This scion was to come from the stock which at first bore the name of Bonaparte, or, as the heraldic etymology later spelled it, Buonaparte. There were branches of the same stock, or, at least, of the same name, in other parts of Italy. Three towns at least claimed to be the seat of a family with this patronymic: and one of them, Treviso, possessed papers to prove the claim. Although other members of his family based absurd pretensions of princely origin on these insufficient proofs, Napoleon himself was little impressed by them. He was disposed to declare that his ancestry began in his own person, either at Toulon or from the eighteenth of Brumaire. Whatever the origin of the Corsican Buonapartes, it was neither royal from the twin brother of Louis XIV, thought to be the Iron Mask; nor imperial from the Julian gens, nor Greek, nor Saracen, nor, in short, anything which later-invented and lying genealogies declared it to be. But it was almost certainly Italian, and probably patrician, for in 1780 a Tuscan gentleman of the name devised a scanty estate to his distant Corsican kinsman. The earliest home of the family was Florence; later they removed for political reasons to Sarzana, in Tuscany, where for generations men of that name exercised the profession of advocate. The line was extinguished in 1799 by the death of Philip Buonaparte, a canon and a man of means, who, although he had recognized his kin in Corsica to the extent of interchanging hospitalities, nevertheless devised his estate to a relative named Buonacorsi. The Corsican branch were persons of some local consequence in their latest seats, partly because of their Italian connections, partly in their substantial possessions of land, and partly through the official positions which they held in the city of Ajaccio. Their sympathies as lowlanders and townspeople were with the country of their origin and with Genoa. During the last years of the sixteenth century that republic authorized a Jerome, then head of the family, to prefix the distinguishing particle "di" to his name; but the Italian custom was averse to its use, which was not revived until later, and then only for a short time. Nine generations are recorded as having lived on Corsican soil within two centuries and a quarter. They were evidently men of consideration, for they intermarried with the best families of the island; Ornano, Costa, Bozzi, and Colonna are names occurring in their family records.