La figlia di Giovanni Francesco Guerrera e Margaret Foretek
Go Slide 2 – Nonna & Nonno
La nipote di Francesco Guerrera e Maria Rosaria Solla
Go Slide 3 – Salvatore’s Remains
La pronipote di Salvatore Guerrera e Caterina Guerrera – Don’t give me that look – it’s a small village.
Go Slide 3 – Midge
But hey – call me Midge – I’m a Jersey Girl and an ex-Pat – one of those gypsies who spend part of the year – ex – out of the – patria – fatherland. Or as my pal Madame Lawrence and I like to say – the mother country. My husband, Jack and I spend a good part of every year in Italy – living
Slide 4 – Pontelandolfo
La Dolce Vita! The Sweet Life!
Belle Viste, glorious foods, incredible wines – every baby boomer’s fantasy – the standing ovation of second acts – just thinking about it makes my heart go pitter patter – or is that agida? Rats – that’s dialect – acido – the more I study Italian the less I know – pain in my acido.
Go Slide 5 – Villa
Midge, get back to the story – yeah – where were we – oh yeah our 6 months in Italy – this year we unpacked our bags in our great house – that’s not it.
Restored Stone Italian Home
Go Slide 5 – House
Still ain’t too shabby – living here for 6 months and closing up the New Jersey money pit – I still had cash left over at the end of each month. How could that be? Reasonable – not NJ – rent – 3 bedrooms – 3 bathrooms – utilities included and all the produce we can eat. And a landlord we absolutely adore – coupled with extended family we love to pieces. Sigh – perfetto!
Go Slide 6 – Historic Village
Here’s our little village – Pontelandolfo – provincia di Benevento – regione di Campania. My family left in the early 1900’s – why? They were starving – no jobs – war ravaged land…
La Dolce vita! Wait, wait here it comes –
Go SFX 1: Boom – Crash – Clang
That other shoe – After two days – we’re told my husband was a clandestino – illegal immigrant – deport his ass criminale!
Congratulations! You just made it through the opening few moments of my new one woman show – “La Dolce Vita – or Is It?” Thanks to Marie Di Stefano Miller and the Westlake Italian American Club I was able to present my – gulp – very first performance of the show to about 100 members of the club. Is it terrible of me to admit I freaking loved every second of it!? I loved sitting in the dressing room – yeah this place was classy with a real stage with dressing room – anyway I loved the butterflies in my stomach and my visualization of a successful show to calm my nerves. I loved putting on that dash more of extra make up and high heels – uncomfortable as hell but I planned on not using the stage but walking throughout the house and I’m short.
That’s me – the short thing in front.
I loved the smile on my cute husband’s face as he watched me perform – instead of watching the slide monitor.
Cute Techy!
I loved the check. I gotta say I just love all of it. Seems the audience loved it too – well almost – there always seems to be another shoe in my life.
Dear Midge,
I want to thank you very much for the well developed program you presented last night. You are a superb presenter. Its progression was right in stride, and you enabled everyone to identify with the various scenarios. Well done.
Many are still talking about how much they appreciated and enjoyed the program.
Until the Other Shoe – Bang, Boom
My bizarro antics held the audience until I winged – not my shoe – worse – a plastic table flag holder at two women who must have not seen each other for at least 3 minutes and had a lot of catching up to do – cause they talked frantically for the entire hour – never coming up for air. What the hell is wrong with me – 98 people were absolutely focused on me – clever me – funny me – and I go off and wing a frisbee at two chiacchierone. The audience was shocked! I made a joke of it – talked about being a “Jersey Girl” – but lesson learned! DIVA BEHAVIOR IS VERY BAD!!! Thanks Marie for not calling social faux pas police. Marie’s letter continues –
Again thank you for sharing your exploits with reliving the Italian pathways that lead to the US. Interesting that on both sides of my family I have a grandfather and great grandfather who had two wives.
Marie Di Stefano Miller
Thank you Marie for the kind words and the opportunity.
You too can see the show – just have your club give me a holler! Yes this a blatant self promotion plug. Need cash to maintain La Dolce Vita.
(I promise not to wing the flag holder at anyone in your audience – maybe candy kisses – now that is an audience control idea – pocket full of kisses.)
You knew it had to happen! How could the actress in me just sit at a computer and write the tales of an Italian village? When would I explode and start shouting the tales from the hilltops – or better yet as a one women show wherever anyone will have me. (And pay me of course! This living on a fixed income stuff ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.) The kick in my lazy butt to work on a show came from the Westlake Italian American Club. Marie M, one of the faithful Nonna’s Mulberry Tree subscribers reached out to me and asked if I would do a presentation at Westlake. She knew of my theater background and thought that I would be a funny, entertaining and informative presenter. I mean, of course she is right. Gulp – I have a gig this January – now I need a show!
I quickly e-mailed back and said the title of my show was:
Il Dolce Fa Niente – The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
The BS – oops – PR blurb I wrote was:
How does a type A personality manage to assimilate into the life of a small Italian mountain village? By taking a gulp and repeating daily, “it is OK to do nothing”. It is expected that one naps every afternoon. The evening meandering passeggiata through the piazza is for meeting and greeting not power-walking. I’ll share the stories of how a “Jersey Girl” manages to live in Pontelandolfo, explore her roots and ultimately learn, “Il Dolce Fa Niente”.
Pretty general blurb – I can pretty well talk about anything. Now, here is where I need your help. What would an audience really like to hear about? Take the short poll to help me pick out topics. Or better yet – leave a comment about what posts resonated with you, made you laugh, cry or curse. Tell me what you’d like to know!
August 2nd was Day Two of Contest Musica Live and day three of the Festa. At 9:00 PM – dressed to the nines and with my party attitude on – I left Jack snoring on the couch and forcing myself to put one tired foot in front of the other drove down to the piazza. Gulp, I was going to a concert alone. Who would I talk to, where would I sit, would I know anyone there? The questions I just typed may have floated through my insecure 16 year old brain but the 65 year old knew that I would talk to everyone, sit where I wanted and – hey this is Pontelandolfo – I would know folks.
The first hint that less folks might be coming to this amateur event was the lack of vendors. Many of the previous nights venders were somewhere else. No one was selling shoes and there were fewer food trucks. H’mm I got a parking space really close too. This didn’t bode well for lots of people coming
Look – a pre-lit stage!
Wow, somebody noticed that the stage didn’t look so professional for the first day of the talent contest or else they hired a different company for Day Two. The set up was much more professional looking. There were blacks up stage – black curtains across the back of the stage and a different light set up. Jack said how do I know these things – I just know OK. You’ll see on the video.
The pre show started at 9:50 – a lot earlier than the day before and almost on time! (The show was scheduled to start at 9:30 PM.) The MC – who over the week I began to loathe more and more – did his usual warmup. When the first group came on stage, folks started pouring into the piazza – not thousands but a healthy crowd. The opening act was a fabulous singer and band from Pontelandofo! That explained the enthusiastic crowd. I also discovered that the day before many of our talented young folks were performing out of town with our dance company, hence, could not be bopping and rocking in the piazza. They made sure to be back for our home town singer, Eleonora Di Marzo! She was terrific and so was the lighting. From smoke spurts to strobes it was much better rock lighting than the night before.
Bar Mixed Fantasy had tables set up that gave a great view of the stage – I bought my Campari soda, grabbed a table and started dancing in my seat. As more folks came, I chatted, rocked and rolled and throughly enjoyed the music, booze, friends and summer night. I am not a music critic but can easily say that the bands the second night were a hell of a lot better than the bands we heard the first night. They excuse Jack had given for not wanting to come – before he drifted to dreamland – was the bands were beh the first night, why should we go and listen to mediocre music. Because it is FESTA WEEK and it is our responsibility to go and support the festa. OK, I want to go because it is always one hell of a party.
Unfortunately, my videos of the later bands had lousy sound quality. So you will only hear our local favorite BUT note the clips of the accordion player – his group was amazing doing Neapolitan classics – too bad my camera recorded the conversation of the folks next to me. UGGGG
My woo woo pals will not even blink when I say that at 7:00 AM the other morning I bumped onto my grandma. She died when I was 16 but I remember her vividly – it was her.
Wearing the same kind of caftan I had on when I first saw Ruth St Denis, whoops that’s the mom of modern dance and she has nothing to do with this story. It’s just the magic of the caftan. So wearing this old tied died caftan, I was walking in The field across the street from my house carrying a plate of apricot peels. As I started to toss the peels into the field – there she was. Smiling because I hadn’t been lazy and walked way out onto the field just like she taught me.
