POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Submitted by: Sherry PACELLI Haddox (#4883)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened the monthly meeting on August 27th with 14 people in attendance including two visitors.
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) is continuing to extract death records from 1809 on and is currently viewing 1879 records. He's quickly approaching 2000 records extracted and 1600 recorded in the data base. Joe said his transcription work is falling a bit behind.
Joe told of some interesting tidbits from the PIE email list:
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) received a copy of the family tree from Luigi MARSAGLIA-CAGNOLA with whom she as been corresponding. They are related through his ancestor, Nicola MARSAGLIA-CAGNOLA who
was a brother to her grandfather, Giuseppe MARSAGLIA.
Jeanie replied to the letter she received from Margherita MARSAGLIA-CAGNOLA.
The Marsalia family reunion is scheduled to be held on Saturday, September 27, 2008. Jeanie will be sharing photos from her recent trip to Italy and sharing her experiences as well. Copies of both family trees will be given to family members who want them as well as other information she has obtained over the past year.
Jeanie received an email regarding an Italian Catholic Online magazine. The first issue of Italian Catholic Media Group's monthly issue gave a description of the articles with brief excerpts along with links to the site. She received this from Al Barcas at ajbarcas@yahoo.com.
Joyce TIANELLO Snodgrass visited her 93 year old Father, Albert J. TIANELLO in Euclid, Ohio twice this summer. They were able to make contact with several family individuals, including Guido PASQUALONE and his younger sister Eva PASQUALONE Titman. These are the offspring of a sister of Joyce's Grandmother, Maria DE FELICIBUS TIANELLO.
Eva (living in Albert's birthplace/hometown of Geneva Ohio) assisted them in finding a schoolmate of Albert's, the 93 year old Judge and Ex Mayor of Geneva, Joe (Joseph P.) MALLONE, who was originally named SGAMBALLONE. Joe and his brother Bruno did not know their father well since he died in some sort of riot/argument at the start of World War I . Joe said there was considerable disagreement among immigrants as to the U.S. participation in a European war.
Mallone's mother remarried Anthony SANZETTA (Joyce is not certain of spelling) and had several more boys. Mr. Sanzetta died by a shotgun blast that was allegedly meant for another of Albert's Uncles, John AGRESTA. (John Agresta and Carlo Pasqualone were both married to sisters of Joyce's grandmother, Maria De Felicibus).
All in all, Joyce loved watching her dad and Joe rekindle memories of the three Italians on the Geneva High School Football team--Louie Carillo, Joe, and Al. All 3 were born in 1915 ~ March 31, April 3 and May 1, 1915. Joyce said her dad has a great memory and Joe Mallone's is even better.
The two visitors were Rick and Pat COPPOLA. Both of Rick's grandparent's were from S. SALVATORE TELESINO, BENEVENTO, CAMPANIA which is the same town Sherry PACELLI Haddox's (#4883) grandfather, Dionisio PACELLI, was from. Everyone was so surprised and Sherry was very excited.
Sherry brought a list of more ancestors from her grandmother's town of GRECI, AVELLINO, CAMPANIA that she had recently received from Bob Pedersen of Canton, Ohio. Bob's wife, Dena diChiara, is Sherry's 4th cousin. He has a data base of the Greci town records. There's an organization called "The Greci Cousins" and a couple of members, John MAZZARELLA and Nick NORCIA have gone to Greci a number of times to film the town and church records and have a data base of all the birth, marriage and death records from the town. Several members of the Greci cousins have worked diligently to get all the records on the data bases. They check each other's work to be certain there are no mistakes. So, Sherry has been given a list of all her ancestors on her grandmother's side of the family back to the 1600's. She feels so blessed to have been given all this information while never doing any research herself. Bob also told Sherry that Kara DioGuardi, who will be the 4th judge on American Idol, has ancestors from Greci and is Sherry's 4th cousin, once removed.
The meeting adjourned at 8:30. Our next meeting is Wednesday, September 24th at 6:30pm at Merrill Gardens in Round Rock, Texas