At a conference a few weeks ago with the Senior Couples in the Italy Milan Mission, Jodie learned about a program called Billion Graves from another Senior Couple serving in our mission.
(https://video.billiongraves.com/en/What%20is%20BillionGraves%20SD.webm)
Billion Graves is the worlds largest resource for searchable GPS cemetery data. This program is similar to one called Find a Grave which you might be familiar with. The idea is that as you visit cemeteries you can capture images of individual headstones (with GPS tags of the location) and then upload them directly into Billion Graves, without requiring them to be stored on your phone. Billion graves shares them with Family Search.
It is interesting that in Italy they only allow graves to stay in cemeteries for 30 years at which time they remove them and make space for new graves. We thought it would be helpful to help capture some of this burial information before the next cemetery change out.
In Italy after 30 years they change out the burial plots in the cemeteries. At this point the remains are cremated and placed in a private vault or deposited in the communal vault. The large square in the floor (the communal vault) is for older unclaimed remains. If the family wants, they can put remains in a rented private vault. It is quite common to have multiple urns in each vault as you can see in the photo below.
What better place to start than Zambla Bassa, where the Balsi’s are from. Balsi is the surname of Jodie's maternal grandmother who has Italian heritage. In Zambla Bassa they spell it Balzi rather than Balsi. The change is probably either an attempt to Americanize Balzi, or it was a simple change in the immigration process – we don’t honestly know at this point.
While in the cemetery in Zambla Bassa, we met a couple of men who are likely relatives through the Balsi line. Their grandmother is a Balzi. Their parents were born in Zambla Bassa and moved to Argentina. These brothers were both born in Argentina and lived there until the older brother was about 26. They have been in Italy now for about 36 years.
As near as we could tell they were about 62 and 60 years old. Because they speak Spanish and Italian, we were able to have a broken conversation in Spanish, Italian and a few words on English. Thank you Google Translate. Once again, a tender mercy or miracle that we were able to find more relatives here in Italy. Jodie is going to dig into the records and see if she can’t determine just how they are related. They asked us to find them next time we visit Zambla Bassa. These Italian connections are really a blessing and a miracle. The spirit of Elijah turning hearts of the Fathers to the children and the children to the Fathers is alive and well in Italy.
We are hoping that this Billion Graves documentation can be an additional service that we provide while on our mission. We both find it interesting and rewarding. It is helping us become familiar with writing styles and typical names that we’ll continue to encounter here in Italy.
As we were transcribing images from Zambla Bassa, we encountered a headstone for Maddalena Balzi, born in 1877.
A Balzi born in Zambla Bassa in 1877 … that has got to be a close relation to Jodie’s great great grandpa Angelo Balsi, born in 1866 in Zambla Bassa. So we jumped on Family Search and looked into this a little bit more. While we haven’t determined/proved the exact relationship just yet, we did find that we’d found a Maria Maddalena born in 1877 in the marriage records we took pictures of in Oltre il Colle earlier this year. Maddalena has a brother named Giovanni Antonio Balzi born in 1866 as well. Angelo’s grandfather is named Giovanni Antonio Balzi and he was born in 1793. Likely Maddalena is Angelo’s first cousin; however, we need to fill in a few gaps before we will know for sure. Nonetheless, it is fun to see a headstone that lines up nicely with the written records that we have found, particularly one that has a family relation.
This week we were able to participate in the Quarterly Worldwide Family Search meeting. It was great to get a better vision for how Family Search provides records with names so that others can connect these records to their ancestors and eventually be in the temple providing ordinances.
Combined with the Family Search efforts of supporting the digitation process and creating and delivering digital reading rooms, we really feel like our efforts in Billion Graves will also nourish temples with names.
On Friday afternoon and evening we went back to Oltre il Colle to capture the cemetery in Billion Graves. We were also able to capture images for all of the headstones in that cemetery. While in Oltre il Colle we also visited the Bar Pizzeria Carrara where we had pizza for lunch with Ken and Pam King in February. We ate their pizza again. So far this is our favorite pizza in Italy.
While capturing images in the cemetery, Jodie noticed that keeper of the church records in Oltre il Colle had passed away in May 2024. She is the woman that showed us the birth and marriage records for Oltre il Colle from 1816 to 1867. We were saddened to see that she had passed away.
Oltre il Colle is sure beautiful this time of year. It was very pleasant in the evening.. We choose a different route this trip which literally took us over the mountain (over the hill = oltre il colle) to get there but it was well worth the trip.
Our
combined efforts documenting headstones in Billion Graves has produced some
pretty exciting results. We’ve uploaded
718 images and so far these images have helped 168 people in their family
history research. It is exciting for us
to see that our efforts are helping others in their family history
research.
Making these connections and linking families together is fun and very addicting. Our experience so far with Billion Graves is a nice reminder to us both just why we're are serving a Family Search mission and a testimony to us that our Heavenly Father has placed us in just the right place at just the right time for us to make these connections.
