Jean Lanti Prevost / John R. Prevost - Parents changed

We also need to clarify if Maria was married to both Stefano and Giovanni, since she's currently showing as such.

Private User I was a little curious about this yesterday when I saw that Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano / John R. Prevost had a birth listed in Settimo Rottaro on June 24, 1876. I wondered where exactly this was from...

I looked in the baptisms in Settimo Rottaro... I did not find one born on June 24, 1878, but i found a Giovanni Pietro Felice Prevosto born on June 23, 1877 which was interestingly similar. I put the links to a few of the Settimo Rottaro baptism indexes on a project page...I was curious to look closer at them and see what I might find: https://www.geni.com/projects/Settimo-Rottaro/4505968

I added a profile for Giovanni Pietro Felice Prevosto born June 23, 1877 in Settimo Rottaro. However there is also a death for a Giovanni Prevosto age 1 year and 2 months to those same parents on August 19, 1878. It would seem that death record is for Giovanni Pietro Felice Prevosto born on June 23, 1877. I assumed it was the death for that baby. Sure, it could be a mistake that it was a different child that died then and they mixed it up...but...

Also if you look at the image on that first link (https://www.quotidianopiemontese.it/2025/05/10/trovato-a-settimo-ro...) on Stefano's profile it certainly does look like a civil birth record for Giovanni Pietro Felice Prevosto, however the first line of text says "L'anno milleottocentotre setto" which is 1877. So the article shows an image for a baby born June 24, 1877...but the text of the article says June 24, 1878...

And there is a death record for a Giovanni Prevosto with those same parents that matches up very closely...

Incredibly important info about the deceased baby, John -- thank you! That feels to me like we should cut these parents for now...what do you think? And that we should include a note on Jean Lanti / John R.'s profile explaining about the death record for Giovanni?

It's starting to look like people in the media are in such a rush to jump back generations that they are ignoring key records. Happening over and over throughout Pope Leo XIV's tree.

Also to answer your other question on whether Maria Sesano was married to Stefano Prevosto or Giovanni Prevosto... It looks like there are two Maria Sesano

Maria Sesano - born circa 1851 and married to Stefano Prevosto

Maria Sesano - born circa 1877 and married to Giovanni Prevosto

So that could be where some confusion is maybe

Private User
Yes maybe it would be best to cut the parents of Salvatore Giovanni Gaetano Riggitano / John R. Prevost although wait a second...besides just the parents...what about thie place of birth?

What do we really know about him? Based on the Chicago Tribune obituary it looks like he died in 1960 and is buried at Holy Sepulchre... The gravestone says 1876. The death record says June 24, 1876 in Italy... SS looks to say June 24, 1876 also...

Where did the town Settimo Rottaro come from? Just because there are Prevosto from there and there was a matching birth date in a different year for a baby that seems to have died? Or is there something else that says Settimo Rottaro on it? It's too bad we haven't found anything else yet...

A social security application would be interesting to see what it lists for parents. Is the only way to get that to pay and order it still?

I was really hoping that the grandsons -- the pope and his brothers -- might be able to answer some questions, but I'm not so sure. The middle son, John, was interviewed by the New York Times, and they wrote:

"John Prevost, the pope's brother, said that their paternal grandparents were from France, and that his father had been born in the United States. He said he and his brothers didn't discuss their [maternal] Creole roots."

So I guess they weren't really thinking of an Italian connection.

John, to answer your previous question:

"...although wait a second...besides just the parents...what about thie place of birth? .... Where did the town Settimo Rottaro come from? Just because there are Prevosto from there and there was a matching birth date in a different year for a baby that seems to have died? Or is there something else that says Settimo Rottaro on it?"

There's nothing in the U.S. -- at least nothing we've found so far -- that says Settimo Rottaro. What we get in the U.S. is a mix of sources saying France, Italy, or "in Italy with French heritage".

Where and when did he get his education? He must have had a legitimate credential on offer to obtain school teaching positions? That does not track with being “fresh off the boat” from a tiny place like Settimo Rottaro to me.

