Updating history

It's been a while since we posted anything on this blog - we're still here, but life has somewhat overtaken the blog. However, there's something we wanted to document. 

Remember this?

In case the answer is "no", a quick recap: Back in 2017, whilst Stuart was doing some work on the ceiling in what is now our snug/office, he decided to pull off the rather ugly and badly fitted (and disintegrating) piece of wood that was covering the old window lintel. As he did this, that he spotted a tiny, folded up piece of paper, stuffed into the original lintel.

The full story of the discovery is here. 

It blows my mind a little to realise that we found this little piece of treasure a whole nine years ago (where has that time gone?!). 

We did our best at the time to decipher the handwriting and the Italian, and came up with a patchy, part-interpretation of what was written. For the last nine years the note has been displayed in a frame and proudly shown to anyone who might be interested (and no doubt to some who really weren't, but politely pretended to be!). We had resigned ourselves to never being able to decipher any more of the writing than we already had done, but were satisfied with our interpretation that it was some sort of invoice or receipt for some money to be paid to the council in Pietrabuona for use of the chestnut mill. Within the space of the last 7 months, however, there have been two major breakthroughs. 

First, last November, I was doing some digging around on the history of our local area. Without wanting to go off on too much of a tangent, the reason for this digging around was that Dad, who was here on one of his visits at the time, noticed a series of stone-edged drainage gulleys in our upper terraces. Incredibly, despite having lived here for 11.5 years at that point, we had literally never noticed them before.

We did some literal digging around them and discovered that the top stone goes a fair way back into the ground, but nothing else of note (sadly no hidden gold or even anything mundane to help us date the structures or determine, definitively, their purpose/use - our best guess remains that they were weep holes or some other form of drainage, or that they somehow carried water down the hill for irrigation purposes, or even to the house). 

Anyway, back to the topic of this post. My research to try to get to the bottom of the stone constructions in the terraces was fruitless, but it did renew my curiosity in our 18th century note and I decided to see if I could work out the name of the signatory at the bottom of the note - I thought it might be Francesco and that the surname began with a B. Anyway, to cut a longish story short, I came across an inventory of records held by the Pescia State Archive, through which I discovered that in the 1770s, one Francesco Benedettini held the position of camarlingo (treasurer) for Pietrabuona in the years 1770 to 1773.

Referring back to our note. It is signed by "Francesco Benedettini Camarlingo"! I was willing to overlook the fact that Francesco Benedettini only held the office of treasurer from 1770 to 1773 because our note is dated 8th January 1774 - early enough into the new year for him still to be holding the position and not yet handed over to the person who held the office after him. 

I was thrilled with my discovery, which made the note that bit more interesting for us, to have an actual name that we could pinpoint in real historical documents. 

Fast forward to last week: Stuart had returned from a medical appointment with a page of A4 with very indecipherable doctor-writing all over it. I pondered whether AI would be able to help decipher handwriting and my brain immediately skipped from 21st century doctor's note to 18th century treasurer's note. 

Now, I have to say, I've not been a great fan of AI until now - in my work I loathe receiving emails and articles that have been written by AI thus disguising the natural language of the authors behind them (which may not be perfect, but is entirely more readable and human than the artificially polished stuff that AI churns out), and I feel uneasy about the way AI makes things so quick and simple and eats away at our ability to find things out for ourselves. But I now have to concede that it can be an incredibly helpful tool. 

First things first though. AI is TERRIBLE at reading handwriting (both that of a modern-day doctor and that of an 18th century treasurer). 

It made a really poor attempt at reading the writing I uploaded, and what it came up with was way off, even for the words that I'd already been able to read myself. However, things got a lot more interesting when I fed into it what I had already managed to decipher myself, and with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between me and the AI, I eventually arrived at the full text of the note. 

If that wasn't satisfying enough, very excitingly I discovered that the note actually contains another name. The name of the person living in our house (probably) and paying the taxes (definitely). The full text is:

Addì 8 Gennaro 1774
Da Gio. Mei Lire quattro per
sua tassa di macina dovuto
a Pietra Bona dico L4 - - 
e piu soldi 16-8 per sua rata 
di taglione dovuto alla Comu 
nita di Pietra Bona per [] anno 1773[] 
dico --------------L--:16-8 
Francesco Benedettini Camarlingo

This translates as:

On the 8th day of January 1774. 

