POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Submitted by: Sherry PACELLI Haddox (#4883)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened our monthly meeting on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 with 14 people in attendance. Lin reminded us that our next meeting will be a potluck lunch meeting on Saturday, September 23rd from 1:30 to 4:30pm at the Round Rock Library, room "A".
New member, Katrina PRATI, reported on her recent 3 week vacation with her daughter and son-in-law in the mountains ("Little Alps") of Northern Italy where she visited her son and her sister, Karen PRATI. Katrina's grandfather and grandmother emigrated from Italy in 1913 and, thanks to them, both Karen and Katrina are now dual citizens and this was Katrina's first experience in using her Italian passport. Karen, who has done extensive genealogical work on the PRATI and ROSA families, has lived in the province of REGGIO EMILIA for over ten years, spending half that time in the house where their grandfather grew up in the tiny village of GOVA, in the comune of VILLA MINOZZO and now in QUARA, in the comune of TOANO. In August all the family comes "home" and visit with family members who live in Milan and Switzerland most of the year. They visited the house, named Pere Storte, now abandoned, where their great-great-grandfather raised his family. They toured castles in the area around CASINA and visited two surviving first cousins of their dad: Gino CHIESI, who is 95 years old and still driving around the mountains in his 3-wheeled Ape and the other cousin, Bruno ROSA (from her grandmother's family), works a dairy farm. Gino was a renown maggio singer, violin teacher and poet. His poems can be found on the Villa Minozzo site at www.villaminozzo.com/pagine/homepage.htm. They also enjoyed the Presepio exhibit in GAZZANO by internationally known artist, Antonio Pigozzi, who kindly gave his autograph. See photos of living in Italy at www.brianburton.org. Photos from her trip will be online at www.valeriebhat.com in a few weeks. Katrina also enjoys keeping up with news of Italy at www.agi.it/english/news.pl?id=agionline-eng.oggitalia.
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) is continuing to extract records from 1809 on. He is currently viewing 1839 records.
Joe found records for 1809 to 1811, and then a gap until 1824 to 1826, and another gap until 1831 to 1834, and then
another gap until 1839.
As a result of his research, Joe has begun to encounter some new words like "cognato" (brother-in-law), "Avo" (grandfather),
"nipote" (nephew) and "conosente" (acquaintance).
Over the course of the last month, Joe has received several certificates from Anne Baker who is researching the
CAMPANELLA/PUGLIESE names in PUTIGNANO. Anne provided him with birth and marriage records for Pasquale CAMPANELLA and
his wife, Maria Cristina LOPRIORE. Pasquale is a child of Francesantonio CAMPANELLA who is the father of their common
ancestor, Giuseppe Nicola CAMPANELLA, spouse of Maria Teresa PUGLIESE, and this is where their families come together.
Scott Patrick (#4819) discovered two new records regarding his GARAGUSI line. The first involved Scott's great-uncle
Vincenzo GARAGUSI. This was a newspaper article dated 12/12/1898 from Lincoln, Nebraska that mentioned his murder the day
before in New York City. This was the first time Scott had seen a written story that supported the oral history of this
uncle's death.
The second was a ship record for Scott's first cousin, three times removed, Nicholas GARAGUSI. The ship arrived in Tampa,
Florida from Havana, Cuba in 1928 and appeared to be Nicholas GARAGUSI with his new bride returning to the U.S.
Also with the couple was a woman whom Scott assumed to be the bride's mother. This lead to a renewed search for Nicholas
in the 1930 U.S. Census. Scott found Nicholas, indexed with no last name, thanks to the new information about the wife.
She turned out to be Canadian. Subsequent search of the 1911 Canadian Census proved the other woman on board the ship to
be the bride's mother. The bride's name was Lucienne PAQUETTE and she was from the Ottawa, Ontario area. A baby girl, not
quite one, named Arianne, was also listed in the GARAGUSI household in the 1930 census.
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) mailed her second packet of documents required for dual citizenship to the Italian Consulate in Houston, Texas on July 31, 2006. She received a reply on August 21st telling her to contact Maria Scolozzi after September 15th for an appointment. So, Jeanie will have her dual citizenship very soon!
The meeting adjourned at 8:45pm.
Our next meeting is a Potluck Lunch on Saturday September 23, 2006 from 1:30 - 4:30 in Room A, Round Rock Library.