Elvira Festuca — Palermo birth extract, 14 October 1899, registered 16 October

Provided by Joseph James Stuart on 3 November 2026. Aunt Lori said the documents came from Sue and described the booklet as a book worn around Grandma Traina’s neck when she was adopted. Preserve this as family testimony about ownership and use, separate from what the documents establish. Photograph dates and Sue’s full identity are not established. User-supplied digital photographs are preserved unchanged; some documents photographed are paper reproductions, not the original registers.

Sources: 1000072194.jpg (front) and 1000072195.jpg (continuation), photographs of a family-held paper reproduction of a certified civil birth extract. Città di Palermo, Archivio dello Stato Civile; births 1899, Parte prima, order number 3732, volume 6° and office 2° as written on this extract. The archive’s separately preserved later municipal index uses archival volume 396; retain both references rather than silently harmonizing them. The issuing/certification date reads 16 October 1899.

Principal reading/translation: the act was registered 16 October 1899; the declarant reports a female child born on the fourteenth of the same month, in Ospedale Concezione, to “una donna che non consente di essere nominata” — a woman who does not consent to be named. The child is given the name Elvira and surname Festuca. No biological father is named. The continuation states that the hospital’s delegated declarant reported the birth without presenting the infant, on the director’s assurance; an act copy is forwarded for the foundling institute to which the child is sent with her accompanying objects. Declarant/witness names and birth time are not asserted here because their handwriting requires further verification.

This is the underlying birth-event extract now available to compare with the previously saved municipal index (WEB-20261028-181441-af63345c), which independently transcribes the same event as 14 October 1899, Elvira Festuca di ignoti, office 2, entry 3732. The index and extract concern the same event and are not independent witnesses to birth. The matching name, registration/reception date, institute context and family provenance strongly correlate this child with booklet 208 and the archive’s Josephine/Alvira/Elvira research. The 1922 marriage and children’s records strengthen the adult identity correlation.

Date conflict retained: the booklet calls birth and reception 16 October 1899, while this near-contemporary civil extract explicitly separates birth on 14 October from registration on 16 October. A confusion of reception/registration with birth is a plausible explanation, not independently proved. Social Security evidence later gives 18 October. The established profile birth field and biological-parent links are not silently overwritten.

The record does not identify the biological mother, establish that either parent had died, prove the circumstances of institutional care, or give a legal adoption decree. Festuca is the surname assigned in the act, not proof of a biological Festuca lineage. Next: full original act and marginal annotations; institute file 208 and any recognition/placement records.