Seeking Anna Vella

This is a photo of my grandfather's school. The chalk board in front, held by two of my mum's sisters, reads McKay's High Schools, Cospicua and Hamrun. My mother is the little girl standing in the middle between my grandmother and my grandfather. My cousin and I worked out that it must have been taken around 1920 and if you look carefully you can see how someone in the intervening years has put numbers on all the McKay children down to my mother who is number 7. Number 8, the baby of the family, my auntie Anne, doesn't seem to be in the picture.

This week I followed up on the family history research undertaken by my cousin Alison, who now lives in France. She is the daughter of number 8. Armed with my grandmother's family tree showing that three generations of Vellas before my great grandfather were married in San Paulo church, Valletta, I called in to see the parish priest.

My cousin had told me that the parish priest would be in his office on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that he looked after the records going back centuries.

I worked out that St Paul's church must be the one on St Paul's street but when I found the church closed and a sign advising tourists that it was worth visiting St Paul Shipwrecked church around the corner I started to feel confused. I wandered in the general direction of the stepped street going up to St Paul Shipwrecked and was rewarded after a few paces by a small, open door with a sign announcing the parish office. A man with a crucifix was just coming down the stairs as though he was on a mission but when he spotted me he asked if I needed help. I waved my family tree and mumbled about living in Valletta.

"You need Father Vincent," he said and pointed me up the stairs.

At the top there was a tiny office with a man sitting at a table carefully copying something from a book. He looked up and I started to explain what I wanted. He indicated for me to sit in a chair and continued with his task. I have learnt that in Malta, when you go into an office, you have to wait until the person behind the desk turns their attention to you. Sometimes this takes a long time. I looked around at the paintings on the wall, one of which seemed to be of the man behind the desk but dressed up in purple. On two other walls behind the table there were khaki metal cupboards like standard issue British bureaucracy.

This time it was only a few minutes until parish priest Vincent Borg looked up from his writing and invited my story. I told him about the family tree.

"So what do you want?"

"I don't really know. I think maybe I just want to see the marriage certificates of these three," I said pointing to the three boxes with dates going back to 1753, all married in Valletta (San Paulo).

Father Vincent looked at my piece of paper. Without saying anything he swiveled in his chair and opened one of the cupboards to reveal shelves full of large, aged books that looked as though they had been used in a Harry Potter movie. He glanced back at my paper and selected one of the books to place on his desk. He opened the tatty brownish cover to reveal pages of spidery black writing. He turned a few pages in the same way that I would look up a word in a dictionary. He explained to me that the dates were at the top of each page and the names of the people were down the side.

"Here it is," he announced. His voice was matter-of-fact. He had chosen the middle date, 1786, the wedding of Gio-Maria Vella and Rosa Xuereb who were married on my birthday. More than 200 years before, somebody, perhaps looking rather like Father Vincent, had carefully written in Latin the details of their wedding: the people who had been witnesses, the parentage of the contracting parties, the officiating minister. I stared at the hand that had recorded my genetic line.

"What do you want to do?" asked Father Vincent.

"Can I have a copy?" I managed.

He reached into a drawer and drew out a small form. I expected him to bite the end of his pen as he began to scan the document and pick out the relevant details to record on the form. There didn't seem to be anything I could do so I looked away and up at the portraits on the walls.

"That's me," said Father Vincent, catching the direction of my glance as he continued writing.

"Oh. I don't suppose I could get a photocopy, could I?"

"No, the book would fall apart."

Silence again as he continued bending to his task.

"Could I take a photo?"

"Yes, that would be OK."

I felt a surge of elation as I got out my camera and tried to work out the most unobtrusive way of getting round the table to take a photo of the page he was working on.

"Yes, come round because I'll close it soon," said Father Vincent. I carefully sidled between the table and the wall and positioned the camera for the shot. The book was closed as I went back to my chair.

"So there were two more, I think," said Father Vincent as he carefully replaced the book on the shelf. He looked again at my page of family history. Another book was selected and opened. Different writing but the same cursive recording of dates and names. This time Father Vincent looked puzzled. He looked back at my paper, then back at the book, then back and forth a few pages. This was the earliest of my ancestors marriages, Giuseppe Vella and Carmela Monti. Finally he opened another cupboard and reached up for another ancient book. This one was like an index.

"You see I can't find it." Back to the paper, back to the index, back to the book, pages were turned. As he works, Father Vincent has started to make conversation now. He asks me where I was born.

"Ah, here it is, the date was wrong, a typing error." My paper said 1753 and my ancestors were actually married in 1763. Father Vincent started copying out the extract and I prepared for the photo. By now, I felt confident enough to ask if I could take a picture of him pouring over the books and he seemed quite happy with that.

The most recent wedding in San Paulo church (1827), Giovanni Vella and Rosalea Sammut, was easy to find and by now we had the photography down to a fine art even though this entry went over two pages so I had to photograph the whole opened book. By now I was beginning to worry about how I should offer to pay for this amazing recording that had been going on for centuries. I mumbled an enquiry.

Father Vincent handed me three small sheets of Extracts from the Marriages' Records held in the Collegiate and Parish Church of St Paul Shipwrecked - Valletta.

"There's the offering box," he said indicating a small wooden box fixed to the wall.

"And perhaps we will see you in church," added Father Vincent, "or do you go to the Scottish church?" He had taken his glasses off.

I turned from putting some money into the slot of the offering box, hesitating.

"Actually, I don't really go to church."

"Well, start going, go to church," said Father Vincent with a little smile as I went out of his magical office.