MEETING
NOTES
March 9, 2002
Eleven Italian genealogists braved 50 MPH winds and bitter
Chicago cold to attend the 6th meeting of POINTers In Person Chapter #27,
Chicago-North, on March 9th 2002 at the Schaumburg District Library in
Schaumburg, IL.
Attendees not mentioned below were Joy Hamm (#4275), Bob
Kurek, and Toni Garofalo (#1701).
Chapter co-founder Dan Niemiec (#2304) opened the meeting by
noting our first anniversary as an active chapter and then asked our new
members introduce themselves.
Larry Pasquesi has been an active genealogist for years and
has traced his family back to the 1500's in Pievepelago, Modena. Larry has worked with Notario records and
wants to see the Catasto Onciario tax rolls next time.
Lisa Perkins is a long-time member of PIP Chapter #1 and she
has also been actively researching for several years. Her original plan was to extract all records for her ancestral
town, but this proved too daunting so she needs to regroup. The theory that "everyone is
related" is sometimes a joke but once you work in the same town for 200 years
you find that each family that has been in that town for that long is tied to
the other families many times over.
Ann Moro is just getting started with her research of the
Guido family. However, she did find a
possible cousin of Dan Niemiec who just passed away months earlier.
Rose Amato-Curtiletti asked about how the size of families
might affect how many relatives you find.
Her father was only one of 2 children.
But once you trace ancestors back and then trace their descendants, the
family grows leaps and bounds. The old
parish priest of her hometown, who shares her surname, showed his support for
Rose's research by saying "Ehh" and waving his arm forward in a
gesture of complete disinterest. (You
had to see it!)
We asked members for ideas on how to boost meeting
attendance. We agreed to send flyers to
a number of Italian-American organizations that are not genealogical in
nature. We already send to all local
Family History Centers and several newspapers.
PIP 27 co-founder "Nonna" Rosa Ducato (#1812)
talked about 2 parish priests, one town apart.
One welcomes her with open arms and open record books, and the other
shuts the door in her face. Filming of
church records is done at the diocesan level though so hopefully some church
records can be filmed.
Nonna Rosa also announced the birth of little POINTer
#1812.10, her 10th grandchild.
We asked all non-POINT members to join POINT and showed them
the annual directory and the quarterly journal. I talked about "drawing flies to the honey" by getting
your name, your surnames and towns out there so others can find you.
The Italian Cultural Center in Stone Park, IL has a new
website: http://www.italianculturalcenter.net
We talked about Chicago Catholic cemeteries transcribing
their records and putting them on computers located at each cemetery office
(rather than the internet) and that it would be at least 5 years to complete.
We talked about a web site made by Morse from Packard-Bell
that only works on Netscape that can be used to do sophisticated searches of
the Ellis Island site and also 1930 census enumeration descriptions for certain
cities.
http://home.pacbell.net/spmorse/ellis/ellis.html
We discussed the 1920 Ancestry.com Chicago census index, specifically
finding easy ways to manipulate the graphics files of the census pages that
Ancestry provides. Roger MacLennan
(#2835) has had trouble working with the images on screen. Right-clicking and saving the files in MrSid
format is the easiest way to work with them off-line.
We advised everyone that some libraries have 1928 Chicago
city directories (Arlington Heights, Buffalo Grove FHC) to use for finding
addresses to use to find 1930 census enumeration districts. I advised that you should check your collection
for documents from 1930 that may have even more current addresses. There is also a web site called http://alookatcook.com/ that has 1930 Chicago census enumeration
districts broken down by ward. Geneva Shay
(#3252) asked if 1930 census enumeration district numbers were the same as
1920. The numbers are quite different
(3000 Ed's versus 2400) and the wards were even remapped in 1923 (35 wards
increased to 50) so none of the 1920 ED or ward info is usable in 1930.
We talked about the Family History Library catalog update to
August 2001. Many areas of Sicily were
filmed from 1866-1910 since the last catalog update. Rose Amato Cortiletti (#2911) has only used microfilm of civil
records up to 1866, but we assured her that there would be new film for her
town. After the meeting we went to the
library computers (Rose is not on-line) and looked up her ancestral towns of
Prizzi, Camporeale and Corleone. All
three had new civil record films after 1866 but also had church records from
the 1500's through the 1900's.
Our meetings for the rest of 2002 are all 2pm-4pm, at the
Schaumburg District Library on 130 S Roselle Rd. on the following
Saturdays: May 11th, July 13th,
September 14th and November 9th. Our
web site is at http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc.