As bizarre as the concept of the foundling wheel may seem to some, the practice still exists to this day, in countries around the world.     Instead of a wheel, unwanted children are placed in a receptacle similar to a bank's 'night deposit box', a called a 'baby hatch' or 'baby box'.     The article at the right was published by the Associated Press on 13 February, 2023.

      Sometimes children were literally abandoned on the street or on a doorstep, but the use of the foundling wheel was so widespread that even these children were often referred to as having been 'found in the wheel'.  The painting below, by Giaoacchino Toma, a 19th-century a artist from Galatina, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, is entitled 'La Guardia alla Ruota dei Trovatelli' ('The vigil at the foundling wheel').
 

      Below is my interpretation of a story about foundlings that was posted in Italian at the site http://www.cognomix.it/

http://www.cognomix.it/ paraphrased the above from an October 2013 article in il Mattino which says: "That name, 'Esposito', which tells the child's origin, was considered a stigma, which made life impossible for people who grew up at the Annunziata."

Il Mattino adds: "The foundling wheel was created to accommodate only babies, but desperate mothers also left older children, sprinkling them with oil to allow them to fit into the mechanism. Too often, that passage caused fractures and internal injuries; so to prevent abandonment of older children, the space to lay the children was reduced from a hand's-width to three quarters of a hand's-width."

THE RECORDS:  Throughout Europe, church records, dating in some towns from 1540, were kept of all baptisms, even those of foundlings.  Generally, church records didn't even give any surname for a foundlings, just a 'given name' and the notation 'parentibus ignoti' as in 'Phillipus parentibus ignoti' (Filippo, unknown parents).  Such children went through life with only a first name and the handle 'foundling'.   Often they simply adopted a nickname or descriptive surname to distinguish themselves from other 'Filippo's'. 

       From about 1809 - 1820, influenced by Napoleon's 'civil code', civil records of birth were instituted in northern Apennine duchies and principalities like Venice and Genoa and in the Kingdom of Sicily stretching from Abruzzo and Napoli on the mainland to Messina and Palermo on insular Sicily. From that time, not only were foundlings' baptisms recorded at churches, but each child was civilly registered by the town's 'Uffiziale dello Stato Civile', the Official of Civil Status, in the civil 'Atti di Nascita', or Records of Birth.  For ordinary births, such records gave the date; names and occupations of the parents; and the name of the child.  In the usual case, there was no other description of the child, besides its gender.

       Civil birth records for foundlings were different.  The 'dichiarante', or declarant (the person presenting the child, in ordinary cases its father) was identified by a title, which varied by town.  In many, as in Serradifalco, on the island of Sicily, the title was 'ricevitrice dei proietti', 'receiver of castoffs'.  In other towns, like Sora on the mainland, it was 'custode della ruota dei proietti', or 'keeper of the wheel of the castoffs'.  But the most poignant, to me, was the simple term used in the Sicilian village of Racalmuto, namely 'ruotaia': 'wheel-lady', or 'lady of the wheel'.  In other towns variations such as 'rotaia' or 'rotara' were used, with the same meaning.

Note: Often, "proietto" and "ruotaia" are written as "projetto" and "ruotaja".  The letter that looks like the English letter "j" is not a "j" at all, but the letter "i" with a long tail.  It was often written that way when it appears between two other vowels, and it is pronounced the same way as "y" is pronounced in English: hence "pro-YETT-oh" and "ruoh-TY-uh".  The "i with a tail" often appears in other words and proper names, such as "calzolajo" (shoemaker), Ajello, Saja, and so on.  The Italian word "progetto" meaning "project", as in a building project, is pronounced "pro-JETT-oh" (where the "g" sounds like the English "j"!) and has a completely different meaning.

       Rather than simply giving the child's gender, the civil registration document of a foundling usually stated where it was found: 'nella ruota pubblica in questa comune' ~ 'in the public wheel of this town'; or if appropriate, on whatever street or doorstep it was found.  If the child had evident birthmarks (or none), that fact was noted, along with a description of the clothing or any 'tokens' found on the baby.  Some records stated that the midwife had arranged to initially feed the child and that it had then been consigned, according to law, to a 'nutrice', a wet-nurse; sometimes the name of the wet-nurse was given. 

