MEETING
NOTES
MARCH 1, 2003
Nine POINTers
gathered at the Schaumburg District Library on March 1st, 2003 for the first
meeting of 2003 for the Chicago-North chapter of POINTers In Person.
Dan Niemiec
(#2304) chaired the meeting and went through a few local agenda items,
including the change of meeting time (10am-noon instead of 2pm-4pm), the lunch
gathering after the meeting, and the addition of Illinois census microfilm
numbers to the chapter web page (http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc/pipcnilcensus.htm).
These film numbers are sorted by Illinois county and then by enumeration
district, as opposed to the Family History Library catalog which is sorted by
film number.
Dan also stressed
to the members that if their e-mail address must change, they should change
their subscriptions to mail lists and web sites with their surnames as well as
message boards. Many people are changing e-mail addresses due to
upgrading to broadband internet and problems with their dial-up
connections. Far too many people are e-mailing genealogists only to find
that the address is no good. Dan noted that anyone with
"@attbi.com" is going to become "@comcast.net" and asked
who had AT&T broadband and Terry Jackson raised his hand. He only
recently got used to changing from "@home.com" and now has to change
again.
There is a new
mail list on Yahoogroups called "BariGen" which is being moderated by
Dan and is intended to replace the old "BariItaly" list and web site which
had not been maintained for 2 years. You can get surnames posted to the
web site by joining the mail list. The list can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BariGen
and the web site can be found at http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc/bari
. This was of interest to Toni Garofalo and Roger MacLennan who both have
roots in Bari.
Joy Hamm brought
an extract of a baptism record from Lucca (which hasn't been filmed) and this
record referred to other parishes, but with the help of the POINT directory we
determined that they were actually towns. So she can now write to these
towns for extracts of the baptisms of the parents of the baptized baby.
Jerry Farenga used the Trafford Cole book to help Joy find the addresses she
needed.
Dan asked the
group to let him know which areas of Italy have not yet been filmed by LDS so
he can write to Salt Lake City on behalf of the chapter and aske them to film
those areas. Jerry Farenga's family comed from Muro Lucano, Potenza,
and it has only been filmed up to 1865. Frank Scalise has roots in
Bologna and there is very little of that entire area on film. Dan even
sent Keith Rose (of the Family History Library) a list of individual years and
records that were not filmed in Bari, in the hope that they will try to film
them now. dan will ask his group on-line to submit other towns and areas
that need filming so the list can be sent to Salt Lake for review.
We all discussed
how to write to Italy. When writing to the civil records offices, we send
no money in advance, but we remit what they charge us after we receive the
results. When writing to a parish, we donate money and wrap the cash in
foil or in the letter itself. Usually we send postal reply coupons to the
civil records offices.
Frank Scalise
brought copies of a list of Chicago Italian-Americans who were interviewed for
a project by the Italian Cultural Center in Stone Park, IL. The list gave
us names and the neighborhoods they grew up in, or moved to after they
emigrated here. Tapes of the interviews are available at the Cultural
Center Library.
Frank also
related his experience with the Catanzaro civil record office. He asked
for an extract of an ancestor's birth, and they sent him a list of births
showing 4 siblings, all born the same day, with 4 sequential record
numbers. Presuming that it was so unlikely they were quadruplets, he
presumed the records office "made up" the information and sent it to
him. But on his recent trip to Italy, he was able to see the original
records and it turns out that the 4 births were all registered the same day for
4 siblings born 18-20 months apart.
Debbie Stecker
asked which libraries besides the Harold Washington (HWL) and the Chicago
Historial Society (CHS) have microfilmed early Chicago Sun Times and Daily
News. No one had heard of any that had the films. Dan noted that at
CHS you have to fill out a form for each film you want to use and wait for them
to get the film for you. At HWL, you can get your own films, but the
change machines don't take new $5 bills and the copy-card readers on the
machines don't work very well.
Joy Hamm also
asked about Italians who emigrated directly to California once they arrived in
the US. What port would they likely have arrived at from Italy? We
suggested New Orleans, simply because the journey overland only covered half
the country. She has relatives who went to and from Italy and Argentina and
America.
Dan is planning
to finally visit Italy in September and the discussion turned to the use of
digital cameras. Jerry used a Sony Mavica that burned the images on small
mini-cd-roms. This allowed him to take as many images as he wanted
without having to lug a laptop computer with him to download the pictures from
a memory stick. Dan has a Sony Cybershot with a 128 meg memory stick that
can hold almost 800 small photos. His plan is to take pictures of as many
church records as he can, and sort them all out at home. Then he wants to
visit the cemetery in Triggiano, Bari and take pictures of the crypts and the
photos on the crypts.
Also attending
was Ann Moro.
We adjourned at
12:15pm and some of the group went to Dominick's for a deli-style lunch, which will
be a regular feature of PIP Chapter 27 meetings from now on.
Visit our website for further information at:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc