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, Chapter #10 - Austin/Central Texas on July 28, 2004, at the Round Rock Library with 18 people in attendance.
Lin informed us that A Taste of Italy in Austin is hosting a Ferragosto Barge Party August 15th on Lake Travis. The cost is $25.00 per person which includes the barge, food, entertainment and the captain.
She also let us know that we can order ceramic mugs which have the Italian map and "Italia" printed on them. We can
purchase them for only $2.69 each from Amsterdam Printing if we place a minimum order of 60 mugs.
She received an email from David Cooney from San Antonio. He recently found our web site and was wondering if anyone in our group was doing research on the CUNEO family from COREGLIA LIGUIRE, which is south of Genoa.
Lin and Bill will be visiting her ONOFRIO cousins in New Haven, CT. next month.
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) will give a presentation entitled "Italian Civil Records" at a workshop and pot luck lunch on September 18th. Joe will speak from 1:40 - 3:50 PM. It will be a very informative and interesting presentation. Joe's extensive record extraction continues. He now has 3000+ births recorded from 1809 - 1880. He has films on order to bring up the records to 1900. The years 1813 -1816 and 1818 are missing. He resumed marriage record extraction and has 960 currently recorded. He is now working on 1880 - 1900. He has completed the years 1809 - 1979.
Robbie Morrison, a friend of Marilyn MANISCALCO Henley (#1653), sent Joe several birth & marriage documents from POGGIOREALE to be translated. He completed everything and returned the documents to her.
Pat Oxley was unable to attend our meeting because she was out of town but sent an email and asked for it to be read to the group. Pat is working very hard on the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference which will be held in Austin September 8 - 11, 2004. She said that plans are moving along and they now have 95 vendors filling 150 booths. She suggested that we try to go to the conference to hear Sharon DEBARTOLO Carmack's lecture "From Italy to America: Starting Your Italian Genealogical Research" which will be on Thursday, September 9th from 3:30 - 4:30 PM. Pat found a new author and really enjoys her books. Her name is Adriana Trigiani and she has written five novels, all with a strong Italian influence in them. The first book Pat read was "Lucia, Lucia" and she gave a very interesting synopsis of it. Ms. Trigiani has also written a trilogy called "Big Stone Gap" and "The Queen of the Big Time".
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) has a film at the Family History Center to view. She's hoping to find a birth record for Caterina MARCHETTO.
Scott Patrick (#4819) completed going through the films of 1827 to 1853 for the Comune of ANZI. He found quite a few ancestors under the names of GARAGUSI and ASMUNDIS. Scott discovered his GARAGUSI name was changed from GARAGUSO while the family was in ANZI. The original family was from PIETRAPERTOSA. Scott recently returned from a trip to Illinois to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday. He presented her with a package of information on the GARAGUSI family, which she was very pleased to receive. Scott has started trying to acquire pictures of what ancestors he can. From his mother he was able to get pictures of all of his grandmother's siblings, another of a great-uncle, and two very large, framed, pictures of his great-grandparents.
Laurie GUGINO Riester (#3878) continues to research Antonio GUGINO and Fortunata PARLATO, from whom she is descended in two ways. They were born and married before the Valledolmo civil record microfilms start, but Laurie is using the Valledolmo marriage to find the children of Antonio and Fortunata. Laurie suspects that most or all of the Gugino's in this country are descended from this generation of Gugino's or perhaps one or two further back.
Ernie and Gloria (GAMBACCINI) SILVA attended the annual "GAMBACCINI" reunion in Kent, Ohio at Plum Creek Park with approximately 75 people in attendance on July 11, 2004. Their daughter, Elizabeth, who lives in Dallas was also able to attend the reunion. Everyone had a good time in sharing food, games, picture taking and swapping stories. Ernie made a family tree and asked relatives to update the tree with the new births and weddings. Gloria spent some time with her second cousins, Corado and Sue. Corado had pictures of his siblings when they were children and another picture when they were young adults with their parents, Angelo and Fermina (CAMPANELLI) GAMBACCINI. Gloria made copies of the pictures. She also made copies of pictures of Angelo with about 25 men who worked at the railroad in Kent, Ohio. You could tell the professions of some of the men by their clothing. Angelo was in the Italian military for three years and Gloria made copies of what appears to be his discharge papers dated 1910. Proper translation is needed for the documents. Sue, Gloria and Francine (Gloria's sister) visited with Mrs. Josephine MOSCA (approximately 80 years old) who is in a rest home now and comes from MONDAVIO, Italy and knew their grandmother, Franchina RICCI GAMBACCINI. She was sad and cried when she saw pictures of the old homeland and wishes she could go back but is not physically able. She told of how she was supposed to marry a young man but he was killed in World War II. The planned marriage was why she came to the United States, otherwise she would still be in Italy. Ernie and Gloria stopped in St. Louis and had lunch at a restaurant at "The Hill" (the Italian district) and went to an authentic Italian deli and a bakery where they bought some torrone and pizzelle.
Ursula PASSAFUMA Rader (#4467) didn't have anything to report this month but her husband, Bill, received a call from a lawyer/author in San Antonio asking for information concerning his father, LeRoy A. Rader. The lawyer is writing a book about politics and politicians during the McCarthy era that closely followed World War II. Bill's father, as the General Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Elections and Privileges in 1950, investigated several of the election irregularities that had occurred at that time. Bill said that it seems like some things about politics don't change! Due to Bill's genealogy work, he was able to give him a fairly complete biography of his father.
Dolores BARNABEI received a copy of Emedio Vincent BARNABEI's obituary. He died in ASCOLI, ITALY and his body was shipped to Victoria, Texas for burial. He was born in ASCOLI, PICENA, ITALY on February 26, 1893, the son of Antonia and Dominic BARNABEI. He was survived by a brother, Luigi BARNABEI, a sister, Ermalinda ROCCAFORTE and another sister, Amasia COLLINA. Dolores looked up the Barnabei's in Italy on the web. She found 12 names and sent emails to each explaining that she was searching for relatives of descendants of Dominic and Antonia Barnabei of Ascoli.
The meeting adjourned at 8:30 PM. Our next meeting will be August 25, 2004 at 6:30 PM at the Round Rock Library.