       From the early 1800s until 1865, civil records were kept on pre-printed forms in a format originally specified by the Napoleonic Code. The extra information recorded for foundlings did not fit in the blanks, so often the written information did not fit the preprinted category.  In some cases, the information was 'squeezed' into the preprinted form, but frequently the civil Register of Births had a 'Parte Seconda' (Part 2) and the foundlings were registered in that section, filed after the main portion (Part 1) of the register.  These Part 2 foundling records were completely handwritten.  Other non-standard births (e.g. late announcements) might also be filed in Part 2.

      In some towns, including Palermo and Catania, there was a complete separate register for foundling births, In some larger cities, all foundlings were abandoned at, or brought by their discoverers to, an ospedale, orfanotrofio, or brefatrofio (foundling home), which prepared its own records and also submitted the information to civil authorities to be registered. The earliest civil records followed the church's policy of simply giving foundlings first names, with the suffix 'foundling', later, they would give a concocted surname followed by 'foundling', as 'Filippo Faccilorda, esposto'.  Civil records after 1865 gave only a made-up first name and surname, but the body of the record itself clearly indicated that the child was a foundling.

      In some locales and eras, the abandonment of children by their unwed mothers was essentially imposed by civil and church authorities.  Town priests and midwives closely scrutinized young single women, and if they discovered a pregnancy, the expectant mother was 'encouraged' to give the child up, to avoid familial disgrace, and, more importantly to the church, to assure that the infant was baptized before it died.  Though the use of the wheel was nominally secret, many institutions required alms or payment by the mothers, so there was a 'paper trail' of evidence even though the general public was supposedly unaware of the particulars.  If a mother was unable to pay alms, often she was required to work for free in the institution as a wet-nurse. 

      Such activities could not long be kept secret from the community, and although the names of foundlings' parents were not officially recorded, no doubt in small communities the true relationships were known.  In some cases, a mother would volunteer to take her own child to her home to wet-nurse, though 'officially' the infant's parents were unknown.

     Unless an abandoned child's parentage was officially established at some later date, most commonly by a rectification (specifically, a "legittimazione" or "legitimization") that was filed to give the names of one or both parents, or on the post-birth marriage record of its parents, the child was always officially referred to by its imposed name and as the child of unknown parents.  When such a child married, even though he and everyone in the community might have known who his parents were, if no official correction had been made, his marriage record would list his parents as 'genitori ignoti'.

     Some children may have been abandoned because their parents were unmarried, or married in church ceremonies not recognized by civil authorities. If the couple was later married in a civil ceremony, the names of the children they had abandoned and their birth dates would be stated in the couple's civil marriage record, thus acknowledging and 'legitimizing' the former foundlings.

     Like those of all citizens, foundlings' birth, marriage, or death records, or rectifications, are kept permanently in the Anagrafe or Registry Office of each town, with a copy in provincial or tribunal archives.  These records may be searched in person, or in many cases viewed on microfilm produced by the Mormon church, or on-line at genealogy sites.  Records of the disposition of abandoned children to wet-nurses or to foster homes may exist, but they are less easily uncovered and usually require on-site research at the towns, churches, or provinces involved.

    These original birth records often reflect the large proportion of foundling births in a town.  In Racalmuto, for example, in the year 1880, there were five hundred and twenty four legitimate births recorded, and eighty-three infants left in the wheel, a staggering fourteen percent of all births!   Other years, and other towns, show similar statistics.  For example, the index of baptisms of the Mussomeli church records for the years 1831 through 1845 lists baptisms alphabetically by the first name of the infant's father.  There are several pages of names beginning with "P", dozens of them reading 'Parentis Incogniti' ~ 'parents unknown'.

  

       In some cases infants were not actually left somewhere, but were reported by a midwife as having been delivered by her, from "una donna che non consente essere nominata" - "a woman who does not consent to be named", and neither was a father named.  In these cases, even though the midwife obviously knew the identity of the mother, she was officially unknown, as was the infant's father.

