MEETING
NOTES
May 8th 2004
L-R: Ann Schaefer, Maria White, Anthony Bravine, Tracie Dziagwa-Villarrea, Diane Kinn, Jerry Farenga, Rose Ducato, Geneva Shay, Frank Scalise
On
a beautiful Saturday morning on May 8th, 2004, PIP Chicago-North
(#27) had its second meeting of the year, with twelve persons in
attendance. Rose Marie Ulizzi-Ducato #1812,
just returned from her winter home in Florida to attend.
Maria
White #4910 was visiting from her hometown in Monticello, Iowa. She brought along her Aunt, Ann Schaefer who
lives in Mt. Prospect. Her Aunt is the one who got her started out on the genealogy
trail. Maria is searching her ancestors
from Laurenzana, Basilicata, Potenza, Italy.
She has gotten back to 1855 on her other line, but is at a stumbling
block because of a female ancestor who is consistantly listed in her children’s
birth records with no maiden name.
She
was having trouble with Family Tree Maker and creating a box descendant chart
small enough to display but large enough to read easily. Dan booted up his laptop and showed her what
to do. Dan showed Maria his
grandparents’ descendants and that it would take 6 pages even at the smallest
print size.
Anthony
Bravine, was a first timer to our group
and has been tracing his line of Bravin’s from Meduno in Udine. He has researched for many years but has
never used a computer for genealogy. We
did some lookups for him on Ancestry.com and Ellisisland.org to show him what
was available but did not find his immigrant Bravin ancestor. Norm Falcone, also a first timer, found us
through an article in Fra Noi, a local Italian Chicago newspaper. (By
the way our own Dan Niemiec is now Fra Noi’s Italian genealogy
columnist, taking over for the late Tony Lascio.) Norm Falcone’s research area is Foggia but he’s not sure which
town in that province. Dan suggested he
look in the Italian white pages to find the number of Falcones in each town in
Foggia to help decide where to look first.
His grandfather got a job working for the railroad. He is also looking for his grandfathers
naturalization papers for Steubenville, Ohio.
Dan
Niemiec talked about the census records being on line through Heritage Quest
and Ancestry. 1900 and 1910 are indexed on Heritage Quest and not on Ancestry,
but Ancestry has all the others indexed.
Since both can be expensive to subscribe to, it was suggested that people
use the public library or family history center to do their initial lookups and
only subscribe when they have so much to lok up that they need to do it from
home.
Dan
would like to revive a dormant project: the creation of a database of marriage
records found at Chicago’s Italian parishes.
He extracted the two smallest parishes and set up the web site, and he
is looking for volunteers to extract the other 10 parishes into a spreadsheet. Jerry Farenga volunteered to help even
though he has no ancestors in Chicago at that time. (Thanks Jerry!)
Tracie
Dziagwa-Villarrea is a first timer. She has just recently joined POINTers. She went to Italy in 2000. She is attending
college and has done her dissertation on socialogical factors involving
Italian-Americans and this project has piqued her interest in genealogy. Her great-grandfather gained notoriety by a
shooting that occurred with another family member. Another grandfather left
their family and she is trying to locate him either living or dead, but he has
eluded her by his numerous name changes. She brought a very interesting book
for us all to look at. She acquired it through E-Bay. It is a Book titled “Italians in Chicago”, published
in 1930. It lists the names of Italians
who owned businesses in Chicago.
Frank
Scalise is still searching for his grandfather. He has recently been informed
that he worked for the railroad. He now has another avenue to investigate.
Diane
Kinn, #1816. She is still searching for her grandfathers Petition for Naturalization
document in New York, but it could not be found on-line. She has the
citizenship document which noted the petition number, certificate number and
the court (Eastern District of NY).
These records are microfilmed and we found the right film for that volume
and petition number.
We
closed the meeting and continued our lively conversation at Dominicks for
lunch.
At
our next meeting July 13th, Dominick Candeloro will be on hand to
discuss his new book about Chicago Italians.
For
information on our chapter, contact Dan at pipnorth@comcast.net
or Rose at psrmducato@aol.com or see
our web site at http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc/