Italian Roots and Genealogy
Unraveling Ancestral Mysteries: A Journey from Upstate NY to Sicily
Join us as we open a time-capsule, revealing family histories, rich traditions, and compelling stories along with our distinguished guest, Mary Schultz. Her ancestral journey, sparked by her mother's passion, takes her from the humble beginnings in Up State NY to the heart of Sicily - Corleone, Italy. Mary helps us understand how the evolution of names can unravel mysteries of our past - an adventure sure to kindle the genealogist within you.
As we traverse from New York City to Sullivan County and Westchester, we uncover hidden roots, cultural heritage, and the importance of preserving family traditions. We venture into the world of DNA testing, unraveling how it can illuminate the trails of our ancestry. Our conversation also brings to light captivating stories, such as a forefather who tended to wild horses in the busy streets of New York City, emphasizing the significance of family bonds and cultural preservation.
Finally, we navigate through the waves of time, exploring generational differences and technology's transformative role in our understanding of our ancestors. We discuss the joy and challenges of genealogical research, like a participant who discovered her great grandmother's name after two decades of relentless efforts. As we reflect upon the concept of genetic memory, we ponder whether our ancestors' talents and abilities might echo within us. Let our conversation inspire you to embark on your journey of uncovering your roots and appreciate the gratifying process of genealogical exploration.
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Farmers and Nobles
Read about my research story and how to begin your family research.
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Join us as we open a time-capsule, revealing family histories, rich traditions, and compelling stories along with our distinguished guest, Mary Schultz. Her ancestral journey, sparked by her mother's passion, takes her from the humble beginnings in Up State NY to the heart of Sicily - Corleone, Italy. Mary helps us understand how the evolution of names can unravel mysteries of our past - an adventure sure to kindle the genealogist within you.
As we traverse from New York City to Sullivan County and Westchester, we uncover hidden roots, cultural heritage, and the importance of preserving family traditions. We venture into the world of DNA testing, unraveling how it can illuminate the trails of our ancestry. Our conversation also brings to light captivating stories, such as a forefather who tended to wild horses in the busy streets of New York City, emphasizing the significance of family bonds and cultural preservation.
Finally, we navigate through the waves of time, exploring generational differences and technology's transformative role in our understanding of our ancestors. We discuss the joy and challenges of genealogical research, like a participant who discovered her great grandmother's name after two decades of relentless efforts. As we reflect upon the concept of genetic memory, we ponder whether our ancestors' talents and abilities might echo within us. Let our conversation inspire you to embark on your journey of uncovering your roots and appreciate the gratifying process of genealogical exploration.
Online tee shirts, hoodies and more for Italians
Farmers and Nobles
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 Sarrantino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy, and please subscribe to our channel and check out our great sponsors, your adult JVita, italy Rooting and Abiettivo Casa. My guest today is Mary Schultz, so welcome Mary. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:So I see a great picture behind you. I'm going to start with that. Who's that?
Speaker 2:That is my aunt. If you you read the little information I gave you, this would be my mother's sister, gustav's daughter. So she was a second generation.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no, it's so great to have a picture like that, especially framed on the glass and everything. That's super.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a few of them. I was fortunate to be the conservator of all the photos for the family. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:I know it kind of fell on me too, at least for all the photos that my mom had for the most part. So you know when and why did you start researching the family?
