Inheritance Claims of the Exile Survivors (1697)
After the "Glorious Return" in 1690, Waldensian survivors began returning to the Valleys. But the devastation had created great turmoil. Whole branches of almost all families had been completely destroyed. Property ownership was unclear; the Waldensians had simply never had to deal with inheritance questions of such great complexity and confusion abounded.
The Duke of Savoy finally ordered the surviving Waldensians to appear before his agents, each claimant providing two knowledgeable witnesses to attest to the basis of their claims to their ancestral inheritance. The result is a very rich source of information about Waldensian families that helps bridge the gap between the notary records before the imprisonment and exile (that is, the notary records before 1686) and the notary records after the Glorious Return (notary records beginning in 1690) and the renewal of the parish registers (1709 for some parishes, shortly thereafter for others).
In these records, the survivor almost always names his or her father (and, often, when and where the father died) and any surviving siblings; and if the mother left an inheritance, she also is named, as well as any other immediate relatives who might have claim to the property.
To benefit from these records, by now you should have identified your Waldensian ancestry through the earliest ancestor(s) named in the parish registers. That should give you a clear idea as to which locality you should search first. Please note that not every town had its own set of Claims records. For smaller towns, check the larger ones, starting with the one nearest to the town of your ancestors.
Sometimes you can determine which line of people with so many of the same names living in the same town are your ancestors by comparing their land holdings. Of course, in those days they didn’t have home addresses, so to distinguish land ownership for legal purposes (inheritances, marriage settlements, etc.), the notary described the adjacent land and its owners. At times, you can find in these Claims the same neighboring land held by a family of the same surname you seek, mentioned perhaps in a land sale several years earlier. That is, the Claims records and the Notary records of the same land with the same people help you to recognize that both sets of records pertain to the same family.
About the Exile Inheritance Claims - Read First
Angrogna
Bobbio Pellice
Lucerna/San Giovanni
Prarostino/San Secondo/Roccapiatta
Rora
Torre Pellice
Villar Pellice
We are grateful to the State Archives, Torino for providing access to these records, and to Giovanni Cena for his generous efforts to abstract them.