Nota bene: There is a simplified family tree at the end of this article, which some of you may find helpful to navigate the numerous Pietros, Marias and Giovannas mentioned in the text.

I think one of the main reasons why our genealogy research never ends is because, with every answer we uncover, new questions will always arise. You will remember my latest article, in which I explored the family of my 6x great-gradfather Pietro Antonio Amerio. In it, I was curious to discover whether the fact that most of his children (from his second marriage to my 6x great-grandmother Giovanna Maria Barbero) had as godparents either one Pietro Matteo Amerio or one of his many children led me to suspect that there was probably a close kinship between Pietro Antonio Amerio and Pietro Matteo Amerio.

My suspicions turned out to be true when I was able to locate Pietro Matteo’s baptism entry from 1742, which confirmed that he and my ancestor Pietro Antonio (who was born in 1744) were in fact brothers! Bullseye! My family tree suddenly acquired a new – and quite large – branch packed with distant cousins!

Once I had connected this new set of relatives to my own lineage, I began analysing them in closer detail – as one does – to see if I could find anything else about these new cousins. I was struck by the fact that Pietro Matteo’s wife, Maria Giovanna (or Giovanna Maria, depending on which record you’re looking at) was the daughter of a Guido Antonio Asinari and his wife Antonia. The names seemed vaguely familiar, so I went through some photos I took at the local church archive during my last research trip to Italy in 2019… and lo and behold I found the marriage of a Guido Antonio Asinari and Antonia Maria Barbero on 31 January 1748 – just a year before Maria Giovanna’s baptism in 1749.

As if this was not coincidence enough, I realised that the marriage recorded on the parish register immediately above that of Guido Antonio and Antonia Maria was that of Pietro Francesco Barbero and Domenica Asinari. The date of the marriage was telling in itself: 31 January 1748 – the same day on which Guido Antonio and Antonia Maria got married! This cannot have been a coincidence: it had to be a case of brother and sister marrying a sister and a brother. Sister exchange, I believe it’s usually called (although why it’s called sister exchange and not brother exchange, or simply sibling exchange, I don’t know!)

So, let’s revisit the facts: my ancestor Pietro Antonio’s brother Pietro Matteo married a woman called Maria Giovanna Asinari, whose parents were married on the same date as their respective siblings. With me so far? Well, hang on, because things are about to become slightly more complicated.

The names Domenica and Pietro Francesco Barbero were not entirely new to me: they happened to be the parents of Giovanna Maria Barbero, my 6x great-grandmother (yes, the one mentioned above, who married Pietro Antonio Amerio). In a nutshell, Pietro Antonio married Giovanna Maria Barbero, whilst his brother Pietro Matteo married Maria Giovanna Asinari, who was not only Giovanna Maria’s first cousin, but her double first cousin, since their respective parents were siblings! Still with me?

As if matters weren’t complicated enough, I was thrilled to discover that Guido Antonio Asinari and his wife Antonia Maria Barbero had another daughter (rather confusingly called Maria) who happens to be my ancestor as well! All I knew of her thus far was that she had married a man called Pietro Piemonte in 1765 and was dead by 1782, when her widower remarried. Thanks to a local researcher I pin-pointed her death record in December 1781, when she was “almost twenty eight years of age”, according to the parish register. This can only mean that she was still 27 when she died, or in other words, she had to have been born in 1754 (or later 1753). This led me to the chilling realisation that Maria Asinari was barely 11 or 12 years of age when she married Pietro Piemonte; he would have been in his early twenties by then. The thought is just so disturbing… And while I’m happy to say that their first recorded child was not born immediately after the marriage, she would still have been 14 or at best 15 when she had her first baby in 1768. Five further children would follow, the last born a few months before Maria’s death.

Maria’s sister Maria Giovanna, the wife of Pietro Matteo Amerio, did not fare much better: born in September 1749, she married him when she was only 13. She had seven children to my knowledge – quite possibly more – and died in 1787 at the age of 38.

Fast forward to 1884, and several generations later, we find that two descendants of Guido Antonio Asinari, Antonia Maria Barbero, Domenica Asinari and Pietro Francesco Barbero intermarried once again, for it was on that year that my great-great-grandparents Pietro Amerio (a great-great-grandson of Maria Asinari) and Maria Maddalena Terzano (a great-great-granddaughter of Giovanna Maria Barbero) were married in the town of Nizza Monferrato, not far from the above marriages took place. The bride, who was only 15, would go on to have twelve children, among whom was my great-grandmother Giovanna. I wonder if any of them ever knew of their ancient family link? Or am I the first person in over two centuries to be aware of it? Either way, it’s a fascinating journey, and I can’t wait to see what I’ll be unearthing next!