There are many "Prevosto" who could present an interesting lead, but the most prominent emigrated to the United States after 1917.

For documentary purposes, we find on Filae a Prevost born in the French-speaking Aosta Valley (Italy), an area whose return to the motherland we (the French) have not yet claimed... (Any resemblance to current events is absolutely not coincidental). This Prevost could be a cousin, or even a brother, of the man we are looking for, whose surname may have been Italianized to "Prevosto."

Reference

Auguste Prévost

Naissance

En 1857, Hers

(Hers, Italie ) Recensement en 1906 a Wattrelos Nord - France
Hers is a tiny hamlet located halfway up the slope above Aosta.

This track presents the advantage of having a French-speaking candidate whose surname has no genealogical link to that of his mother and could have interested a young emigrant.

The problem is that I don't know how to access Italian sources.

John is our Italian records expert.

Jean/John Prevost's records sometimes saying he was from France and sometimes from Italy keeps making me think he was from a disputed bit of territory. The Aosta Valley could make a lot of sense, at least to explore. Great thinking, Pierre!

The pope's uncle received a major honor from the French government in the 1960s...I wonder if there's anything in a French publication from that time that would give us some info.

This is the uncle: Jean Centi Prevost / Dr. John C. Prevost

I wrote about his government honor in his profile.

I'm not familiar with Aosta Valley, but i see there are a number of places within there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aosta_Valley

Looking at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/?lang=en and typing on one of those place names...it doesn't show anything. Looking at the map i see two of the nearby archives are listed in yellow as "partial" so i wonder could it be part of that?

Or is something else entirely different happening with this or is there more to finding these places.

Searching for those place names on FamilySearch doesn't come up with anything either: https://www.familysearch.org/en/search/catalog

Ok and then I looked at the FamilySearch wiki page and wow Ancestry has records for those places?

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Aosta_Valley,_Italy_Genealogy

https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1894/

It looks like you could go year by year through all of the places in Aosta and select the year and births index and see if anything interesting comes up

These two pages have some interesting info on his origin:

https://www.ancestry.com/c/ancestry-blog/entertainment-and-culture/...

https://www.discordgenealogy.com/research-findings?fbclid=IwZXh0bgN...

Private User

I went ahead and updated the place of birth to Milazzo and added his Italian name. Hopefully that's ok. Maybe the name needs to be tweaked a little bit

That Alien Registration Form itself cited on that link above seems to be pretty good evidence...along with a bunch of others things they found. Unless that's a forgery, but I'd hope not :-)

I also put the the FamilySearch citation on his birth event on the timeline tab with the link to the image from Milazzo.

I'm going to look further at some of his Sicilian branches based on those others research too.

let me know if you have any other thoughts.

This is so interesting. It looks like the breakthroughs came from pursuing the language teaching (newspapers) and the street address. And Pierre’s theory of a scandalous pregnancy wasn’t that far off. Do we have it all on geni now?

What a great piece of genealogical research!

Where did the Lanti name come into the story? Jean Lanti Prevost?

Susan Graber good question... Is the only place where "Lanti" is found an Ancestry.com and FamilySearch birth index for one of his children?

It would be interesting to see the actual handwriting on the birth record...considering his father's name is Santi I'm wondering if it is supposed to be "Santi"

I suppose the name "Centi" may also be intended to be "Santi" as well...

We know the “Omarius” was actually “Marius” (according to his son) so I agree with the possible transcription issue for “Lanti” as well.

I changed the display name to “John R. Prevost” because it looks like “Jean Lanti Prevost” was mistranscribed or a one time alias.

Catching up on this days later...thanks so much, everyone! I've put both his birth and last names in the display name, as we often due in these cases.

I 100% agree re: "Lanti" being "Santi". Especially since there are two saints named Marius. "Omarius" is just wrong, as Erica noted; I trust the Pope as a high authority. :)

Please, by all means, make any necessary edits. I have been caught up with exams and not following the research updates on this.

What I really want to find is the marriage record for John and Suzanne. It has to exist because there's no way she could've joined the Lay Carmelites without one.