Ferdinand is made in his own name to say of his father, "I think it better that all the honor be derived to us from his person than to go about to inquire whether his father was a merchant or a man of quality, that kept his hawks and hounds." Other biographers, however, have pursued the inquiry diligently.
Columbus's family line.
In one of the sections of his book on Christopher Columbus and the Bank of Saint George, Harrisse has shown how the notarial records of Savona and Genoa have been worked, to develop the early history of the Admiral's family from documentary proofs. These evidences are distinct from the narratives of those who had known him, or who at a later day had told his story, as Gallo, the writer of the Historie, and Oviedo did. Reference has already been made to the prevalence of Colombo as a patronymic in Genoa and the neighboring country at that time. Harrisse in his Christophe Colomb has enumerated two hundred of this name in Liguria alone, in those days, who seem to have had no kinship to the family of the Admiral. There appear to have been in Genoa, moreover, four Colombos, and in Liguria, outside of Genoa, six others who bore the name of Christopher's father, Domenico; but the searchers have not yet found a single other Christoforo. These facts show the discrimination which those who of late years have been investigating the history of the Admiral's family have been obliged to exercise. There are sixty notarial acts of one kind and another, out of which these investigators have constructed a pedigree, which must stand till present knowledge is increased or overthrown.
His grandfather.
What we know in the main is this: Giovanni Colombo, the grandfather of the Admiral, lived probably in Quinto al Mare, and was of a stock that seemingly had been earlier settled in the valley of Fontanabuona, a region east of Genoa. This is a parentage of the father of Columbus quite different from that shown in the genealogical chart made by Napione in 1805 and later; and Harrisse tells us that the notarial acts which were given then as the authority for such other line of descent cannot now be found, and that there are grave doubts of their authenticity.
His father.
It was this Giovanni's son, Domenico, who came from Quinto (where he left a brother, Antonio) at least as early as 1439, and perhaps earlier, and settled himself in the wool-weaver's quarter, so called, in Genoa, where in due time he owned a house. Thence he seems to have removed to Savona, where various notarial acts recognize him at a later period as a Genoese, resident in Savona.
The essential thing remaining to be proved is that the Domenico Colombo of these notarial acts was the Domenico who was the father of Christopher Columbus. For this purpose we must take the testimony of those who knew the genuine Colombos, as Oviedo and Gallo did; and from their statements we learn that the father of Christopher was a weaver named Domenico, who lived in Genoa, and had sons, Christoforo, Bartolomeo, and Giacomo. These, then, are the test conditions, and finding them every one answered in the Savona-Genoa family, the proof seems incontestable, even to the further fact that at the end of the fifteenth century all three brothers had for some years lived under the Spanish crown.
It is too much to say that this concatenation of identities may not possibly be overturned, perhaps by discrediting the documents, not indeed untried already by Peragallo and others, but it is safe to accept it under present conditions of knowledge; though we have to trust on some points to the statements of those who have seen what no longer can be found. Domenico Colombo, who had removed to Savona in 1470, did not, apparently, prosper there. He and his son Christopher pursued their trade as weavers, as the notarial records show. Lamartine, in his Life of Columbus, speaking of the wool-carding of the time, calls it "a business now low, but then respectable and almost noble,"—an idealization quite of a kind with the spirit that pervades Lamartine's book, and a spirit in which it has been a fashion to write of Columbus and other heroes. The calling was doubtless, then as now, simply respectable. The father added some experience, it would seem, in keeping a house of entertainment. The joint profit, however, of these two occupations did not suffice to keep him free from debt, out of which his son Christopher is known to have helped him in some measure. Domenico sold and bought small landed properties, but did not pay for one of them at least. There were fifteen years of this precarious life passed in Savona, during which he lost his wife, when, putting his youngest son to an apprenticeship, he returned in 1484, or perhaps a little earlier, to Genoa, to try other chances. His fortune here was no better. Insolvency still followed him. When we lose sight of him, in 1494, the old man may, it is hoped, have heard rumors of the transient prosperity of his son, and perhaps have read in the fresh little quartos of Plaanck the marvelous tale of the great discovery. He lived we know not how much longer, but probably died before the winter of 1499-1500, when the heirs of Corrado de Cuneo, who had never received due payment for an estate which Domenico had bought in Savona, got judgment against Christopher and his brother Diego, the sons of Domenico, then of course beyond reach in foreign lands.