Italian Roots and Genealogy
From Abruzzo to Astoria: A Personal History of Italian-American Migration
Picture yourself traversing the bustling streets of Astoria, Queens, where the air is thick with Italian dialects and the spirit of a robust, tight-knit Abruzzese community permeates every corner. Our guest today, Maria Fosco, raised amidst the lively Italian neighborhood, retraces the vibrant roots of her ancestry, offering a fascinating glimpse into the migration patterns of Italians and their profound imprint on Astoria.
Join us as we follow Maria’s engaging narrative, journeying all the way back to her great-grandmother's house in Italy, purchased in the 1890s, and the subsequent chapters of her family's history. Experience the profound saga of her family's transition from Italian-speaking immigrants to English-speaking American citizens. Maria unveils an intriguing tale of reconnecting with long-lost cousins through ancestry and DNA, and offers insights into her visits to her family's ancestral house in Italy.
Maria emphasizes the profound significance of knowing one’s roots and sharing those stories with the world. She has documented her family history in compelling chapters, and shares tales from her daily storytelling sessions with her late mother. From performing in a folkloric group in traditional costumes to tracing the path of the seasonal journey of sheep. Maria's experiences have been rich and diverse. So, tag along for a ride through time and heritage as Maria paints a vivid picture of the Italian-American history and the importance of preserving our past.
Read about my research story and how to begin your family research.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Picture yourself traversing the bustling streets of Astoria, Queens, where the air is thick with Italian dialects and the spirit of a robust, tight-knit Abruzzese community permeates every corner. Our guest today, Maria Fosco, raised amidst the lively Italian neighborhood, retraces the vibrant roots of her ancestry, offering a fascinating glimpse into the migration patterns of Italians and their profound imprint on Astoria.
Join us as we follow Maria’s engaging narrative, journeying all the way back to her great-grandmother's house in Italy, purchased in the 1890s, and the subsequent chapters of her family's history. Experience the profound saga of her family's transition from Italian-speaking immigrants to English-speaking American citizens. Maria unveils an intriguing tale of reconnecting with long-lost cousins through ancestry and DNA, and offers insights into her visits to her family's ancestral house in Italy.
Maria emphasizes the profound significance of knowing one’s roots and sharing those stories with the world. She has documented her family history in compelling chapters, and shares tales from her daily storytelling sessions with her late mother. From performing in a folkloric group in traditional costumes to tracing the path of the seasonal journey of sheep. Maria's experiences have been rich and diverse. So, tag along for a ride through time and heritage as Maria paints a vivid picture of the Italian-American history and the importance of preserving our past.
Read about my research story and how to begin your family research.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi, this is Bob Sorrentino from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check us out on YouTube and Facebook on our podcast and our great sponsors, your Dolce Vida with Dawn Materra, Italy Rooting with Letizia Sinisi and Abietivo Casso with Sabrina Franco. So today we have a great guest from New York. I haven't interviewed somebody from New York in a long time, Maria.
Speaker 2:Fasco.
Speaker 1:So welcome Maria. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I appreciate this so much. Nice to see you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, being a fellow New Yorker, where are you from?
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in Astoria, queens, in a very heavily abruzzese community.
Speaker 1:Ah, so you know Marta Christie. I went to Marta Christie.
Speaker 2:Oh, what year I graduated 1980. Oh, 69.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great, I'm an old guy see. We paved the way. We paved the way for you youngsters. So how close did you live to Marta Christie?
Speaker 2:I was about a mile and a half. I used to walk there. It was easier for me to walk than just to take the bus. But you know, because I lived on 18th Street in Astoria, which is really it's the very old section of Astoria and the very heavily Italian section, and I grew up there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm going to guess that my uncle's wife, my aunt, probably came from that same area. I vaguely remember going there when I was a kid, so I can't recall everything, but I know our family was from Astoria, but I had to take a bus and two trains to get to Marta Christie until I got my car. So I went from an hour and a half trip to down to about 20 minutes, oh wow.
Speaker 2:Now. I used to walk it. It was a 20 minute walk. It wasn't too bad. No, that's great.
Speaker 1:I used to walk, you know, from the R train, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:But I lived in College Point.
