Varese Ligure & Maissana Family Tree

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY ALL OF THE BELOW BEFORE USING THIS SITE

Hello and thank you for visiting my site. My name is Noelia Demichelli and I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I've been preparing this project for a long time now, and although it's not finished yet (far from it actually), I think that it is advanced enough to be published now. Please consider donating if this was of use to you and/or if you'd like the project to continue.

In this intro you'll be able to:

  • Understand what the site is about and what information it contains.
  • How can *you* help the project if you want.
  • What errors you can report and which ones are not errors.
  • A list of the sources used for this project.
  • A list of the locations contained in the events of the tree.
  • How far I am through the sources and what's the last batch entered before the latest update to the site.


WHAT THE SITE IS ABOUT AND WHAT INFORMATION IT CONTAINS

This project began as a way for me to make connections and see the big picture when doing research for my branch of Varese Ligure and Maissana. Also, to have a reliable tree where to go whenever I needed to see something, since all the trees I've encountered online have mistakes and are obviously not complete since each one concentrates mostly on their own branch. I've tried correcting some of these in FamilySearch in the past but people keep coming back putting the wrong info so I mostly gave up on that.

So I thought of putting together a big, comprehensive tree of the comune of Varese Ligure (and, further on, Maissana) since most of them are connected to each other anyway, at least at the beggining before people began to emigrate elsewhere. At first this was a private project and I did not plan to put it online, but as time went on and it got bigger and bigger, I thought that it might benefit also other people searching for information on their particular branch.

This tree also includes all the foundlings (esposti), even if they died in infancy or never married into the main tree. I include each and every person that I find as I go along through the records in the sources. It's like a way to remember them also, since no one else will.

Mostly, all names and surnames have been standardized in order for me to be able to work, otherwise it would drive me crazy and it would take me forever. So please be aware that the names in the tree may not match exactly the names in the records. If you need to see the original spelling please refer to the source, which it is always cited. Also, sometimes the names or ages will not match at all the source, please see the section regarding what you might think it's an error but it's actually a correction on an error on the source.

I encourage you to use this site only as a reference; please remember that all sources are cited and it is recommended that you always check the original sources.

I began with the 1838-1859 church records on Antenati, first the marriages, then the deaths, then the census, then the births. Now I am currently working with the civil records from 1866 onwards from FamilySearch and Ancestry. You can see the current progress on the last section of this intro.

There are still some floating branches and loose people which hopefully will connect to the main tree as I keep going forwards in time and can connect them through death records or marriage allegati. There are some gaps and missing records so there's a possibility that some branch will never get connected, not at least until I can access the missing records. Also, the esposti that died in infancy or never married will obviously never get connected to the main tree.

Please remember that the information is only as good as the info on the records; so there might be mistakes due to there being mistakes in the original records. Through my research, I've corrected the mistakes I could detect, but there's no way of confirming or correcting others until more records are available, specially of the existing gaps and the older records not online.

Please be aware that if you bookmark a particular individual, there's a possibility that in the future, after an update, that page (id number) will no longer belong to that specific person. So it would be best to just bookmark this page and always start from here.

I'm working with Legacy to do this tree and the tree itself posted here when you access it is made from the software and does not let me change much of the format. So I apologize in advance for the not-so-nice format but there's nothing I can do unless I want to go through thousands of pages one by one and change it. Which of course I am not going to do at this time because it would mean doing it all over again each time I do an update. Maybe when I'm finished I might, or maybe before I'm finished Legacy will release an update which exports the webpage with CSS support instead of the plain HTML it exports now.

Also, bear in mind that even though I enter the information in the original language of the record, the main titles for the info, headings and dates are defaulted from Legacy software which is in English, so they will be in English also here in the webpage. If you have any questions please let me know.



HOW CAN *YOU* HELP THIS PROJECT GROW AND KEEP GOING

- Donate through any of the payment methods available in the "Donate" section. I do this in my spare time and I do not get paid to do this research. But maintaining the web and the server does cost money and also I use time to research that I could be using to work in other projects that would be paid. And also the subscriptions to the paid sites where sometimes I need to access to obtain info that is missing from FamilySearch cost quite a lot.

- If you're in Italy or can get someone to access any of the parishes, please obtain records of the years missing in the online repositories. I've exhausted FamilySearch, Antenati and Ancestry and there are a lot of gaps in the info and some areas do not have anything at all pre-1866. The most valuable you could send me are: Maissana records pre-1866; Varese Ligure records between 1860 and 1865; and Varese Ligure records pre-1838. If you'd like me to extend the project to other surrounding comuni then you can also send me the records. Languages in which I can read, understand and work with the records: Spanish, English, Italian, Latin, French, Portuguese, German, Galician and a little Catalan.

- If you are a descendant of someone in this tree and would like to help the project, please let me know where your branch emigrated so I can do the research on my side. Once I finish with all the Italian records the idea is to trace the emigration of all the branches as far as possible, but this will obviously take an enourmous amount of time. If I know where they went, it would help to accelerate at least that branch.

- Report any mistakes/errors, as per instructions below.



WHAT ERRORS YOU CAN REPORT AND WHICH ONES ARE NOT ERRORS


  • What are *not* mistakes/errors to report:

- You've seen something different in another person's tree, in FamilySearch, Ancestry or other site. Please do not report these as mistakes, the most probable scenario is that the other tree is wrong. I've seen the other ones and most of them have grave mistakes.

- You went to the cited source and saw that one or both parents do not match in a record. This is not a mistake (unless it is an actual different record and I cited the number wrong). Through my research sometimes I've been able to correct the mistake that was made in the original record. Clerks and priests were human too and sometimes they wrote the wrong names. And in death records there's a high chance that the age or parents' names are not entirely correct since the person reporting the death did not always know this information.

- You went to the cited source and saw that the name or surname is spelt differently. As mentioned in the intro, I had to standardize most of the names and surnames in order to be able to work this project, otherwise it would take me forever and I could not make the connections necessary to build the tree. If you need to use the original spelling please refer to the cited source; the spelling used in this tree is not always the same.

  • What *are* mistakes/errors to report:

- I've cited the wrong record number. It would be seldom, but I am human and there are thousands of people in this tree. I might have miscited some record or put the number wrong. If you see this please let me know so I can correct it.

- Typos. These are probably frequent. As said above, there are thousands of people in this tree (and thousands more to come) and I usually type very quickly. Once in a while I make some typos. When I find one I correct it, but I am not always going back to every person in the tree. So if you see an obvious typo please let me know so I can correct it.

- A date that is wrong. As mentioned above, I type very quickly and I might, sometimes, put a date wrong. I try to double check every time I enter the dates, specially after I found a mistake early on; but on the first couple of batches (before I found my first mistake on a date) I might have more mistakes than usual. Also my keyboard sometimes plays dirty tricks on me and misses a few characters when typing, specially when the battery is low. So if you see one of these please let me know.



SOURCES USED OR TO BE USED (FOR NOW)

  • Varese Ligure 1838-1859 parish records from Antenati website.
  • Varese Ligure 1837 census from Antenati website.
  • Scurtabò parish records 1780-1806 from Antenati website.
  • Comuneglia parish records 1780-1806 from Antenati website.
  • Cavizzano parish records 1780-1806 from Antenati website.
  • Varese Ligure civil records 1806 from Antenati website.
  • Varese Ligure civil records 1866-1941 from FamilySearch and one or two years from Ancestry for the ones that are missing in FamilySearch.
  • Maissana civil records 1866-1941 from FamilySearch and one or two years from Ancestry for the ones that are missing in FamilySearch.

Every source is cited in full for the births, marriages and deaths which correspond to it.



LOCATIONS LIST

You can see the Locations section after the Donate section in this webpage, which includes all locations used in this tree for at least one event. Most of them have the coordenates, except the ones that are for a more general area (for example, the main comune; or a country in general), or a couple for which I could not yet pinpoint what the place mentioned in the record is.



ORDER & CURRENT PROGRESS THROUGH THE SOURCES

Up to date at the last version, this is the order and current progress through the sources and into the tree:

  • Varese Ligure 1837 Census. Complete with some exceptions of people I still need to see who they are and where they fit.
  • Marriage records 1838-1859; all frazioni from Varese Ligure. Complete with some exceptions of records I need to check more thouroughly; and with the exception of the records that are missing from the Antenati source. Only main people added (spouses and parents). Witnesses and priests not started yet, except for frazione Buto which is complete.
  • Death records 1838-1859; all frazioni from Varese Ligure. Complete with some exceptions of records I need to check more thouroughly; and with the exception of the records that are missing from the Antenati source. Only main people added (deceased, spouses and parents). Witnesses and priests not started yet, except for frazione Buto which is complete.
  • Baptism records 1838-1859; all frazioni from Varese Ligure. Complete with some exceptions of records I need to check more thouroughly; and with the exception of the records that are missing from the Antenati source. Only main people added (child and parents). Godparents and priests not started yet, except for frazione Buto up to 1841 which is complete.
  • Varese Ligure civil records (all) 1866-1922; 1924. Complete.
  • Varese Ligure civil records (matrimoni-morti) 1923; 1925-1941. Complete.
  • Maissana civil records 1866-1920. Complete.
  • Maissana civil records 1921-1941. In Progress.
  • Varese Ligure civil records 1806. Not started yet.
  • Cavizzano parish records 1780-1806. Not started yet.
  • Comuneglia parish records 1780-1806. Not started yet.
  • Scurtabò parish records 1780-1806. Not started yet.
  • Other records around the world following the emigration of the different branches. In Progress.
  • Varese Ligure civil records (nati) 1923; 1925-1941. Suspended Family Search has, WITHOUT WARNING, taken down the nati records from 1923 onwards that were previously available, so this is suspended at the moment.


  • Last update: April 5th, 2026
  • Current headcount: 55.727 people in the tree
  • Previous update: February 2nd, 2026
  • Previous headcount: 54.257 people in the tree
  • Original upload: October 8th, 2022
  • Original headcount: 16.777 people in the tree