Family of craftsmen, probably original of Brisgovia (Breisgau). The first chronicles of the family report a Hugo Väsch, living in Freiburg in the year 1388, followed by his son Heintzmann, stone-cutter by trade, who moves to Basel, Switzerland, in 1404, finally obtaining  the citizenship of this town in 1409. Ninety years later, in 1494, the Fesches begun to make part of the City Council.

Note: For more information of this huge family please visit the website of Urlich Stroux, Munich and specially THIS and THIS page

Saridaki (Σαριδάκι) is a Cretan name. It comes from the Turkish word Sari=blond and the suffix "aki" which in Greek indicates a diminutive.

This Saridaki family lived in Salonica along the whole 19th century.

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Thessaloniki and the Abbott family

The Abbotts seem to be a major constant of Thessaloniki history since 1761 as the family has been involved in many incidents and historical events during the last three centuries. The Abbotts have always been adventurous and cosmopolitan and could hardly settle in a place for long. However Thessaloniki is the city where the family counts an uninterrupted presence of many generations, maybe because Thessaloniki was a cosmopolitan city herself - yes it’s a “she”- a city of international deals, a city of three religions, a city standing between east and west…

East Mediterranean has always been attractive to the Abbotts. According to the legend a knight named Abbott was among the crusaders that conquered Constantinople in 1204! Throughout the centuries we come across various Abbotts in Smyrna, Aleppo, Constantinople/Istanbul….

The coat of arms of the family depicts a unicorn supporter, symbol of virtue and strength – qualities easily recognizable in the members of the Abbott family- also symbol of Jesus for the Christians while the three pears on the shield symbolize felicity and peace. According to medieval myths the unicorn is only tamable by a virgin –could this virgin be represented by Thessaloniki in this case ?

Today there are a few Abbotts left in Thessaloniki - and some distant cousins, with different surnames though, in Athens. Although Thessaloniki has lost her old glamour and cosmopolitan air the Abbotts remain there maybe because the fate of this city is to always recover from conquers, disasters, dark periods…and to get reborn as the queen city of the Aegean heartland.

Since the end of the 18th century Giovanni Vianello was one of the most importants Venetian merchants of Thessaloniki. At that time Venice was under the rule of the Austrian Hungarian empire, so Giovanni was an Austrian citizen. Before the Greek revolution (1821) the family was among the richest in town. Their trades went from Vienna to Bremen, Frankfurt and Leipzig, Marseille and Trieste, mainly in colonial goods.

 The grandchild of Giovanni, Giorgio (Georges) Vianello was Consul of the Sardinian Kingdom from 1840 to 1861, when, together with the kingdom of the two Siciles, it became the first unified kingdom of Italy.

The Dobrowolski family originates from Poland ... [please provide text]

The family originates in Torre del Greco, near Naples and in the shade of the Vesuvio. The patronymic small "d" in front of the surname usually indicates a certain degree of nobility but it is not clear whether it really corresponds to a nobiliary title. The genealogycal researches in the original places are severely limited by some destructions occurred in those areas not only because of fires but also by wars and revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Today there are two main zones where this surname is used in Italy. One is Friuli, and specially Tolmezzo, with some 90 (!) presences and the other is Naples and Torre del Greco with some 30 presences. The presence in Friuli is clearly due to the massive migrations from the south to the northern Italy starting from the beginning of the 20th century.

A third possibility of finding some relatives comes from the the emigration of the two brothers Michele and Vincenzo to America in 1904 and 1908. A simple query to the American white pages gives a quite consistent number of d'Orlandos in the States. Who knows whether there is some lost cousin there ?

Let our little bottle float ...
 

The Wessely family originates from Moravia, an historical region in central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region. Wessely is a rather common family name: the root Vesel or Wesel means "pleasure" or "fun" in most slavic idioms.

The main city of the region is Brno, in those times named Brünn. The two places whose name appears in the documents are Slaup (now Sloup) and Walchov (see picture, now Valchov).

Trieste (Italian: Trieste, pronounced [triˈɛste]; Slovene: Trst; German: Triest) is a city and seaport in north eastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south, east and north of the city. Visit Trieste's official site.

Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic cultures. In 2009 it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trieste province. Trieste was part of the Habsburg Monarchy from 1382 until 1918. In the 19th century it was the most important port of one of the Great Powers of Europe. As a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region Trieste became the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (after Vienna, Budapest, and Prague).

Thessaloniki (Greek: Θεσσαλονίκη, IPA: [θesaloˈniki]), Thessalonica, or Salonica is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the Greek region of Macedonia.

It is honourably called the Συμπρωτεύουσα Symprotevousa (lit. co-capital) of Greece, as it was once called the συμβασιλεύουσα symvasilevousa (royal co-capital) of the Byzantine Empire. According to the 2001 census, the municipality of Thessaloniki had a population of 363,987. The entire Thessaloniki Urban Area had a population of 763,468.

Thessaloniki is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and political centre, and a major transportation hub for the rest of southeastern Europe; its commercial port is also of great importance for Greece and its southeast European hinterland. The city hosts an annual International Trade Fair, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, and the largest bi-annual meeting of the Greek diaspora.

Thessaloniki retains several Ottoman and Jewish structures as well as a large number of Byzantine architectural monuments.

Visit the image bank of the historical Thessaloniki !

 Venice cannot be described here in a simple way. We would rather prefer to focus our interest  to the city as the origin  of the Vianello family although it seems that Venice as such played a little role, if any, in the fortunes of the family. Actually, Giovanni left the city to Salonica presumably in the mid-18th century and never came back. For the time being, ther is no evidence that he had a "venetian connection" to carry out his international business. In fact his headquarter was in Thessaloniki.

[...]

During our restless researches we came across a number of members of  other families, collaterals or merely contemporaries. We are collecting in this section some of the most significative traces of such persons and situations that populated the life and the world of our ancestors. 

Needless to say, the message in the bottle ... is floating for them also !

The Gliubich family originates from Ragusa, today Dubrovnik, Croatia ... [awaiting text]

The Lhomer originate in Normandy, nothern France, in the small village of Lonlay-l'Abbaye.

 World War I (WWI), which was called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance).

More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history.

Our ancestors were (unfortunately) there !