Speaker 1:So it was. It was a great experience. Like I said, it was a trip. It was quite a trip. So now, going up, you know what was your neighborhood like. I mean, we, you know, we grew up in Corona, so I'm sure there's a lot of similarities.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of similarities in Corona. People in Corona come from I forgot the name Montes something in the region of Salerno. That's where Montes. People from Corona come from, who settled there when I come from. The Abrucesa settled where I come from, in the 18th Street, 14th Street area, astoria Boulevard. They were first the Salese, which is a town up near La Quila, and then the Orsonnesi started to come. They started to migrate and settled in that area, so it was very heavy Italian Orsonnesi. Orsonne is a town where we come from, so when I grew up there were thousands of us there, thousands. So the point, you know, we had a social club there. Actually we had two social clubs on the same block, on the same town, that's funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom, my mom is a Bades, and Corona had a lot of mix of different people because my father wound up there too and his family was from Naples. But growing up these are neighborhoods I don't like that anymore. You walk down the street and all you heard was Italian.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely. That's all you heard. And, in fact, my mother never learned how to speak English because everyone around her spoke Italian or dialect. The stores in the area were all Italian. Besides being Italian, many of them were from Abruzzo, so she even spoke dialect with them. So she never learned. So her dying day never learned how to speak English, which was amazing.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is amazing. I mean my grandparents my mom's mom spoke a little bit, my grandfather not too much, and my dad's family. I never will call my dad's mother speaking English. We would go there on a Sunday and my father would just speak to her and the Neapolitan dialect and that was it. But my mom and dad always fought over whose Italian was correct.
Speaker 2:My sisters do that because they're both married to Bades.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other language.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the point that all right. Today is actually my sister's 33rd wedding anniversary and for the life of me, I still cannot understand my brother-in-laws. I have to ask my sisters what did they say? Because they speak to each other in Bades dialect and I just I have no clue. And my sister actually explained to me that the Bades dialect is also part German because it was taken over by Frederick the Great and that's why there are a lot of blonde, blue eyes people from Bades and a lot of their Bades words are actually German words, and I never knew that. This was explained to me by my sisters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my grandmother had blue eyes, but we were just there last week. Sorry to be back, but we had the driver that took us around. He was. We were talking to him about the language and he would say something in Italian and then they would say it in Bades and it was like not even close.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no night and day. Night and day yeah.
Speaker 1:So now, growing up in the Italian neighborhood, I mean, what sparked you to do any research and follow up, and what have you found?
Speaker 2:I was always very interested in the Italian movement, the Italian American community. What motivated them to come here? When they got here, where did they live? What did they do for a living? Their migration patterns. I used to do a lot of studying in migration patterns Communities from Italy they moved up to Harlem and then they moved up into the Bronx, or from Italy they moved to Brooklyn and then from Brooklyn to Long Island. And I always was very curious about why. We were in Queens well, astoria, queens.
Speaker 2:And I sort of realized that the mass migration of the Brutzezi, the Orsongezi, was that they were working in construction, you know, building the bridges, the tunnels and whatever. So it was convenient for them to live in Astoria. And I found another issue, another situation Many of the Brutzezi who came, they were anarchists and they were friends of Carlo Tresca. Carlo Tresca was an abruzzese, he was from Sulmona and he obviously he was killed here in Manhattan. But a lot of the anarchists moved to Astoria, the abruzzese. So one abruzzese brought another abruzzese and I met an elderly lady who was Orsongezi but her father was an anarchist and she said that's the reason why they moved to Astoria. So it was one abruzzese brought in another one and before you know it you have a whole community, let's say abruzzese, living in Astoria and or, you know like, in Corona. I've known that the Neapolitan's lived in Corona and the Bronx. A lot of the Badeis lived in the Bronx and they migrated to Westchester a lot of those Badeis. So yeah, I find this stuff fascinating. I really, really do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. Me too, I wish I had started when I was younger. I only got started maybe 15 years ago or something like that. My grandfather and my uncles when they were younger, they were ice men, and the Badeis are known.
Speaker 2:Badeis are ice men, and Coleman yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I can't figure out why, but it was funny because we were in Bari and I saw a bicycle with a big like I don't think maybe in a small motorbike. I have a picture I'll have to check it out with a basket on the back that said ice man, yeah. So it's like oh yeah, a real body is an ice man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would love to learn about how they became the ice men and the Coleman, I mean. And even to this day, if you look, if you ever speak to anyone who owns those, the oil trucks, heating oil trucks their descendants are Badeis. If you speak to them, if you talk to them and you ask them about their tiny heritage, they'll tell you they're Badeis. So they went from ice to coal to now heating oil companies. So it's interesting how the movement goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and funny you mentioned that because my uncle he was actually, I think he was Sicilian. Of course my aunt was Badeis, but he owned an oil company in Corona, minus fuel oil, and I worked with my cousin a couple of summers and that was quite an interesting job for sure. So now you're sitting, so both your parents born in Italy.
Speaker 2:Yes, both my parents were born in Italy. They went through World War II in Italy. My father arrived here in 1956 because really there was no Italy, was going through a recession, there was no work there and he settled in Astoria with all the other Paisons and he raised enough money to pay for my mother's passage. So she came here in 58, she came two years later and then they had my sister and bought a house and then my twin sister and I were born. So but we always stayed in the same neighborhood. We never moved. My father never moved, actually it's only they moved.
