His uncle and cousins.
Antonio, the brother of Domenico, seems to have had three sons, Giovanni, Matteo, and Amighetto. They were thus cousins of the Admiral, and they were so far cognizant of his fame in 1496 as to combine in a declaration before a notary that they united in sending one of their number, Giovanni, on a voyage to Spain to visit their famous kinsman, the Admiral of the Indies; their object being, most probably, to profit, if they could, by basking in his favor.
Born in Genoa.
Claim for Savona,
and other places.
If the evidences thus set forth of his family history be accepted, there is no question that Columbus, as he himself always said, and finally in his will declared, and as Ferdinand knew, although it is not affirmed in the Historie, was born in Genoa. Among the early writers, if we except Galindez de Carvajal, who claimed him for Savona, there seems to have been little or no doubt that he was born in Genoa. Peter Martyr and Las Casas affirm it. Bernaldez believed it. Giustiniani asserts it. But when Oviedo, not many years after Columbus's death, wrote, it was become so doubtful where Columbus was born that he mentions five or six towns which claimed the honor of being his birthplace. The claim for Savona has always remained, after Genoa, that which has received the best recognition. The grounds of such a belief, however, have been pretty well disproved in Harrisse's Christophe Colomb et Savone (Genoa, 1887), and it has been shown, as it would seem conclusively, that, prior to Domenico Colombo's settling in Savona in 1470-71, he had lived in Genoa, where his children, taking into account their known or computed ages, must have been born. It seems useless to rehearse the arguments which strenuous advocates have, at one time or another, offered in support of the pretensions of many other Italian towns and villages to have furnished the great discoverer to the world,—Plaisance, Cuccaro, Cogoleto, Pradello, Nervi, Albissola, Bogliasco, Cosseria, Finale, Oneglia, Quinto, Novare, Chiavari, Milan, Modena. The pretensions of some of them were so urgent that in 1812 the Academy of History at Genoa thought it worth while to present the proofs as respects their city in a formal way. The claims of Cuccaro were used in support of a suit by Balthazar Colombo, to obtain possession of the Admiral's legal rights. The claim of Cogoleto seems to have been mixed up with the supposed birth of the corsairs, Colombos, in that town, who for a long while were confounded with the Admiral. There is left in favor of any of them, after their claims are critically examined, nothing but local pride and enthusiasm.
The latest claimant for the honor is the town of Calvi, in Corsica, and this cause has been particularly embraced by the French. So late as 1882, President Grévy, of the French Republic, undertook to give a national sanction to these claims by approving the erection there of a statue of Columbus. The assumption is based upon a tradition that the great discoverer was a native of that place. The principal elucidator of that claim, the Abbé Martin Casanova de Pioggiola, seems to have a comfortable notion that tradition is the strongest kind of historical proof, though it is not certain that he would think so with respect to the twenty and more other places on the Italian coast where similar traditions exist or are said to be current. Harrisse seems to have thought the claim worth refuting in his Christophe Colomb et La Corse (Paris, 1888), to say nothing of other examinations of the subject in the Revue de Paris and the Revue Critique, and of two very recent refutations, one by the Abbé Casabianca in his Le Berceau de Christophe Colomb et la Corse (Paris, 1889), and the last word of Harrisse in the Revue Historique (1890, p. 182).