MEETING
NOTES
May 11th, 2002
Ten Italian genealogists traveled through a driving rain
to attend the 7th meeting of POINTers In Person Chapter #27 in Schaumburg,
IL.
Our two newest attendees, George and Sylvia Marcuccilli,
came in from their cottage in Indiana to see us. George's grandfather was from a town called Santo Padre in
Caserta, but there is no such town anymore, so he doesn't know where to go to
find more records. (An internet search
of "Santo Padre" of course produced thousands of Italian web sites
that mention the "Holy Father", Pope John Paul!) There is the possibility that Santo Padre is
now a "frazione" and isn't listed as a "comune". But we were able to help them find the
microfilm for their other towns that could be ordered and viewed. We also
showed them the Trafford Cole book and how it explains the translation of the
civil records.
Also new to PIP 27 is Rosanne DeFrank (#3624), whose main
concern with genealogy is that it doesn't get out of hand (as it has for a
number of us). She began her research
just trying to find living cousins and has done work
on New York and elsewhere. But to find more cousins you must go back further in the
ancestry, then trace down, and the snowball starts rolling downhill too fast.
Linda Messina-Holda showed us all a new book about St.
Philip Benizi Church and the Little Sicily neighborhood it served. The book is called Little Sicily, by Dr.
Bruce Zummo, available from Near North Publishing, PO Box 544,
Rosemont, IL 60018-0544.
There was a short discussion on Italian cemeteries. After Mount Carmel and Queen of Heaven in
Hillside, the acknowledged Italian cemetery of Chicago, where do you check to find
Italians? We agreed that finding the
death notice or death certificate is critical, but without these you have to
try other cemeteries with Italians such as St. Joseph, All Saints, Calvary for
earlier Italians, and Mount Olivet on the south side. Dan has noticed that Italians who married Poles ended up
consistently at St. Adalbert in Niles, at least in his family.
Since our last meeting, the 1930 Census was released, and
we opened the floor to anyone who had done some census research with 1930. After a deafening silence, Dan announced
that his first census film arrived from NARA the day before the meeting, and
that he spent the morning of the meeting going through the film for the
"Grand and Ogden" neighborhood on the near west side. Rosanne De Frank and the Marcuccillis had
ancestors who lived in that area but we were unable to find them in the copies
Dan brought to the meeting. The Family
History Library in Salt Lake City wrote to Dan to tell him that the microfilm
of the 1930 census films would not be cataloged or available for rental until
September or October. So the only
choices are to A) go to the National Archives; B) wait for Ancestry to publish
the census and index on-line; or C) order film directly from NARA. We reviewed the steps for preparing to use
1930 Census films. First, find the
address as close to 1930 as possible using city directories. Rose Ducato has spent a lot of time at the
Newberry Library downtown looking for addresses both in and out of
Chicago. We mentioned the libraries
that have Chicago and suburban directories on film. Then we told everyone about the 3 essential web sites for finding
the enumeration districts: http://alookatcook.com (which has 50
Chicago ward maps showing the ED numbers); the National Archives website that
has descriptions and roll numbers, http://www.nara.gov; and Stephen Morse's
site of 1930 ED numbers for smaller cities, http://home.pacbell.net/spmorse/census/
Another option for census research for 1930 will be
Ancestry.com but Dan did not recommend it to anyone who has a modem, because of
how slow the pages load. Since 1930
Census work will require reading lots of pages, it is not efficient to use on a
dial-up. But in a few months, the 1930
Census will be indexed by Ancestry and then you can jump right to the correct
page.
We also mentioned the public release of the Tribune
Historical Archives, which will eventually be a complete transcription of the
Chicago Tribune newspaper from 1849 to 1984.
(A searchable 1985-date index has been running for some time but has no
death notices.) So far, only some of
the Archive is available, but it will all be done within 3 years. As of May 11th, the death notices were only
available for 1969-1983, and also 1915.
Dan described how to search the death notices, including text searches
for people from his Italian ancestral town of Triggiano. This is also very useful for people found in
SSDI with just a death month but not the date, because without the index you
would have to search up to 31 days of newspapers manually. This is available through the Evanston
Public Library's web site from your home, or at the Arlington Heights library
in person.
Chicago Tribune
Historical Archive (link no longer
works)
Other death notices can be found in other defunct Chicago
papers at the Chicago Historical Society.
So far, PIP 27 has at least 5 representatives who will be
attending the 2002 POINT National Conference.
We encouraged everyone to register soon and told them about the many
excellent speakers who will be presenting.
We also explained what POINT was to the newest attendees who are not
POINT members.
The group briefly discussed the 2004 POINT Conference. Since the latest POINTers would like to see chapters combine in order to host the 2004 conference, we felt we needed to discuss this. PIP 27 determined that we are not ready to host a conference for a variety of reasons, most obviously the lack of a large central core of regular members. Our group seems to draw people to one or two meetings a year but not all of them. But without that core of devoted people there would be no chance of hosting a successful conference. We are not located in the right place to host in the suburbs but no one in the group is based near downtown to help get us set up. We agreed to discuss this with the Milwaukee and Chicago chapters before the 2002 conference.
Some sad news…our co-founder "Nonna Rosa"
Ducato is retiring and moving to Florida in 2003 and will be leaving us. We will miss her spirit, her warmth, her
amazing knowledge of genealogy, and, of course, her homemade cannoli! Our 2002 banquet will be her going-away
party! Details will follow.
Rosanne DeFrank asked about GEDCOM files. We explained that they are files that can be
imported by any genealogy software program, and that you can't open a FTW file
in PAF and vice-versa. She also is
having trouble finding some death certificates in Chicago and we suggested she
check the 1916-1947 fiche death index under a variety of spellings of her
surname. There is a film index that
also has the death location and would include out-of-town deaths of people who
were buried in Chicago.
Dan updated the group on the status of the Chicago
Catholic cemeteries computers and that they plan to eventually create an
internet database of all burials.
Rose Ducato (#1812) gave a 20 minute presentation on how
to write to civil records offices and churches in Italy. She passed out some Italian form letters for
birth, marriage and death records. She
described her 2 "miracles".
The first "miracle" was the quick response she received from a
civil records office, which not only sent the reply within 2 weeks but did not
ask for any money. The second
"miracle" was her request to a parish priest for some church
records. They not only sent what she
requested, but they traced her tree back several generations and sent copies of
the baptismal records that are the primary source! Rose showed us the results of these simple letters.
We mentioned a conference in Dearborn, MI in July, the
European Roots Conference, where Jonathan Galli (an excellent former POINT
conference speaker) will be speaking about Italian genealogy. (NOTE: THIS CONFERENCE WAS CANCELED WITHOUT
NOTICE BY THE PLANNERS.)
Other members who attended were Roger MacLennan, Otto
Knapp, Rich Davi and Ron LaPenta.
PIP 27 meets again Saturday, July 13th, 2pm-4pm, at the
Schaumburg District Library on 130 S. Roselle Road in Schaumburg, IL. Geneva Shay will be speaking on "How to
Search Cemeteries". She will talk
about the symbols that appear on gravestones and what they mean and how to get
the most from your cemetery visit.