Speaker 2:Well, my mother was always interested in it. It was always writing down the family trees, as much information as she could get, and when she got ill we moved her with my husband and I and it just morphed from there. My father had passed away and I didn't want her unoccupied, so I asked her what she would like, who she would like to go and trace, and it exploded. It really did just explode. I found a lot of information. I'm sure you saw the tree. It's quite large, a little unwieldy, I don't recommend it, but it kept her busy and it kept her alive for about 20 years after my father had passed away. So that's what started it and it's a giant puzzle and I love the history of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I like the history too, and that's kind of why I do it. But same thing, you know, there's just some of us that have kind of chosen to do this kind of thing. So now your mom, when did she start? I mean, she must have started, obviously before the internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, absolutely. In fact I have a lot of her paperwork that she had sent away for birth certificates, that type of thing. She did it old school. We made several trips together to Cemetery's, one in Shemokin, Pennsylvania, the first time we went she had. She knew that they were there but she didn't know their names, which is an interesting search. It took us two trips to track down her relatives in Shemokin and we went to Connecticut We've gone to the Bronx, of course, St Raymond's and in Westchester tracking down Cemetery's for her. We just went there. We did a lot of traveling and research for this, and then she wanted books for my siblings, so we put together individual books for each one of them and then it morphed into my nieces and nephews and their families, so there's probably 20 or 30 different trees that we've produced over the years.
Speaker 1:That's great. So now Shemokin. I never heard of Shemokin until not the last interview with the one before that, where Antonio's mentioned that he had family or he had some family that came from Shemokin in Pennsylvania. So there you go. There's a connection there, you can miss it, but apparently he said there's a large Italian community there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There is. There's a large German community there also, but there's both. It was mining for the most part, and beer. So the Germans went for the beer, the Italians went for the mining part. They made fascinating jewelry there. If you ever get a chance, it's from the dust and they call it coal diamonds Very rare. It was antiques. The miners did it in the off seasons to get money and it's hard to find it. I have a few pieces over the years.
Speaker 1:Really Wow. That's so interesting. So what big city is Shemokin near?
Speaker 2:Don't know. I just drove there. It's really a small town. I guess the closest one probably would be Pittsburgh, but it's a very poor town, beautiful area, absolutely stunning area, if you ever get up there and try that, yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you know when and why they wound up there?
Speaker 2:Well, that happened to be the German side, and my mother's great uncle was a brewmaster and he ended up at the brewery there. When prohibition hit, of course, everything shut down and he went and started working at a entertainment place I guess would be called. He later gets arrested for illegal gambling machines, and we'll leave that at that.
Speaker 2:But, mostly, yeah, exactly, and mostly the family came into New York. I have tracked some members. They're not direct line ancestors, certainly, but certainly cousins that went into New Orleans were involved in that horrible episode in New Orleans.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then what's interesting is a lot of them ended up in Texas, some in Houston and some in San Antonio. So the family did spread through Corleone and went to all over the United States.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's something. Yeah, and a lot of us, especially us from New York, we don't realize that there were Italian communities all over the country going way, way back to you know.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, absolutely. My mother and father grew up in Westchester. I grew up up state New York, but I can track where they came through and that's what's fascinating and what they did.
Speaker 1:So now, where did they come from? In Italy.
Speaker 2:Corleone. The entire Sicilian side of the family is definitely from Corleone. I can't find them moving out of there from about 1600 on, so I'm assuming they were kind of stuck there for a long time.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah Well, people didn't move around that much back then. They couldn't. So what did you find anything really fascinating about the family going back to 1600?
Speaker 2:Well, I liked the change in names, because Sicily, of course, was overrun by everyone. You name it, they had it. Yes, there was murderers, there were hangings, there were vendettas. That's one of the reasons that I've come to find out that my mother's family came to the United States was because of the vendetta. I can't prove it because there's nothing in writing, of course, and nobody wants to talk about it, but that's pretty much the story of how they came through, but historically they were very involved. There was one gentleman who was and I'm going to pronounce it wrong Benavida, who was one of the leaders in the revolutions that occurred over the years. It was fascinating to read the history about Sicily and what happened. I had no idea that it was going to happen.
Speaker 1:It's not easy getting back, especially in the small town of Sicily. Getting back that far, how did you manage to do that?