'FOUNDLING' (trovatello) versus 'ABANDONED CHILD' (abbandonato): There is a tendency to use these two terms to mean the same thing.  There can be a difference, however.

        Clearly, infants who were found in 'the wheel', on a doorstep, in the woods, or in the middle of the road were abandoned before they were found.   But there is another class of abandoned children, as noted above; those who were delivered by a midwife to an unnamed woman who would not or could not name the child's father.  In these cases, the mother of the child abandoned the child to the midwife and hence to the local authorities.  She was known only to the midwife, not reported in the record of birth, so she was 'officially' unknown, as was the father.  Hence, while all foundlings were abandoned children, not all abandoned children were strictly foundlings.

       In its effect on the future of the infant, the results were the same, whether the child was abandoned to the wheel or abandoned to a midwife.  While not strictly 'found', the latter, just as for an actual 'foundling', was given a concocted name, consigned to a wet-nurse or home for abandoned children, and future official references to his parents would list both of them as unknown.  See the case study for Santa Venerdi Proietta, below.

      If an unwed woman was named in her child's record of birth, but she did not name its father, it would then bear her surname, as an illegitimate child, but not a foundling.

NAMES:  Although their parents were at least 'officially' unknown, foundlings had to be given some kind of name, and this was done by the receiver of foundlings, or the priest baptizing the child, or the civil official registering the event.  On an ordinary birth or baptism record, usually only the given ('first') name of the baby was recorded, since its surname was the same as its father's.  But with foundlings, the given and the surname were recorded.  Both, of course, were 'made-up', and in the earliest records, first names were recorded, followed by a word that was synonymous with 'foundling', as in Pietro proietto. 

        'Proietto' meant 'castoff' or 'thrown away' in early Italian, and consideration of the word's Latin origin sheds some light on the way foundlings were looked upon.  The origin of 'proietto' was the Latin 'proiectus' (written 'projectus' in cursive), and early church baptisms used 'Projectus' as a surname for foundlings.  One meaning of 'proiectus' was 'cast' or 'thrown'.  But Latin dictionaries give secondary meanings: 'lowlife'; 'miserable'; 'deplorable'; 'honorless'; 'lamentable'; and many more similar meanings.  Such was the view they had of these parentless infants.

         Other surnames clearly meaning 'foundling' or 'abandoned' include Trovato (found), Abbandonata (abandoned), or Esposto/Esposito (exposed).   In the  various duchies, principalities and other states on the mainland, at baptism, frequently a foundling was given a saint's name or other made-up name as a first name, then a surname that was the Latin possessive form of the same name, for example Genesius Genesi (Genesius, son of Genesius) or Amatus Amati (Amatus, son of Amatus).  Such 'first' or given names were then Italianized in the civil records, resulting in Genesio for Genesius; Amato for Amatus, etc.  Sometimes a foundling listed by only its first name and followed by "d'ignoti" eventually had the descriptive term capitalized and evolved into a surname, D'ignoti or Dignoti.

       In Roma, where a foundling's mother was often listed as "m. ignota" (madre ignota, mother unknown), a pejorative term was "figlio di Mignotta!" that is, "Son of an unknown mother!" Since most foundlings were illegitimate, that was a 'polite' way of calling someone a bastard.

Note:  On the death record of a foundling, their parents' names were invariably listed as padre ignoto and madre ignoto, or the foundlings were referred to as d'ignoti.  These terms did not mean that the parents' names were simply unknown to the clerk or declarants of a record, they meant that the person was a foundling.  If it was intended to convey that the person was not a foundling, but their parents were not known to anyone in the proceeding, in the place for the parents' names, the clerk would enter "s'ignorano" (the names are not known to us).

       The descriptive 'foundling surname' eventually became the person's official surname.  When a foundling boy grew up, married and had children, the children's surnames would be the same as their father's even though they themselves were not foundlings.  Many of these surnames exist to this day, with their bearers having no idea that somewhere in their ancestry there was a foundling child.

