MEETING
NOTES
November 5th, 2005
Dan
Niemiec opened our PIP#27 meeting on Saturday, November 5, 2005 to a group of
30 enthusiastic Italian genealogists. Dan advised our group of the up and
coming POINT national conference. A
recent letter from Dr. Militello has updated the list of speakers and topics so
Dan made these known to the group and encouraged participation in the
conference.
Dan
Niemiec our PIP#27 founder writes a genealogy column for Fra Noi, a very
prominent Italian newspaper here in the Chicago area. They are beginning to put in free death notices for Italians in
their paper starting this year. Dan is currently indexing these and also all
obits from Fra Noi back issues back to 1972.
These will be on our chapter web site at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc
Carleene
Laskero, a first timer attended our conference “Discover Your Italian Roots” on
September 17, 2005. She advised that her father passed away last year. She said
our conference inspired her to start tracing her Italian heritage.
Ray
Mannarelli had an important announcement pertaining to a DNA Study that he
participated in. He just submitted a
sample of his DNA though the National Geographic study. The cost was
$100.00. After a little time the test
came back and advised Ray that he was Chinese!
They also said that the strain of DNA he submitted was only found in
certain parts of China! Ray thought
this a little odd and called them on the telephone. A scientist from the National Geographic thought this somewhat
odd too. He said he would get back to him.
(Maybe Marco Polo went to Italy???)
Marilyn
Hallihan, a first timer, is doing her Irish as well as her Italian side. What inspired her was a scrapbook project. She wanted to add a family tree in her
family scrapbook. She could not list the names so she contacted a cousin in
Detroit. There is also some detective work that went into this. Evidently some
of her family has some notorious persons in her family tree. (Who doesn’t)!!
John
Cavallone starting his research at a family reunion with 150 persons in
attendance. He hand out pamphlets on
his Sassano families from Calabria. He is hitting the proverbal brick wall. We
advised John to become a member of POINT. He should also attend the PIP#27
meetings. He also noted that our
conference was the event that got him to start his research in earnest.
Our
guest speaker was Dr. Gary L. LiVacari, a practicing dentist who lives in Park
Ridge, Illinois. Gary has been married for 28 years and recently retired from
the United States Navy Dental corps. After a 24 year career as an active duty
and reserve Dental Officer. During the 1980’s Gary was fortunate enough to be
stationed in Italy for a two-year tour of duty. During this time, he learned to
speak Italian and traveled extensively throughout Italy. He got involved with
his family genealogy following the death of a distant relative. His talk involved a family history project,
which actually consists of seven “ Mini-projects,” including his narrated video
tour of Mt. Carmel Cemetery.
It
was hard to believe that Gary has only been researching his family tree since
May of 2005. When he attended a funeral
for one of his relatives he met a person by the name of Lucian Levaccale, aged
93. Lucien was instrumental in providing Gary with an enormous amount of
information and personal photographs of many family members. It was not long
after he received all those precious photographs that Lucian passed away. This is a very important issue in finding
those precious photographs from older family members before it is too late.
Gary
has done most of his books and his presentation on software called “Passage
Express”. He then demonstrated how easy it is to do this once you have entered
data in Legacy Software genealogy program.
He distributed his finished project to many of his relatives in a matter
of a short time. He was able to produce
a small book including narrative stories and photos with little effort. He also was able to make a web site that
includes his family tree and the photos.
Gary
decided to make a movie of his trip through Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside,
IL, the last resting place of many Chicago Italians including his own
relatives. Gary filmed as he drove (!)
and explained a few of the famous monuments and sections along the way and then
talked about his relatives as he filmed their grave markers.
The
irony was that Gary has only been working on his family tree for a few months
but his enthusiasm is so contagious, you can see how he was able to do so much
in such a short time. Our group was
able to offer tips for Gary himself for future research. Gary admits he still has a lot to learn
about how to research and also told us of a nagging problem in finding where
one of his ancestors lived. Dan advised
that the PIP 27 web site has a Chicago street name conversion guide and was
able to give Gary the current street name of the place his great-grandfather
died.
Gary
also mentioned that his aunt had given him a box of death notices and obits cut
out from the newspapers. For those who
do not have such a thoughtful Aunt, there is the Chicago Tribune archives
on-line. You can only access it at a
public library or through your local library’s web site with a user name and
password. There are two Chicago Tribune
archives, the ProQuest which shows the actual page images (and is harder to use
when looking for death notices) and the Historial Archive which is a text
extract of the entire newspaper.
Neither one is 100% complete but they are extremely useful in finding
death notices and other news stories about your relatives.
Our
meeting ended with our annual trip across the street to Lou Malnotti’s for the
deep dish Chicago style pizza, pasta, and salad. Rose Marie Ulizzi-Ducato provided her homemade legendary Italian
Cannolis for desert.
Our
meeting will be held next year at the same place: Schaumburg Library in
Schaumburg, Illinois. The meetings
dates are set tentatively for the second Saturday of each month (with
exceptions).
March
25th
May
13th
July
8th
September
9th
November
11th
Have
a great holiday season.