August 23, 1997 Italian Genealogy Workshop

POINTers IN PERSON REPORT
Chapter #10-Texas, Central Texas/Austin
Marilyn Maniscalco Henley (#1653)

Fifty people attended the 2nd Italian Genealogy Workshop at 1 pm on Sat, August 23, 1997 presented by the Central Texas/Austin area PIP Chapter #10. Members Jim and Virginia Macri Gerick handled registration which included a $6 fee (per family) for handouts.

Lin Onofrio Brinkman welcomed guests and members and invited everyone to enjoy a luncheon feast that included homemade Italian favorites such as Lasagna, 3 Meat Pie from 'The Big Night' movie, Chicken Cacciatore, and Cannoli as well as other tasty dishes set out by members Eugenia Luken, Sheila Dugosh, Bert Henry, Marie Matrangelo and Dorothy Lippencott.

During lunch Lin explained POINT and encouraged all who were not members to join. Marilyn told about Arbu Sicula and its publications.

After lunch, Bill Brinkman began the lectures with the basics of genealogy. Using a pie chart he showed the many places to locate information for research. He explained how to use the Family History Center and the State and Federal Archives. Using an overhead projector, Bill displayed various records and explained how to interpret the information provided on each.

Tony Abbattista followed Bill and talked about using Computers in Genealogy. He explained how to select an internet server, how to use search engines and making your own home page. His handout gave web addresses to subscribe to PIE, its homepage, the homepages of the PIP Chapters and genealogy software home pages. He also provided web addresses to sites that pertain to Italian Genealogy.

Marilyn Maniscalco Henley spoke next on U.S. Research for Italian Ancestors. Instead of talking from her detailed handout, she gave some key points of research. She emphasized being open minded about the localities and types of records to search. She showed examples of finding relatives in areas not previously known as well as newspaper articles about family incidents. Also, be flexible about the spellings of the family names. She showed two examples of the horrific spellings of two Italian names on Ameican records.

Joe Mastrangleo completed the lectures with Italian Records, how to locate them, get them and how to read them. He began by explaining the civil records that are produced in Italy, the timeframe for record keeping and what records are kept at the various government levels. Examples were shown explaining the differences between content of original, certificate and extract records and how to interpret the documents. Joe also explained how to write letters to the various Italian repositories to request records.

A question and answer session followed the lectures, which ran 15 - 20 minutes each. Lin invited everyone to our next regular meeting on Wednesday, September 24, at 6:30 pm at the Bank One Bldg.

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