MEETING
NOTES
March 13th 2004
Eight Italian genealogists gathered at the Schaumburg
District Library to open the third year of the Chicago-North Chapter of
POINTers In Person. Notably absent were
some “snow-birds” including our beloved “Nonna Rosa” Ducato, who is still in
sunny Florida. (We miss you!)
We covered a variety of subjects. A number of us have written to relatives in
Italy, or have talked to relatives in Italy, and have been surprised at their
indifference to what we do. We could
have debated the entire meeting why Italians aren’t all that interested, but we
surmised that they are still close to their extended family and don’t need to
go looking elsewhere for additional family members, while Americans whose
families are scattered around the country have more of a psychological need to
look for cousins. But we’ll leave the
rest of that discussion to Freud.
Jerry Farenga (#1763) wrote some letters to relatives in
Italy and received e-mails back. Dan
Niemiec’s (#2304) relatives, even the younger people, want him to write letters
because they don’t like to keep up with e-mail.
We talked briefly about the status of POINT and PIP. Everyone present was made aware of the POINT
Conference in October, the 2006 Conference in Los Angeles, and the loss of PIP
founder and former Chapter 1 leader Anthony Lascio. Dan attended a meeting of the Milwaukee PIP Chapter and was
surprised to see how many of their members are related to each other. They talked more about actual family
connections than about research methodology.
There will be further discussion about possibly sharing a booth with the
Milwaukee chapter at the Italian fest in the summer but we need to figure out
how to cover the booth costs.
We also held preliminary talks about possibly hosting a
one-day mini-conference some time in 2005.
We have been asked to host the POINT National conference but the
logistics of planning and the lack of time have made that impossible at this
time. However, with a single-day
conference, geared toward the beginner and non-POINTer, we can simplify the
planning and financial implications and introduce new Italian genealogists to
POINT and our chapters at the same time.
We will talk with PIP1 and Milwaukee and maybe arrange a separate
tri-chapter meeting to discuss the idea.
Geneva Shay (#3252) is working on her grandson’s
genealogy (on his father’s side) and was working with passenger lists to find
the Italian town of origin. She has
been unable to contact his relatives (due to domestic squabbles) so she has
been limited to using microfilms and internet sites.
Linda Messina-Holda (#2055) talked about a number of
interesting books about Italian-American history, including “Storia Segreta”
about how Italians were put in camps during World War 2, and about Italian POWs
who were sent to the US and their experiences.
She and Frank Scalise also mentioned the book “The Italians” by Luigi
Barzini, and the movie “The Tree of the Wooden Clogs”.
New member Marie Parise says she’s just getting started,
but she already has the ancestral towns of her immigrant ancestors (Chiusa
Sclafani and Mezzoiuso, Sicily) and is researching the surnames Gobbia,
Vernaggi, Lopes and Di Chiara.
We decided to have Dominic Candeloro speak to our group
on May 8th about his new book “Chicago’s Italians, Immigrants,
Ethnics, American (The Making of America)”.
He is a professor at Governors State University in the far south
suburbs. He spoke to our sister chapter
PIP 1 and he was very interesting and informative.
Ann Moro has been to a couple of our past meetings but
has made significant progress. Her
grandparents and great-grandparents came from Calvello, Potenza. Her surnames are Guido and Graziano. A cousin of Dan’s has ancestors from
Calvello also with the surname De Marco and Ann remembered a De Marco family
from her youth that could have been from that clan.
Roseanne De Frank (#3624) asked about the availability of
Illinois death certificates from Springfield.
They used to do free lookups but they were overwhelmed and cancelled
that program. However, you can go to
the state archives in Springfield and find certificates yourself. None of us has been down there to actually
use the state archives. There are
people who are on the Cook County page of Rootsweb or US Genweb who live in Springfield
and will do lookups much cheaper than the state charges for official copies,
but more expensive than driving down to Springfield and doing your own.
Dan announced some major improvements at the Buffalo
Grove IL Family History Center, including full internet access, a free
Ancestry.com complete subscription, and a new reader-printer that saves to
CD-ROM. Dan also announced the return
of part of the 1911-1929 province of Bari marriage microfilms from the center,
which is of interest to Toni Garofalo (#1701) who needs to look up some relatives
from Casamassima.
We adjourned to Dominick’s for lunch and further
discussion, during which time a shopper overheard Dan Niemiec say “Triggiano”
and came over to the group and announced that she has a first cousin
researching Triggiano, who turned out to be Jo Holmes (#4347) who Dan already
knows.
Our next meeting will be May 8th, 2004 at the same location at the same time. For information see our web site at http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc or contact Dan at pipnorth@comcast.net