Tm is m From an emblazoned copy made in Geneva Miss Sarah Diodate Gardiner. s. Notes 1O and 18. MR. WILLIAMDIODATE i (OfNew Haven from 1717 to175 1) AND HIS ITALIAN ANCESTRY, READ BEFORE THE A ? J^ til" fife.euj ftaccn ftiaiortcal mmtu, June 28, 1875, nv f \ EDWARD ETSALISBURY. : .M 3 Taken from the Society's Archives, by permission, for private circulation, and printed, after revision, in April,1876. v, v :. •- \j OW \ r. \ 2f2 f'I - Printed by Tittlk,Morehousr & Twior. SUPPLEMENT TO THE DIODATI GENEALOGY. By Prof. Edward E. Salisbuuy, LL.D., of New Haven, Ct. H preparing my paper on the Diodatis and their alliances, WHILEitoccurred to me to inquire whether there might not be some relationship between the Mci wife of Carolo Diodati, the namesake of Charles V.,and a family of similar name whom Iheard of when visiting Switzerland several years ago, one of whom was the first husband of the second wife of the celebrated theologian De Wette of Basel. Accordingly, Iwrote a letter of inquiry on the subject to a granddaughter of De WWrettc by his first wife, who has lately sent me the following reply fiom a cousin of one of her step-grandmoth- er's relatives. No affinity appears to exist between the two fami- lies ; but the letter gives authoritative information respecting the Meis who became allied to the Diodatis by the marriage of Carolo, and is therefore worth preserving. Itranslate it here from the French, for the benefit of all who may have become interested in the Diodati genealogy. Bkrnk,Nov. 20, 1877. Here at last is the answer to your inquiry of the 31st of Octo- ber The Mey family of Lucca is entirely alien to us, as is easily proved by the difference of uanie (theirs being Mey or Mci, ours dei Maggi), and of origin (they coming from Lucca, we from Brescia), by the different coats of arms ( their escutcheon being divided into two parts—the upper of deep blue, the lower of deep yellow, witha hunted wild-boar in the middle), and by the entire absence of associations. "When our ancestor Jean Rodolphe Mu)' was bailiffat Nyon in 1659-1665, he heard speak of the Meis of Geneva, and learned from them that the last Mciof Lucca was about to be chosen bailiffof Bisignano in Calabria ;and he would have liked to get from him some genealogical information. But how should he come at it? He, being a Protestant, would not have been honored with an answer to inquiry,any more than the Meis of Geneva. The work of investigation was resumed in 1730, when a letter was ad- dressed to the Marquis Luchesini, governor of Mirandola. The marquis was to ask for the pedigree of the Mci family from the Marquis Bottini, whose mother was the last Mci in Lucca of the female line, through whom Bottiui had inherited allthe possessions of this extinct family. Bottini feared and believed that there was a wish to disinherit him, and, before complying with the request made, demanded a formal renunciation, onthe part of allthe mem- bers of the May familyof Berne, of all the possessions once pertaining" to the" Meis of Lucca. Thisrenunciation, signed byallthe Mays, by.the Avoyer and by the Two Hundred, was sent to Lucca January 30th, 1735. Soon after there came from the Republic of Lucca a document signed by the Grand Chancellor Joseph Vincent Hiccolini, and sealed with the great seal of the republic. Itcontained the testimony of the Government of Lucca that the Mcifamily was counted as one of the nobility,that several members of it had been Grand Councillors, Ancients, and Gonfaloniers [Chief Magistrates 1 C=>il TIJBI 2 of the republic], among others, Blaise, Laurence, Emile, and Philippe. It was added that on the 21st of January, IG2B, there had been made a catalogue of the noble families of Lucca, in which the Meis were included at page 127. In 1802 the May family commissioned the Chancellor Frederic May to make genealogical researches in Lucca itself. On his return to Berne he reported minutely,— withoutbeing able to establish any relationship between the two families which, as we have already said, never existed. The Mci family expatriated itself from Lucca in the middle of the six- teenth century, for religion's sake. Biagio (Blaise) Mci established him- self in 1544 as a merchant at Lyons. His son Vincenzo, married to a daughter ofMartino Bernardini, came to Geneva in1550, together with one of his relatives named Cesare, who had been of the Grand Council of Lucca from 1544 to 1548, and twice acted as Ancient. The wife of Cesare was named Pellegrina Galganetti. In 15(50 Vincenzo Mcibecame a citizen of Geneva, where other families of Lucca, the Torre ttini,Micheli, Burlamachi [the family of the wife of the Rev. John Diodati], and the Passavanti, had settled contemporaneously with the Meis. Lucca had been for some time the last refuge of the gospel in Italy,and it was from this city that the Jesuits drove away the families that maintained the most independence, and which were, in part, also of the noblest stocks of Italy. Vincenzo Mci became a member of the Grand Council of Geneva in 1568. Horatio was one of his six children, who, on the Ist of January, 1596, was called to Berne to make an attempt to establish the silkworm in the Canton de Vaud. This same Horatio is reckoned among the celebrities of Lyons as a merchant or manufacturer of silk stuffs ;Ithink he was also made a citizen of Berne. After some time the Meis became extinct in Geneva; the last of the name in Lucca, of the male line, Ornofrio, bishop of Bisignano, died in 1 664. This is about all the information which Ican give respecting the Mci family of Lucca and Geneva. As to our family,May or Maggi, itpassed the Alps as early as about the year 1300, being driven from Brescia sifter the defeat of the Hohenstauten and the victory of the Guelphs and the Church of Rome, whose declared enemy it has always been. And now, dear cousin, be pleased to receive the expression of my high consideration. A. dp: May. The Vincenzo Mcinamed in this letter is doubtless" the father of Marie M. who was married to Carolo Diodati (see Mr. William Diodate and his Italian Ancestry," p. 13) ;and the information here given shows that the proper form of her name is Mci, not, as in that paper, Mai. [Reprinted t'lom the New-England Historical anijGenealogical Registeu for April1, 1878.] Mr. WILLIAM DIODATE AND HIS ITALIAN ANCESTRY When, in the year 1821, it had been decided to oblit- erate from the Public Square all traces of the ancient burial-ground of New Haven, among the monuments removed to the Cemetery on Grove street, which had been in use since 1796, were those, as a cotemporaneous document 1 informs us, of Mr. William Diodate and his relict Sarah. Had this Society then existed, itis hardly to be doubted that the antiquarian spirit would have jealously guarded the old enclosure as a perpetual monu- ment to the fathers of New Haven; in which case the grave of William Diodate would not have been, as itnow is, an unmarked spot beneath the sod ; and his descend- ants of the present generation would have had a locality about which to gather a long line of associations with the past, lately brought to light, of great interest to them- selves, and not unworthy, it is thought, to be added to the mass of early New England family-history, now being accumulated for public as well as private ends. To pre- serve the memory of these interesting facts, now to be connected with this name, hitherto undistinguished —car- rying us back, through England— and Switzerland, to the Italy of the Middle Ages the following paper has been prepared. Mr. WilliamDiodate and his Italian Ancestry. 4 It will be proper, especially before this Society, to begin with bringing together a few items from New Haven records, respecting William Diodate himself, for which we are indebted to the researches of our honored associate Henry White. The first notice of William Diodate, in our town-records, is in 171 7, when a deed of land to him, dated April 23, 1717, is recorded. On the 4th of March, 1719-20, he purchased half an acre" on the corner of Elm" and Church streets,— where the blue meeting house afterwards stood which he sold Jan. 7, 1720-1. He was married Feb. 16, 1720-1, to Sarah Dunbar, daughter of John Dunbar of New Haven, by his first wife, whose name is unknown ; and in the month of May following he purchased his home-lot, on State street, on the south-west corner of what is now Court street, containing \\ acre, with a house and a small barn on it,for In1728-9, Feb. 24, he purchased a vacant lot adjoining, next south, containing ifacre for £j$ ; and about the year 1735 several tracts of outlands were added to his real estate. His will,dated May 26, 1747, with a codicil dated March 9, 1748-9, was proved on the 13th of May, 175 1, in which year, therefore," he probably" died ; for, though the grave-stone of his relict Sarah, who survived him several years, still exists, 3 his own has not been found, so that the exact date of his death is not ascertained. So much as an outline of what the town- records tell us with regard to our subject From the records of the First Church of New Haven we also learn that he made profession of his Christian faith on the 20th of March, 1735, under the ministry of Rev.