Larry and I think of Carlos Francisco Alberto Julio Lorenzo de Vivaldi as the Forest Gump of his day--with amazing and unlikely connections to Fr Pierz, Bishop Cretin, Abraham Lincoln, Lewis & Clark, Long Prairie, St Cloud, Rome, Santos, Brazil and Patagonia.
Maybe it's cuz he was so different than the Heschs?
We started assembling a timeline two weeks ago when Larry found a recent book online about Francis deVivaldi's life (Author Juan Jose Kopp, who we thank immensely!) It was published this year, in Portuguese, and thanks to google translates we were able to fill in facts about a very interesting character.
This is so COOL!
Birth of Francis DeVivaldi July 12, 1824 Italy
Schooling 1829-1847? Italy & France
Ordination as a Canon (a priest connected with a certain cathedral) Turin, Italy
Revolutionary agitator 1948 Italy
Exile 1849 France
Sailed for America July-August, 1851 (age 27) St Paul, Minnesota
Arrived in Long Prairie, Mn 1851? Winnebago Indian mission
Fr Pierz meets Vivaldi 1852 Long Prairie, Mn
Letters between Cretin & Blanc 1856 (Bishops of St Paul and
New Orleans)
Vivaldi moves to Green Bay, Wisc. 1857 Meets Mary Lowe Meade
Marriage to Mary Meade July 15, 1858 Green Bay, Wisconsin
Starts newspaper 1859 Manhattan, Kansas
Vivaldi naturalized c 1859 Manhattan, Ks
Birth of Corinna Alberta Vivaldi April 18, 1859 Wyandotte, Kansas
Possible meeting with
Joseph Whitehouse/journal c 1860 *Left journal with NYHS
Appointed consul August, 1861 Santos, Brazil
Angry Kansas editorials** Oct & Nov, 1862 Kansas newspaper
Association with Howe Sommers 1865 New York and Rio
Consulate term ends 1867 Moves to Rio
Corinna wins a scholastic medal 1875 Rio de Janero, Brazil
Vivaldi leaves marriage May 1882
Year of repentance *** Jan 1883-March 1884 Casa San Carlos
Resumes priesthood March, 1884 Chubut, Patagonia mission
Birth of Vivaldo Couracy (grandson) 1882 Brazil
Mary deVivaldi dies 1885 Rio
Appointed honorary canon August 1888 Cathedral of Buenos Aires
Corinna and her dad
begin corresponding 1888 Rio/Patagonia
Vivaldi goes to Rome August 1891 steamship Santander
Corinna goes to USA 1891 Wisc and St Cloud, Mn
Corinna dies 1892 Near New Orleans, La
Vivaldi decides not to return to SA 1892 Rome, Italy
Vivaldi shows up in Mn 1892 St Cloud, Mn
Vivaldi travels to California 1893 *Whitehouse journal sold to
Gertrude Haley, supposedly
Death in Paris Jan 22, 1902 (age 78)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Joseph Whitehouse was a barely literate Kentuckian who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition across the continent of North America. While on the trip, he kept a diary of daily activities. Larry found references to deVivaldi’s recieving a journal volumn from him while being his “confessor” (in a book published in 1904), but that would have been when Francis was a newspaper man in Kansas, definitely NOT when he was a priest. Still, we believe Francis (Charles) deVivaldi was in those places at those times.
Little is known of Joseph Whitehouse except http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/jwhit.html
** The 'Angry Kansas Editorials' were two wordy newspaper diatribes Larry found at the Library of Congress website. They were signed with initials only, but contemporary readers would have known. We assume the writers were people who lent money to Francis, now Charles deVivaldi.
***Evidently, Francis didn't resume the priesthood lightly or effortlessly. The Salesian priests at Casa San Carlos wondered later if the year was more a trial for them or for Vivaldi.
OK, this might actually be all we have to say on the subject...
you never know ☺ !
Our study of De Vivaldi is fascinating to me because he seems to have had sort of an epic, sweeping life. He pops up in the most unusual places and he not only fits in but he excels. It plays out like a combination novel and scavenger hunt, it's a geeat story but you have to dig to discover another episode. Fun, isn't it?
ReplyDelete--Larry
You promised four or five years ago that genealogy would be fun ☺ and it definitely IS. Still, neither of us expected to research unrelated people like Viv. Luckily, we had an affinity thru Minnesota, American history and the Catholic church, not to mention your Portuguese background, so there was understanding, too.
ReplyDeleteWhat fascinated me was how deVivaldi re-wrote his own life 8-10 times in his 78 years, depending sometimes on anonymity and sometimes on notoriety. That alone made him interesting, but the sheer ballsyness of things he tried (and succeeded at) kept me in the game. I expect we'll still find more about him...lol