POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Sherry PACELLI Haddox (4883)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened our monthly meeting on January 24th with 15 people in attendance.
Lin will work on an updated directory for the chapter.
She passed around the calendar for the Italian Cultural Association of Austin, which includes book club, cooking classes, Italian card games, pizza and movie night,
wine tasting, Italian opera, bocce and Carnevale. The website is: www.austinitalians.com.
Lin will check into a tour of Damian Mandola's Estate Winery in Driftwood, Texas.
Lin's paternal grandfather, Frank Onofrio, was the first born of his family in 1893. His youngest sibling, Anne Onofrio Durazzo, daughter of Antonio and Florence
Rubano Onofrio of Faiccio and San Lorenzello, Benevento, was born in 1916 and recently passed away in Connecticut, the last of her generation. Lin expressed
her gratitude to have met her great aunt Anne, since her grandfather died in 1954.
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) is continuing to extract Morti records from 1809 on. He is currently viewing 1849 records.
The 1848 records revealed the death of Joe's ggg-uncle Domenico (b: 1803, d: 1848), and his son, Nicola, who
died 3 months later.
To date, Joe has extracted 490+ morti records that contain either the MASTRANGELO or PUGLIESE (sometimes both) names.
Joe has had contact with some of his New Jersey PIZZOLATO relatives and they have provided some photo's of cousins and family members that Joe lost
contact with a long time ago. He reported that it was good to see old familiar faces again.
Joe received a newsletter (written in Italian) from the Comitato Degli Italiani All'estero (Committee for Italians Abroad). He used his Xlator in order to understand
the newsletter. There was one article that he translated into English ~ it concerned the new Electronic Passport. It explained the attributes to this type of document
and the cost (in Euros).
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) received a call from Maria Scolozzi from the Italian Consulate's office in Houston on 1/11/07 and was told that a letter from
Monastero di Lanzo, Italy addressed to Jeanie had been sent to the Consulate's office. It had first been sent to Jeanie's home address where she does not
receive her mail. Jeanie gave them her correct address and is anxiously waiting for the letter.
Jeanie's son, Shane Mahon, mailed his request for dual citizenship on 1/13/07.
Jeanie received an e-mail from POINT member, Michael Maddi, in reference to her experience with the Italian Consulate in Houston, Texas that he had read about
in the minutes of POINTers . He had moved and was having difficulty getting the consulate to change his address. Jeanie advised him to contact their office by
e-mail. He did and got the problem resolved. He is co-administrator of the Sicily DNA Project at Family Tree DNA. He said anyone that is of Sicilian descent
and is interested in the project should e-mail him at m.maddi@att.net. He also asked Jeanie to pass along the following web-sites:
www.familytreedna.com/public/Italy and www.familytreedna.com/public/Sicily.
Cynthia Barnhart is researching the PIZZI and COZZA families in the area of San Giovanni in Fiore in the region of Calabria for her friend, Roxanne PIZZI Erwin. Cynthia recently found the birth records of Serafino PIZZI and Margaret COZZA who are Roxanne's great-grandparents. Serafino was born 19 March 1879 and his father was Paulo Pizzi. Margaret COZZA was born 18 January 1879 and her father was Matteo COZZA. Cynthia will continue to search the film for the births of additional family members.
Eileen DELUCA finally made contact with two churches in PA and got the name of the town where her husband's family came from. The lady at the church had difficulty reading the writing. To her it looked like the name of the town is Castelsorntana but she said the handwriting was so bad she was not sure about the spelling. Prince of Christ Church is where her husband's grandfather was baptized.
Sherry PACELLI Haddox (#4883) brought a Pius XII (Eugenio PACELLI) gold coin that her cousin, Alessandra Gesualdi, had recently sent her from Rome. Alessandra also sent a piece of an ancient Roman amphora that her husband, Matteo Mottola, found many years ago. She said men were digging on a street, working for the water service in Rome and uncovered some ruins. There were a lot of pieces and the men noticed Matteo looking at them and told him to take some if he wanted to. She explained that the laws were not as strict about ruins at that time.
The meeting adjourned at 8:45pm. Our next meeting will be at 6:30pm on February 28th at Merrill Gardens in Round Rock.