Whew, where did that memory come from – why was she here now? When I was a wee thing we had pasta at grandmas house every Sunday. After the locusts in my family had managed to eat everything but the mopeen – dish rag we all used to wipe our saucy fingers on – it was often my job to take the pile of bones and other table scraps out to the field. The instruction was walk far and toss. Sometimes a lazy kid would just dump the plate at the edge of the lawn. ( Jack screams at me now because I’ve turned into a lazy kid and dump on our Flagtown lawn line.)
This was a no no and would draw rats close to the house. We didn’t have a fancy compost pile or Eco box. We had the field. Foxes loved the bones and they were soon gone. The egg shells and the veggie scraps were great for revitalizing the earth. Now 60 years later, here I am in the place where my nonna learned that doing a field dump wasn’t a trailer trash thing. It was simply keeping the cycle of growth happening.
That morning I was doing something I know she had done. The field was a recently shorn hayfield. The feral cats and foxes still eat any meat stuff and the rest just rots back into the soil. Maybe next year this field would be a potato patch – enriched by or simple veggie scraps.
What struck me was how the simple action of tossing apricots peels brought my nonna back to me. She was there making sure I walked out far enough and did the job right. This had a colossal impact on me. After a year long painful inner dialogue about selling our house in NJ, it was this moment in a field that nonna made me realize that I could. The farmhouse was my grandma’s and is the place where I feel the presence of my elders everyday. Nonna let me know that wherever I am they are and all is OK.
Now, I’m not sure what a Patron Saint does. I asked Jack who went through 16 years of Catholic Education and he said, ” Nothing now, they’re dead”. After I tossed an apple at him he continued. They used to do miracles, now they are a conduit to God. Folks ask them for help. Ah, I said. Believing there are no coincidences, I began to wonder why in the play I just finished, Mamma Mia – La Befana?! one of the characters asked San Antonio for his help. I thought I had used the name San Antonio because I was finishing the play, here in Ponteladolfo and the festa for him was plastered on posters everywhere. When I looked him up on Wikipedia it said:
St Anthony is venerated all over the world as the Patron Saint for lost articles, and is credited with many miracles involving lost people, lost things and even lost spiritual goods.
Woowoo time. In Mamma Mia – La Befana everyone is looking for the little lost girl, Mary. (This is a secret commercial for my new play, Mamma Mia – La Befana?!, which is perfect for Italian American Clubs, schools, children’s theaters. It is a modern spin on the traditional Italian tale.)
Friday night, June 13 a large percentage of our local community went to the piazza to honor San Antonio. The night started with a mass –
Mass was in Chiesa Madre the “Mother Church”
moved on to procession –
A band led the procession.
and culminated with fireworks.
It was fun to see the whole community participate.
In the middle, was a performance by the youth dance company, I Bebiani di Circello and our favorite – Ri Ualanegli Juonior, the junior company of Pontelandolfo’s folklorico troupe. The company tours internationally!
Before I share a video of the local favorite, I need to tell you that the woowoo gets better. I asked a few people why the children’s company seems to always dance for San Antonio. The answer – he is also the dude who watches over children. Boy did I score a home run picking him to be part of my play about a lost child!
Enjoy the video clip of our young dancers on June 13!
Whoa – all I can think about are drugs! With the air waves bombarded with the shut down of the American Government and all that debate over the Affordable Health Care Act – who wouldn’t think of drugs. Medicine to keep us healthy. Medicine to keep us sane. Time to look into the meds that keep us sane and send some to the USA Congress. It makes me crazy to think that a country still exists where some retired folks stop taking medicine when they find they are in the Medicare Part D donut hole of higher profit for big pharma. I am hoping that the Affordable Care Act – if allowed to live on and grow – addresses that too. OK, enough politics – let’s get down to what it is like for an expat to go to the pharmacy here in Pontelandolfo.
There is only one pharmacy in our village – the sign says Farmacia. It is not Waldgreens or CVS or any big box monolith run by employees who will never remember your name. It is simply La Farmacia – a family owned and operated small space on the Piazza Roma. No, they do not sell soda, bread, flip flops, books or toys – there is however a condom dispenser on the nearby exterior wall. How clever – condoms in a machine available 24/7 right out there in public!
Before we leave for extended Italian stays we always try to stockpile medicines for my husband. I’m lucky – I just take a blood pressure med and I made sure to get a thousand samples. Jack takes a suitcase full of heart, cholesterol and who knows what else stuff. What I do know is that when Jack’s Medicare Part D falls into the donut hole of death for the poor, his monthly tab for meds can be $2,000. Damn, my first car cost less than that. Rats, Jack just edited this and said I am lying about the $2,000. Ptblahhhh ( that is me sticking my tongue out at him.) I got the breakdown for what Jack’s co-pays were before we left for Italy in April – $1718.49. So I exaggerated a little but hey – some people don’t have $1718.49 – and that is still more than my first car.
Jack knew, before we hit the Italian hills, we couldn’t afford to buy multi-month’s worth of pills in the USA . So, we spoke to Michelle and Michael our fabulous local – non corporate – pharmacists at Raritan Apothecary. They said – buy them in Italy – they will be a hell of a lot cheaper.
Blatant Plug – Buy Local
Raritan Apothecary
25 West Somerset Street Raritan, NJ 08869
I will admit, my drama queen worry mamma surfaced. What if we couldn’t get Jack all the stuff he needed? Would I have to send him home? Get in touch with my wild women roots and make drugs from monkwart? The first time Jack ran out of a medicine, I brought the empty bottle to la farmacia and introduced myself to the Perone family team of Nicola and Tina, the father/daughter pharmacists who keep Pontelandolfo on a healthy path. (Yes, I did remember the Italian courtesy of saying Buon Giorno as soon as I entered the store.)
Tina Perone – who always said “Ciao Midge”. That doesn’t happen at CVS.
Dott. Tina Perone recognized me as Carmella’s cousin – the American who dances two nights a week with her mother. Small villages create the art and activity they need. Carmella had organized a bi-weekly line dancing excersize and get together gab fest at the indoor bocce courts. I love to dance, need excersize and wanted to meet the village women. It was a win – win – win since it gave Tina and I an immediate connection.
Even without that connection, Jack and I would have been treated like people not numbers. Dott. Nicola Perone took the empty bottle and then proceeded to research for an incredibly long time the formula and ingredients. When he had the Italian perfect match he provided Jack with his meds. We do not have health insurance for Italy. We are not part of the Italian health care system. We paid full retail. Full retail that was freakin’ less than Jack’s bloody co-pay in the USA! How the hell can that be?
Over the course of months we visited the pharmacy often. Jack’s meds were always researched and supplied. The one thing that cost more in Italy was Advil – ibuprofen – one euro a pill! Of course they only sell 400 mg of Ibuprofen – not our 200 mg bottles. Jack needs to pack his Costco Ibuprofen or start using the Italian Spedifen! Interesting that vitamins weren’t pushed – apparently most people only take those vitamins that docs prescribe – like vitamin D. That made me pause and think about how much I spend a month on supplements.
Poor Jack, he loves to walk in the noon day sun up and down the hills. Too bad the soft corn between his toes hurt like a son of a bitch. We went into the pharmacy to get the name of a podiatrist and the first thing Dott. Nicola said was take off your shoe. Jack took off his shoe and Dott. Nicola looked at the giant thing between his toes. Damn, I wouldn’t even do that and I love the guy. He gave Jack some rubber things to put between his toes and some gunk to put on the ugly thing. Did you catch that, the pharmacist got on his knees and checked out my husband’s toes. You don’t see that at Walmart.
Dott. Nicola Perone – our fabulous pharmacist!
I am uncomfortable sharing the meds my husband takes so I will only give you one example of price point differentials. Before we left for Italy Jack got Nexium 40mg – 90 pills – for a $311.95 co-pay or $3.47 co-pay per pill. In Italy for the generic exomeprazolo it cost .73 per pill retail – not co-pay. I just checked on line and the exomeprazolo 40 mg for 90 days co-pay at CVS on line comes to .55 per pill. Retail is less than or a wee bit more than the USA co-pay. Huh?!!! What?!!!!
Interested in learning more about Italian pharmacies and brushing up on your Italian –
Le farmacie sono luoghi organizzati dallo stato ma operati da professionisti medici che vendono medicinali solitamente dietro ricetta medica. Con l’istituzione delle parafarmacie è possibile acquistare medicinali equivalenti senza ricetta medica.
Pharmacies are places organized by the state but operated by medical professionals who sell medicines usually with a prescription. With the establishment of drugstores you can buy generic medicines without prescription. Are big box drugstores coming to Italy? I hope not. We did see pharmacy concessions with a separate check out in big grocery stores – kind of a grocery/Walmart store set up.