Speaker 2:My mother moved after my father had passed. She moved about 20 years ago and she went to live in another section of Queens which was full of Orsonese. They sort of migrated to another part of Queens all at once. So that was another interesting situation, cause I said that I said you didn't, you didn't really leave 18th street. Now you're on Hayeson street. They're all the same, they're all the Orsonese, all your Paisons are all lined up across the street and she goes. That's why I moved here. I wanted to still be with my Paisons.
Speaker 1:Makes sense, that makes sense. You know my wife, my wife's mom. She grew up in Little Italy, on Spring Street.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And so she. You know they were right in the heart of things and you know her uncle lived there until he passed away. He never moved, he never left Spring Street.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't, I get it. I do get it, I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they found one bank account with $500,000 in it. Wow, imagine he never got married and he had one bank account. That's something. I guess he was saving for a rainy day or something, yeah, so now I'm going to assume you've been back, yeah, Italy. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I go back actually every year at this point. My partner has a house literally actually in Orsonia, in the town where my family comes from. So he's from that area also and he has a house and we go there. The house that my family had was sold about 20 years ago. It was just falling apart. No one had lived in there since the 70s Since they were actually since like 68, 69. And it was time to get rid of the house. There was no point in renovating it or whatever. So we sold.
Speaker 2:Actually, nothing we didn't sell was our land, and I actually went to see it about six years ago. I hadn't never seen the land that my family worked on because they had the house in the town and then they had the land outside the town with the Maseria. Maseria is the farmhouse, and when I went there I saw the roof of the Maseria had collapsed, the building had collapsed and there was a landslide on the land. It was sad to see, but we still had that. But then, because I'm registered in our tax, since I'm an Italian citizen, the town administrators sent me a tax bill for $10,000 because I was the only living relative that land was attached to. I said this is crazy. I barely know where the land is and it's not even workable. And they said, well, we'll make a deal with you. Just, we'll take back the land and just erase the tax bill. And I said, fine, take back the land, what am I gonna do with it? It was the end of that one.
Speaker 1:But I do go back every year, plus I've studied it. Obviously they just wanted the land.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they wanted the land.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean we went back to a few places last year. I mean we had gone 25 years ago and had them in the back, and now we went last year and we were again this year and I'm working on the citizenship. I'm so bummed that I didn't do this sooner, but hopefully we'll not get it eventually. But I had a situation with my grandmother's father's family and they had a Palazzo in Montabello and the place is big and the current owner let us go inside and it was so sad. I mean it was nice to go in but it was so sad because you could see what it once was and now it's in such disrepair and the mayor and the council, they wanted to buy it like 10 years ago and he just won't sell it. They wanted to fix it and I don't know, make it a museum, make it a hotel, whatever they were going to do with it.
Speaker 1:But you know those towns, those couple of towns in Calabria, same situation. We went down one street and it was just all empty houses still with, like you know, bits and pieces of furniture and everything in it. And they told me that you know, people from people have moved away and they work in Germany or France or you know different places, and they're hanging on to it but they don't do anything with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I know, but we did, we were able to sell it, we were lucky, we found a buyer and who renovated it. And I passed by every time and I'm sad because I, you know, it's my family time. My great grandmother bought that house. She sold her dowry in order to buy that house because she did not want to live with her mother-in-law and at the time that she bought it. So this was like in the 1890s when she bought it. It was just a too too room little hut, but it was in the town. You know, obviously it was destroyed during the war and then my father worked as a. He baked bricks during right after the war under the Marshall plan and in paint. For payment instead of money they gave him bricks and he was able to rebuild the house and he rebuilt it and it was like two became three stories at one point. So it was a three story house. It was like a townhouse type of thing.
Speaker 2:And you know, when I was a kid, when we went back, we lived there, we stayed there, but then, you know, when you get older, my sister's got married, I had a career, I went to Italy all the time, but I really didn't go back to the town anymore. You know my grandparents had passed. I hardly had any relatives there and I, you know the house was in disarray and so really no one went back. So then we got an offer someone to buy the house and we just sold it. There was really nothing we can do. My sisters said you know, we're not going back to Italy and we're not going to be pouring money into a house in Italy. And I felt the same way. Like you know, my life is here, you know, and it was a pretty big house to pour a lot of money into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's, that's cool, so so. So then your grandmother, she must have had a, she must have come from a family role to do family then to be able to have a dowry like that to purchase the house. Not that the house was that much money, I suppose. Yeah.
Speaker 2:She did my. This is my father's family. They were very wealthy landowners and I only found this out. I didn't. I didn't know that they were, you know, well off. I didn't know how well they were well off. And it wasn't until I went back in what, 2017 to 2018, that I spoke to someone who was a historian of the town. He said to me you know, your great great grandfather owned the. He showed me the part of the land and he told me the acreage. And I looked up the acreage and I converted it into American, american acres and it's the size of Central Park, Wow.
Speaker 1:And I said it can't be.
Speaker 2:I said this is that's it's. You know it doesn't make any sense. He says no, yeah, because we know what we're talking about. We've looked it up. It was the size of Central Park, the amount of land that they had, and then, little by little, it was sold off, piece by piece, and then split up amongst you know, other children and whatever, until it was down to to really nothing. And yeah, and then that's what. That's the reason why my father's parents, or my father's family, never came here Not one of them, and it was because they were wealthy Whereas my other great-grandfathers all came here this is prior to World War II but they were birds of passage, meaning they came, they worked and they went back.
Speaker 2:No one stayed. And I really couldn't understand this whole mentality of not staying, and I don't know it. I do know one great-grandfather used to say America will ruin your families if you stay, you know your wives will be liberated, you know you'll lose your culture, you'll lose your language or whatever. So I don't know if this was the mentality in those days, or the mentality was just to come here and make money and then go back there and buy, because we didn't come from a family that stayed. You know, my father came in 56. So we're here fairly recently compared to other Latin Americans. I hear all the. You know I worked at the Colandria Institute for 25 years. I was, you know, with the museum. All the Latin Americans I worked with their great-grandfathers came here. They all came at the turn of the century or prior to World War.
Speaker 2:I, or you know no one, I was the as far as a Latin American. I was the youngest of the generations that came. I was the newly generation that came. I actually spoke Italian and in fact I was the only one in the office who spoke Italian. No one spoke Italian. And that you understand the reason why that because of World War II, they didn't teach the children the language and all that kind of stuff, whereas by the 50s the mentality was over. That didn't that. It was believed that you should teach your children Italian by the time the 50s and the 60s came around. So my generation all speak Italian. All my cousins, we all speak Italian.
Speaker 2:You know Although I have cousins that don't speak Italian at all, which is very, very odd for us that like they couldn't communicate with their grandparents, like how can you not communicate with your grandparents? How can you not like have a conversation with your grandmother. And I was very lucky. I was taught Italian. Well, italian became my first language. It was originally my first language. I really didn't learn English until I started going to school, because we only spoke Italian in the house, and my father was insistent that we speak Italian in the house. He wanted to communicate with us. He wanted us to understand what was going on at the kitchen table. He wanted us to communicate with our grandparents, and my mother taught us how to write little letters to my grandparents in Italy. So we would write you know caro, non, non, you know bon natale, you know that kind of stuff, and so we would do that. That's the way I grew up.
Speaker 1:That's so great, I'm so bummed that they didn't teach us. You know, I was, like you said, all my all, my mother's family, the exception of my one uncle who stayed behind in Italy when my grandparents came, and to your point, I think my grandparents had planned to go back. But then you know, world War, I had just happened, my grandmother had, between World War I and you know, the end of the war, I think she had at least two, if not three children. I mean, she was, you know, knocking them out pretty quick and so they didn't go back.
Speaker 1:And you know, the interesting thing you mentioned about your family with the land, that was my grandmother's family, my father's mother. When I look at the records for those people, it either says rich person One thing actually says rich person and a couple of the other ones say you know property owners and things like that, and they had land. They had land in several different places and last count, my cousin Chincey are over there found like six or seven different properties in different parts of Italy and but same thing, my grandmother and her aunt, what he only to from the family that came. And I never knew this, nobody ever said it, nobody ever mentioned how? What family was back in Italy? And now, since then, I found my dad's first cousins still still alive. I mean, it's just been an amazing experience for me to find people that no one ever talked about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I know. I just had this experience, this really weird experience. My grandmother's brother, her eldest brother, came here in 1921. He was 17 years old, he worked here, got married here. He married a woman from Calabria, I believe. He died in 1946 at 42 years old, no-transcript, and the family just disappeared. They disappeared. He had three sons. We had no clue where they were. We just found them through ancestry, ancestry, dna and we had a family reunion back in May. They didn't even know we existed. We knew they existed, they didn't know we existed. And then I found records that they used to live down the block from us in Astoria. They all had all moved to Florida and we never heard from them again, so we had no. Well, I have a similar story with my cousin, linda.
Speaker 1:Like I said, you know my grandmother and her aunt when he only was okay. My grandmother's aunt came in 1905 and my grandmother came in 1915. And I never knew about this until I got contacted by Linda and she said I think we're researching the same person, maria Piromalo, and I think we might be related. I said we're definitely related. I said Maria was my great grandfather's sister and she was like you sure. I said I'm 100% positive, there's no question about this. And so she did ancestry and, of course, if we were a match, we're like, I guess, third cousins once removed or something like that. But to your point, our families were tied at the hip until the 1960s and we never knew.
Speaker 1:I never knew about these people and you know, as we're discovering stuff, her grandmother was. We refer to her as Ampetris. I probably met her when I was very, very young. Maybe we met Linda, for that matter, but I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if we even met Linda, for that matter. But when I married my first wife, we were going to look at an apartment that my cousin was vacating and flushing and we passed this house on Booth Memorial Avenue and I remember my father saying that's where Ampetris lives, and you know 20 years old and went right over my head. So now I'm talking to Linda and she says yes, we live, that's where we live.
Speaker 1:My cousin Jean lived downstairs with his mother and we used to. I used to be there every summer and my apartment that my cousin vacated was five blocks away from Ampetris, Never know, and my cousins were like close with with Jean's mother and my father. My father was a photographer for the Daily News and I could see the pose of Jean's mom and I think they got married in 1956 or something like that. And I said to him I said I get, my father took that picture. I could tell yeah.
Speaker 2:That my father I could see the way she's posed.
Speaker 1:I am sure my father took the picture and my grandfather ran a business they made bridal crowns in New York City and the bells and things. And when Linda, when we, when we got to meet Linda, her mother, her grandmother had saved beads and she brought us all beads. Wow. So you know, these things are probably 80 years old, maybe a hundred years old, no one knows how. Yeah, that's great. That's great. I love these kinds of stories. I love the stories.
Speaker 2:I love the stories. I love the stories. That's great. I love these kinds of stories. I'm always asking people's their stories, always.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, that's why I do this. People ask me, you know, I said the story is a similar, but they're different and everybody's got a different twist on things. You know, everybody's got something in their background that's similar. But also, I'm intrigued by why people came, Me too, how they met people, you know. Did they go back there to leave? What was it like when they went back? I mean, we went to Torrito last week and they just You're from Torrito. Yeah, my grandmother yeah.
Speaker 2:My problem was the boat from Torrito.
Speaker 1:Oh, really yeah.
Speaker 2:What's the last name? Carl? When is Carlucci and when is Machia?
Speaker 1:I have Carlucci in the tree way, way back. I think I have some Machia my. Both my grandparents were Nicoletti but they're not. They weren't related.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're the same thing. Yeah, we were just there and and I'm going to have to send you my tree so you could send it to them. I'm sure we're related somewhere to the line. That is interesting.
Speaker 2:So they did. I went to the Torrito dinner dance they had. They used to be in a Torrito Mutual Aid Society many years ago and it was their 100th anniversary and this was about 25 years ago, and I went to their dinner dance in the Bronx. Oh, that's all located in the Bronx? Yeah, they don't. They don't exist anymore, but I believe they, the Torritos, always have a. They have a picnic in New Jersey every year in June.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:I have to find out about that.
Speaker 1:I'd have to find out about that. Yeah, they, they, um, um, they actually had. They actually had a small little house, um, on Via Cardona. If I'm saying the right yeah, I think that's right Um, and in fact the town historian just sent me just today, sent me the um. It says like the um, like the. It's like a card or I guess I don't know if it's a census type of thing, but it lists the people who lived in the house and that showed my grandparents and my uncle, uh and um. That was really interesting. But yeah, I will have to compare notes on that because that's so interesting.
Speaker 1:They were just so nice to us there, it was just great. Uh, my friend Latitia, um, she's from Puglia, she's from Bari, and last year she did a big tour and and I was just going to go to Tirito just to walk around, it's just a no, no, no, you know I'm going to take care of everything, don't worry about it. So we got to meet the mayor and they brought us into, you know to to records and they gave me the records of my. I had some, but they gave me the records of my um, great, great grandparents, birth and death and marriage and things like that. Um, so that was really really very exciting, yeah. So now I look at the wall behind you and I see all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, this is, this is my life, this is this is the life that uh, I don't know if I have, or I had, or, but actually there are more. I have more in front of me and on the side, and even have some at home. Yeah, these are, this is. This is 40 years worth of uh work within the Italian American community. That's really what it is.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Um, I have some stuff On the other wall. You know from our last trip that they they had given us. We had come back, we had to buy a suitcase to bring back all the books that they gave us and then, while I'm Italian so I'm struggling to get through some of them, but every place we weren't, they were given us a book with two books about the town, about the history of the town and things like that. So so now I know you also Were involved in the new Italian American Museum going up in the New York City, correct?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm still on the board. I mean, I'm a founder, I'm still on the board. I was the administrator up until 2008, so I'm like Waiting for it to open up again. I have meetings with Dr Shelton and the board. Occasionally we hit we, you know, we have to make decisions on things. I'm anxious to see it open. I mean I, it was, it was my baby at one point, you know, I Remember dr Shelza back in 2001, after 9-11.
Speaker 2:He had real reservations about it, whether or not we should go forward with it. We had just we just we had just been incorporated on June 12th, and so this was after 9-11. He said, with all that's going on in the world, I don't know if this has any value or if this is important enough, and maybe we should just, you know, not do this project now, because at that point we didn't have a building, we just had materials, and the materials were from the exhibit. I'm sure he spoke to you about the exhibit. I'm the bit of New York of the time, americans at New York Historical Society. So we had all this material that people did not want back. They, they told us to keep it. So we had rooms and storage of space, rooms and rooms of all these, these Wonderful items. Like my mother donated her grandmother's sewing machine and you know my mother he said I don't want it back, keep it. And so that's how the museum was developed. So we we convinced dr Shelza to continue on. That was in 2001 and we did by the building 2008.
Speaker 2:They realized the building was falling apart, so we made a decision to rebuild. So we tore that down and started rebuilding. It was supposed to been up by 2020, but we all know pandemic hit. Everything was at a standstill and we had a meeting not too long ago, about a month ago, and we don't know who will be opened by the spring. We're trying, we're trying. Actually, I, I Was prepared for us to be open for this Columbus Day, for Monday. That's how you know, it was in my mind. We'll be open for Columbus Day of 2023.
Speaker 2:Obviously, it's not happening, but luckily we do have funding for it. We have the funding to To finish it. So I think that was my, my fear that we didn't have the funding to finish it, but we do have it. So it's just a matter of time. You know the contractors just moving it along and then we have to get back in there and, you know, put up all out there our exhibits and bring back all the items that are in storage. And I think I don't know if he told you the the safe. You know, because the museum was the old Stabil Bank. It had a gigantic safe in it and the safe was I don't even know how many years it was, at least 150 years old. It was monumental. It was so heavy. They had to get two cranes to get it out of the museum from from from the ceiling, from, you know, and Apparently it's in storage in Chicago right now. We have to get that back. You know that's, that's a, that's a centerpiece of the museum.
Speaker 1:Exciting. Yeah, that's, that's so cool. Yeah, you know, I remember when I interviewed Dr Shelza that you know it was like really supposed to be imminent and and, like I said I think I interviewed him was it had to be just before COVID Mm-hmm, because he was one of the. He was one of the first interviews that I actually did, because I wasn't doing the video then I was just doing the audio, I believe, and I was so excited to hear about it and you know so. So so for the people listening, you know when it does open, what kind of exhibits and what's gonna be in there.
Speaker 2:Oh well, we are gonna put in the items that we had previously, which will be a permanent exhibit, and those are, you know, all like, you know, the, the thongs from the Iceman, and we have a gigantic book on A great grandson of a midwife gave us, so, especially when it's from Italy, so it's a listing of all the babies that she, that she delivered in little Italy. They're just. That will be the permanent Exhibit and then, I believe, on the second floor, it will be A revolving exhibit, whoever, as we we used to do this when we were at the Klandra Institute. We had an exhibit space and we would have artists or certain, you know, like, so, like the, the Caruso, the Caruso Museum. They had an exhibit there once. So it'll be changing exhibits on the second floor, I believe, second floor, yeah, yeah. And then, I believe, on the, we have a terrorist to have some events and we have a theater, so we're going to be doing a lot of things and it's gonna be really exciting.
Speaker 2:I mean, you don't get to, it's something in life that a lot of people don't get to do. You don't get to say that you founded a museum, something that's permanent, that's a building that's brick, and you could say, hey, I was part of that. So you know that that's really my legacy with In my life. I mean, I, whatever work I do, I've always done it for the museum, I've done it for Italian Americans, I've I've loved, I love doing it and I love doing it and I have so much pleasure in doing these things. Actually, I'm doing something for my family right now which is interesting.
Speaker 2:For my birthday, which was a few months ago, my sister gave me a gift and it was For to write up family stories, for write family history. So each week I get a Questioned email to me saying what were your grandparents like? Something like that, and I would write up Whatever I remember from my grandparents and that you know I would finish that. Next week I get another question you know, what did your house look like as a child, or what did you do as a child, and. But I've been doing it and I've been Writing about all the family history that I know of and I I believe my sister did. This is because I'm the only one in the family who really knows the family history, so I'm the only one who asks the question. It's really asking questions, that's all it is, and trying to write down.
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of times I went to Argentina to go speak to my great uncle and I went there really because I wanted to speak to him about the family history and he gave me a whole bunch of information and I actually had to start writing everything down because I could never remember all of this, and you know so, luckily, I even used what he gave me in this. So right now, I've written 15 chapters of this. You know, in each chapter it's about seven, eight pages. You know the chapters are small, you know, but we have.
Speaker 2:What was your grandmother like? How did your parents meet? You know all this kind of stuff, but I'm trying to go back in time as much as possible to to at least Put it in writing for my own family about what I'm doing, put it in writing for my own family about what our family Was like, what we went through, who was who, what was what, and the little stories, little anecdotes, the snippets. Um, my mother, my mother passed away in 2016 and I went to live with her for the six months prior that she did, she passed, I went to take care of her and every day, um, she would, we would sit up in bed. She was, she had cancer and you know she, but she was able to function, she was able to talk, and I would sit with her and ask her these just simple questions, you know, and all of a sudden she would just flow, the information would just flow from her. And these are stories I never heard before. She never spoke about it. I mean, she told me the first time that she went to her future mother-in-law's house. It was for her sister-in-law's wedding and she actually described her outfit to me and I never heard the story before and I and and then she one story was she was describing her wedding, the dinner at her wedding and and what was served. I had never heard these kind of stories before and these little things.
Speaker 2:And then we were talking a lot about the war. Because she was a child during the war, she never really talked about it because her mother was killed during the war. She didn't like to talk about it. What happened was a journalist got in touch with me and he wanted to interview Children that went through the war. So as he was typing the, he was in Italy. So as he was typing me the questions, I would sit with her and ask her the questions and type back the answer. And I heard stories that were just really heartbreaking heartbreaking that she never spoke about and In way, I'm glad I wrote them. I wrote them down for the, for the journalist, but then I wrote them down for myself, so I wanted to record what she had said to me, what happened to her when she was 10 years old, and it was very important and it's really important for us to know these things.
Speaker 2:A lot of people say oh, why do we do this? Why do we go back in our ancestry? Why do we want to know who was our great-great-grandfather? Who cares, who cares? And I hear that all the time. It's very important that we learn what our family has gone through, especially if you have parents or grandparents that went through a war, that have been traumatized, that have PTSD, that were taken both my grandparents, grandfathers, were taken as prisoners of war. What my father went through when he was 14 years old during the war to keep his family alive and feed them, and then even to learn about your great-great-grandfather.
Speaker 2:I had a great-great-grandfather who was a bounty hunter. And here's the story he was a bounty hunter, made a lot of money, he had a lot of businesses, he didn't trust anyone, but he had six daughters. So what did he do? He educated all his daughters. He made sure they had education. So these women were so highly educated that they became teachers. And in fact, because I pay attention to family, root, family branches and all of that, everyone from that branch of cousins were all educated and that comes from the fact that the great-grandmothers the six of them were all educated, so they educated their children and the children educated their grandchildren and it goes generation by generation.
Speaker 2:So I always say it see, that branch of the family, they were all educated because of my great-great-grandfather, who was a bounty hunter, didn't trust anyone and educated all his daughters. So this is the reason why you got to learn about your family. You have to learn and it's amazing what you hear, what you know, and it's, let's say, your grandfather's philosophy of life. Where did he get that? He got that from his father. Where did his father get that from? His father went through an experience, he went through something else and he's taught his son something and these things get passed down through generations that we don't even realize, that we're not even. We don't observe, we're not cognizant of these things. So it's very important to learn about your family very, very important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and you know I interviewed and he's from College Point too. I didn't know it when I first met him, dr Visco and his great-grandfather was a jeweler in Italy. And when he came to America, when he bought the house, in the kids' room he painted on the ceiling like a microscope and like the cover of a medical book and a few things like that and he told all the kids you're going to be doctors and the whole family are doctors or pharmacists or you know, because he instilled that into them. Yeah, he instilled that. But to your point about the stories, I don't know if you ever heard of Anthony Riccio. He's passed away suddenly, like a year and a half ago. He's such a wonderful guy. He's written several books, but when he was just out of college he became the advocate for Italian Americans in Boston, or Italians actually in Boston in the 1970s and these were people now who had come in late 1800s, early 1900s. They were all in their 70s and he had the wherewithal to photograph and record their stories and I'll send you some of them. The stories are just so profound and so deep because it's in their own words, from what it was like on a farm in Italy, why they came, what it was like in America during the war, what their fathers were like, what their mothers were like Just amazing.
Speaker 1:And one story that Anthony told was about this couple in America. The husband worked. He was like a tenant farmer or something like that we were talking about. You know, the men thought they were in charge, but really the women were in charge and the women were smart, they made them think they were in charge. But he was a tenant farmer and the man was selling the farm and he went to his wife and said you know, he's selling the farm, I'd like to buy it, but he wants $75. I don't have $75. And she said wait, and she went in and she came out and had the $75 because she saved every dime, every nickel, whatever he gave her she put away. So they were able to buy the farm. And these stories are just amazing and unfortunately there aren't a lot of us who get it. We get it Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's extremely important. And you know it's funny because my twin sister, because I went through my ancestry, I found my grandfather from 1730s, and so my twin sister said so, now what are you going to do with that information? Who cares? Okay, so I told my sister it matters, everything, matters, everything. All this kind of information is very important to us. And then she was the one who gave me this gift on my birthday to write down the family history, because I told her this is extremely important to know this kind of stuff A lot of people don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I met this distant cousin. You know the family that disappeared when we had a family reunion. You know nothing of his family, absolutely nothing. And it was so sad, absolutely sad. You miss on family history, you miss on what your family went through, you miss out on the culture you heritage, your legacy, you know nothing of your legacy. Then At least I have a sense of what my family legacy was in Italy. At least I have that. A lot of people don't have this and it's very, very sad, no-transcript Because then they start to adopt other cultures and other heritages because they don't know anything about their own, which is, you know, I guess, if they want to, it's fine, but you know like, why not embrace your own heritage? It's so rich.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and that's why I do this, because I feel that you know, as we go with next generation, next generation, next generation, we're losing that. You know we're losing our history, our heritage. I mean, especially when you go, when you go over to Italy and they're so deep into the heritage and the history and they're so proud of everything that they have, even these small little towns. It's so far into us, yes, and I tell people, you know, people say they I'm going to go to Italy, where are you going to go? I'm going to go to Rome, I'm going to go to Florence, you're going to go to the hometown. No, I don't know, I don't know anybody there.
