Recently on Ancestry I was asked what I knew about Tomás Anzalota, an Italian immigrant to Puerto Rico who appears in my tree. Though Tomás is not a part of my main line of ancestors, whenever I find crossovers of people who married cousins or members of my family that are fairly interesting or a pose a challenge (such as a foreign person in Puerto Rico in this case), I am intrigued to see if I can trace them off the island. This is mainly because with my own ancestors it is not as easy – most have been on the island since at least the early 1700s or late 1600s. I have been fortunate to trace one line to Mallorca in the 1800s and two lines to the French Caribbean (one to Martinique and the other to Guadeloupe) in that time period as well. Besides that, there is one line that comes from Spain in the 1700s that I am fairly sure I have traced off the island as well back to a small town called San Juan del Puerto. But besides that, all other lines have been fairly difficult to trace off the island.
So when I was asked about Tomás I figured I would write a post for others who might descend from him and to demonstrate how by using a paper trail I am fairly sure I was able to trace Tomás back to his Italian town of origin.
General Information
In the image above we can see one of Tomás’ earliest presences on U.S./Puerto Rican records (I say this because we also have the Registro Civil but which was created under Spanish rule). We see that Tomás Anazalota is listed as “Tomás Anzalota Monet”, the head of his household, male, white, 37 years old, single, a native of Italy who immigrated in 1885, and still a foreigner with non-US citizenship. After him are listed five children (Manuel, Ramona, Josefa, Concepción, and Candelaria) ranging from 16 years old to 8 years old. Lastly, a Josefa Álvarez García, female, white, 45 years old, married once for 25 years with 1 child is listed as a boarder with the family. According to this record alone, we do not know who the mother of the children are (a fact we will later corroborate with other documents). The oldest child Manuel would have been born around 1894 and the youngest Candelaria around 1902, which would mean that all of their births should appear in the Civil Registry which should likely give us more information as to who Tomás’ parents were and the possibility of listing their mother as well.
Civil Registry of Puerto Rico
With Puerto Rican research, we are fairly lucky that a birth record usually mentions three generations – the person being born, their parents, and their grandparents. This allows us to quickly jump from one generation to the next and without losing the mother’s surname along the way as well. Searching in the Registro Civil we were able to find various birth records for Tomás’ children, I will reference two of them to give us more information on Tomás’ origins.
Manuel Anzalota
As you can see above, Tomás appears in 1894 to register the birth of his son Manuel in Palmarejo, Corozal, Puerto Rico – the same place they were living in 1910. Similarly, no mother is listed in the birth record, which truth be told is a bit odd since we mostly see fathers not being listed when the child is not legitimate. However, thanks to Tomás’ appearance we can now learn the name of his parents – Francisco Anzalota and María Monet[e] (we will see variations of this surname as Monet, Moneta, Monete, Moneti, etc.).
Not only that but it gives us exactly where Tomás was from in Italy! It mentions he was from “Diamante, province in Italy”. This is fairly lucky because not always will a town be mentioned when the person is a foreigner. A quick search for “Diamante, Italy” brings up one town located in Calabria in the province of Cosenza. Though it mentions Diamante as a province in the record, we must acknowledge that the 1800s in Italy was a fairly different time than what it is now seeing as how unification occurred in 1848.
Concepción Anazalota
Another son’s birth record in 1899 confirms much of the same information we saw in his brother Manuel’s birth record. Tomás still appears as being a native of Diamante in Italy and both of his parents are still listed as Francisco Anzalota and María Monet[a] (this time there is a clear ‘a’ at the end of her surname).
A Late Marriage
Tomás would actually marry Josefa Álvarez García, the woman listed in his household in 1910 in the year 1914 in Corozal, Puerto Rico. Since she was listed in the household with the children and he ultimately married her, it is likely that she was their mother. In his marriage record it mentions that he was from Italy (no specific town listed) and it mentions his parents as Francisco Anzalota (deceased) and María Monet (deceased) both from Italy. This helps to provide a range of potential death rates ranging from 1894-1914 giving that in Manuel’s birth record the parents were not listed as deceased versus Tomás’ marriage record where they were listed as deceased.
What is interesting is that Josefa Álvarez was married during the birth of all of Tomás’ children, her husband Juan Delgado did not pass away until 1912. I wonder if they dissolved their marriage between them as a verbal agreement but religiously stayed married until his death. This would explain why none of the children were recognized at the time of their birth given Josefa’s married status.
Petition for Naturalization
The last piece of evidence from Puerto Rico we have is Tomás’ petition for naturalization – a document that is not commonly found for Puerto Ricans, but given that Tomás was an immigrant it makes sense we were able to find it.
This record does a great job summarizing everything we were able to previously find.
As you can see Tomás is listed as being from Diamante, Italy, this time we are provided with a birthdate (December 21, 1872). He is listed as the widower of Josefa Álvarez and their marriage is listed as April 1892, though we have a document showing they were married much, much later in 1914 (was this a way of saving grave in a Catholic culture?). It does list all of the children we previously saw listed in 1910.
