POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Submitted by: Sherry PACELLI Haddox (#4883)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened the monthly meeting of POINTers IN Person on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 with 8 people in attendance.
Last month Joe Mastrangelo (#2614) mentioned that his mailing address was incorrect on the notification from Putignano. He contacted the Houston Consulate and the corrected notification from Putignano arrived last week.
Joe is continuing to extract birth records from Putignano films and has now completed the years 1809 thru 1899. He has started on 1900. Currently he has about 3950 birth records recorded in the Access data base.
Joe is continuing to note some anomalies in the records he is researching. He brought a sample which displayed an obvious error in the recording of the mother's name on one record that immediately preceded another record that he was able to verify as being correct.
Joe copied some St. Joseph's recipes from the Feb./March issue of the American Italian Heritage Digest our of Albany, New York and passed them around at the meeting.
St. Joseph's day is March 19th.
Jeanie Marsalia (#4251) received a reply letter from Giacomo Marsaglia in Monastero di Lanzo, Italy near Torino on January 28, 2006. Jeanie had written to him on January 13, 2006. She was very happy to have an answer so quickly! She found his name on line in the Italian white pages. He does not know if they are related but promised to do local research and let her know if he finds anything.
Jeanie also wrote letters to Wilburton, Oklahoma and Kankakee, Illinois asking if they have any records for her grandfather, Giuseppe Marsaglia who lived in both places.
She received a reply from the National Archives - Southwest Region in Ft. Worth, Texas stating they can find no naturalization records for her grandfather. Therefore they could not state whether he was naturalized in a state or local court.
Jeanie also received replies from NARA in College Park, MD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (INS) regarding naturalization information requests.
Don Villoni reported that he has had to do a lot of DNA study/research in order to be able to respond to the email he received last month from Holland indicating a 100% match to his great-grandfather in Italy. Several years ago at the POINT conference in Salt Lake City, Don gave a DNA sample to the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation. The DNA testing was free to the people that participated however the results and subsequent marker identity would not be provided to those individuals. Don feels that DNA research has come a long way since then and now wants to have a full fledged DNA test performed. Depending on the test that his "cousin" in Holland had done, it may require that he do the same thing to assure them both that they match 100% to his great-grandfather. Don feels very upbeat about this new research and was very enthusiastic when he reported on DNA.
Scott Patrick (#4819) told about receiving several pictures from his recently found cousins. Two of the pictures were of Scott's great-uncle, Mack Gardner (aka Ercole Garagusi). One was a portrait of Mack around age 50 and the other was of Mack in front of his jewelry store in Phoenix, Arizona in about 1920.
The other pictures were of children of Mack's former wife Michelina Gallo.
Scott also reported he had gone through a few more years, 1822 to 1824, of films for the town of Laurenzana (PZ BA) and had found several birth and death records for siblings and cousins of his ancestors carrying the surnames MANZI, MOTTA, D'ALESANDRO and PINTO.
The meeting adjourned at 9:00 pm.
Our next meeting is Wednesday, March 22 at 6:30 pm at the Round Rock Library.