Speaker 2:Right, but that's where you're from, right. A lot of people don't even know where they're from. They have no clue. If you ask them they'll say, oh, somewhere in Naples, you know. And I'm like what? You never went, you never asked, you never saw any documents, you never you know. Like why don't you know? Well, how come you don't know where your family is from? You know, and for us it was embedded in our minds and it was instilled where we came from.
Speaker 2:My parents were very proud of Brutzezi, very, very proud. I mean I sent you some of the pictures they used to perform in a folkloric group representing a Brutso. They went all over Italy. They did a Brutso tour film I sent you. And then when they came here they were part of a folkloric group from Orsonna and in fact I was part of that group because they needed dancers and I could dance and I knew the older dances. So I was part of that for a good 15 years. I was part of that and I sent you pictures also of that. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2:I was dressed in costume from Orsonna, from our town, and my mother made the costume. Part of the costume was very old, it was my great-great-grandmother's night shirt and the apron was old and whatever, but my mother had to recreate the rest of the costume. So I went all over the Tri-State area performing, especially during the 10-Hurricane Culture Month, and it was an experience. I met so many people from different communities. I met a lot of Italian Americans. I enjoyed it tremendously. Plus, we sung the songs from Abruzzo, the dances. It was part of my existence and it really made me what I am today. I can't even describe the experience and, god forbid, some other girls or people my age did that. They wouldn't be caught dead doing that. They would get dressed up in costume, folklore costume, and go sing and perform in singing old Abruzzese folklore songs. They wouldn't be caught dead doing that, and yet I embraced it.
Speaker 2:I found it as an opportunity to get out of the house, to perform, to dance, to do something. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it beyond belief. It taught me a lot to be with people and how to interact with the community. It taught me everything about my own culture. It's a shame that other people don't know anything about their own culture. I know about my Italian culture. I know about my Abruzzo culture, my Orsonese culture.
Speaker 2:I had tons of books on it that my uncle left me. I thought my sisters were saying I have to have the books. I was like, no, I have to keep the books. In fact, for a family reunion, my cousin wanted me to write a history about Orsonia, our town that we come from. I spent all of last summer summer of 22, researching. I went to every library, I pulled out every book. I emailed Italy, orsonia if anybody can give me information and whatever. I wrote a nice 10-page no, it was more. What am I talking about? It's a good 20-25-page history on Orsonia, starting from the Roman times. We published it and handed it out to family members. It was a family reunion. We were over 100 people. That was nice. I really loved doing it.
Speaker 2:I knew the history of Orsonia, but I only knew maybe up until, maybe from two, three hundred years ago. I didn't know anything prior to that. I didn't know that it was really a Roman town. I had no clue about that. Why was geographically positioned where it was? I had no clue about that. Then, in my research, I found everything out. It was part of the path of the transwanza, where the sheep go from body all the way up to laquila. Every year, every season. The shepherds bring their flock up north during the summer and down south during the winter. Our town was smack in the middle so they would pass us by. In passing us by, a town was developed there. I found that very interesting. That goes back to the Roman times.
Speaker 1:I learned about that when we were in Capricotta, because they showed us the same thing. They showed us the sheep path where they would go from Capricotta in the mountains down into Puglia every summer. It was so interesting. In fact, we went to a restaurant and they made us a meal that the shepherds would eat, similar to what Exactly? This similar kind of thing that they would eat, which was really pretty neat. I'll send you a couple of those things from Anthony, though. I think you'd be really interested in it.
Speaker 1:I would be very interested. It was so sad. He was such a wonderful guy and I only knew him I don't know maybe six months. But everybody who met Anthony came away with the same feeling that this was a man dedicated to his Italian heritage and that he would do anything to propagate the history of the people who came from Italy into America. Mostly he was in Boston because that's where he was from, but it was just a super, super guy, no question about it. Well, listen, this has been so much fun. I mean, I think we could probably do another three hours here.
Speaker 2:Yes, probably.
Speaker 1:But certainly looking forward to the museum opening and once it, let me know when it opens. Either you adopt the shell.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we'll be putting our press releases and all of that. It'll be all over the place when we open.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks again, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
