My very first blog post..

I posted this on an older blog site that I was using for my DIY renovations on my house. I guess this is what the universe was trying to tell me, that I would be doing this for more than fun! The pictures didn't come over, so go over to that page to see the whole thing!

https://www.mokehillhousefarm.com/2019/12/my-mysterious-norwegian-ancestor.html

Johannes Buzzi

My Mysterious Norwegian Ancestor, Johannes Buzzi aka Giovanni Antonio Buzzi Biela (1777-1846)

Way back on the family tree of my father, in the city of Trondheim on the west coast of Norway, my 5 times great-grandfather, Johannes Buzzi (‘Boo Zee’) married Lorine Antonine Roe in 1801. This was Lorine’s 2^nd marriage, due to her first husband dying, and Johannes first marriage.

 The last name of Buzzi is not common in Norway, but when I originally started looking at my Norwegian genealogy, I was focused on the Tonseth line and just skipped over him. The Tonseth family has so much history in Norway, and Trondheim in particular, that I had plenty of interesting stories on which to focus. But one day, on my Ancestry.com family tree, another person posted a picture of a painting of him and his name was not Johannes. His real name was Giovanni and he was born in a small town in northern Italy, on the border with Switzerland, called Viggiu, about an hour north of Milan, on the banks of Lake Lugano.

This was a bit of a shock since if you look at me, there isn’t anything that would suggest Italy in my heritage. I am so pale that the sun will burn me in 20 minutes if I am not covered in sunscreen and protective clothing. But I have science on my side so went to check my DNA results, and there it was, a very small percentage of southern European genetics.

 It finally hit me, I really am descended from a man who left Italy and somehow ended up in Trondheim, Norway. My Norwegian cousin who we first met in 2014, didn’t believe it when we told him. His statement was “there are no Italians in the Tonseths” or something to that effect. (He is also in his 80’s and follows the Tonseth tradition of being stubborn.

The distant relative who posted the picture of Johannes and started this quest, is living in Norway so I contacted her about this intriguing story. She is descended from Johannes and his 2^nd wife Clara Evensen, while I am from Johannes and his 1^st wife Lorine Roe. Her family had this picture of him and was able to give me a lot of information on him and how he ended up in Norway. This is what she told me. “ They had travelled to Viggiu and met up with a local man there, who gave them some of the history of the area and the family. Viggiu is a small town that was a mining town for limestone, that was used in a lot of the buildings and statues. The family was in mining and was doing pretty well for themselves. There is a very old church there and they had a section dedicated to a saint they paid for, and they were buried underneath that section. They had a very good life but then Napoleon Bonaparte was coming through the Alps from France and heading for a fight with the Austrians who were in Italy. The relative said that the family gave him some of their family treasures, and put him on a boat heading to some family in Bergen, Netherlands. But something happened during the trip, bad weather or bad navigation, and he landed in Trondheim. There is also a manuscript about Trondheim and the people of historical significance that mentions him.”

I found the book on the history of Trondheim and its people, and Johannes has a letter to the State Church of Norway, asking to convert to Protestantism from Catholicism. He describes leaving the country ahead of the “French Giants” that would have conscripted him to fight at Mantua.https://www.tfb.no/db/personalhistorie/3_7_20070228_134916.pdf

When you look at the history of the area, you can’t see the thing that would push a young man out of his country, and make a foreign land look better than his beautiful hometown. Unless you knew that Napoleon Bonaparte was coming after the Austrian army. If you look up the Battle of Marengo, you will see that Napoleon is pursuing them through the Alps and reached Milan in June of 1800. To get to Milan that way, you will have to go through the Lombardy region and the idea of being forced to join the French army, was probably not appealing to Giovanni and I am sure other able-bodied men in the region felt the same way. But he was able to leave and he never went back. Although the book he is in does say that when he was very old, he actually set out on a ship to try and go back to Italy, but lost his nerve somewhere around Denmark and turned around. He eventually died in Trondheim and is buried in the courtyard of our family church, Var Frue.

