These minutes were sent to members with e-mail on 1-19-2007
On Saturday, January 13, 2007, a meeting was held at the Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin at 10:30 a.m.. Those in attendance included: Members: Colleen Bettini, Vincent D’Orazio (3418), Dani Graf, Lisa Joecks, John and Arlene Jorgensen, George Koleas (1527), Filomena Lea, Marie Roth (766) Steve and Jean Scalzo,
New members: Shirley Chirafisi, Beverly Draws, Bea Pellegrini-Johnson, Leslie Silletti,
Guest: Dan Laake
Shirley Chirafisi is researching Chirafisi of San Carlo, Palermo and Malinzano of Campoflorito, Palermo.
Bea Pellegrini-Johnson is researching Gianetto, Jannitto, or Jannetto, Levigne or La Vigni and De Grado of Lucca Sicula, Agrigento, Sicily, Pellegrini and Caruso of Capestrano L’Aquilla, Abruzzo. Bea Johnson and Beverly Draws grandparents were Cologero and Santa Giannette (later they spelled the name Jannetto.) The wedding occurred January 11, 1890 in Lucca Sicula, Agrigento, Sicily.
Leslie Silletti is researching Silletti and Catania.
We are sad to report that Norma Busalacchi Hurley died in early December, 2006. Norma corresponded with us regularly and visited our Festa Italiana display when we featured Sant’ Elia. She was a member of the extended Alioto family and a cousin to a number of our members.
I was sent 30 copies of Family Chronicle Magazine, December 2006 issue, and 5 copies of their companion publication, Internet Genealogy, January 2007 issue, to distribute free at our January meeting.
Everyone in attendance got a copy of Family Chronicle Magazine. To download a free issue for yourself, go to: http://www.familychronicle.com/ . We held a drawing for the 5 issues of Internet Genealogy. Winners were Shirley Chirafisi , Beverly Draws , Dani Graf, Bea Johnson, and Filomena Lea. You can download a free issue for yourself at: http://www.internet-genealogy.com/ The free issue features German genealogy, but gives you a good idea of what the magazine is like.
Marie Roth (766) reported that the November/December 2006 issue of PRIMO magazine had a Genealogy Special Issue that included: PRIMO's complete guide to Genealogy; List of Immigration Ships. Advice from Professionals. Steps to Beginning Family Research. Guide to Genealogy Products and Services. There were also articles on the Rocky films and the heroic story of John Basilone, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and the Purple Heart. For information on Primo Magazine go to www.primomagazine.com
Tana Salvaggio (4835), would like your input on whether you would be interested in a trip to Italy as follows:
· Milwaukee to Palermo - (Sat. - Fri.) (5 full days there - lose 1 1/2 days flying)
· Palermo to Rome - (Sat. to Tues.) (2 1/2 days - fly out Tues. am)
· Late May or mid- September. Approximately $2,700- $3,000 per person (this is hotel and airfare only).
If you are interested, contact Tana at tana@wi.rr.com . Please put "Sicily Trip" in the subject line. You can also contact me and I will pass your interest on to Tana.
Marie Roth (766) reported the in July 2006, she visited cousins; Armando Borre` of Torino & Courmayeur and Mario Pezzati of Piacenza and Ziano Piacentino of Val Tidone. Armando has written the history of his branch of the Borre` family ( in Italian) and Mario has researched the Pezzati family and given Marie 583 digitized photos of the Pezzati family records in Nibbiano and Caminata Pavese in the Val Tidone. They now have the Pezzati family back to 1700.
Filomena Lea told a story of a call she got from someone in San Diego, California, who thought they were related. The excitement mounted as the caller identified that her father’s names was the same as Filomena’s. Then the excitement was gone when it was learned that the grandparents were different.
Colleen Bettini reported that her sister found a cousin in the Comune di Sestola, Provincia di Modena, Emilia-Romagna, who helped obtain civil records and extend their family history.
Beverly Draws told the story of how their grandfather came through Ellis Island when he was 8 years old in 1931. Because he had no one to claim him, he was placed in what he called a "dog cage" for three days. A document called “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” confirmed the story.
