POINTers IN PERSON Minutes
Chapter # 10 Central Texas/Austin
Sherry PACELLI Haddox (4883)
Joe MASTRANGELO (#2614) opened our monthly meeting with 6 people in attendance, including one guest.
Joe is continuing to extract records from 1809 on. He is currently viewing the records from 1842.
This month Joe received a wealth of information, including certificates from Anne Baker. She is researching the
CAMPANELLA/PUGLIESE names in Putignano. Joe and Anne met on PIE and have discovered they are cousins! Anne provided Joe
with various records for the CAMPANELLA'S and their family. Their common ancestors are Giuseppe Nicola CAMPANELLA and his
spouse, Maria Teresa PUGLIESE.
Maria Teresa PUGLIESE had a brother, Alessandro. His son is Giuseppe who had a daughter, Antonia Pugliese, who married
Angelo MASTRANGELO (Joe's grandfather).
Giuseppe Nicola CAMPANELLA had a son, Francesco, who is Anne's grandfather.
Another twist to this relationship, Giuseppe PUGLIESE, father of Antonia PUGLIESE (Joe's grandmother), had a second wife
with whom he had a son, Alessandro ~ who in turn had a son, Giuseppe, who married Joe's aunt, Angela Mastrangelo (sister
to Joe's father), making Giuseppe a step-nephew as well as a son-in-law to his grandmother, Antonia.
This past month Joe's family held a mini-family reunion in New Jersey. Unfortunately Joe and Marie we unable to attend
however Joe was contacted by the son of one of his 1st cousins who provided him with some pictures of a trip his parents
and grandparents took to DuQuoin, IL in 1951 to visit with the brother (Leonardo) of Joe's maternal grandfather (Rosario).
Since Joe had never met these folks he's very happy to have these pictures. In addition, he can recognize his parents and
grandparents as he remembered them back in the 50's and said it really brought back old memories.
As some of the older club members might remember, Marilyn Maniscalco encountered a Marriage Certificate in the town of
POGGIOREALE, TP, while doing her own research. This chance discovery gave Joe his 1st link to POGGIOREALE for his
PIZZOLATO family. A fact unknown to his entire family. The Marriage Certificate was for Leonardo PIZZOLATO.
Joe received a call from Lin Brinkman who had been contacted by a Bob Lowry from San Jose. Bob had run across Marilyn and
Joe's names in some 1996 minutes which were posted on line as someone researching in POGGIOREALE, TP. The
names he was interested in were ANGELLO and VELLA.
Joe called and told him that these were not names in his family and passed the information on to Marilyn for her
consideration.
Joe received an article about Giovanni DA VERRAZZANO from Bianca OTTONE from MyItalianFamily. Bianca was one of our
vendors at the 2000 POINT Conference here in Austin and provided us with many useful items and excellent information.
Joe found the article particularly interesting since he and Marie watched the Verranzzano Bridge being built from Brooklyn
to Staten Island while they still lived in Brooklyn.
Jamie and Diana CANNONE sent an email announcing the birth of their second child, another daughter. Her name is Gillian Rose. She arrived on Saturday, October 14, 2006, at 12:02 pm. She weighed 6 pounds 12 ounces and was 20 inches long. Her big sister, Breanne, is extremely proud and hasn't stopped saying "my baby sister".
Jeanie MARSALIA (#4251) went to the Houston Italian consulate's office on October 13th to apply for her passport. However, she was unable to obtain it due to a new requirement by the U.S. government that the passports have to be issued electronically. They were in the process of upgrading their equipment and told Jeanie to come back in December. They could only issue passports for Italian citizens whose passports were about to expire.
Cynthia Barnhart was our guest. As a favor to her friend,
Roxanne PIZZI Erwin, Cynthia has started researching her ancestors from Italy. The names she is researching are PIZZI and
COZZA from southern Italy.
Roxanne's paternal great-grandparents were Serafino and Margaret (COZZA) PIZZI. They immigrated to the U.S. in 1901 and
lived in Tacoma, WA. Serafino died in 1917 and Margaret and her children moved in with her brother, Ellis COZZA. The
family left Tacoma and relocated to the San Francisco, California area in the mid 1920's.
On the immigration record from Castle Garden it states that Serafino and Margaret's last residence in Italy was
SAN GIOVANNI and they are pretty certain that the family was from SAN GIOVANNI in the region of CALABRIA. Margaret's
two brothers, Ellis and Ben, and her sister, Rosie, all immigrated in the early 1900's. The family all lived near each
other in Tacoma and then moved to California. Cynthia's email is for5barnharts@sbcglobal.net and would like anyone with
knowledge of these families to contact her.
Willie Henderson was not able to attend our meeting but sent an email stating that he found a Family History Center near his home and learned that they can only help with early 1900's and back. His search is 1945. He also went to the National Archive Center in Fort Worth, TX and found that they, too, could not help with a search so recent as 1945. As he continued to research the subject of Italian P.O.W's that were held at various locations here in the United States, he found a possible match to the information he's looking for. Supposedly, there are files at the Adjutant General's office which contain rosters with I.D. numbers of all P.O.W.'s held in the United States during the period from 1943 to 1945. He has submitted a request to NARA for copies and is waiting for a response. As it stands for the moment, if the information he requested is granted and proves to be pertinent, he'll be off and running to the next step.
Sherry PACELLI Haddox (#4883) was happy to report that she had received a letter from the Houston Italian Consulate stating that she is eligible for Italian citizenship. They sent a list of the certified documents, with Apostilles, that are needed to complete the process. Sherry has sent for all the required documents.
The meeting adjourned at 8:15pm. Our next meeting will be November 28, 2006 at 6:30pm in Room A at the Round Rock Library.