On September 13, 2003, PIP Chapter 22 met at the Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin at 10:30 a.m.
The following were in attendance: Frank Balistrieri, Ginny Balistreri, Laura Lancione Bearskin, Joe Dentice, Tina Favero (4452), Mave Freyberg, Dani Graf, George Koleas (1527) Filomena Lea, Marie Roth (766), Steve and Jean Scalzo, Tanna (4835) and Mike Salvaggio, Marge Schutz (2149), Susan White and new members Delores Marino Ploetz , John Balistreri and his guest Patricia Stein and Anita Gulotta-Connelly.
Marie Roth (766) recently lost her husband Don. Our chapter extends our sincere condolences to Marie for her loss. Don helped us at our first Festa Italiana display and has attended some of our meetings. Marie was the first person to respond to my original e-mail asking if there was any interest in starting a PIP chapter in Milwaukee.
Marlene Magnarini sent us a note to tell us that her husband Rudy was ill. Pat Therkelson (2356), who has helped at both Festa Italiana displays and our display at the Roma Lodge, is recovering from an illness and was unable to attend our meeting. Pat was also at our very first meeting and virtually every meeting since. Our chapter will remember Rudy and Pat in our prayers and extend our wishes for their recovery.
We received a letter from Tradizione Vivente, The Italian Dance Group of Milwaukee. Our member, Danita Wendorf is also a member of this organization. They are trying to raise money to attend The Italian Folk Art Federation of America Conference in Canton, Ohio, from September 26-28, 2003. If you would like to make a contribution, please send a check to Lisa DeSanctis, 5456 Olympia Drive, Greendale, Wisconsin 53129 or call (414) 421-6722 for more information.
Our website, articles and queries in the Italian Times continue to be successful in locating information about our families and interesting individuals in becoming members of our chapter.
New members from our last meeting, Michael Aliota and Adele Tarantino McGrath, shared their family information with us. We were able to connect them with Peter Bellanti who we have collaborated with many times. He was able to connect them with his extensive database and confirm that they are related. They are now also related to me, Joe Dentice and a number of other researchers, both within our chapter and within POINT. We have an article in the September Italian Times explaining our work with Peter Bellanti. His website, containing much of his research, is at www.bellanti.org .
Tana Salvaggio’s (4835) article, An Italian Immigrant Family’s Success Story, detailing how the Marchese Brothers left their mark on the auto racing industry in Milwaukee, has been accepted for publication in POINT. Watch for it in a future issue. Coincidentally, after our meeting I went to the Milwaukee County Historical Society to do some research. When I was finished, I looked around at the displays. To my surprise, there was a display on the history of the Milwaukee Mile presented in four panels. One of the panels was entitled "The Marchese Era". On another panel were pictures of the racing members of the Marchese family.
The night before our meeting, I received a phone call from Camille Maglio, who was searching for information on the Maglio family. She had done a search on her browser using the Google search engine. It located a reference to the research done by Barbara Roberts on Maglio from one of our past meeting minutes, which was posted on our website. We discussed continuing to post queries in the Italian Times, but also adding queries to a new “Queries” page on our website. This new webpage will provide another opportunity for us to make more connections with people using search engines. If you have a query concerning family information you are looking for, please let me know. I will compile the information I receive and send it to the Italian Times for publication. I will also post it on the new “Queries”page on our website that I will create. If you have ideas for articles for the Italian Times, please also send them to me.
Tina Favero told us that, since our last meeting, she has been contacted three times by people who saw her family website and who were looking for their birth mothers. Tina has recently had some success helping these people reconnect with their families. However, some people she had tried to contact for these people would not respond. It appears that they do not want to be found.
Dani Graf showed pictures of her recent visit to Italy and described her trip. “We visited Fossombrone, the city of my great-grandparents. The family names are Fabbri, Santi, and Zanchetti. The Zanchetti family owned the water mill. We found gravestones from all three families. We visited Urbino, one of the provincial capitals. Urbino is a 20 minute drive from Fossombroneand. At the Pallazzo Ducale, there was a famous painting by Raffaello Santi (Sanzio in my art history book). There were paintings by his father Giovanni Santi. There was also a tour of his birthplace in the center of the city. We wondered at the change of his name in history books from Santi to Sanzio. I have since found him listed as both.”
