MEETING
NOTES
Read Dan Niemiec’s article, “In Search of Nonno”, that appeared in POINTers, Fall 2001
Read Rose Ducato’s article “Remembering My Grandmother”, that appeared in POINTers, Winter 2001
NOVEMBER 10TH, 2001
Nineteen Italian genealogists gathered in Schaumburg, IL for
the 5th meeting of POINTers In Person Chapter #27.
Attendees not mentioned below were Joy Hamm, Jerry Farenga,
Tom Glatz, Diane Kinn, Rich Davi, Toni Garofalo, Roger and Pauline MacLennan,
Laura Heidekrueger, Susan Lehrmann and Karen Bucaro.
We opened with our traditional introduction of new
members. Ron LaPenta is just starting
his genealogy and is starting to use the Family History Center microfilm for US
Census research, and we told him to look for his Italian town in our web site
and see what has been microfilmed.
Sharon Pinio Smith talked about her annual trips to Sicily to visit
relatives and further her research.
Dan Niemiec (#2304) discussed a major exchange of records
with a distant cousin who lives in France but was born in Dan’s ancestral town
of Triggiano, Bari. Additional
connections with other genealogists whose roots come from Triggiano have added
84 new ancestors to his tree and brought one line back to the 1560’s.
Dan also talked about his project to list all Chicago street
name changes (http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc/pipcnstreets.htm)
which has taken 2 months and is still not complete. It is all part of larger project to convert Chicago addresses
into the Census enumeration district numbers and to find close Catholic
parishes. John Storts made some
suggestions for Dan to complete the project that can be found at the Harold
Washington Library in Chicago.
This led to a short talk by Rose Ducato about a conference
she attended in November presented by Kathleen Hinckley regarding the 1930
Census. Since the 1930 Census is not
soundexed for Illinois, it will be critical to use city directories and convert
these into enumeration district numbers in order to find anyone in the 1930.
Our speaker was Mike Bacarella, who is an actor as well as
an author. Mike talked about early
Italian emigration and historical reasons for Italians to emigrate all over the
world as well as America. Much of Southern
Italy was under Spanish influence from the 13th to the 17th
centuries. Northern Italy was under
many dukedoms and the middle of Italy was the Papal States under control of the
Pope. So when the western and
midwestern American colonies were being divided by the European powers, the
alliances in Europe (Spain with the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies versus the
French with the northern Italians) were the same in their battles here. Many Italians fought over American colonies
two centuries before the usual immigration wave we all discuss. Many southern Italians also fought on the
side of the American colonies against mercenaries in Tripoli who captured
American ships in that region. Some of
these Italians were given US citizenship later and emigrated to New Orleans in
order to claim land bounties.
When Italy fought its own battles of unification, it forced
some of the losing side to be exiled and some went to South America and others
to North America as early as 1848. Some
of these ended up in California during the gold rush. Others formed regiments in the US Civil War and there are records
on these Italian-Americans amongst the Civil War muster rolls and service
records. In 1870, the Papal States were
annexed and Italy was unified. The
government thus formed was part of the reason many Italians emigrated in the
second wave. Mike then showed us some
of the documents and indexes of military records that are available.
The meeting ended with Pat Powers talking about her trip to
Italy and her experience in her ancestral town of Capurso, Bari. She was in Italy for 25 days but only spent
a few days in her hometown. Rose
Curtiletti was just in her “hometown” of Prizzi, Sicily, and met her cousin who
is the Mayor. The Mayor introduced her
to the Parish Priest who spent hours of his time doing research for her. She came home with 4 generations of
ancestors and several books written about her small town.
Our group adjourned the meeting at 4pm and went to Lou
Malnatti’s Restaurant in Schaumburg for our Annual Dinner and we all enjoyed
pizza, pasta, and “Nonna Rosa” Ducato’s famous homemade cannoli!
Our next meeting will be March 9th, 2002 at the same location. See our web site for details. (http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc)