Italian Roots and Genealogy
Embracing Our Italian Lineage and Cultural Quests
Embark with Maggie Workman and me on a voyage through time as we trace our Italian lineages from the cobblestone streets of Onano, Viterbo to the bustling avenues of America. Our conversation meanders through generational tales that piece together a mosaic of our Italian-American identities, blending personal experiences with the broader narrative of Italian migration. The echoes of our ancestors' footsteps resonate in this episode, as Maggie delves into her genealogical discoveries and I share my Neapolitan legacy, which extend beyond the well-trodden paths of New York to the often-forgotten Italian enclaves of Ohio.
Ever wondered what it takes to plan a wedding amidst the rustic charm of Italy, or how to reclaim a piece of your heritage through citizenship? The adventure doesn't stop at historical recounts; we also navigate the present-day pursuit of roots – from celebrating love in ancestral towns to untangling the bureaucratic labyrinth for official records. The heartwarming assistance from local Italian mayors, the spontaneous kinship with townsfolk, and the pride in preserving our lineage, all culminate in a narrative that speaks to the romantic and the realist alike.
The episode closes on a poignant note, with an account of Maggie's serendipitous meeting with a woman dedicated to chronicling emigrant family sagas. It's a testament to the universal longing to understand where we come from and the importance of safeguarding these legacies. As Maggie and I ponder over the value of such stories, we extend an olive branch to anyone keen on exploring their own histories, emphasizing the profound impact these journeys can have on our sense of self and community. Join us for a heartfelt tribute to Italian roots that not only define our past but continue to shape our present.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Embark with Maggie Workman and me on a voyage through time as we trace our Italian lineages from the cobblestone streets of Onano, Viterbo to the bustling avenues of America. Our conversation meanders through generational tales that piece together a mosaic of our Italian-American identities, blending personal experiences with the broader narrative of Italian migration. The echoes of our ancestors' footsteps resonate in this episode, as Maggie delves into her genealogical discoveries and I share my Neapolitan legacy, which extend beyond the well-trodden paths of New York to the often-forgotten Italian enclaves of Ohio.
Ever wondered what it takes to plan a wedding amidst the rustic charm of Italy, or how to reclaim a piece of your heritage through citizenship? The adventure doesn't stop at historical recounts; we also navigate the present-day pursuit of roots – from celebrating love in ancestral towns to untangling the bureaucratic labyrinth for official records. The heartwarming assistance from local Italian mayors, the spontaneous kinship with townsfolk, and the pride in preserving our lineage, all culminate in a narrative that speaks to the romantic and the realist alike.
The episode closes on a poignant note, with an account of Maggie's serendipitous meeting with a woman dedicated to chronicling emigrant family sagas. It's a testament to the universal longing to understand where we come from and the importance of safeguarding these legacies. As Maggie and I ponder over the value of such stories, we extend an olive branch to anyone keen on exploring their own histories, emphasizing the profound impact these journeys can have on our sense of self and community. Join us for a heartfelt tribute to Italian roots that not only define our past but continue to shape our present.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our blog and our YouTube channel and our newsletter and our great sponsors, your Dolce Vita, italy Rooting and Abbiativo Casa. And today I'm here with Maggie Workman. So welcome, maggie, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:My pleasure, my pleasure. So where's your family from in Italy and when did they arrive in the States?
Speaker 2:from in Italy and when did they arrive in the States? My father's family is from Onano in Viterbo, Italy. He came to the US in 1913. My grandmother was born in the US, but her family is also from Italy. They're from the sort of east coast of Italy, so they weren't they didn't know each other in Italy at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's like my parents too. They just they wound up in Corona, Queens, and, and you know, my mom's family came from same thing, they came from the East Coast, and my father's family was from Naples, and they so they settled in the Chicago area.
Speaker 2:No, so my grandfather came in 1913 and then he spent some time in New York with his brother-in-law and sister, who had come over, apparently previously and worked in from what I'm told like the salt mines or something there, and then they moved to Ohio, so Canton, ohio, and that's where my grandparents met. So I'm originally from Ohio. I just moved to Chicago for a job after I graduated from school, so, yeah, all of the family is basically in Ohio.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things that I didn't realize until I started doing this that Ohio. You know there are a lot of Italians in Ohio and I never realized that. Coming from New York, you know, we think every all the Italians from New York.
Speaker 2:Well, there was a metal factory and then the Akron rubber factory. I think a lot of people came to to work there. There was a very big community where my, my grandmother lived and my grandfather lived. They were all in the neighborhood. The neighborhood was all basically, I think, from the same region. Um, so they would bring people over, you know, yeah and that happened.
Speaker 1:And that happened a lot, as, as we know, um. So now, how how far back has your research been able? Have you been able to go with your research?
Speaker 2:So on my grandfather's side I've gone back to like my great, great grandfather and I have a little bit more on my grandmother's side, but I linked into a tree on ancestry, so some of it I need to verify, you know. So I'm farther back on my grandmother's side, maybe like great, great, great, great. On my grandmother's side, maybe like great, great, great, great. So let's see my father's third great grandparents on my fourth great grandparents on my grandmother's side.
Speaker 1:Well, that's pretty good, you know that's pretty good. And yeah, I think that's. One important thing on ancestry is to try and verify it the best you can, because you know the names and people think that somebody was somebody and maybe they weren't. They may have been a cousin or they may have been just somebody else in the town. So it is. It is very important to try and verify it whenever you can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, going through some of this ancestry, there was always sort of some family. I don't want to say folklore or whatever, but going through you're like I don't see where this is coming in. So it's really interesting to see some of the actual research and comparing it to what was sort of passed down by word of mouth. To what was sort of passed down by word of mouth.
Speaker 1:And I was lucky on my mom's side because and I don't know why I think it may have been one of the places that FamilySearch first started indexing or filming the records, because her hometown and it's a small town in Bali, torito, but all the records, you know, all the records from 1809 are there. I found everybody like really pretty easy, a lot easier than I thought, uh, and my dad's family from naples was very, very hard, because there's, you know, millions and millions and millions of records in naples. So sometimes you just have to get lucky to find the records.
Speaker 2:Right, I found my grandfather's birth certificate because we weren't really we didn't have a copy of it, and so I went on FamilySearch and the church records were there digitized, and so I searched through some of the records. The problem is basically they took a picture of each of the pages and dropped it, like in a folder or something, so you basically have to open up each page and look at it and then close the page, open up the next page. It's not super easy, but luckily my grandfather was born in March, so I only had to go through like three months of pictures to find his. So I was able to find it. And then that's how we found his parents. We didn't really know his parents' name. My grandfather only spoke Italian and my father did not speak Italian, so they couldn't communicate very well, um, so we didn't really know a lot of history. So that really gave us his parents names, and then I was able to go from there to do some more research so now that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Um so so your grandfather spoke Italian, but your father didn't speak a lot or speak.
Speaker 2:Italian. He spoke none, except he could maybe swear, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:Well, but when my grandparents came, they wanted to be Americans, and so they made sure my father spoke English and he has five sisters, so none of them, I think, speak Italian. My grandmother did so. She obviously was able to communicate with her husband, but, yeah, they weren't able to communicate very easily.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting. My parents, they did speak, I I don't think they were like fluent, fluent, but um, my, my father's father, I didn't know at all. He, he passed away when I was a baby but, uh, my grandmother always spoke to my father in italian, um, and my mother's, they spoke broken English but they would, you know, my aunts and uncles with them would drift in and out of Italian, or they'd be you know. You know, half the sentence would be in Italian, the other half would be in English. It was very strict, actually, I keep saying Italian and it really wasn't Italian because it was a dialect from that in that region. But it was very interesting, those conversations, you know, because you understood some of it and the rest of it you had no idea what they were talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, like I said, in their neighborhood when they were growing up there was a lot of Italian people, so I think that the, like, my grandparents and the neighbors would speak Italian, but the kids did not.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what did your grandparents do in America? What kind of occupations did they have?
Speaker 2:So my grandfather worked at like a metal factory, so he was a blue collar worker. My grandmother, she basically was a homemaker, but she did have some small jobs like cleaning jobs or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I suppose that's typical. You know, in New York. There were a lot of factories in New York and they're all gone now, which is a sad thing. I mean, I remember growing up where there was still. They were still making, you know, dresses and suits and everything in New York City which I don't think you know. People born 30 years ago actually even realized that there was so much industry in New York City itself. So now you've been back, right, you've gone back to the hometown.
Speaker 2:Yes, my daughter got married last September and they wanted to get married in Italy.
Speaker 2:She married a boy who was Italian. They were from Sicily, I mean, he was American and his parents I think were, and you know, american and his parents I think were. His mom might not have been born in in the US but, you know, has been in the US for most of her life, I think. But they wanted to get married in Italy. So we went to. It was near Rome, we say. We all stayed in a villa and they got married in a small church in the region and it was about an hour and a half away from my grandfather's village. So no one had really ever ever been there.
Speaker 2:So I made sure that while we were there to visit, to visit the village. So you know, I went there. I had from my grandfather's birth certificate, um, this the house number that they lived at when he was born. So I'm assuming he that's where he lived when he was was a little, at least that's that was listed on his birth certificate. So I wanted to go to go find that Um, and then I was going to try to get some copies of some birth certificates of my great-grandparents. Unfortunately, the day we went, I think it was like a Thursday or something and they were closed on Thursdays. So I wasn't able to do that, but I walked around the village, found his home, found his home and then there was another address listed on my great-grandmother's death certificate because I found that. So I went to that location to see that house. So it was really interesting to see it. It was basically exactly like I had in my head to see it.
Speaker 2:I did talk with some people there and I went to a shop to get some souvenirs. You know it's hard to get souvenirs in a little village like that. They don't have souvenir shops or anything. But they had these magnets that said Onano in the window. So I went in to get these. And then I wanted to bring my dad back a newspaper, a local newspaper, and just find some trinkets to bring back home.
Speaker 2:And so I ended up buying some really random things.
Speaker 2:I bought a newspaper, I bought my mom a little magazine cookbook because I thought she'd like that, and I brought my nephews some Pokemon cards that were in Italian, and then I bought the magnets.
Speaker 2:I just bought some random stuff and I told the lady I tried to explain myself because I felt a little silly for buying all of this stuff and I said well, my grandfather was from this village so I want to bring back things from home and she was so welcoming and we got into a wonderful discussion about it and so I really got involved a little bit in the village. They're doing a project on reaching out to family members who have people from the village who have moved to like America and their families, so they're sort of reaching out to those families and so I got involved sort of in that community. So they couldn't have been more welcoming and it's just from randomly telling this lady why I was purchasing all of this random stuff, I got really involved in this community. I've met some other people from the village who are working on their ancestry, so it's been a really amazing journey.
Speaker 1:Now did she speak English.
Speaker 2:She did not speak English so we we spoke through google translate on our phones, and then, um, she showed me a picture of a flyer, um, which I've. I have now found out they they, they do weekly or monthly um interviews of these family members from people who have left the village to go to America or other places. And so she showed me this flyer and there was a Facebook logo, and so I looked up that Facebook logo and I liked the page and then so then we got in the communication on Messenger and so then I went back. I went back to the villa for the wedding and she messaged me through Facebook Messenger that the mayor wanted me to come back to meet him and to get a tour. So then I went back the next day and I met the mayor.
Speaker 2:They gave me a tour of the village hall, and then I met a guy who was writing a book about the people from the village who have went abroad, and so he wanted me to sort of update my family's part in the book. And so he I mean he's the one who told me about my grandfather working in the salt mines in New York. We didn't know that. And then he also sent me a census page that said that he worked in the rubber factory in Akron which is nearby, which nobody knew that he ever worked there. We always thought he just worked at this metal factory, but on the census he had written down you know he was a rubber factory worker. So it's really gotten me some good information for my search, my ancestry search.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's fantastic. Did you find out if there was any family still there?
Speaker 2:They said that there is one family member with that name who lives there, but they either, like some, are there. They weren't there at the time so they'd only come back periodically. But there is still somebody from the family who lives there and I've been trying to figure out who, how he's connected, because my grandfather only had a sister, so obviously she doesn't have that name and then so I can't figure out on his brother or, like his father's brothers, who he's connected to, because I haven't reached that part of the tree yet.
Speaker 1:And that's really that's something that they called you back. I never heard that before. I mean a lot of people, I believe, have gone, I've gone, but I've never heard somebody going and then having the mayor call back and say we want to see you again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's because they're doing this big project where they're trying to reach out to family members to do an interview. So I ended up doing an interview with them and to talk with the guy who's doing the book. So I think that that's why. But, like I said, they've been very, very generous. It was a little bit difficult because, for one, I didn't have a car and you know these, these villages, they're up in the hills and so it wasn't easy to get to get there. You can't get there by public transportation very easily.
