On Saturday, April 8, 2006, 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: Frank Balistrieri, Barbara Bombaci, Colleen Bettini, Joe Dentice, Elsie Fucile , Olga Fucile, Mave Freyberg, Lisa Joecks, Rosemary Joecks, Ruth Baldini Hendrickson, George Koleas (1527), Marie Roth (766) , Steve and Jean Scalzo, Hugh Swofford and Lynn Thrasher
Guests include: Larry and Glenna Amateis, Peter Gumina
The National Genealogical Society will hold their conference “They Passed This Way” in Rosemont, Illinois, June 7-10, 2006. There will be presentations on Italian Genealogy on Saturday, June 7, 2006 For more details go to www.ngsgenealogy.org .
The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society presents Gene-A-Rama
Friday, April 21 & Saturday, April 22, 2006 at
Country Springs Hotel & Conference Center, 1501 North Point Ave., Stevens
Point, Wisconsin. For more details go to
http://www.wsgs.org/ .
Roots in the Boot! is a conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 14 and 15, 2006 at David Lawrence Hall, located at 3942 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, on the University of Pittsburgh campus. For more detail see http://www.rootsintheboot.org/ .
The Fourth POINT (Pursuing Our Italian Names Together) National Conference will be held on October 6-8, 2006, in Los Angeles, California. For more details, go to: http://www.point-pointers.net/CONF2006.htm
The Italian Genealogy Conference group would like to thank our PIP chapter for its support of our Conference last fall. As a token of our appreciation for our support, and in an effort to encourage Midwest chapter participation in the POINT National Conference, they would like to award someone from our chapter with a $165 scholarship to the Fall 2006 POINT Conference. The early registration fee is $165 through May 31st, 2006. It is up to our chapter to determine a winner of the scholarship. The winner will need to register for the conference and will be reimbursed at the conference itself, hopefully at a presentation during one of the lunches or dinners at the conference. If you are planning to attend this conference, please contact me as soon as possible.
Plans are underway for Festa Italiana 2006. Festa Italiana will be July 20, 21, 22 and 23. We have offered to provide a display on Abruzzo along with a large Italian and Sicilian map. We have requested 5 panels to display our materials.
Here is what we need:
1. We will need some family trees with ancestors from Abruzzo.
2. I don't know what hours we might staff a display, if we need to staff it at all, but if we do, I will need people to keep an eye on the display and answer questions on genealogical research in Abruzzo. If you don't have Abruzzo experience, it will not be a problem. The genealogical techniques are the same and I hope to have materials on the display concerning resources.
There are not many details about Festa Italiana available at this time. The website is: http://www.festaitaliana.com/
Mike Aliota is planning another reunion to be held towards the end of summer. This reunion is for families from the Santa' Elia, Santa Flavia, Porticello, Solanto, Solunto, and other towns located around Palermo, with attendees traveling here from all over the country, it was not the right time to hold another reunion again this year. Surnames from this area include Alioto (also Aliota, Arioto and Galioto), Balistreri (also Balistrieri), Bellanti, Busalacchi, Dentice, Machi, Tarantino, SanFilippo and many other related families. Many of our members continue to research these surnames. I will pass on details as they are known.
Taste of Italy will be at the Italian Community Center on April 23, 2006. Bonnie Dompke, Lynn Krenn and Lynn Thrasher have volunteered to help. We have not heard back from the Taste of Italy committee.
In some of our past meetings, some members have expressed an interest in going to Italy with a group.
In the February 2006 edition of the Italian Times, it was announces that Peter Orlando and Bob Cefalu, Italian Community Center Members, are planning "Cefalu/Orlando Avventura Siciliana" a 14 day trip to Sicily in the fall October 2-16, 2006, specifically to Palermo, Monreale, Corleone, Agrigento and the Valley of the Temples, Piazza Armerina, Taormina and Mt. Etna. For details on this 14 day trip, contact Bob Cefalu at 414 352-2597 or Grand Circle Travel at 1-800-221-2160 or 1-800-597-2452. If calling the travel agency, inquire about Sicily G620617.
Peter Bellanti is working on a family tree that includes the surname Italiano. One family includes the descendants of Annunciato Italiano. This Italiano family married into the SanFilippo's. The other family includes the descendants of Pietro Italiano. This family includes Alioto's from Palermo city. Both families came from Milazzo, Sicily. If anyone has any information on Italiano families, please let me know and I will forward the information to Peter.
Former President Ronald Regan often used the Russian proverb “Trust but verify”. This should be the watchword for all genealogists when using information from the internet. The Milwaukee County Genealogical Society reported in their newsletter “The Reporter” that Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City, Utah is reporting that, “A software company is marketing a new program to Internet advertisers that could quickly generate Web sites full of extensive, but fake, family trees. Critics say the approach appears to be part of a new money-making scheme to lure people who search for family names on Google, Yahoo or other search engines to Web sites that use bogus data to help ensure they appear high on "hit lists." They then make money if visitors click on advertisers' links. To read the full article, go to http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635160683,00.html
Donna Becker posted an e-mail on POINTers In E-mail (PIE), suggesting that if you are researching an Italian family in the San Francisco, you might be interested in reading The Italian Settlement of San Francisco by Raymond Stevenson Dondero, .ISBN: 0882472844 , OCLC: 1145810. It was originally published in 1950 as his thesis at the University of California. R & E Research Associates reprinted it in 1974. “It's a really good study of Italian immigration to the Bay area, covering conditions in Italy prior to immigration, American resistance to immigration, the spirit of community among Italians, their establishment in various businesses, the destruction of the Italian settlement in the 1906 earthquake and fire, and some examination of the experiences of second generation Italians in the late 1940s.” You would have to request it through Interlibrary loan. Locations can be found at: http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/servlet/WLAHoldingServlet?query=no%3A1145810&sessionid=00AC068A4C786E5DB2CA15403FBEF983.two&recno=1&zip=wisconsin
Also on PIE, were the
following recommendations for form letter generators that my help you write to
Italy.
http://www.circolocalabrese.org/resources/letters/index.asp ,
http://mangeruca.freeservers.com/letters.html ,
http://italiangenealogy.atspace.com/italian-form-letters.html
You can subscribe to PIE directly from the PIE website at: http://www.jsoft.com/archive/pie/ and, near the bottom, click on JOIN PIE MAILING LIST
Giada De Laurentiis, author of Giada's Family Dinners will be at Schwartz Books at Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 7 p.m. at 17145 W. Bluemound Rd. Brookfield, Wisconsin. For more details call (262) 797-6140 or go to www.schwartzbooks.com.
Marie Roth (766), told us about a magazine called PRIMO. A few of the articles in the most recent issue, Jan-Feb 2006, (Vol. & No. 1), included folk dancing, wine country of Italy, Amerigo Vespucci's genealogy, a story about an Italian immigrant from Abbruzzo to Pittsburgh, a story about an Italian-American area of Madison, Wisconsin that was destroyed, buying real estate in Italy, New Orleans Italians and Katrina, cooking, language and book reviews. The address for PRIMO is 2125 Observatory Place, N. W., Washington, D. C. 20007 (Phone: 866-677-75466) or go to http://www.flprimo.com/home.do;jsessionid=a_OP2ODLqlIc
Linkpendium is a trying to create a compendium of links on the internet. At the time of this writing, Linkpendium has 4,478,824 genealogy links including 489,531 in the United States, 8,638 in Wisconsin, 401 in Milwaukee County, 165 in Waukesha County, 98 in Washington County 106 in Ozaukee County, 134 in Racine County and 106 in Kenosha County. To access Linkpendium, go to http://www.linkpendium.com/genealogy/USA/
Our next meeting will be on Saturday, September 9, 2006 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 next meeting on Saturday, November 11. 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)
