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7. The Stato dell’anime of S. Lorenzello of 1714

         The Stato dell’anime (literally "State of souls") of S. Lorenzello of 1714 is a very precious document, because it is a census, for every house in all districts, of all families living in S. Lorenzello in that year. Besides giving information concerning the "state" of each individuals soul, i.e. if she/he received confirmation and communion, it also gives their age and their relationship with the head of the family.

          According to the Stato dell’anime of 1714 we find the following families with husbands or wives, descended from the children of Mattia Cofrancesco, living in S. Lorenzello. They are listed in the same order as they appear in the document. The district or street where they lived is shown in parentheses.

          The age of the persons in the previous list, and also in the following ones, is written, "as they appear" in the Stato dell’anime. You can find the true date of birth from records of baptism, when it is known, in parentheses. As you can notice, there are some rather strange data. For instance, three children of Giovanni Donato; Lorenzo, Mattia, and Bartolomeo, are shown as to have the same age (58), while we know for certain that at least two of them have different dates of birth. This could happen because, when asked by the priest, they probably gave wrong dates of birth, or made some mistakes in calculating their age. We also often find this kind of inaccuracy about the age of people in the Catasto.

          The nine children of Giovanni Donato, both males and females, were all still alive in 1714. They lived in homes of their own, and probably had enough land and goods to live quite well.  An interesting case is that of the three brothers Mattia, Bartolomeo, and Tommaso, who lived in three adjacent houses outside the village of S. Lorenzello in the Piana district, a small flat area between the Titerno River and the first slopes of Mount Erbano.  They were farmers and probably shared the same farm, although they were recorded as three distinct families (called "houses" in the language of the Stato dell’anime). Fabio Di Cerbo lived with his family in the next "house", according to the Stato dell’anime. He was the son of Antonia Cofrancesco, and therefore nephew of the three Cofrancesco brothers.  That was a rather large Cofrancesco "community", in a quarter that had just 9 families.

          As stated above, the only male descendant of Angelillo in 1714 is Tommaso, the son of the now deceased Clemente and Antonia Pacelli.  Tommaso is also recorded in the Catasto Onciario of 1754, now quite old (about 70) and unfortunately designated with the "profession" of a beggar, even though he had a home of his own, purchased from Anastasio Festa, on which he had a debt of 40 ducats.

          In 1714, out of a total of 9 families with Cofrancesco male heads, 6 belong to the descendants of Mattia, and among these, 5 heads are sons of Giovanni Donato and Caterina Pacelli. From these families virtually all Cofrancesco families of Massa, S. Lorenzello, S. Salvatore, Castelvenere, and later, Gioia and Solopaca, descended.

          Besides the 13 families with husbands and wives descended from Mattia, there are 8 other families with different origins. The largest group of families among them is the one of the sons of Simone Cofrancesco (son of Silvio and Mariella Giusti) – whose full name is Giovanni Simone – who first married Antonia Lavorgna, and then Isabella Sagnella, on 2 June 1658, when he was about 40 years old. We find the families of Simone’s sons in 1714 are as follows:

          As mentioned earlier, no descendants of Simone has been found in S. Lorenzello after the end of the 1700s. In the Stato dell’anime we also find the following families from Cofrancescos who have other origins:

          Among these, Francesco is very interesting. In fact, as we will see, all the Cofrancesco of Cerreto descended from him.

          Putting together all the information found up to this point we can draw a map of S. Lorenzello in 1714, with the approximate position of each house where a Cofrancesco lived, with the names of the alleys and districts almost unchanged at the present time. Just a few places had names that are no longer present in the toponymy of the town. The district of Carmine, for example, was near the present parish church, where it was the monastery of the Carmine (Carmel), suppressed in 1808 by the government of Gioacchino Murat, and used one year later as the new parish church. It was a very little district with just six families. The district called in mezzo alla Piazza ("the Square") corresponds to the square existing in front of the present parish church, from where Avantisanti Street starts, just behind the ancient Vicinato Franzese. There were 22 families. Other districts identified as La Quercia and A pie’ della Terra, have not been precisely located.

Families with a Cofrancesco husband or wife living in San Lorenzello in 1714