Speaker 2:The first time, the first day I went, my daughter not the daughter who was getting married, but her sister, her friend had a car. They were. They were there for the wedding, they had a car. They offered to take me the first day. They were. They were there for the wedding, they had a car. They offered to take me the first day, um, cause they were the only ones who had a car, um, so they generously drove me there an hour and a half, you know, on these hilly roads, and then, um, the next day, cause they had that, that was their last day. They spent their last day in Italy driving me to my village, um, so I was really appreciative of that.
Speaker 2:And then the next day, my daughter who was getting married. They had rented a car. They couldn't take me the day before because everybody in the wedding party was going to this winery but then that day they were free so they drove me back because she wanted to see the village and meet the mayor and everything. So, yeah, I was surprised and, like I said, we were just communicating through Messenger after I followed their Facebook post about this project that they were working on, so I was surprised to go back or to be invited back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, if they're interested, if you're in contact with them, I'd love to have them on the guy who's writing the book and the mayor and, um, if they're interested in doing it, I'd love to do it because, um, you know a lot of these little towns now I just, we just did it with uh penne and I'm I'm trying to do it in uh, vickery, uh, to get the mayors on to talk about what they're doing and their projects, because a lot of the mayors there now, especially in these small towns that that that are, you know, losing population, are trying to do these kind of progressive type things to bring you know whether it's Americans back or Italians back or whatever. So, yeah, I mean I'd be interested, if they're interested, to have them on and interview them.
Speaker 2:They just had a festival, may 11th through 12th, that they wanted me to come. To come back to the festival.
Speaker 1:I know they think we could. Just we, just, you know we just know.
Speaker 2:I told him I'm a teacher and it's in the middle of the school year. You know it's not that easy for me to to get out. Plus it was mother's day weekend here, so um.
Speaker 1:But they're always telling me. Everybody's always like, yeah, you have to come back again. I'm like, well, you know, it's not that simple, it's not especially to get to these little villages.
Speaker 2:I mean, you have to drive and I don't know that I feel comfortable driving on those on those hills. Um, I didn't even like being a passenger, so I can't imagine driving.
Speaker 1:I drove. I drove there. That's almost 30 years ago. I, I drove um from Naples to Sorrento and we drove around and I had a car. But I, I wouldn't do it now. Um, you know, if you're on the, if you're on the big highways, it's not so bad, but getting in and out of these towns or driving through Naples, that's insanity. But I'm interested. So why did your daughter decide? Or her husband? Why did they decide they wanted to get married in Italy?
Speaker 2:I don't know my daughter, she likes to do that kind of stuff. I don't want to say she's extra, because if she, if she is, listens to this, but I think it was important to them. They went there on vacation, they really loved it and they just they, they wanted, they wanted a destination wedding. I think they wanted a small, intimate thing, and so that it just all kind of worked out and they worked with a wedding planner who kind of specializes in these sort of destination weddings in Italy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know, I would love for my daughter you know when they decide to get married. To get married in Italy.
Speaker 2:I mean, logistically it's a little bit difficult because to get married legally there you have to sort of go early and get the license. You know, do all of that sort of go early and get the license, you know, do all of that. But you can get married here, um that, you know, at the courthouse or whatever, and then have your sort of wedding wedding there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we're working, I'm working on getting citizenship for myself and and the and the kids. I'm working through a lawyer. So, um, if you petition the court, uh, rather than just go through to counsel it, he could do anyone else within the same chain, if you will, for lack of a better word.
Speaker 2:So you could do, you know, father, children, grandchildren all at once, if you want to do something like that once if, if you know, if you want to do something like that, yeah, that's what I'm working on getting my citizenship, because my daughter obviously wants, wants her citizenship, um. So that's really why I've gotten into a lot of this ancestry is, trying to find um, some of this information. So that's why, when I went to onano to try and get the birth certificates of my great-grandparents that's why I wanted to do it. Unfortunately, they weren't able to give it to me because they were born before, apparently before the records were nationalized, so they didn't have the records. They did have their um, their death certificates. I was able to get that. I wasn't able to get their birth certificates because they were um, they were born in um. Let me see 1862 and 1864, and I think they said something like 1865 was maybe the year when you can get the yeah, it depends on the region.
Speaker 1:The south goes back to 1809, but once you get start getting up towards rome, a lot of those places didn't start until the 1830s, some, like you said, even in the the some, like you said, even in the the 1850s or 1860s yeah, they told me 65, because I my um great grandfather was 1864, so he was.
