May 22, 2013 Meeting Minutes


    POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
    Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin

    Submitted by: Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388)

    Meeting of POINT # 10 Central Texas called to order at 6:30 pm, 22 May in the home of Bill and Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman with 7 present.

    Lin ONOFRIO Brinkman (#1388) informed the group that the San Antonio Genealogical & Historical Society will hold their annual seminar on 19 October, 2013 at the John Calvin Presbyterian Church in San Antonio. Guest speaker is Lloyd Dewitt Bockstruck, well-known genealogist, lecturer and author. More information is available by emailing saghs@sbcglobal.net or by calling 210-342-5242.

    Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) said that she watched an episode of "Tanked" which is airing on the Animal Planet Channel. The owners went to Carlsbad, CA to build an aquarium for the owners of Pizza Port. Their names are Gina and Vince MARSAGLIA, which is her family name, with the spelling changed.
      Another show named, "Pizza Cuz", on the Cooking Channel is a series featuring pizza places explored by cousins Francis Garcia and Sal Basile. One recent episode featured "Appiza Scholls", where the pronunciation of the word, "Appiza", was corrected by these cousins to the owners. Chapter 10 members had previously recalled grandparents saying, "apeets".

    Betty TOMASELLI Glaser (#5297) has found new names on her TOMASELLI side : AMATRUDA, CASSIPOLI, CATALDO, CELANO, ESPOSITO, FUNARO, LAUDANO, PALUMBO, RISPOLI, SORVILLO, WILCHIINSKI, ZAMPANO, ACAMPORA, D'ELILLO, COCCIO, and VERMIGLIO. New names on the ONOFRIO side include : NAPOLETANO and VINCENT, for a total of 867 names in her family tree.

    Stace SMARELLI found his Grandfather Eustace Smarelli's WWI draft registration in Waterbury, CT. It showed that he worked at Scoville Brass Plant, which made Civil War buttons, and later made brass for the war effort.

    Susan TYLER shared her DNA results : 43% Central European, 34% British Isles, 10% Eastern European, 8% Persian/Turkish, and 5% unknown. The surprising part of the results to Susan was that it did not show any Southern European even though her family came from Southern Italy. It was explained to her that although her family had lived in Italy for perhaps hundreds of years, their ethnic origin was from elsewhere. Susan researched that part of Calabria, and it appears that many of the settlers originally came from Greece.
      She has continued poring through records on FamilySearch for ancestors in San Pietro Apostolo. New names found include : Bernardo FRAGALE, Anna Maria TOMAINO, Pietro DeSANTIS, Teresa DeSANTIS, and Maria MAZZA.
      Bernardo Fragale's son was born in 1813, so Susan estimates that Bernardo must have been born in the 1700s. She said she never anticipated getting that far back in her research. She discovered that she comes from a long line of tailors, but said that, apparently, she did not get that gene.

    Next meeting : 26 June 2013