MEETING
NOTES
Sept
14th 2002
On Saturday, September 14th, 2002, 18 Italian
genealogists joined POINTers In Person Chapter #27 (Chicago-North) for its 9th
meeting. It was our most well-attended
meeting since our first meeting in 2001.
The 1930 Census on Ancestry.com for Illinois is almost
complete, but still unindexed. The
microfilm for the census should be available through the Family History Library
to local centers within the month.
We briefly discussed our chapter’s relationship with
Chapter #1 (Chicago). With Tony Lascio
leaving that chapter and new leadership taking over, there will be some
discussion between our chapters about perhaps holding a combined meeting once
per year, but continuing to maintain separate chapters.
Our chapter is trying to move the meetings from Saturday
afternoons to Saturday mornings. This
will hopefully make it easier for people to attend and still have the majority
of their Saturday to do other activities.
They can join us for lunch after the meeting if they would like to
continue the discussion. When the
Schaumburg Library meets in November to plan their room schedule, we will be
able to announce a change in meeting times.
Due to Rose Ducato moving out of Schaumburg, Geneva Shay
has volunteered to act as Room Chairperson.
Schaumburg Library requires a library cardholder in order for us to use
the room for free.
Dan announced that the chat sessions have been suspended
until a functional chat room can be found.
Yahoo’s chat room is not working for us, and a replacement chat room
(About.com) won’t even return our e-mails.
Dan is still actively looking.
We asked new members to talk about their research and ask
questions. Sharon Presto is having
trouble finding the town of origin of her ancestor but knows the province. We checked the POINT surname directory but
no one is researching her name in that province. But the ancestor lived in Chicago and we suggested that she try
to find a naturalization at the National Archives (on South Pulaski), send for
a death certificate (the birth town may or may not be on it but she said that
her ancestor died at home so the informant is not going to be a hospital
orderly) or send to Social Security for the SS5 form.
Several members are stymied by the fact that their towns
have not yet been filmed. Since the new
Family History Library catalog has been released on CD, and is more recent than
the internet version, we checked the catalog for several of their towns. No new films have been released for
them. Carl Robertson was trying to find
the town of Campagna near Salerno.
Stan Schmidt is very familiar to anyone doing Polish
research. Stan is former President of
PGSA but his wife is Italian. He
brought a list of Italians who emigrated to Poland as a result of a marriage
between a Polish King and an Italian Countess.
This list was published in a book in 1907.
Paul Douglas and others were having trouble with the
Italian handwriting. Jerry Farenga
showed them the handwriting charts in Trafford Cole’s book as a guide.
Tony and Gayle Segredo have an ancestor born in New
Orleans in 1895 whose parents were born in Palermo. But the word “city” was crossed off and “Province” put in its
place, so they don’t yet have the town of origin. They are going to check the passenger arrival records for New
Orleans to try to find a town of origin.
Jan Harms and Sharon Marconi wanted some guidance on
preparing for a trip to Salt Lake City, specifically for the POINT
Conference. My main suggestion was that
they send in the list of films they will need as early as possible so they have
time to make copies of the ones that are not on shelf. They only make 5 films per person per
day. US films are all on shelf but
European films are only on shelf if someone else has requested the film in the
past.
John Storts brought with him a translated Italian birth
record, typed up by an acquaintance, who is another genealogist, and showed it
to Dan. It turned out to be a birth
record from Dan’s town and Dan is now awaiting contact from John’s friend to
exchange data!
John also was having trouble finding the right films in
the Family History Catalog because of the repeated names of Chicago Catholic
Churches. Dan pointed out that a page
on the chapter web site lists all Chicago Catholic parishes and clears up the
mystery so you can find the right film numbers for the right Assumption
parish. http://www.rootsweb.com/~itappcnc/pipcnchicagochurches.htm
Toni Garofalo and Dan Niemiec continue to have surnames
criss-crossing between her town of Casamassima and his town of Triggiano but
they haven’t made a connection yet.
Karen Bucaro and her daughter Sherry attended, making 3
generations in one family to come to PIP 27!
(Karen’s mother attended the first meeting.)
Our next meeting will be November 9th, 2002 and our end-of-year banquet will be at Lou Malnati’s afterward! Contact us for details.