Just like I won’t shop in a Walmart in the USA and we only get medicine at a local pharmacy – Raritan Apothecary. When in Italy, I’ll stick with going to see Dott. Nicola and Dott. Tina in our little La Farmacia on the Piazza. La Farmacia where every “Buon Giorno” is greeted with a smile and you are served by people you can trust.
Before I ventured into Alimentari De Angelis, our local salumeria for the first time alone, I stood outside and took a breath. My heart was pounding. Would I remember all the Italian I needed to buy mortadella or prosciutto or – well anything? Etto? Cento grammi – was that close to 1/4 pound? Theatre training kicks in – I review my lines – visualize my actions – think about what I was doing before I went through the door and said, “Vorrei un etto di – – Un etto of what – eeeeeeech -here is where I point at the case and resist saying “that salami looking stuff”. I know these words. I eat these words – wait – I didn’t say that right.
Now you are thinking – it is just a store in a small Italian village – stop with the dramatics. You’re right. But in this village everyone knows everyone else. I can’t embarrass generations of Guerreras and Sollas. I notice the woman on the bench near the store staring at me. I go in. The small shop – about 8X10 – was crammed full of just about anything you needed to create a quick scrumptious meal. Packets of pasta, a few round loaves of bread, rice, canned good, juice, paper plates, – you get the picture.
The three people in front of the meat counter turned as I pushed aside the beaded curtain, entered and said “boun giorno.” (Everyone says boun giorno every time they enter a shop – most times the folks in the shop echo an answer.) While I was waiting for my turn, the other customers and I stood close together in the jammed packed shop. This was a good thing. I could see and hear how they interacted with the shop’s owner, Pierina De Angelis. After all, we were all here for what was found in the refrigerator case – mortadella, prosciutto, salami di Milano, salami di Napoli …..
Soon it was my turn – I noticed a price list taped to the refrigerated display case and had memorized it. How could everything be un euro or un euro e 20 centesimi per un etto? Cheap great meats – how did I know the cold cuts were great? My cousin and world’s greatest cook, Carmela Mancini, shopped here.
The friendly Pierina De Angelis and her husband Antonio Santo Pietro. (My nonna’s first husband was a Santo Pietro – wonder if we are kind of related?)
“Vorrei un etto di mortadella, per favore.” The blonde Pierina standing by the old fashioned counter smiled and asked me where I was from – in Italian of course. Damn, was my italian so bad that she pegged me right away as an outsider? That happens to me a lot. I told her I was from New Jersey and before I knew it we were having a simple conversation and she discovered where I was from, who I was related to and how long I was staying! She made me feel comfortable and not embarrassed by my accent. I wanted to be her friend for life! OK, now it is time to order – guess what – I forgot the entire product list that I had memorized. Ugggg. We started with the mortadella.
If you haven’t had great mortadella – but only the crap we get in the USA super markets – you haven’t tasted the cold cut that makes you keep coming back and buying more! As a matter of fact, even though my cholesterol rises when ever I think of mortadella, I bought the yummy meats about every other day.
Mortadella – so very very very good.
Starting in about 1899 Americans were calling anything made of pork parts and stuffed in a casing bologne/baloney. Maybe manufacturers thought they could trick folks with limited taste buds into buying the stuff thinking it was like Mortadella – a famous culinary tradition of Bologna, Italy.
Mortadella di Bologna starts with finely ground pork, usually the lesser cuts of meat that are not used for other types of sausage. In fact Mortadella is a testament to the resourcefulness of the Italian pig farmers as nothing edible on the pig is wasted. This ground meat is mixed with a high quality fat (usually from the throat) and a blend of salt, white pepper, peppercorns, coriander, anise, pieces of pistachio and wine. The mixture is then stuffed into a beef or pork casing depending upon the size of the sausage and cooked according to weight. After cooking mortadella is left to cool in order to stabilize the sausage and give it firmness.
It must be cocktail hour somewhere! I wrapped mortadella around grissini added olives and Campari soda. Now that is art.
After the first week of repeated stops at her shop, Pierina could almost guess my order. Un etto di mortadella for me and due cento grammi di salami for Jack. Jack experimented with the various types of salami and couldn’t decide which he liked best. Bottom line? It was all wonderful.
No it is NOT Boars Head. This one – whose name I have of course forgotten – was spicy.
Alimentari De Angelis has been in Pierina De Angelis’ family for generations. She and her husband Antonio Santo Pietro have run it for a long time. I was saddened to hear that they will be closing the shop this fall. They are moving on toward retirement. Boy, do I hope that someone as nice and who sells productsjust as good steps in to fill the gastronomic void.
Chased by the emotions welling from a simple e-mail subject line – Invio Ricerca Famiglie Rinaldi e Solla (Search for Families Rinaldi & Solla), – tears race down my cheeks. An incredible gift was soaring over the mystical internet highway. I took a breath, double clicked and read –
Come eravamo rimasti, finalmente posso inviarti la ricerca delle due Famiglie Rinaldi Mariantonia e Solla, spero che il tutto sia soddisfacente. (As we left it, finally I’m sending you the documents about the Rinaldi and Solla Familes – I hope this is satisfactory.)
Una caro saluto
Antimo Albini
How could it not be satisfactory? It was so much more than satisfactory! Attached were two incredible documents – documents tracing my grandmother’s family back to the 1500’s!
Little boxes of wonder! Pages of them waiting to be entered in my Family Tree software. Anyone want to help?
Immediately I sent PDF’s flying through space to my family. With a little more digging, my newly found ancestors will share incredible stories. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning –
One beautiful morning Annarita Mancini and I walked up Via Municipo and stopped in front of a small attached stone row house. This part of the Pontelandolfo dates back to the 1600’s. Annarita rang the bell.
The shutter of the second floor window burst open and our guide into the past thrust out his sleepy head. “Beh?” Oops, were we too early? Annarita explained that we had an appointment to see the church archives. While he was mulling that over, the beaded curtain in front of the door parted and a middle aged woman peeked out. Shouts from above moved her. She ushered us into the front room. More shouts from above and she ushered us up the stairs. Annarita and I looked at each other. Weren’t we supposed to go to the church? Wasn’t he the dude with the archive room key? Why are we going up to – well who knows what? What had my quest for the family’s history gotten us into? That quest had led us to the true keeper of the keys to knowledge – Antimo Albini! After a cursory greeting, Antimo promptly sat down at the computer, lit a cigarette and led me on a four hour journey into my grandmother’s past.
His head of thick grey hair bobbed and weaved as he pulled up database after database. This passionate historian had decided that the history of Pontelandolfo would be lost if someone didn’t do something. He decided to be that someone.
Antimo spent four years of his life meticulously going through all of the church records and putting the information in a Microsoft Access database. This was an incredible undertaking. As he digs into my past, the gleam in his eyes reveals a man filled with passion for both history and the story of Pontelandolfo. He entered data from books going back to 1607 – separate books for each year of the census. There were also combined year range books of births, deaths, and baptisms. That is a heck of a lot of books. Whoops – he had matrimonial books back to 1505! He said, ” as the books disappear, their stories will be gone unless people like us who care about our pasts start passing the stories on.” So get on the stick and start recording your stories!
Imagine reading thousands of pages like this one.
As he created the databases he noted the book name, page number and entry number. That way if anyone really wanted to see the fragile old books they could just go to the relevant pages. He also created separate data bases labeled by book. Damn, he is good. The organization will help future historians track data.
We learned that until 1903 the priest of each parish was responsible for doing a census. The census held the tales of the village. The priests would visit each house in the parish – whyam I wondering if they also got donations for the church at the same time – and ask questions. They noted the names and ages of people living in the house, if the house was owned or rented, what kind of jobs folks had, nicknames and what ever else caught their fancy. Those notes are now safely ensconced in Antimo’s database. In 1903 the state took over the job and started to do a census every ten years. These sure has hell don’t include the interesting notes the priests wrote down.
Birth and death registration book from the 1800’s.
Before 1700 there were four parishes serving this mountain town of peasants and landholders – San Felice, San Angelo, San Piedro and San Salvatore. So priests from all of those parishes kept records of births, baptisms, deaths, weddings. These are great old journals with meticulous handwriting on paper so old that it crumbles when touched. We know that because the Comune has it’s own set of unprotected books that are manhandled, falling apart and not digitized! Che fa! Thank God Antimo created a database of the much more complete church records.
In 1688, there was a huge terremoto – earthquake – after which the parishes were forced to merge. Well. not exactly forced, but San Felice and San Pietro parishes spent a lot of time fighting over who got to be the cemetery. In those days that meant holding the bones of the departed in the catacombs of the church – you know that space just below the seats for the congregation. In the throws of the fight neither church got rebuilt. That narrowed the playing field and in 1700 there was only the mother church of San Salvatore. The church where my grandmother was baptized and twice married. It still stands and we go to mass there often – not because I’m a good catholic but because I can feel her presence there.
San SalvatoreThe art in San Salvador is awesome.These are shots from the 50’s. Later we will have a blog on the parish and you’ll see glorious color.
As I sit in the piazza writing this, my heart fills and tears start to glide down my cheeks. What is that about? How could a middle aged, hard assed woman like me get so sentimental about finding my family? I haven’t a clue but the universe sent me here and as my dad’s first cousin, Giusippina, says often – sangue è sangue – blood is blood and I am the first of the family to return looking for those that stayed.
Finding one’s family is a backwards process. Start with the birth and death certificates of today and work backwards. Since I had already done a lot of research to gather the documents to become an Italian Citizen, I went to see Antimo with the materials he needed to leap even further back in time. (Read the blog about citizenship for more background.) https://midgeguerrera.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/cittadina-italiana-citizenship/)
Antimo started by finding my grandmother’s birth records. We had the day, time and name of her parents, Liberantonio Solla and Maria Antonia Rinaldi. (I am dying to know if we are related to the Rinaldi Olio di Oliva folks.)
Every village in Italy will provide you with your family’s documents. There was a very nominal fee for grandma’s birth certificate.
Then he painstakingly worked backwards, creating a new excel data base for me that included everything he could find. The little details he unearthed painted a picture of the times and the people. nicknames were used everywhere. My great-great grandma Solla had the same name as mia nonna – Maria Rosaria. It was also the same name as her mother. Her birth certificate was noted as Maria Rosaria D’Addona.
Antimo said that baptisms were very close in date to birth records. Many children died soon after birth. Since everyone wanted the babies to go to heaven, people made sure they got those kids to church and baptized immediately. Often if a child died, the same name was given to the next child of the same sex. Boy, does that add another database layer of confusion.
Later we paniced – we couldn’t find my grandma’s grand-mom, Maria Rosaria D’Addona, in any database. Oh where oh where could my grande bisnonna be! We only found the unborn (no birth record) Cesare D”Addona in all the family census databases. Like she fell from the sky. The brilliant Antimo scanned even more documents and realized that Cesare was Maria Rosaria’s nonna’s name. Since there were two Maria Rosarias in the family they decided to call my great great grandma – Cesare. In 1839, Cesare was only 16 years old when she married the widower Felice Solla from Morcone. I am guessing he didn’t have much cash because they moved in with her mother on Via San Felice (now Via Municipo – the same street where Antimo currently lives.) That means I have walked past my great – great grandparents first marital home a million times!
I never would have figured that out. We were blessed to have Antimo, a focused detective, helping us by constantly cross checking information from birth, death, marriage and census records. OK, we found the lineage of my great grandma. Now let’s talk about great grandpop.
My great grandfather was Liberantonio Solla – family tales are full of his musical ability. Zia Caterina also remembered his ability to drink the night away and fall down the mountain on the way home to Via Porta Nuova. On my second visit to Pontelandolfo, we found my great granddad’s house . The rocks of this small medieval stone cottage – now in ruins – held secrets that we will never know. Or will we?
Only a few stone walls are left of the house that my young grandmother, grandfather and aunt and uncles shared with grandma’s parents.
What we didn’t know was that Liberantonio wasn’t called Liberantoino by anyone but his mama. Pitocchio (flea in dialect) was his nickname. As he played the concertina, villagers shouted Pitocchio . I’m not quite sure of the name my bisnonna, Maria Antonia Rinaldi, shouted when he came home dead drunk, having spent all he made singing at the bar.
Oh, I just remembered, great grandma Maria Antonia Rinaldi was born in a rented house. Liberantonio Solla was born on Via San Felice – in the home of his grandma! How the hell did we discover all this in less than ten hours? My great grandfather was a “bracciante” – an ancient term for working the land for someone else and getting a piece of what you grew for yourself – yeah serf. I come from a long line of indentured servants. Weeoo. My great-great uncle Nicola Solla (Liberantonio’s bro) worked for the commune. We discovered that for generations a Nicola Solla worked for the commune. I can’t wait to find out if one works for the town today.
So much to discover. So many stories to hear, feel and relive. So little time to do it all.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Antimo Albini for keeping the keys to family history at our fingertips.
Nonna's Mulberry Tree 