Speaker 2:Some of it was done for me, which I really appreciate, wickey Tree, because they did have the documentation I could double check. It's a slow process for Sicily it is extremely slow. I've spent years and years upon this. This doesn't happen in a week. It's taken me years to just kind of piece together the information. Then I get sidetracked with the history part of trying to figure out what's going on during that time frame and why certain things were occurring. I found it really interesting that the women married quite young in Sicily. We wouldn't put up with it today, but some of it was very young when the wives died, of course, probably in childbirth, that the husband would remarry almost immediately. There was a lot of stepsisters being married to stepbrothers and it's quite the nest. It's not a tree, it truly isn't. It's a big circle. The families intertwine historically over the years for hundreds of years. You'll find a name and track it back and they'll intertwine again. I find that just absolutely interesting.
Speaker 1:Especially in those small towns, there was only so many women and young girls to go around. I know that I saw that a couple of those in my family too, where a brother-in-law married a sister-in-law or the sister with a brother, or those kinds of things. They had to keep the family going, I guess, and that's just the way they did it.
Speaker 2:Well, as you said, there weren't a lot of choices. A lot of the marriages occurred because of connections of wealth, of status. I was interested when I first started and I kept coming up with this maestro. My first thought years ago was oh, they're all musicians. That's not what that means. I laugh at myself because I don't consider myself a professional by any chance, but I can figure out a puzzle that was interesting to start looking at. Who was a maestro? Who was a Don? Who was this? It really was interesting.
Speaker 1:For people listening. Who was the maestro? What was he? What was he?
Speaker 2:A maestro is just simply a master at their trade, whatever that trade might be. The Don gets into, I believe, more of a leader, or not so much royalty but leader, where they would be the town leaders, the true wealth of the neighborhood, I guess, is. There's not much in Corleone as far as wealth, but during that time certainly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but even though there was always somebody like you said, there was always somebody in charge who had more money, more property than other people my grandmother's family, my father's mother. She came from noble families. In some cases it just says the occupation as property owner. In one instance it just said rich person.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That was his occupation. Rich person.
Speaker 2:I didn't get those yeah it is.
Speaker 1:I like the history aspect of it too, and I don't know if you've seen it or heard of it, but I interviewed Paula Treviso, who wrote a book called Sicilyana and a fantastic book about the French and the Sicilians back in the 1200s.
Speaker 2:It's an amazing story.
Speaker 1:I wish I could write historical fiction. I want to try, but it's really very difficult to do.
Speaker 2:I've attempted. I have to stay with. I'm a very literal person, but there's stories, are there and it's righted because it's important to keep that history going. I bore my grandchildren continuously but when they need it I'll get a phone call saying grandma, help me with this Sure.
Speaker 1:I have to do a family trip.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's already been done. They're a little bit older, but it's a history lesson sometimes.
Speaker 1:I wish one. I went to Catholic Grandma School and I was able to trace back to at least that I found 23 saints. Every time I would find one I'd say boy. I wish I had this information in the fifth grade.
Speaker 2:Please don't tell me it was Gate of Heaven and ingredients, but no, I lived in College Point, so I went to St Fidelis. Okay, I know College Point very well. One of the relatives lived there, also German, I was sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What's the last name?
Speaker 2:Philip Pfeiffer is his name. His mother was part of my mother is aunt, so they lived there for a long time.
Speaker 1:That was a huge German community. My first wife. Her father was Heim H-I-M. He was very German. My mom was Irish. Interesting thing with her when I looked at her stuff she actually goes back to some of the original Dutch people. Her third or fourth great grandfather something like that was Rickart. She owned Rikers Island. He sold Rikers Island to New York City.
Speaker 2:Very interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were there for Jesus. Some of them were Dutch, some were German. But they go back to some of the farms in Hempstead, go flushing in Hempstead and all those places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had done my brother-in-law, my husband's brother-in-law. He's a scribner and part of his family started at Smith Point. Of course his family has been well-documented. The scribners go from the Mayflower all the way back. We tease them, we call them prints. It's a fascinating history. New York itself, new York City in the surrounding area, is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, did you go up and flush it?
Speaker 2:No, I grew up upstate in the Catskills.
