I’ve always been interested in the origins of my family. I have always asked questions because I wanted to know more. My father’s side of the family was from Poland, Austria and Russia. I knew this but when I asked my father about his family, he would always say he didn’t know much and that he was proud to be an American. I always thought it strange that he didn’t ever ask his father who was an immigrant from Poland about his story. A few years back, he gave me my grandfather’s Polish passport and other documentation. I thought it was like hitting the jackpot. Holding in my hand the very passport that my grandfather, whom I never had the opportunity to meet, carried across an ocean towards a better life. Although my dad might have said he didn’t care much for the story of his family, when he passed this year I found that he saved a suitcase full of of photos and momentos. It’s been speculated that this was the suitcase that his father used when he came to America. I guess my dad cared more about his family’s memories more than he let on.
On my mother’s side, it was completely different. I was fortunate to have had a long relationship with my grandparents. They came from Italy in the early 1950s and always talked about Italy. The stories they have told have been ingrained in my memory and really fostered my desire to know more about my roots and where I came from. Although there are a number of relatives here in America, there are many still in Italy. My grandfather was the only one of his siblings to come to America and my grandmother left behind two of her brothers.
The year before I did a study abroad program in Florence, my grandfather’s sister, Maria, came to visit with her grandson, Alessandro. I had been studying Italian for about a year and a half. I was beyond excited to meet them and practice my Italian. Looking back, I think I did pretty well but my Italian wasn’t what it is today by any means. Alessandro and I had hit it off and he even came to stay at my house for a while. Even though my grandfather had said to me when I told him that I was going to learn Italian, “What are you going to do for the Italian?” (You need to say that with a heavy Italian accent and I promise it will make sense), I think he was so proud that I was able to communicate with my cousin and my Zia Maria.
After my zia and my cousin left, I told them that I would be coming to Italy to study and I changed my major in order to become an Italian teacher. I kept in touch with Alessandro and when I had a break from school, my mother had come to visit and Alessandro came up to Florence with his father to bring us down to the town where my grandmother had grown up –Bojano. I was so excited to see where my grandmother had lived for 26 years before coming to America and where her family had had roots for many years. The feeling of being in the place where my grandmother was raised was indescribable. I felt as if I were meant to have made this trip and that it would forever change me. I met so many cousins and many of my grandparents’ siblings.
One thing that is particular to my family is that my grandparents families were extremely connected since my grandmother’s brother married my grandfather’s sister and my Zia Maria married my grandmother’s first cousin, Giuseppe. Since there were so many connections here, my cousins also took us to the town where my grandfather was born and raised – Conca della Campania. As soon as we arrived, I saw a man walking on the street and instantly knew who he was although we had never met before. He was my grandfather’s brother, Aurelio and he looked like a younger version of my grandfather. We walked through the town and even got to see the house where my mother was born. She had never seen it before either! Of course we visited the houses of each of my grandfather’s brothers before having a meal with Zio Aurelio and Zia Lina. I’ll never forget what Zio Aurelio said to me while we were eating our pasta (penne lisce – my grandfather’s favorite). He was studying me as I ate and he said to me, “You eat your pasta just like my brother!” It’s true. I slide my pasta onto my fork (short pasta, of course) instead of stabbing it, just like my grandfather. It made me proud and made me feel a part of the family.
Since my first time in Italy, I have returned many times with student and adult tours and for family vacations. I have connected with more cousins and have been fortunate to have gotten to see many of them each time I go.
In 2010, I decided that I would finally take the time to put together my family tree. Genealogy had become very popular and websites were offering services to help you build your trees and help you to research all in one place. I chose to use Ancestry.com. I had a good start because I was able to ask my father about his side and even though he thought it was odd that I was doing this, he obliged me with names and relations. On my mother’s side, I reached out to some family in Italy asking if they had information and a few responded with some very detailed information. For the rest, I was on my own researching the website’s databases and other web sites.
You have to become somewhat of a detective to find information. I started with all the information I could gather from relatives and started from my generation and then going backwards. On my father’s side, I was only able to go back to my great-great grandparents on both his mother’s and father’s sides. Unfortunately, records from Poland, Austria and Russia (or wherever the country borders were at the time) are hard to come by and I am at a disadvantage not speaking any of those languages. On my mother’s side, I was able to go back as far as my six-times great grandparents! That puts me somewhere in the early 1700s!
What really helped in my research were a few things and could help you, too!
- Talk to your living relatives and gather as much information as you can, even if dates are approximate. Write it all down!
- Use the databases available to you on a website like ancestry.com or Family Search. Here you can find so much information like draft cards, census results, birth and death records, ship manifests. Many documents will give links to other family members. For example, a birth record will list parents names and ages, which will help you then look for their birth records and so on. A ship manifest will often show the next of kin left behind in the country of departure and their address. A census will tell you where they lived at the time, with whom and even professions.
- If you are looking for records from Italy, many towns have digitized their birth, death and marriage records. I suggest checking out Antenati (it means ancestors in Italian). If you click on Browse the registries, then look for the Archivo di… and find the province of the town you are looking for. When you click on that particular archive link, it will then give you a choice of Stato civile napoleonico, Stato civile della restaurazione and Stato civile italiano. These go in chronological order starting around 1809 for napoleonico, 1816 for restaurazione and 1861 for italiano. When you choose one of these, then you will get a list of all towns available. Choose your town and start doing your detective work. *Hint: for some of these registries there will be an initial page that contains a list of all the births or deaths that might make it easier than opening each and every page.
- If you are using Ancestry.com, then you might find other trees of users that have information to help you out. Make sure you review your hints!
It took me years to get to where I am because it takes a lot of patience and deciphering of Italian handwriting. Some years, the transcriber had easy to read handwriting and some years, it is chicken scratch, at best. Although it can be somewhat tedious, when you find a link, it really is a breakthrough and will give you the next piece of information that you need to go even further back.
There are some interesting things I was able to piece together when researching my family. One thing that I realized was how likely it was that children would not survive, as you go back further in time due to lack of resources but sometimes fate takes over. I was able to find both three-times great-grandmothers on my grandmother’s side. I learned that one of them had two husbands and five children but only one child made it to adulthood. The other, a single mother in 1845, had only one child who was born to an unknown father. These two children somehow were destined to be married and would end up being my grandmother’s grandparents. It made me appreciate that if the stars hadn’t aligned just the right way, I wouldn’t be here.
Another interesting story I learned after I was stopped dead in my tracks, not being able to go beyond my great-great-grandfather because he was born to an unknown father, was that this padre incerto was German. And he did not want a child or to marry. So he jumped off a balcony and survived. He then went back to Germany. This is the story that a cousin of mine told me. And this is the reason she believes that she has blue eyes and light hair. I have no way to prove it but it is a story that made its way to 2020 from 1845.
Right now, I’m at a bit of a stand-still because I can’t go back any further without accessing parochial records. For that, I’ll need to go to Italy. Ever since one of my cousins said to me that he thought we had some ancestors from Florence, it instantly became my mission to prove that I am related to Dante Alighieri. I guess that would explain my intense love of the language and why I chose to teach it. You might think I’m nuts and it might be a huge stretch and undertaking but after watching the tv show, Who do you think you are? and seeing that Cindy Crawford is related to Charlemagne, nothing is impossible.