I needed to know more, and I decided to go to Italy to see this little town and the country. To find out anything I can about him and his life, and see for myself, where my Italian roots started. My first genealogy trip was that one to Trondheim in 2014 with my parents and my son. Since then, I have gone to a couple more places, Pennsylvania, Stockholm, New Orleans and Alabama looking at the places my ancestors lived and soaking up the atmosphere. I usually find things in person that can not be found on line, and this proved true for this trip, big time.  

I set up the trip and this time my son and daughter-in-law are coming along, as well as meeting a good friend of mine who is always up for an adventure. We left California in mid-july and were excited to be going to France and Italy. We landed in Paris during a heat wave, which reached temperatures of over 100 degrees several days in a row. Paris is a city known for its food, wine, history, monuments and people who aren’t always happy to see you. Let me tell you that heat makes the people of Paris even grumpier than usual because few places have air conditioning. Because it was so hot, people were out in the streets at the cafes until the very early morning, like 4 AM. For people who are jet-lagged, it was miserable.

But on to Italy! We took the train from Paris to Milan, because Milan is the closest large city to Viggiu and I really wanted to see it. My friend Anthony, was going to go to Viggiu with me so we rented a car and I drove out towards the Swiss border where all the famous lakes are, like Lake Como and Lake Lugano. We actually crossed the border into Switzerland briefly, and then it went back into Italy. (see map) It is not easy getting to Viggiu! I got lost at least once, maybe two times.

When we got there, it was like travelling back in time to a pre-world war 2 era. It was so quaint and quiet and since it was still hot, not a lot of people out and about. We tried to start at the museum but it wasn’t open yet, so we went towards the main part of town. There was a church that had been there since the 1400’s.

And we saw the family name of Buzzi everywhere, but with different 2^nd last names. (I will explain more…) This is what the street looked like, and no one spoke English. Anthony and I walked all over the town, ate pizza at the local restaurant and gelato as well. Everyone was very friendly but looked amused and confused by us, as we obviously didn’t fit in and I don’t think they get many tourists. We had gotten to the end of a dead end road at one point and an older Italian lady and her 2 german shepherds came out to meet us. She didn't speak English and we didn't know Italian. It was pretty amusing but she told us to go back and turn left and we found the entrance. I think she must have picked up the phone and called all the neighbors to let them know about us.

Finally, we were able to go to the library and museum http://www.museiciviciviggiutesi.com/  and met up with a nice man who spoke English and was able to hand church books to look at and take pictures of them. They were hand-scribed by a gentleman who came every summer to Viggiu and spent it transcribing the church’s books into these copies. I was able to go back a few generations and confirm birth/marriage/death dates from these. He explained the last name of Buzzi, and why we saw it everywhere but with a tacked on second last name. There are a lot of people who descended originally from the Buzzi family, but as they kept growing and multiplying, they adopted a second last name to identify their branch of the Buzzi tree. My ancestor is Buzzi Biela, but there are a lot of variations. I was able to show him the Trondheim book and explain what it says, and he was fascinated that all of this was online.

I spent several hours in the library and the museum which was breath-taking. This museum houses the second largest set of plaster casts in the world and there is no one there visiting it. Anthony and I were let into the place by ourselves to walk around and see the artwork there. It was stunning and odd. With all the art in Italy, why isn’t this more popular? This little town is where the limestone for all those grand statues was quarried. This museum has the plaster casts for so many great bronze statues, and you can literally spend all day there by yourself! There is this one room with plaster scenes on every wall that form a story.

I want to go back and hopefully find someone who can speak English. The place was captured in time and had such a wonderful feeling about it. I know there is more to learn there about this mysterious ancestor of mine, but I also really want to go back for the food... and the wine.. and the art... and the gelato.

Julie