       Even the given names of foundlings were often unusual or fantastic, like Cleopatra or Romulo.  When surnames other than Proietto, etc. began to be used, they, too were unusual and often stigmatic, like Urbino (blind); lo Guasto (crippled); Milingiana (eggplant); and Vinagro (bitter wine).  A child with such a name was marked throughout his or her life as one with 'genitori ignoti' (unknown parents) and by inference, as a love child, although at least in theory, it wasn't known whether or not the child was abandoned by a married woman who conceived it in wedlock.  Even children with less insulting surnames were thusly scorned.  Di Dio (of god); D'Angelo (of an angel); del Popolo (of the people); degli Uomini (of the men); di Giugno (born in June) and Gelsomino (jasmine) are all mild enough surnames, but in certain towns they were used exclusively for foundlings, and marked them just as surely as the cruder versions.

       Below is a poignant example of a name given to a child found in the town of Montemaggiore Belsito on the morning of 29 June 1835, in the public wheel of the 'House of Castoffs'.  She was found and presented by the Ruotara (female wheel-keeper) Francesca Ippolito, age 29.  The infant was a girl, wrapped in ragged digapers, without any birthmark or token, and was given the name Diana, and the surname Cacciatrice.  In Italian, the word "cacciatore" signifies "hunter"; the feminine form is "cacciatrice", meaning 'female hunter", or "huntress".  So a flippant official gave the unfortunate child the name "Diana the Huntress", possibly to show off his knowledge of Roman mythology.

      Regardless, it would be recognized by one and all as a "foundling name", and the girl would bear that stigma all her life.

       Eventually, laws were passed prohibiting the stigmatic names, but in small towns, because the names were made up, they were invariably different than the surnames usually occurring there.  Often such names carried a 'foreign' implication: Lopez, Romagnoli, Suez and even Miller have appeared as surnames in Sicilian birth records.   These may be valid names, derived from ancestral ethnicities, or they may have been names concocted for foundlings. The surname Miller, for example, may have been given to a foundling because the midwife, receiver of foundlings or civil official knew (without officially revealing it) that the infant's father was an Englishman named Miller; or assumed that to be the case; or simply chose Miller to show that the child was 'not from here, not legitimate'. 

       Coniglio is a perfectly valid Italian/Sicilian surname, but in a town of only 1,500 souls, where no one else had the surname Coniglio, any child with that name was obviously a foundling.   In some cases, a foundling was simply given the name of his village as a surname: thus, Giuseppe Vallelunga, Rosa Siragusa, etc.    However, it was more common to give foundlings the name of some other town, or a modification of a town name to indicate 'from the town', such as Barese, Palermitano, Tirminisi, etc.  This also marked the child as a 'stranger' or the child of a stranger.  Place names as surnames, I believe, were more common as foundling names than they were as places of origin. For a more detailed analysis of Sicilian town place-names as surnames, click HERE.

 ALIASES: While abandonment of children born out of wedlock was sanctioned by both Church and State, it was illegal for a married couple to abandon a child.  Though there were some cases in which legal parents saw no other recourse, the overwhelming majority of foundlings were illegitimate children, to the extent that the word 'foundling' or any of its variations was synonymous with 'illegitimate'.  If you were a foundling, you were a bastard child, considered by society the lowest of the lowest social class.

Because of such stigma, on reaching adulthood, many foundlings took less stigmatic surnames rather than Proietto, Esposito, or the formulaic, contrived, and unique surnames that had been concocted for them.  These self-chosen names were usually simply common surnames in their villages, not necessarily with any familial connection. In some cases the new names were legally granted by the judicial system, but in many instances, the foundling simply 'went by' a name of their choosing, to the extent that after being used for some time, it essentially became their name.  Such persons often had both names recorded, for example, as follows: Giuseppe del Popolo, inteso Marconi, that is, 'Giuseppe del Popolo, going by Marconi'; or Ciro Gelsomino, detto Faso (Ciro Gelsomino, called Faso); or Paolo Proietto, alias Burgio ('alias' has the same meaning in Latin, Italian, or English).

