POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Submitted by Sherry PACELLI Haddox (4883)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened the meeting on January 27, 2010 with 25 present, including two new members. The word "pizza" in the meeting notice must have had something to do with the larger than normal turnout!
Lin showed a book written by Bill and Lacy Musgrove of Seattle, WA, "In Search of the GERACI family in Sicily", written in 1999 after their visit to PALERMO and PIANA DEGLI ALBANASI. It is a beautiful book full of pictures they took while there. They're researching the following names: GERACI, MATRANGA, DI MODICA, SCHIRO, BOLLINO, AIOLA, FUTTO and STASSI.
Lin announced the Meeting dates for 2010:
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) is continuing to extract death records from 1809 to 1900 and is currently viewing 1896 records. Joe is reaching 3500 records extracted
and just in excess of 2300 recorded in the death data base. The birth data base contains 4217 records and the Marriage data base has 1383 records.
Joe has discovered another use for the death records. There is another MASTRANGELO family in the Vandergrift PA area and Joe has known that they were friends of his
grandfather, Angelo, right after he arrived in Ashville, which is a small mining town near Altoona. Joe tried for awhile to link the two family lines with no success. He recently
took another try at it and, as is usual, began working backwards from what he knew. Using the Access Data Base for the Marriage records, Joe began the backward search
and very shortly encountered a discontinuity in the marriage record films, leaving a gap of 10 years (1812 - 1822). He searched for a way around this roadblock and realized
that the death records also included information on the deceased's parents and spouses and this allowed him to jump the gap and reach back 3 more generations. Joe has
now got this family back to cir 1745 so now it's the dreaded church records if he is to go back further.
Another observation that quickly appeared was the "progression" of names. In Joe's family the names alternated between Angelo and Francesco. This Pennsylvania group
alternates between Giuseppe and Sebastiano - except at the 1745 point - there the name of Francesco Paola appears. Joe's educated guess, based on this, is that either
one or two generations further back there is a possibility that the two may come together.
Joe's next step is to expand at each generation. He began one generation back from the contemporary generation and by using the access data base for birth, he identified
six children that are tied to this set of parents. Next is to try to identify unions for them and then on to the previous generation for more of the same.
Another use for these records is to double check for potentially missing records in the films. It sometimes happens that records are lost or dropped and double checking
may pay off.
The fruits of the labor are continuing to be useful. More often than not Joe is able to link the data bases together to correct/confirm information from one to the other.
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) didn't have any information about genealogy to report but she brought Christmas cards she received from relatives in Italy and was happy to tell about her son and daughter-in-law, Shane and Catherine Mahon's, surprise visit from Seattle, WA..
Patricia COLACINO told about the trip she and her husband, Joe, made to Italy and Sicily in September. They visited MARINEO, SICILY where Frank Giue had
ancestors and GIULIANA, SICILY where Patricia's ancestors, Giuseppe ARCURI and Margherita COLETTI supposedly were born. They were very close to
MEZZOJUSO where she believes her great-grandparents, Vincenzo MUSACCHIA and Gesualda MANOLA were born but they did not have time to go to that town.
All were in the province of PALERMO.
They also visited her cousins in MOTTA SANTA LUCIA in CALABRIA and CASSANO all'lonio in CALABRIA where Joe's MELOMO ancestors lived.
Mike Harden brought a wonderful video that he showed on his computer of his grandparent's 1941 wedding in New York.
Laurie Gugino told of a trip that she and her daughter made to Sicily several months ago. They took a wonderful cooking class from a family that owns a restaurant. They met the lady who taught the class early one morning at the market to buy all the fresh food and then went to her home to learn how to prepare several different dishes. They really enjoyed the class ~ and eating all that delicious food!
We enjoyed meeting new members, Hans and Marie ZANFARDINO Jensen. Marie is researching CIRIGLIANO and VERRE from LAURENZANA and ZANFARDINO and CHIAZZA from FRAGOLE or AFRAGOLE (which is just outside Naples).
The meeting adjourned at 8:30pm. Our next meeting will be February 24th at 6:30pm at Lin and Bill's guest house.