Steve Morse has created a new Ellis Island One-Step search form - the gold form. The gold form is capable of searching through the entire twenty-five million passengers in the Ellis Island Database, and it can search on every transcribed field. His gold form makes his blue and gray forms obsolete. The gold form has these new features: (1) It can search on traveling companions. (2) The user is able to specify which fields to display on the results page. (3) The user can specify how to sort the results. You can find the form at http://stevemorse.org/ or http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellisgold.html
We are continuing our planning for a display on Calabria Genealogy at Festa Italiana this July. Anyone with family from Calabria or elsewhere is welcome to help. We particularly will need the largest map of Calabria that we can find and family trees that display Calabrese descendants. Filomena Lea may be able to help with a family tree.
As many of you know, we are the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society’s (MCGS) Italian Area Interest Group. Help is needed for their indexing project. The MCGS has started to index the vital records found in the Milwaukee Journal. The first issue was November 15th 1882. The goal of the project is to index every vital record; birth, marriage, death, divorce and adoption found in the newspaper. The task requires reading 35mm micro film and recording the information on your computer. When the project is completed the index will be available to all genealogists. The present group of films cover 3 months, with 3 to 4000 names on each film. The goal was to index through 1906 so that the 1890 missing census era would be covered. We presently are up to 1893, but we are running out of volunteers. We plan to continue as long as we have help. This will be a very large data base when completed. If you are interested in helping with this project please contact project Roger Cobb, for additional information. Contact: roger@cobbemail.com . This link will take you to a page on our site that will show you some of the interesting historical, personal and vital information you may be able to help Roger and the Indexing Project record. http://www.milwaukeegenealogy.org/project.html
If you hadn't taken the MCGS census class in a while, you may want to attend one of the January Classes. So much has changed in doing the census making it easier to do!! She thought some people might like to attend the classes for a refresher. One class is Monday night at 6:00PM Jan 22nd and the other class is Friday morning Jan. 26th at 9:30AM. Each is a two hour class. There will be no charge. The classes are held in Conference Room One on the first floor of the Library. For more information, go to: http://www.milwaukeegenealogy.org/classes.html
Our next meeting was planned for Saturday, April 7, 2007. Because this is Easter weekend, we decided to change the date to Saturday, April 28, 2007. The following conferences are happening before our meeting in April.
The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society is planning Gene-A-Rama 2007 featuring Megan Smolenyak on Friday and Saturday, 13-14 April, 2007 at the Olympia Resort and Conference Center, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. For more information, go to http://www.rootsweb.com/~wsgs/meetings.htm.
The Milwaukee County Genealogical Society is planning
their 15th Biennial Workshop on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at
American Serb Hall, 5101 West Oklahoma Avenue, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, featuring
Cyndi Howells of Cyndi's List. For information and a list of events go to
http://www.milwaukeegenealogy.org/
From PIE we found this interesting posting from Paula Nigro: “The
most beneficial place to list a surname is on a town specific genealogy
website listing researchers interested in contacting others from that town or
those who have ancestors from that town. It is important that it can easily
be picked up in "www.google.com"
so that people (potential relatives) who do not easily read or write English
are able to find you & contact you because most international computer users
usually know about google and can use it but most will not know how to sign up
for a password and other such handicaps. Being on a comune specific website
is why I now have 400+ connections to my Italian tree and it is why I have
recently been sent another 300+ which I have not yet finished proof-reading.
If no genealogy website specific to your Italian Comune of interest exists
(yet) then this Italian Surname List maintained by Anthony Parente is *great*
because he has a column for listing City/Town/Region in Italy and also Current
Residence:
http://www.italiansrus.com/surnames/surnames.htm and his list is easy to
find and view.”
New member Leslie Silletti, asked for suggestions on how to start her genealogy and keep organized. We recommended a good genealogy program. For someone who is new to genealogy, we suggested the latest version of Personal Ancestral File (PAF). The latest version is available free at http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/ . For suggestions on how to get started, we also suggested the free Italian research outline, which can be found at http://www.familysearch.org/ . Click on the “Search” tab, select: “Research Helps”, select “I”, scroll to Italy, Finding Your Ancestors. Click to read online. Click PDF to download. You will need an acrobat reader which is available free at http://free-downloads.tv/adobe-reader/
Our next meeting will be on Saturday, April 28, 2007, at the Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, starting at 10:30 a.m. and concluding at noon. Please mark your calendar for our other meetings in 2007 on Saturday’s, September 8 and November 10, 2007. We welcome anyone with an interest in Italian Family History. If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to contact George Koleas by e-mail or by calling (262) 251-7216 after 7:00 p.m..
Submitted by George Koleas (1527)