When foundlings emigrated, many immediately changed or modified their names and/or revised their family stories, claiming to be orphans, or 'love children' of important figures, nobles, or officials, or having living legitimate parents left behind, since often there was no one in their new surroundings who could refute their claims. See an example in the case study for the Famiglia Messina.

THE FATE OF FOUNDLINGS:  Civil records were and are open to the public, in 'registri' or registers. Citizens could go to the town hall and ask to see them.  'Unknown' parents of a foundling could therefore see what name had been given to their child (from the date and the description of tokens or clothing), and sometimes, to whom the baby had been consigned.  They might then reclaim the child, although recorded instances of this are few.  If a legally married couple reclaimed a child, they would then go to the civil authorities for registration of a 'legittimazione', a correction which would officially name them as parents, and legitimize the child's birth.  Tales are also told of many a mother who claimed her child without revealing their relationship, being paid a stipend to wet-nurse her own child.

       In the foundling homes, hospitals or asylums of large cities, many babies suffered horrific conditions.  Wet-nurses were often of lower classes and carried diseases passed on to the babies.  Children who survived to early childhood could be 'farmed out' as servants, field laborers, or worse: often, boys were indentured or sold to sulfur mine owners or workers as 'carusi' (mine-boys) to carry raw sulfur out of the mine; and girls were often sold into prostitution. 

      These horrendous possibilities, of course didn't preclude the consignment of foundlings to foster-families that did care for them responsibly, and raised them to adulthood.  Because of the nature of these arrangements, easily available public records are hard to come by.  At one point in Italy's history, foundling homes became so crowded, and the total pay required for the wet-nurses of its inmates so high, that civil authorities hired 'external wet-nurses' to care for some infants away from the institutions.  They even sometimes acknowledged unwed mothers and paid them a sort of child support stipend, to nurse their own children.

       This led to some bizarre situations.  In the years following the unification of Sicily with northern Apennine states (the 'resorgimento'), vast church property was appropriated by the state, and church and state were at odds.  Marriages that took place solely in church were not recognized by the civil authorities, and in order for a union (and its offspring) to be legal, a couple was required to be married in a civil ceremony, usually at the town hall by a public official.  When the policy of civil stipends to unwed mothers was instituted, sometimes an expectant mother would marry in church, avoiding family disgrace, but would not take the civil vows.  This made her child illegitimate in the eyes of the state, entitling her to a stipend!

       In small towns, the fate of foundlings may have been somewhat better than in it was in large cities.  In smaller communities, they may not have been subjected to the crowding of orphanages, but instead were consigned to the individual families of the wet-nurses.  There, though they may have eventually been required to work in the fields or the family business, the same as the family's natural children, they may also have found some measure of acceptance and normality.  However, their names marked them as foundlings.  In a class-conscious society, sons of landowners married daughters of landowners, daughters of tradesmen married sons of tradesmen, and foundlings married foundlings.

IDENTIFYING FOUNDLINGS' PARENTS:
        As family researchers try to 'build' their family trees further and further back, many are frustrated by the 'brick wall' presented by a foundling ancestor.  Unfortunately, exactly because foundlings were intentionally abandoned by unknown parents, it is virtually impossible to determine the names of their biological parents.  In many cases, it isn't even possible to determine the names of the families that raised them. 
       As early as the 1500's, churches kept records of baptisms for all children, including those for whom only one parent was known as well as for foundlings.  In the 1800's, civil registrations of births began to be recorded.  So there can be some clues in foundlings' birth and baptism records.  Civil records give the name of the receiver of foundlings or the midwife who presented the child for registration, along with the names of two witnesses to the registration, and often the name of the wet-nurse or institution to which the child was consigned.  It's possible that one of those named belonged to a family that raised the child.   Baptism records give the names of the foundlings' godparents; again, possible foster parents of the infant.
       However, remember that the parents of a foundling were unknown for a reason: the anonymous abandonment of children was sanctioned by church and state to protect the 'honor' and therefore the anonymity of unwed mothers and their love partners.  Even in the rare cases in which official consignment, fostering or adoption documents were created, THE BIOLOGICAL PARENTS OF THE FOUNDLING WOULD NOT BE NAMED in such documents.
       With the recent trend towards DNA testing, it's possible that descendants of relatively recent foundlings may be able to locate close relatives who can help to clarify their lineage, but the farther back the 'brick wall' occurred, the less likely that even DNA methods can help. 
        Briefly, DNA venues test your DNA, then compare it to others who have tested, and provide a list of persons, some of whose DNA matches some of yours.  DNA is measured in centiMorgans, or cM, and the more cM you share with a "DNA match", the closer your relationship.   If these "DNA matches" have family trees and are willing to share information with you, you may find that they have ancestors in common with you.  This may help you to determine the identity, or at least the close family of the parent or parents of your foundling ancestor.
       For example, say one of your grandparents was a foundling.   That would mean that two of your eight great grandparents were unknown.  We share great grandparents with our second cousins, however, not every second cousin is descended from the unknown couple.  To isolate one or both members of the couple, you would first have to develop your own 'pedigree' or family tree that identified the six great-grandparents who were NOT the foundling's parents.   Then if you could analyze the trees of all the second cousin "DNA matches" that you have, you might be able to determine those who were descended from your known ancestors.  By elimination, any second cousins who were not descended from your known ancestors must be descended from one or both of the foundling's parents, so one or both of those second cousins' great grandparents are your ancestor(s).

Second cousins, on average, share 238 cM of DNA (actually, from 43 cM to 504 cM), so you'd have to study your DNA matches in that range and hope they have trees back to their great grandparents. In the diagram, great grandparents 7 and 8 are the unknown parents of the foundling, and obviously would have different names than your known great grandparents.

The same logic could be applied if your foundling ancestor was your great grandparent, but in that case, its unknown parents would be your great-great grandparents, of which you have sixteen.  So you'd have to know fourteen of the sixteen, and find enough DNA matches who are third cousins who had trees that could allow the same process of elimination. 

Needless to say, that would be a Herculean task, not likely to be successful.  In general, we usually have to resign ourselves to the fact that we'll probably never know our foundling ancestors' true parents.

ADOPTION RECORDS:  I have found no official records pertaining to the formal 'adoption' of foundlings.  In most Sicilian and Italian towns, from early on through the early nineteen hundreds, adoption was not common and even illegal, and the only formal adoptions allowed were those of orphans, that is, children whose parents were known, but one or both of whom died before the child reached adulthood. 

     Adoption of foundlings, whose parents were unknown, was generally not permitted.   Foundlings may have lived out their lives in a foundling home, or in private homes as menial servants, or worse; they may have been consigned to families as persons who worked in exchange for room and board, or to owners of the quarries or mines in which they toiled.  Even though foundlings' parents were officially 'unknown', a relative of the foundling, an aunt, mother or sister of the 'disgraced' true mother, may have raised the child.

      In some cases, they were formally consigned to official guardians, whose families became the foundling's foster family.  One case of foster parenting can be seen in the case study of Genesio Genesi, linked below.  Even where there are official consignment papers, since the foundlings' parents were unknown, that is how the parents were listed.  No names of birth parents are given in such papers.

     There generally are no official records of any of these dispositions, however in certain instances couples who had abandoned children born to them prior to having been married in a civil ceremony may have later married civilly, and in their marriage record declared the names of the children and acknowledged them as their own. For more detail, click HERE.    

      In cities or larger towns, a child may have been 'farmed out' (even for pay to the institution): boys as 'carusi' or child mine workers; girls as servants, or, sadly, as prostitutes.  In many cases, in small towns, these infants were raised in the families of the wet-nurse to whom they were consigned, or families which needed an extra set of hands for field work or other family enterprises.        

LEGENDS:  A very common explanation many families were given about a foundling ancestor is a variation on the following theme: A young girl was working as a servant in the home of the local prince (or rich businessman, or priest).  She was impregnated by the man (or his son, etc.), who could or would not marry her, and she left the baby, of noble or upper-class blood, in the wheel.

      Some of those stories may carry a grain of truth; however, there is usually no way to corroborate them, and I believe the great majority were fiction, made up to assuage the shame of families with unwed daughters who had become pregnant.  Hopefully, today the world is less judgmental.