Though a birthdate is listed for Tomás, given the incorrect marriage date for him and Josefa we can use the birthdate to guide us but not take it as an official date set in stone.
The question becomes, can I find Tomás’ birth record in Diamante with the information at hand?
Registri - Stato Civile
Luckily, there are records available for Diamante on FamilySearch for the time period in which Tomás would have been born. Starting with 1873 I worked my way backwards to see if I could find a Tomás Anzalota being born in Diamante, the son of a Francisco (likely Francesco) and María Monet (Moneta, Monete, Moneti as possible variations). Also taking into the account the possibility that Anzalota could be spelled similarly but a little bit differently.
In a weird twist of fate, a good chunk of 1870s birth indexes were actually listed by first name and had it not been for this I likely would have not found Tomás’ birth record at all.
This is because in 1870 a Tomás was born under the name “Tommaso Ciriaco Giuseppe Lanzellotta”. This Tommaso was the son of Francesco Lanzellotta and his wife Marianna Monetti. Based on the information we have in Puerto Rico and what I found in Italy – I think we have a fairly solid match!
Despite Tomás’ birth date being listed in naturalization, the census records provide his birth year from as early as 1865 to as late as 1875. In Puerto Rican research I rarely if ever believe a year seen on a document unless it is being provided in its original record (birth year in a baptism, death year in a death certificate, etc.) because a lot of the time years listed on documents are conflated.
Francesco Lanzellotta & Marianna Monetti
Francesco Lanzellotta and Marianna Monetti were also born in Diamante, Cosenza, Italy. Their births are recorded as the 13 June 1839 for the former and the 7 May 1840 for the latter (There is a website for Cosenza with information which seems to be down right now but I’ll hyperlink here in case it starts working again!). They had another son named Luigi born in 1873 and a son named Divino born in 1881. What’s interesting though is that the Lanzellotta family did not seem to have stayed behind in Diamante, if not, the family actually can be found in Mexico years later.
Francesco Lanzellotta is recorded as dying in Distrito Federal, Mexico the 14 August 1909 while his wife Marianna Monetti died later on the 10 April 1930. Both Luigi (now known as Luis) and Divino (known as Albino) came along for the journey as well marrying Italian immigrant women themselves. Below you can see Francisco’s death record in Distrito Federal, Mexico.
Since the family immigrated to Latin America, why did Tomás separate from the group and head to Puerto Rico? He was about 15 years old when he supposedly left Italy – was he on his way to Mexico, stopped over in Puerto Rico, and stayed? Did he have extended family in Puerto Rico already? Was there hope to meet up with his family again in Mexico and his wishes never came to fruition? These are the questions that sometimes documents can or can not answer, the social side of genealogy and the reasons why our ancestors might take certain journeys or make certain decisions. We do our best to piece together the story of our ancestors with the documents and stories we were left behind but even then sometimes we are left with gaps in what we can answer.
Lanzellotta, Lanzellotti?
The last interesting piece of information is that between Tommaso’s birth in 1870 and Divino’s birth in 1881 the surname changed from Lanzellotta to Lanzellotti. A look at Divino Domencio Enrico’s birth record clearly shows us the difference.
Seeing this in the Italian records goes to show that Tomás’ presence with the variation Anzalota in Puerto Rico versus using Lanzallotta is not too farfetched. Removing the “L” vocally does not really change the sound of the first syllable if you say the surname aloud. Time and time again we have seen surnames change spellings once they moved from one linguistic community to another but here we even see a switch between the same community. I do not know much about Italian surnames and spelling in the 19th century to comment on it, but I do know that spelling varied as well in Spanish-speaking countries (Rivera versus Ribera) and surnames did change over time (de la Cruz became just Cruz).
When the family moves to Mexico, it seems they carried with them “Lanzellotti” which is the more common spelling in Mexican civil records.
Conclusions
Given the information discovered both in Puerto Rico and in Italy, I am fairly certain that Tomás Anzalota was Tommaso Lanzellotta born the 8 September 1870 in Diamante, Italy, son of Francesco Lanzellotta and Mariana Monetti.
One of my favorite memories I always think about when doing genealogy is from a volunteer in a church I went to visit in Spain to do research who when I told him about the various coincidences I kept discovering said to me that there comes a point when the coincidences are more than just that. A lot of the times in genealogy we are nervous to make a certain connection or establish a certain line for fear that we are working in the wrong direction and/or tying false ancestors into our tree. But at the same time we need to be confident about our work and research as genealogists! For example, this line I discovered way back in 2013 but it is not until now, 10 years later, that I am writing about it on here!
Cover Photo Source: Registro Civil (Corozal, Puerto Rico), “Nacimientos 1892-1907, L. 8-12,” p. 269-269v, no. 74, Concepción Anzalota, birth, 3 May 1890; accessed as “Puerto Rico, Civil Registry, 1805-2001,” browsable images, FamilySearch, (https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/1682798 : accessed 30 May 2023). Image 1264 out of 2219, signature extracted from birth record.
You found my great grandmother’s father Tomás.