A large proportion of the current United Kingdom Diviani family are descended from one person, Pietro Diviani who was baptised in 1824 in the church of St Atanasio, Calpiogna. Pietro was the 8th child in a family of nine and his parents were Andrea Diviani and Maria D’Alessandri.

Nearly every branch of the Diviani family has an additional name “Soprannome” to identify the branch or family line. Some of these Soprannome have changed over the years and some have remained constant since the time they appeared in records.

The Soprannome is not usually a word found in an Italian/ English dictionary as it is either descriptive or a nickname and influenced by dialect that is still spoken in Campello today. Pietro Diviani’s Soprannome is “Sebastiani” which is presumably after Saint Sebastian who is the patron saint to whom the tiny church in Fontanedo is dedicated.

This is yet another link with our past, as Fontanedo is the original village where the Diviani and Brentini families lived before they moved higher up the mountain to Campello. There are various rumours as to why they moved away from Fontaned; some say it is because the inhabitants wanted to escape the plague that was rife in the lower town of Faido in the Leventina valley, another rumour is that the water in the spring that served the settlement dried up, another rumour says Fontanedo is haunted, perhaps more land space was required to farm to provide food for the growing population. We will never know the exact reason. Perhaps it was a combination of one or more of these “rumours” that was responsible for the exodus?

Pietro Diviani’s father Andrea died in 1846 just before Pietro set out for England. His mother died in 1855 a few years after Pietro married Mary O’Connor in London and three of his brothers were dead by 1861. I suspect this was the reason Pietro did not maintain his links with Switzerland.

For 140 years the people and Commune of Campello were in ignorance of the “Sebastiani” branch of the family until 1994 when my family history research proved the link. Since then we have certainly figured and participated as part of the worldwide Diviani family.

Unfortunately the tiny cemetery in Campello did not record the burials of Pietro’s parents and siblings as these occurred before the fashion of erecting memorials. This was rectified during the Diviani and Brentini family reunion of 2-3 August 2003, when a stone tablet was unveiled in Campello cemetery commemorating not only Pietro’s birth and death but referred to all of his descendants worldwide, this will prove a tangible point for his descendants when they visit Campello.