From Giovanni Mei, four lire for his milling tax owed to Pietrabuona, namely 4 lire.  

And furthermore 16 soldi and 8 denari for his share of the communal levy owed to the Community of Pietrabuona for the year 1773. Namely: 16 soldi, 8 denari. 

Francesco Benedettini, Treasurer

I had really struggled with the first couple of words after the date at the top, not understanding what "Gio" and "mei" meant, or even if those actually were the letters that were written, but AI was able to tell me that "Gio." (including the dot, which is clearly present in the note) was a common abbreviation of the name Giovanni, and that "Mei" was, in fact, a common surname in this area. So it seems highly likely (or at least possible - I'll explain why some doubts remain later) that one Giovanni Mei was living in our house in 1774. It was certainly he who paid both a milling tax of 4 lire and a communal tax of 16 soldi and 8 denari to the Community of Pietrabuona, and Francesco Benedettini wrote him a receipt as proof of payment. 

In the 18th century, in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the monetary system was divided into lire, soldi and denari:

 

1 lira = 20 soldi 

1 soldo = 12 denari 

This explains the annotation "L--16-8" meaning 0 lire, 16 soldi and 8 denari, and likewise "L4--" means 4 lire, 0 soldi and 0 denari. 

I very much struggled to decipher the second of the years mentioned in the note towards the bottom, firmly believing it read "1777" (and indeed it looks like there's something else scribbled after the year, but I don't think that's decipherable). AI was very cross with me for thinking it said 1777, telling me it was "impossible for a tax from 1777 (four years in the future) to be paid in January 1774; the chamberlains always collected the taxes of the year just ended (1773)". 

AI then softened the blow a bit by conceding that 18th century "3"s were written in quite a different way and that they can be easily misread as a "7" by a modern eye: "In eighteenth-century cursive handwriting (the so-called chancellery handwriting), the number 3 was written with a flat horizontal stroke at the top and a diagonal that descended, then curved at the bottom. This flat initial stroke makes it very easy for the modern eye to confuse it with a 7." I'm still not sure I totally see it, but I do agree that 1773 makes more sense than 1777 in this context. 

I tried to do a bit more digging, wondering: 

1. Why was the note folded up and tucked into the window lintel? 

2. Was Giovanni Mei the owner of the property or a tenant? 

3. Knowing that in 1830 the house belonged to wealthy Pescia landowner/noblewoman Anna Pagni Bordoni, how did it pass from Giovanni Mei to her (if indeed it was owned by Mei in the first place)? 

On these queries AI was less helpful. I have some sympathy for it because digitised local Italian records are quite few and far between - there's clearly a lot of information that's still only available as hard copy original documents, kept either in state archives or in parish records. I had hoped that in the nine years that had passed since our initial investigations more records would have become available online, but that seems not to be the case. 

AI really demonstrated its limitations when it used something that I myself - a floundering amateur researcher of local Italian history with little understanding at the time of either Italian or local history - had written (on this very blog), as a citation to back its up its claims. Not so clever, AI.

This really gave me pause to consider how seriously I wanted to take the output. I am fully confident that we now have the true and correct text and translation of our 18th century note. But the answers to my further questions really had to be taken with a large pinch of conjecture. 

 For what it's worth, the possible answers it came up with were: 

1. Why was the note folded up and tucked into the window lintel? 

It's possible that the note was hidden above the window as some form of superstition - to protect the home from misfortune, lightning, illness, evil spirits, or witchcraft, but it's more likely that the note was put there either for safe-keeping or for ease of access in case of someone coming to check whether Giovanni had paid his taxes. 

2. Was Giovanni Mei the owner or a tenant? 

In particular I wondered whether the house would have been part of the Mezzadria system of farming (where a wealthy landowner provided the land and the farmhouse and a tenant farmer lived there and worked the land, but had to give half of all produce to the landowner), which was prevalent in Italy at that time. 

What AI told me was that analysis of the two taxes mentioned in the note suggests that Giovanni Mei was most likely the owner or a small direct farmer, and NOT a mezzadro (sharecropper). Though I feel there is still some room for doubt here. 

