A Genealogy

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

Original Message:
-----------------
From:  JBFRAME at aol.com
Subject: A Genealogy


http://pages.prodigy.net/ptheroff/gotha/thurn.html


>From Old Post Bags



The family originated in Bergamo, in Italy, where their
name originally was Tassis or Tasso. Torquato Tasso, the poet
is said to have been of the same stock. From very early times
the Tassi were keenly interested in methods of communication; and, by the way, messenger service in Italy is of considerable antiquity, though the 
romantic claim that the Italian postal system has descended in an unbroken
line from the Cursus publicus of Rome is undemonstrable, to say the least of it.
One hears in the thirteenth century of the corporation of the Bergamascan Couriers, who were organized by Omoedo Tasso, and who, after 1290, were found in many parts of Italy. The early messenger service in that country was somewhat similar to that of the Teutonic Knights. The turbulent conditions of medieval Italy made it a troublesome and dangerous thng to be a dispatch bearer. THomas Garzonus, the italina writer, in his Piazza Universale, speaks of "the great hardships messengers had to undergo at the hands of Banditti, robbers, ruffians, murderers......"
..

In the fifteenth century the great family of postal enthusiasts is found mentioned as de Tour et Tassis, though there are claims that their supplementary name was really Torriani.....Roger de Tour et Tassis is said to have established a courier service across Tyrol and Styria about the middle of the fifteenth century........Roger wnet over to Austria and antered the service, as Chamberlain and Chief Master of the Huntsmen, of the Holy Roman Emperor Freiderick III (1440-1493), who established the first post
in the empire......


Roger was a great favorite with the emperor, but evidently his two names had too soft, too liquid and Mediterranean a sound for his new and very Teutonic lord, and we therefore find the names presently germanized into Thurn and Taxis......"

pgs. 59-60    Old Post Bags...... Alvin Harlow.....

love,
cfa

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