Speaker 1:Some of the family was down there. Yeah, they did, I have to ask you we're in the Catskills because we used to go camping up there a lot Mount Trempor I don't know if you ever heard of Mount Trempor, but it's one of those real out of the way places which was great back in the early 70s.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, now we were between if you know where Ellenville is and Liberty.
Speaker 1:Oh sure, yeah, I had a house up there, up that way.
Speaker 2:Okay, in the reservoirs, of course, I'd supplied New York City with the water. We lived across the street from the Roundout Reservoir, which is a beautiful area.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice Very nice yeah.
Speaker 2:And my father was the principal or the superintendent of the school up there. No-transcript it was. It was a beautiful, beautiful area. It really Was great.
Speaker 1:No upset New York is. Is is great, um, but yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I, like I said I had a house up there, what I don't remember that the name of the town, but it was right off of Old 17, okay, it could have been wordsboro.
Speaker 2:It could have been wordsboro. That's it. That's the place.
Speaker 1:I Know the area now.
Speaker 2:But it's funny is that my husband grew up on Long Island. Well, from the Queens to Long Island and I started tracing, his and his family actually moved from New York City to Sullivan County and as I started the tree and he started, he was related about half my class, we met in Florida. We had no idea, you know of each other and but we met in Florida and Turns it, his family and my sister-in-law's family, my brother's wife, they're related and Pulling up the information, they sue each other over the years and in the area it's. It's more amusing than anything else when you pull out these Little pieces of information and they start to connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I know exactly exactly what you mean. So now have you done, have you done DNA?
Speaker 2:I've done DNA. It's a very helpful tool to start to track back, especially people that have done trees. I get very frustrated with people that have do the DNA test and then they don't have any tree and you go I can't help you. You know, it really brought Information that you cannot get any other place and it validates a lot of the information that you get. So I'm 50% Irish, absolutely just 50%, nothing you know. And then, of course, the other is German and Italian, or Sicilian, as I like to call.
Speaker 1:So who is Irish?
Speaker 2:My father was Irish and his parents came in. Both of them were born in Ireland. His father came in, worked up in Connecticut at the copper mines up there, went back to Ireland, married my grandmother, came back and he broke horses under the Elves in New York and the docks by the docks and he was a stable man for a number of years and then they moved up to Westchester.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a cool job.
Speaker 2:Well, New York City back then well, they were bringing in them wild off on the boats and he would break them under the by the docks, and I find that absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1:I never knew that I have. No, I had no idea that that was going on in New York City back then. Gotta think of the time frame you know well, yeah, no, no, exactly. And and you know the interview before this, Carla golden, you know her, her Grandfather, or great-grandfather, built 160 something buildings in New York City. I never even heard of paternal construction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and I, you know Some of the picture. I mean, I recognize these places. So you know that's one of the reasons for doing this is to get people's memories, so that you know we don't lose this, this kind of culture and heritage, whether you're Italian or Irish or anything else you know.
Speaker 2:Well, my I, as I sent you the information my grandfather was a marble worker and he worked at Grand Central Station on some of the pillars by the the, and I have one of them. It must have been a One that they didn't use, so I have this pillar, identical to the ones at Grand Central Station, and I love that type of thing. Is the history of that. A Million people, millions of people, billions of people have seen those he created, that he made, those he made. That was part of him and I love that part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your relatives, they built things. You can go back and look at those and it's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know I met a, my fourth cousin, linda, and I had no ideas, you know, several years ago when we first met how close the family was and Her mother, her grandmother, saved beads. My great, my grandfather, used to me and his brother used to make bridal veils and bridal crowns in New York City and she had the beads from my grandfather's store, wow. And so you know, linda went when we met her. Finally she came over and, and you know, gave my sister and myself and my cousin Paul, you know, a little package of the beads from my grandfather's shop. And you know my cousin actually used to go from white stone in Queens on the, you know, on the subway I probably 10, 11, 12 years old, you wouldn't do that anymore and you know run back and forth from the home in mitestone to the shop in New York City. So he was thrilled to. You know he used to bring the finished product back and forth. You know, yeah, you can't replace those things.
