Domenico's house in Genoa.
Within a few years the Marquis Marcello Staglieno, a learned antiquary in Genoa, who has succeeded in throwing much new light on the early life of Columbus from the notarial records of that city, has identified a house in the Vico Dritto Ponticello, No. 37, as the one in which Domenico Colombo lived during the younger years of Christopher's life. The municipality bought this estate in June, 1887, and placed over its door an inscription recording the associations of the spot. Harrisse thinks it not unlikely that the great navigator was even born here. The discovery of his father's ownership of the house seems to have been made by carefully tracing back the title of the land to the time when Domenico owned it. This was rendered surer by tracing the titles of the adjoining estates back to the time of Nicolas Paravania and Antonio Bondi, who, according to the notarial act of 1477, recording Domenico's wife's assent to the sale of the property, lived as Domenico's next neighbors.
Columbus born.
If Christopher Columbus was born in this house, that event took place, as notarial records, brought to bear by the Marquis Staglieno, make evident, between October 29, 1446, and October 29, 1451; and if some degree of inference be allowed, Harrisse thinks he can narrow the range to the twelve months between March 15, 1446, and March 20, 1447. This is the period within which, by deduction from other statements, some of the modern authorities, like Muñoz, Bossi, and Spotorno, among the Italians, D'Avezac among the French, and Major in England, have placed the event of Columbus's birth without the aid of attested documents. This conclusion has been reached by taking an avowal of Columbus that he had led twenty-three years a sailor's life at the time of his first voyage, and was fourteen years old when he began a seaman's career. The question which complicates the decision is: When did Columbus consider his sailor's life to have ended? If in 1492, as Peschel contends, it would carry his birth back no farther than 1455-56, according as fractions are managed; and Peschel accepts this date, because he believes the unconfirmed statement of Columbus in a letter of July 7, 1503, that he was twenty-eight when he entered the service of Spain in 1484.
1445-1447.
But if 1484 is accepted as the termination of that twenty-three years of sea life, as Muñoz and the others already mentioned say, then we get the result which most nearly accords with the notarial records, and we can place the birth of Columbus somewhere in the years 1445-47, according as the fractions are considered. This again is confirmed by another of the varied statements of Columbus, that in 1501 it was forty years since, at fourteen, he first took to the sea.
1435-1437.
There has been one other deduction used, through which Navarrete, Humboldt, Irving, Roselly de Lorgues, Napione, and others, who copy them, determine that his birth must have taken place, by a similar fractional allowance of margin, in 1435-37. This is based upon the explicit statement of Andrès Bernaldez, in his book on the Catholic monarchs of Spain, that Columbus at his death was about seventy years old. So there is a twenty years' range for those who may be influenced by one line of argument or another in determining the date of the Admiral's birth. Many writers have discussed the arguments; but the weight of authority seems, on the whole, to rest upon the records which are used by Harrisse.
His mother, brothers, and sister.
The mother of Columbus was Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo de Fontanarossa, and Domenico married her in the Bisagno country, a region lying east of Genoa. She was certainly dead in 1489, and had, perhaps, died as early as 1482, in Savona. Beside Christoforo, this alliance with Domenico Colombo produced four other children, who were probably born in one and the same house. They were Giovanni-Pellegrino, who, in 1501, had been dead ten years, and was unmarried; Bartolomeo, who was never married, and who will be encountered later as Bartholomew; and Giacomo, who when he went to Spain became known as Diego Colon, but who is called Jacobus in all Latin narratives. There was also a daughter, Bianchinetta, who married a cheesemonger named Bavarello, and had one child.