Of the "Taglione" tax, AI says that in 18th century Tuscany, the taglione was a fixed contribution tax based on the ownership of real estate (land or buildings) registered in the local community's land registry. It goes on to say that, by law, Mezzadria contracts required that taxes on land and community taxes were to be paid entirely by the owner of the land, not by the worker, concluding that if Giovanni Mei is recorded as the direct debtor of that share of taglione to the Community of Pietrabuona, it means that he was the owner of that property or that fraction of land. For me, this doesn't 100% clarify whether he was the owner of the land with someone else (a mezzadro) living in the house and working the land, or whether he himself was living and working here, as AI wants me to believe. 

Of the milling tax, AI says that small landowners who milled their own chestnuts from their own small farms had to pay directly to the municipal treasurer to obtain authorization to collect the flour. This seems more in line with Giovanni both owning the place and living/working here, but is it still possible that he paid this tax on behalf of a tenant farmer (or because he, being landowner, was responsible)? 

So I'm still unsure as to whether the house was owned by Giovanni Mei and he lived here, farmed the land and paid his taxes, and folded up his receipt and stuffed it in a safe place to keep as proof of payment and that everything was legal and above board. OR whether Giovanni Mei owned the house and land, had a tenant farmer in place in the house, and paid his taxes, passing the receipt on to the tenant in the house so that they could produce it as proof of payment of taxes if needed. 

AI helpfully tells me that the surname Mei is "historically deeply rooted in the Pescia and Valdinievole area" (though with its "historically deeply rooted" I'm starting to suspect AI of over-egging the pudding). Less helpfully in this instance it tells me that there were both working-class branches (connected to agriculture and milling in the hilltop villages) and landed families with this surname. It tells me "Finding a Giovanni Mei paying the milling tax in Pietrabona in 1774 is a formidable documentary confirmation." (there it goes, over-egging again). 

3. How did the house pass from Giovanni Mei to Anna Pagni Bordoni (if indeed it was owned by Mei in the first place)? 

My third question opened a whole can of confused worms and AI tried to lead me down various paths that it was clear to me were wrong turns. 

Of course it all depends on who Giovanni Mei really was, but IF he was a smallholder who owned this house, it's quite possible that, facing financial hardship (potentially due to radical reforms in local tax systems introduced in the late 1700s by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo), he went to the wealthy Pagni Bordoni family for a loan, which he then failed to repay and the property was foreclosed and passed to them. However, this doesn't quite explain why it was in the name of Anna Pagni Bordoni - unless it was her father who became its owner and passed it down to her (we already know from an entirely different document that Anna was her father's sole heir - or at least that there were no male heirs). 

AI then tried to be helpful in making suggestions as to who might have lived in the house in the 1830s, "since Anna Pagni Bordoni lived in a grand palazzo in the historic centre of Pescia" (did she?). It tells me that the house would have been leased out to generate income and was almost certainly occupied by a tenant farmer and that, rather than being a grand mezzadria estate, the house was likely treated by the Campioni family (did I mention that Anna was married to Pietro Campioni?) as an independent, single-family rental unit, where the tenant paid Anna an annual rent in cash, oil, or chestnuts. 

I firmly believe that AI has jumped to some conclusions that may not be entirely accurate, but to give it its dues, it has given me a lot of food for thought, and I'll continue to chip away at the mysteries and think of different ways to probe AI. 

Ultimately, we do now have one more tiny piece in the puzzle, which we are celebrating as a massive win, but the mysteries of our house remain. If anyone knows of a friendly dendrocronista in the Tuscany region please put us in touch! 

Oh, one last thing. We did come up with the bright idea, just over a year ago, to attempt to date our house based on calculating the age of some of the very old olive trees at the very top of our terraces - trees that have been dead for a while, but still standing, theorising that the olive trees would have been planted at around the same time as the house was built. Stuart duly cut one down and produced a beautiful piece of wood, but the rings are so close together in some parts that it has proved impossible to count them (it would need a travelling microscope to do anything approximating an accurate count). So we have a beautiful piece of olive wood, but only a rough age estimate of approximately 250 years - which doesn't get us any further than the note from 1774.

The quest continues!