POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Central Texas/Austin
Marilyn MANISCALCO Henley (#1653)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened the monthly POINTers In Person meeting and pot luck luncheon Sat., Jan 16 1999 at the Bank One in Round Rock with 27 members and guests attending with a prayer and instructions of "mangiamo". The food that the members bring keeps getting better.
After lunch, minutes of last month's meeting were passed around, and Lin introduced our guests. Membership applications for POINT and the Austin Genealogical Society were distributed. Lin updated the progress of the search for the hotel for the POINT Conference. She is down to the final selections and would announce more next month. Next Saturday is the Austin Ethnic Fair sponsored by Concordia University. The Italian Cultural Association of Austin will have a separate section next to ours. They will be selling sausage and peppers and we will sell biscotti, tiramusu and expresso. A sign up sheet was passed around for members to help staff the booth.
Lin passed around the 1999 meeting schedule: (Wednesdays at 6:30, except where noted. Saturdays at 1 pm) Feb 24, March 24, April 17 (Sat), May 26, June 23, July 17 (Sat), Aug 25, Sept 22, Oct 16 (Sat), Nov 17 and December 12 (Sunday luncheon).
Laurie GUGINO Riester reported that the past few months have been amazing. She is trying to determine if her grandparents, who had the same last name, were both from Valledolmo, Sicily. She located the death certificate for one of her great grandfather's in the Valledolmo records at the FHC. She located the ship records with Bill Brinkman's help. Joe Mastrangelo helped her read the names on the records. She was surprised to discover that some of her family's Italian first names changed after arriving in America, such as Crocefissa to Josephine and Calogero to Charles.
While she was in Florida at Christmas, Laurie visited an aunt who shared an old family photo of her great grandparents, which Laurie passed around. She told us about discovering Kin-Ships on the internet, which has lists of ships of which images are available, from old penny postcards. Marilyn passed around one sample of the work that can be ordered with a mat cut for the ship image and a cut for a photo of your ancestor. The work is high quality. The site is: www.Kin-Ships.com/
Frank and Beth HENRY (IANNARINO) (#3258) are traveling to San Diego and plan to visit the Little Italy area while there.
Jamie CANNONE found a Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Messina allegati record of his ALIQUO great great grandparents. He did not find the TRICOLI name he wanted. While looking over some old notes, he found his great grandmother's birth record, giving her fathers birth date. Don't forget to go back over those notes taken early in your research. Jamie mentioned that Reunion Genealogy Program is upgrading their software for Mac Users.
John TESTOLIN joined us for the first time. He is working from information supplied by an elderly aunt 10-12 years ago on the Giuseppe TESTOLIN family, possibly from CONTEUOLLO. Giuseppe was a miner in Iron Mountain, Michigan at one time.
Virginia MACRI Gerick (#2730) announced that she has completed a 16 hour computer course and can now turn on the computer. Jim surprised her with her own mouse pad, purchased at the POINT conference with the saying, "You Bet Your Linguini I'm Italian."
Mary Jo Belk introduced her cousin Eleanor MAGALASSI, from Fort Worth. They are going to Corleone, Sicily in March with Mary Jo's brother and will visit cousins there. Eleanor's name was originally MACALUSO in Italy. She is also searching for SCOMA from Corleone. One of the places she wants to locate on their trip is the convent where her maternal grandparent, NICOSIA, was raised. PIP member Bill Wale graciously translated some Italian documents and letters to Corleone for Mary Jo.
New computers must have been the top Christmas gift. Don VILLONI, Dorothy MANGO Lippincott, Virginia Gerick and Jeanette Green each received one.
Zina VERSAGGI Graalfs (#3336) reports good progress on locating the Jersey clan of family that immigrated from Agrigento and originated from Augusta. She is finding lots of records on the Versaggi family on the microfilm records. Marilyn loaned her a book, Saga of American Italians in Southeast Louisiana that has a photo of her uncle Dominic Versaggi. Henry Graalfs told about a telephone call from another Graalfs in Fairbanks, Alaska from a letter written in 1946.
Michael DEL GIUDICE joined us for the first time. His beginning research is of DEL GIUDICE of Genoa and D'ANNA and DE MARTINO of Casordia, Campania. He spent a month in Venice and is planning to move to Italy. He is looking for someone with whom he can practice his Italian speech.
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) displayed his new Italian poster that he heard about on PIE. Regarding his Mastrangelo research, he has conflicting birth info to straighten out. He is also at the point where he's run out of available civil records and is waiting for a response to three letters to various church offices in Putignano. He also discovered the town name of Taranto in some of the Putignano records and remembers an aunt telling him that they had family in Taranto.
Joe related that Robert Lowry of Houston supplied him with PIZZOLATO family information of Poggioreale, Sicily that dates back to 1640. The Pizzolato family is one of the original families of Poggioreale and came from the nearby town of Gibellina.
Marie Mastrangelo has also had remarkable success with her Norwegian research going back to the 1600's. She even discovered Norwegian census online.
Marilyn MANISCALCO Henley (#1653) told about finding obituaries for two cousins, Nancy CULMONE ALFANO and Rita ALFANO on the Obituary Daily Times web site: www.rootsweb.com/~obituary/ and then sending for copies of their obits to the New Orleans library. She also found a MARCHIAFAVA cousin on the same site and located his obituary on the Baton Rouge newspaper site. Marilyn's big news, however, was that she and Arthur will become first-time grandparents about Sept 7 by daughter Shelly (the archivist) and husband Bryan Kelly.
Jeanie MARSALIA has been trying to locate her grandfather's naturalization record. She has not been able to locate a 1917 death record of her grandfather from Eagle Lake, Columbus Co, TX, but did find a newspaper obituary. She's sent for her grandmother's death certificate.
Lin announced the next meeting is Wed, February 24 at 6:30 p.m.
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