Steve Scalzo told us about two websites. The first, freetranslation.com, offers translations to and from German, Spanish Portuguese and Italian. There is both a free and a for fee service. The second, multimap.com, offers a wide range of maps of Europe and The United States.
Peter Bellanti writes to us, “ If ever you had to check films from within the City of Palermo, there are over 1400!. The City, was sectionalized and each kept their own records, until a central index was created. Refer to the following hyperlink. http://www.ustica.org/genealogy/palermo.htm.”
We had a general discussion about Italian records. They following points were made:
· At times you will find pages missing or too damaged to read.
· You should always try different spelling variations of the surname. Don’t forget aliases.
· Don’t forget that some older records may also be in Latin.
· Because of a dispute between the Church and the State, depending on which side of the argument your relatives were on, their records may be in one or the other location, but usually not both.
· You may find that a relative, who is not listed under the father’s surname, may be listed under the mother’s surname instead. This may or may not be due to legitimacy issues.
· We had a discussion about divorce or annulment records. No one at the meeting had ever seen an example of either.
· Marriage records have two formats. One is a very simple record with just the bride, groom and marriage date information. The other is a much more involved document that includes a lot of other family information and may include grandparent’s information too. Try to find this full record.
· Just like in the United States, there is a delayed birth record in Italy. It is created at a later date, when a birth record may not exist. It may be needed to prove the age to the government for a variety of reasons, including citizenship or entry onto, or exemption from compulsory military service.
· Birth records were not always filed at the time of birth. Some were filed a year or more later.
· Some immigrants to America and South America never mentioned their families or children they left behind in Italy. They just started a new life. Depending on the circumstances, the opposite was also true. Families left behind could disown an immigrant family member and never speak of them again. It was not until their return to Italy that they may have to face their past, whether that be a divorce, an annulment or military service. In these cases, it may be years after the fact that a record would be made.
If you have any additional input about these records, please let me know.
Margaret Schutz (2149) is trying to separate 5 Josephs, who appear to very close to one another from records in the 1600’s. There don’t appear to be any other records that go further back. The group suggested locating census records or trying to follow each forward, hoping to find a way to separate them in a future record. If any member has any other suggestion for Margaret, please let me know.
Filomena Lea reported that the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. is nearing completion. If you have a relative that played role in battle or at the home front during World War II, the memorial is looking for individuals who would like their names and pictures to become a part of the memorial’s World War II Registry of Remembrances. There is a fee to submit a picture. For more information, go to http://www.wwiimemorial.com
We received correspondence from other researchers looking for information on these Milwaukee area families:
Francesco Dentici and Carmela Megna. Their birth dates are estimated to be about 1855 and 1860.
Battista (probably Giovanni Battista) Deluca, born about 1880. We think he was married to his niece Caterina Balistreri (daughter of Antonina Deluca and Gaetano Balistreri). Caterina may have been also married to another Giovanni Battista DeLuca who is the son of Francesco Deluca and Caterina Balistreri.
There were two Costa families in the Milwaukee Area. One is my Joseph Costa family. Joseph was married to Concetta Alioto. The other is the family of Salvatore Costa, who was born about 1935. He married Valencia LaBarbera about 1955. She was the daughter of Gaetano LaBarbera and Rosa SanFilippo. She was born May 11, 1928 in West Allis, Wisconsin. Their children are John, born about. 1956, Donna, born about 1957 and Thomas, born about 1958.
If you have any information on these families, please contact me.
We set new meeting dates for 2004. Our meetings will be Saturday’s, January 17, April 24, September 18 and November 13. At present the times and location will not change.
Our next meeting will be on Saturday, November 8, at the Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We will meet, starting at 10:30 a.m. and conclude the formal meeting at Noon. Those that wish to, will then go to the restaurant, order lunch and continue to share information and help one another or they may make plans to meet elsewhere. Everyone is welcome to attend our next meetings.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact George Koleas by e-mail at GeorgeJK676@wi.rr.com or by phone at (262) 251-7216 after 7:00 p.m.
Submitted by
George Koleas
