MEETING
NOTES
JULY 13th 2001
Thirteen Italian genealogists met at the Schaumburg (IL)
District Library on Friday July 13th, 2001 for the third meeting of POINTers
In Person Chapter #27.
The new members introduced themselves to the group. Paul Douglas is researching his wife’s side
of the family for her. Geneva Shay
(#3252) is researching her grandson’s Italian roots for him. Jean Grillo (#2788) is researching her
husband’s family for him (and her Polish roots for herself). Ann Moro is working on her husband’s lines
for him. (We have some selfless
genealogists, huh!)
New member Mike Bacarella is an actor and historian who has
written books about Italians in America.
He has researched the Italian-American regiments in the Civil War and is
working on the more voluminous World War I Italian-American soldiers. He brought photographs of the Civil War
Italian-American soldiers and of the re-enactments he participates in. He has also written a book about
Italian-American entertainers called “ItalActor” and it lists many prominent
Italian-Americans, their real names and credits, and includes many performers
who had maternal Italian ancestry and were never thought of as Italian. He is very interested in Italian military
records both here and in Italy. Many of
our members have expressed the need to acquire military records but don’t know
how to do it. (Note to Mike Madeo: find
a speaker on this topic for the conference)
Dan briefly talked about moving the meetings from Friday
night to Saturday afternoon, to accommodate members who cannot drive at night,
and to appeal to members who tend to have Friday night plans.
Dan showed the group the chapter website. It has become a valuable resource. The site now contains a page for each
province with a complete list of towns contained in the province, and links for
each town to the Family History Library catalog entries for that town. (Only 66 provinces are done at this
time.) Also, there are pages listing
all Catholic Churches for the Archdiocese of Chicago (Cook and Lake County,
Illinois) and links to the catalog films for each church. One project to add to the site will be a
“church finder” that will allow the user to enter east-west and north-south
coordinates and it will show the 10 closest churches and the 5 closest churches
of the chosen ethnicity. The program
works but it has not yet been turned into a web page. Pat Powers (#2531) suggested adding links to the web site for
histories of some towns in Italy. Roger
MacLennan (#2835)suggested a link to the PIE page (a major oversight on my
part!) and Jean Grillo would like to have a link to the Italians to America 1880-1893
database, to find her husband’s immigrant ancestors who came in the 1880’s.
A handout was distributed showing the results of a survey
that was mailed to about 150 people and about 35 were returned. The survey was designed to see just how
advanced the group was so that good topics would be chosen for upcoming
meetings.
Jerry Farenga (#1763) followed up on his experiences with
the Ellis Island site. At our last
meeting, he expressed frustration at not being able to find his immigrant
ancestors on the site. We had suggested
that he try misspelled versions of his name (the most common transcription
error is that a lower-case “n” is transcribed as a “u”) and that he look under
the mother’s maiden name since Italian women traveled under that surname, and
their kids who traveled with her would be listed under their first names under
her name. As an example, Gerardo
Farenga age 8 who came to the US with his mother Anna Volpe, would be listed in
the Ellis Island site as Gerardo Volpe.
Well, Jerry found both immigrant ancestors using these techniques, with
help from Joy Hamm (#4275) who has had similar problems. We all wondered how to get Ellis Island to
correct the entries in the database so that others would have a chance to find
these people.
Geneva Shay and Dan Niemiec (#2304) agreed to exchange
information about the Purpura surname.
Geneva is not 100% sure where they came from but Dan has some research
done from Termini Imerese, Sicily, which is a likely place for Geneva’s
Purpuras to have come from.
Dan Niemiec talked about the Family Search website. For a day or two, they were testing an
updated Family History Library catalog, which included a Keyword search. The keyword search is only available on the
CD-ROM version, but it allows you to search for a town that may only be listed
in the description of another town’s records.
This could include towns that were once “comuni” but are now merely
“frazioni”. Rose Ducato (#1812)
expressed that there are towns she needs records for that she has not found in
the catalog but a keyword search would help make sure that those records are
not hidden elsewhere. Dan explained how
he found his towns, using the keyword search, listed in the province record for
Bari where the 1901-1910 births marriages and deaths were filmed at the
provincial level. This was communicated
to the other Baresi researchers, Pat Powers who is researching De Nicolo from
the town of Capurso, and Roger and Pauline MacLennan who are researching Ceglie
del Campo. Pat is convinced she is Dan’s
“20th cousin” because we both have De Nicolo ancestors in nearby
towns in Bari.
Our next meetings will be Saturday September 8th,
2001, and Saturday November 10th, 2001 at the same location,
2pm-4pm. We expect to have speakers at
both meetings. Please contact Dan
Niemiec or Rose
Ducato for information, and visit the web site at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc