POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Submitted by: Sherry PACELLI Haddox (#4883)
Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) opened the meeting on July 22nd with 13 present.
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) reported that her last living aunt on her father's side of her family, Dora MARSALIA, died last month.
Patricia COLACINO showed some photos of her father, his sisters and her grandparents in Italy and also when they came to America. She received them and a
number of other photos on a CD from her first cousin, Anthony. He is the son of one of her father's sisters. She's hoping to make a book of photos to give to her cousin
in Italy of her relatives in America when she and her husband, Joe, visit her in September.
Patricia sent for the LDS birth records from MEZZOJUSO in Sicily. She spent quite a few hours at the LDS library since they received the MEZZOJUSO microfilm. After
sifting through the first records on the film of births, marriages, etc. from the commune of MISILMERI, she finally got to what was on the film for the municipio of
MEZZOJUSO (years 1867-1875). She was trying to find either the birth record of her great-grandfather, Vincenzo MUSACCHIA, who she thinks may have been born in
1867 or her great-grandmother, Gesualda MANOLA/Jessie MUSACCHIA who she thinks may have been born in 1873. Unfortunately, she didn't find records for either of
them.
The real struggle was the fact that the records on the film for the years 1867, 1868, 1869, 1870, 1871 and 1873 were all entirely handwritten in Italian. They were not the
standard fill in the blanks record forms. The 1872 and 1874 records were missing. The only records on the film for MEZZOJUSO that had forms were for 1875. Needless
to say, it was difficult to read in addition to the fact that many records were water damaged, torn, or had pages missing.
Patricia tried going to the indexes first and then if anything looked vaguely like a possibility she went back to the numbered record. She did find a few instances where the
name Giuseppe MUSACCHIA (the name of Vincenzo's father) appeared but she wasn't sure what she was looking at since she couldn't always read the words. There was
also a death record in 1875 for an Antonio MUSACCHIA. Supposedly, Vincenzo MUSACCHIA was the identical twin of an Antonio MUSACCHIA. At this point she's not
sure what to do. She may go back to the LDS Family History Center with a digital camera and try to photograph some of the records or ask her husband, Joe, to go with
her to see if he can save the images to a flash drive so she can enlarge them at home.
Everyone enjoyed the fellowship but there was no new information about genealogy.
The meeting adjourned at 8:30pm. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, August 26th at 6:00pm at
Andiamo Ristorante at 2521 Rutland Drive in Austin.