Speaker 2:He was pretty, um, pretty close, but but no, so I I think I need to go back to the church records now to to get them, but those records are not digitized.
Speaker 1:I was able to get my grandfather's. You shouldn't need your. What year was your father born?
Speaker 2:My father was born in 1931.
Speaker 1:And so his grandfather. You shouldn't need anything further back than his grandfather.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, but I need their birth certificate, which I can't get. Well, the list that they gave me of what I needed, I mean it was a pretty big list.
Speaker 2:I know it's a lot, yeah, so that's why I'm not sure that I'm able to do it. I've run into some snags, but interestingly I ran into snags on my grandmother's side, who was born in the us, so that seems to be. But it says my paternal grandfather birth certificate. My paternal grandmother birth certificate. My grandparents marriage certificate. Um paternal grandfather and or grandmother's death certificate. Father and mother's birth and marriage certificate. Father and mother's death certificate. Father and mother's birth and marriage certificate. Father and mother's death certificate. Grandparents' marriage. Someplace it said the great, the great his grandparents. My father's grandparents' birth certificate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting, because they didn't. They didn't ask me for that. I only had to go back as far as um.
Speaker 2:This is like a form that I found on um on, like one of the, like you said, like these, these lawyers groups who tried, you know, to help you and you know they and they may do that, because in some cases maybe they want it.
Speaker 1:Because I was working with one person who got the things and I was originally going to go through Naples but they said there's just so many there it's harder. So then I just because I could go through my mother or my father, because I was born after 1948. So when I talked to the lawyer, it's harder Because I could go through my mother or my father, because I was born after 1948. So when I talked to the lawyer and he said it's going to be a lot easier and a lot quicker if you go through Puglia rather than Campania, because there's just less people there and we could deal with the judges easier.
Speaker 1:Um, and so my snag in here right now, the only snag I have at the moment, and I'm sure it'll get fixed out is that my mother, her name on her birth certificate is rachel caroline. Um, because she was named after my uh, grandfather's sister, but my grandmother a. They apparently had an argument just before, right after my mother was born, so they started calling my mother Caroline. So all her paperwork, all her license and everything death certificate, marriage certificate all says Caroline, but her birth certificate says Rachel. So they said, well, I had to send for her social security application because they said that should show. You know, um, the Rachel Caroline thing or something like that, um, they kind of said it's it's probably not absolutely positively necessary to have, but better to have it than not have it.
Speaker 2:It's like that's kind of way they explained it to me I ran into the same issue with my grandmother. Well, I I tried to get their marriage certificate and I wrote to ohio um to get it and they called me and they're like we can't give this to you because I had written to ask for her name is Mary, which that's what she went by Mary, mary, tony Ali's um marriage certificate. And she said they said it. It says Maria in one place, it says Marie in another and then Mary. She signed it Mary. So on the on the wedding certificate it's spelled three different ways and so she wouldn't, she wouldn't give it to me. She said I needed to go to court to get it changed or something.
Speaker 2:So I went back to Ohio for the solar eclipse. It was going through my hometown and so I went there in person. I thought, oh, if I go in person, maybe they won't give me this, this runaround, you know, and won't give me this runaround. And they did give me the runaround, but I ended up coming home with the marriage certificate. So I'm hoping that that's okay, because she did sign it. Mary Tonielli, I don't know that it matters so much. The problem is she does not have a birth certificate.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:They never made a birth certificate for her. She was one of like 13 kids or something. From what they could find, there was only maybe four of the kids had birth certificates. Those were mainly created later in life when they were trying to, like they went to court, I think, to get those done for whatever reason. So I'm having the same issue that you are.
Speaker 2:I did write through the Freedom of Information Act to get my grandmother's Social Security application. So I did get that. I did get that and then I also wrote to get her passport, because she did have a passport. She went back to Italy in like the 40s, I think, or the maybe the 40s or the 50s. She went to Italy so she had to have a passport. But I don't know how she got a passport without having a birth certificate. So there had to be a way. I I know she got her social security, I think because her social security check. When it was time for her to get her check, she brought a person who could swear that they were there I don't know when she was born, or that they knew her, you know whatever. Um, so they brought, she brought a, a person to to vouch for, to vouch for her.
Speaker 2:So that's the last thing I need is to work on my grandmother's situation, because she doesn't have a birth certificate and she was born in the U? S. So I didn't really think that that would be my stumbling block and getting citizenship would be my grandmother's side, but it has been. It has been an issue. So, like like you, I I'm hoping the social security application and then this um copy of the passport application might be um sufficient yeah, enough to do it.
Speaker 1:How long did it take for the Social Security application to come back?
Speaker 2:Maybe six to eight weeks.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think I'm at about four right now, so should be, soon then.
Speaker 2:No, afterwards I did the passport application because originally when I was looking for the birth certificate, they told me that they could have a birth certificate made but I needed these two pieces of evidence. So the passport was one of them, the passport application. But I've come to find out now that, since she's deceased, that they won't make the birth certificate Anyway, but I had already sent away for the passport, but then they just send it back and said they needed, I had to send them a um, uh, not certified. Uh, when you go to a person and they um, oh, like the the epistel thing the registrar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the registrar, where they I have have to go and do my information because they won't give me her passport info without.
Speaker 1:Without that.
Speaker 2:Without that. So I'm still waiting for that.
Speaker 1:I had an interesting thing on my father's because his birthday was April 7th and I get the birth certificate and it had July something, july 18, or some something like that.
Speaker 1:So I was like how is this possible? You know April 7. And so I said my sister had his, had his passport. And I said my sister had his passport. And I said what does the passport say? She said it says July. I said, well, how could that be? So when we finally got his birth certificate or another transcript of birth certificate or whatever I got I don't remember exactly what it was what happened was he was born on april 7th, but he was born in scotch plains, new jersey, which was probably, you know, very rural area. Maybe the, maybe the there were, was a birth there, who knows, every three months, or something like that. When the clerk who filled out the paperwork to send to the state, he wrote down the date that he submitted the paperwork as my father's birthday.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I said my father's not around to ask anymore. I said why did he do this? And then, knowing my father, he probably forget. Ah, it's the passport. Who cares what birthday it says on there?
Speaker 2:We're just going away so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Well, on um, when I was searching the birth certificate of my grandfather on the records from the Onano church, um, it was recorded in the church book March 2nd. But then when I was in Onano and requested the records and they gave me the official version, it said March 5th and they told I asked them about it and they said it's because of that, because of the delay and when they sent it. But they said obviously the church record is when he actually was born, but the official day is March 5th and I think they celebrated it on March 2nd, although I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's when they celebrated.
Speaker 1:Well, my cousins, I have cousins that were born in Italy from my oldest uncle. They left him behind when he was a baby and they didn't come until later and my cousin said, you know, they would send, you know, one of the kids you know, 10 years old, 12 years old, to go to the Comune to say my mother had a baby girl or baby boy. They said you have to be careful with some of this stuff. The names are wrong, the dates are wrong and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting.
Speaker 1:My last interview just the other day was with somebody. She's gone through the Antonati and found all of these, yeah, yeah. And my last interview just the other day was with somebody. She's gone through the Antonati and found all of these crazy anomalies about how they would do things, how they would correct things. You know, if they, if they got the name wrong, they wouldn't, they wouldn't necessarily cross it out, they would put another notation, and you really, you really would have to know what they were trying to say in this.
Speaker 1:The good thing is, though, is you know they always put the, the, the grandparents, in most of the records, so that that would. That makes it easier, and sometimes you could find other family members through the witnesses, because a lot of times, one of the witnesses might be you know a cousin or uncle, or you know somebody else in the town that would be important, and so, yeah, so I'm doing it. I'm 73 now. I'm doing it mostly for the kids, because I want them to have it, you know, because you don't know, they may want to retire there one day, or travel there or spend an extended amount of time there. It's just, I think it's a good thing to have. If you can get it. It's a great thing to have.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, and I'm lucky. I know my grandparents had five daughters after my father or including my father. The youngest one, my grandfather, became a citizen before she was born. So I think that that's part of the family. They won't be able to get the citizenship through him, but the others could, because he did get us citizenship, but the kids were all born before he got the citizenship.
Speaker 2:But, like you were saying before, when I went to try and get my parents, my grandparents, marriage certificate, they couldn't find it for the longest time and they actually sent me to the library, to the genealogy people, to see if they could find it. Um, but it was their last name was spelled incorrectly and, um, we ended up finding it. But the person who was writing it down um, you could tell spelled it phonetically. How the people were speaking with an Italian accent. That's how it was spelled on the marriage certificate, so you could totally see them standing there saying their name and this person writing it down based on what they were saying, because I really don't think that they could read or write English very, very well at that time. So, some, you could tell somebody was writing it down for them, so, but that's why they couldn't find. So the last name spelled wrong, the first name spelled wrong. My grandmother has three spellings of her name, so it's really a messed up certificate yeah, not that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that can make it confusing. Well, you know that, though. You know the women don't change their names in Italy, right, they still don't? Um, and somebody came to the door my grandmother's house and she spoke English, I don't know how. Well, then, this was probably in the forties, because my uncle was still there and I don't know if it was a census taker or something, something like that, and she had the same last name as my grandfather. They were both Nicoletti and and, but they weren't related and as far as we know anyway. And so the guy kept asking my grandmother, what's your maiden name? And she kept saying Nicoletti, and he said, no, that's your husband. What's your? What was the name before you married? She kept saying Nicoletti, and my uncle was in the other room and finally said she knows what you're saying, she has the same last name.
Speaker 2:So she didn't have to change her name, although they didn't, but I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, they did here because my grandmother, my father's mother, she wanted the Sorrentino. So you know, I guess, as they like on their alien registration and all of that, her name is Sorrentino, it's not Piermallo. But that's the one thing that makes it easy about when you research in Italy, the fact that the women don't change their last names. You can follow the family a lot better than you can here, because they change it and then you have to go hunting for the maiden name and all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, Difficult yeah yeah, like haunting for the maiden name and all of that kind of stuff. Um, right, yeah, um, difficult, yeah, yeah. So, and you know, in her family, um, I kept because, because she came from a famous family and it was well documented, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't find her in the line. And then I realized that she was a woman, so she wouldn't be in her mother's line, because I found that she would have been in her father's line, but they had changed their name. So it was really making me nuts. Did I have the right family? And then finally I realized it was. And then that was confirmed when I found cousins in Italy and they said, yeah, yeah, we know what the problem was, because a few generations ago they added several other names and then they just got confusing. So one part of the family has three last names and then the other part still had only the one name, but, boy, for a couple of years. It was making me really, really crazy on trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2:One of the things when I was doing the geneal on Ancestry, I found a a tree called Onano Village Tree or something like that. So somebody had done like a whole tree of everybody in the village and so once I was able to connect into the tree, that's how I got you know more of the the background, although my grandfather wasn't on the tree, but that's because I think he had come to the US after. They kind of stopped before Because somebody was doing it for their ancestry and so they got involved in doing the whole village and so they didn't go down that line because he was in America but his sister was listed there. So that's how I found it and then got in contact with them.
Speaker 1:So once you make these connections.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting, but those are the ones that I have to kind of verify to make sure, because I don't have the, the records. I need to go back and look at some of these um, either marriage certificates or birth certificates to to verify well, yeah, and that's what happened with us and in torito.
Speaker 1:Um, I have a friend there now in in the communing and he's like you know, whatever you need, whatever, just you just ask and we'll send it and we'll take care of it. And you know, they're really, you know, fantastic. I know a lot of people complain. Well, I sent it, you know I, I sent an email or I I sent a letter and they don't respond and they don't. But if you, if you're able to get there or know somebody or make that connection, they bend over backwards for you for the most part.
Speaker 2:You know, um yeah, I told them that I was going to try and come to the festival next year in may, um. So if I, if I do go, I'm going to spend some time in the, the church records, if I can, to just do some of this searching um for myself, since most of it isn't digitized. At least back to where I want to go.
Speaker 1:But they're all there.
Speaker 2:I mean they were all born, lived their whole lives in the village, didn't go anywhere. I mean, so far I have not found anybody who has left the village besides my grandfather, that level, everybody prior to that. They were born and died, yeah.
Speaker 1:So how did you feel emotionally when you got there?
Speaker 2:I really couldn't believe that I was there. I actually still feel like I can't believe I was there because it's something we've we've talked about our whole life. You know about my grandfather coming from Italy and you know, but no one had really been there to see it, to see what it looked like. We didn't know and, like I said, we we really had no contact with people back home because my, my grandfather didn't, like I said, you know, he didn't speak English so we couldn't really. Well, he died before I was born, but even but the kids really couldn't ask very many questions. It's only kind of hearsay stuff that they remember talking about. Um, but uh, so we didn't really know anything about it, um, except it was a small village kind of. It was up in the hills, um, you know that sort of thing. Um, but going there was was so amazing and I learned a lot. Like they were really they're known for their lentils. Like I had no idea we had never heard that before that the, the region is known for their lentils, um, because I, when I went there, there was this big lentil pot or whatever, and they had like a, a sign, you know. So I used my google translate sign and you could kind of figure out what it mostly said. You know, it was about how they're famous for their lentils and this was a lentil pot or whatever, and I'm like we had never heard anything about that.
