Collection of miscellaneous legal and financial documents pertaining to the rent contracts for real property in the city of Ribera (also referred to as Rivera), Agrigento, Sicily. For many generations, the Burgio family owned and rented numerous pieces of land and houses in Ribera, and their typical tenants were small farmers. According to the items in the Ribera collection, during the 19th century Giuseppe Burgio and his son, Nicolò€, often sued their tenants and had the courts force them to vacate their houses as well as having their real property repossessed whenever possible. The legal documents in the collection describe the various phases of these trials, and often include detailed proceedings, court orders, depositions, and other miscellaneous items and forms (sometimes printed). The financial documents are comprised of accounts (both for rent and for farm production), records chronicling the payment history of each tenant, and lists of debtors and creditors. Various stamps, perhaps indicating the payment of the customary governmental stamp tax to issue official documents, appear on numerous items; they are the same as or similar to stamps on other documents in the Villafiorita Ducal Records. A document containing information on tax payments for the tenants of the Burgio family, as well as well as a double sheet of the Giornale di Sicilia (1870), the main Sicilian newspaper, with a long article on the trials against the defaulting tenants, are housed in the Oversize series.
