MEETING
NOTES
September 9th, 2006
Saturday September 9th, 2006, Dan Niemiec opened the 26th meeting of PIP #27 Chicago North Chapter at our usual home at the Schaumburg District Library in Schaumburg IL, with 21 PIPsters in attendence. He recapped the “Roots In The Boot” conference that was held in Pittsburgh July 14 and 15 of 2006. Dan Niemiec, Rose Ducato and Joy Hamm attended the conference from our group. Dan and Rose discussed a few of the specific areas we learned during the conference, especially from Dr. John Colletta who was their keynote speaker and gave 4 presentations, and Paula Manfredi who gave two interesting presentations on Italian history and obscure records.
We had no new members at this meeting so we had no discussion of new member research, so we turned the floor over to our speaker Mike Bacarella whose presentation was “ Italians in The Napoleonic Era”. Mike Bacarella is a author of several books entitled “ Ital-Actors” which was researched thoroughly to find many entertainment personalities of the past and present who are part-Italian. Of course many changed their names and others are only Italian on their mother's side, such as Marlo Thomas. Also he wrote "Lincoln's Foreign Legion, The 39th NY Infantry, The Garibaldi Guard" about the Italian regiments in the US Civil War. He is a historian on the military and his presentation showed us the many different battles the Italians, Spanish, Russians fought in over Italian history. He brought us some examples of books showing the many different uniforms and the firearms that they used in battle. Some of the books were “ “Italian Militiamen 1260-1392 Authors: David Armour . The Conquistadores by Terrence Wise and Angus Mebride. Mike has researched many military engagements and found many history records by searching at Newberry library in Chicago. These records can be found by looking at muster records of the military. Possibly your immigrant ancestor fought in some of these wars.
We concluded our meeting with a lunch at Dominick's. Our next and final meeting of the year will be held on November 11, 2006. Linda Fortunato Davenport will be speaking on “ Italian Records”. You can visit our web site for details. www.chicagoitalian.org Lunch will be at Lou Malnati’s and of course Nonna Rosa’s cannolis for desert.
As always please check our web site for any further details or changes to our meeting dates. http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc/index.htm
You can contact Dan Niemiec: famigliabari@comcast.net or Rose Marie Ducato mailto:psrmducato@aol.com