Speaker 2:And when my grandfather came in Ellis Island or whatever, he wrote down farmer. So I'm wondering if he worked in the lentil fields or if they had a lentil farm. I don't know, but that's something I'm going to, you know, look into, because he did put farmer down, which we never knew that. But he was 18 when he came, so he could have just been a farm worker, you know. But we had very little information except the city name. That's all really we knew was the city, the city name.
Speaker 2:So it was so amazing to be there and it almost didn't happen. Like I said, I, I had a hard time getting there. I had to really almost beg a ride for somebody to to take me there, um, so I would have been sad, being so close and, you know, an hour and a half away and not not visiting. So I plan to go back a hundred percent, hopefully next year, um to go back and do to do some more research and, like I said, everybody was so nice, um so um, to go back to see some of the people and hopefully, maybe I'll see some family members if I go back at a time when they're in town, because nobody was there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what makes me nuts? When people tell me they're going to Italy and I say you're going to the hometown, and they say no, and I was like how could you go to Italy and not go to the hometown? Yeah, and I was like how could you not? How could you go to italy and not go to hometown? But um, yeah, and we had the plan to do that.
Speaker 2:Um, um, my, we didn't realize, like we had never been there so we really didn't realize it looks like it's a really short distance or whatever. But when you're there you realize that it's not a short distance because it's like you're going up and down these hills and the driving. We didn't realize driving would be that big of a deal. So my daughter not the one who was getting married, but my other daughter and her husband were going to rent a car and so we were going to go in the car that they rented on Thursday. We were going to go the car that they rented on like on Thursday we were going to go but they ended up not renting a car because they didn't have an international driver's license, which they didn't really know about getting and getting fined If you didn't have a driver's license. So they were afraid to kind of get a car.
Speaker 2:So it kind of I was really disappointed. I'm like, oh no, if you don't get a car, how are we going to get there? So I would have been devastated if we didn't, if I didn't make it there and and I'm so glad I did because it's turned into this whole I mean, it's turned into this interview right just by by going, going there and meeting the people that I did. It's really opened up so much about my family history. I mean I've looked at houses there. I mean not that I'm going to's really opened up so much about my family history. I mean I've looked at houses there. I mean not that I'm going to buy a house, but I mean I have sat down and looked to see what's available there.
Speaker 2:We do the same thing, yeah, we do the same thing and yeah, I'm a firm believer in nothing happens by accident.
Speaker 2:There was a reason their last day that they were nice enough to take you there, I don't know, because they had some what I would call like kind of like food truck things. But they weren't food, it was. It was like clothes or household things or whatever were set up in like a little square, which is where there were some park parking spaces. And when we pulled up, we we parked and we got out, everybody in the square turned to look at us. Like who are these strangers in town? We felt a little intimidated, like everybody was staring at us and we were walking through I mean, there's really like three streets, you know what I mean Like there's no, it's not a big village at all, and so everybody was staring at us as we were walking around and I was a little bit intimidated, um and.
Speaker 2:But when I got into that shop, I've I really felt compelled to tell this lady about my grandfather living there, and she's the one who's working on this project, doing these interviews with the families of people who have gone abroad. So something was telling me to speak with this lady. I didn't speak with anybody else because everybody was staring at us and making us feel, you know, like we were invading, but I felt compelled to tell her right, so something led me to talk with her. Yeah, I have no other explanation because I didn't talk with anybody else there.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's why I say there's something out there and it just falls together. You can't explain it, you really can't know it's, you can't explain it.
Speaker 2:You really can't, I can't explain it. Well, I felt compelled to talk with her and tell her about my grandfather yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, maggie, I really appreciate it. Uh, you taking the time and, um, like I said, if, if anybody in the town the you know the mayor or the person writing the book or whatever um, if they're interested in doing something like this, I'm happy to do it. I can always get a translator if they don't speak English or if they don't have somebody there to speak English. But I like to get the word out there about these villages because it's important for people to know.
Speaker 2:It is, it really is.