Speaker 1:No, no, and and you know, my wife and I talk all the time because she actually was born in Manhattan and you know, wasn't that long ago, it was only in the 70s, where they were still you know. You know Millery places in New York City do still making dresses and suits and shirts and all of that. That's hard to believe that I mean that's all disappeared now. Nothing like it.
Speaker 2:I could well. They simply couldn't do it anymore the way they did it. I know a lot of my grandfather's sisters were dress makers and that's what's listed on the on the Census is that's where they worked, where this those making dresses, I, some of them, were more. My grandfather was a marble worker. Some of them were mechanics. They went on. They didn't have a lot of schooling. I Don't think my grandfather went past eighth grade, but it didn't happen then. It's simply that was enough for them. I.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, things are I suppose a lot less complicated. And you know, they, they, they had to work. I mean, the kids used to work.
Speaker 2:Well, they were nine in that family, so they had to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, the same thing with my, with my, my mom's family. You know, my mom didn't get her first doll I'm probably 1930, 1930, 1332, whatever it was Until her sister was able to buy a far, because the sister was probably, you know, 15 years older than her or something like that. Yes, you know, and my aunt used to tell us that Christmas they used to get an orange.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've heard that. My that's my father's situation, that's what they got.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and they were thrilled, they were thrilled.
Speaker 2:You know it was special.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people, you know, yeah, you know, we're spoiled and the generations behind us, or, I think, even more spoiled.
Speaker 2:One I'm amazed at what my parents saw. My father didn't drive until he went into World War two. They had a horse and wagon. My mother was a little more. She liked fast cars. She started driving at 16 and never stopped. But there was a big difference in culture there and it's what they had. My grandparents were one of the few that had a radio in their neighborhood when they first came out. You don't think about those things now.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, my uncles was still. They would deliver nice in New York City into the 40s. Yeah, people didn't have refrigerators back then.
Speaker 2:I remember my grandmother's icebox. She's kept it. It was. They eventually got her a refrigerator, but she still had when I was a child. Still use the icebox, yeah, see.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I don't remember the coal, but I remember seeing in the cold shoots in the basement. By that time they were already. They had already. You know we switched over to oil, but I still remember the last one. What's that? Oh, that's where they used to. You know, they used to send the coal down the chute and everything like that.
Speaker 2:I mean I kids nowadays? I don't think.
Speaker 1:I don't think they have a concept of radiators either, you know? Oh no, forget ready your telephones.
Speaker 2:Our first telephone. I grew up upstate, because upstate was pretty wild back then. You know it was pretty well cut off and was one of those candlestick. You had a party line and was one of the candlesticks ones we weren't allowed to touch it as children, trust me really. Oh no, it's so funny. Yeah, but there were three or four people on that line and everybody had a different ring. But it's I. My grandchildren laugh at me when I tell stories like that because they have no, no comparison.
Speaker 1:So I didn't know that so. So if you were on a party line, I want back that. So you had a, you had your, so you would always hear everybody's ring, but you knew yours to pick up. Absolutely, absolutely oh boy, I'm getting an education here. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:And I'm dating myself. I'm old. What can I tell you?
Speaker 1:Oh well, it's all mine, but Well, you know, they just recently said that, so I'll tell you. Be the other day. People don't, they? They don't remember phone numbers anymore. I still remember my phone number as a kid.
Speaker 2:Oh. I could tell you my home phone number.
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:Did I tell you what my husband's cell phone number is. Nope, no, wait, exactly Exactly.
Speaker 1:No, I don't know. You know the cell phones. I mean the home phone, but the cell phones I don't know anybody's number. You're just going the thing and and uh-huh and pick it, but my, my phone number at home and before area codes, was I remember? Was you know it was independence, in3 4791.
Speaker 2:My mother knew her. I know it was a marie hill number, uh, but I don't, I wouldn't know it, I didn't grow up with it. But she remembered it forever. That was their number, that was their identity.
Speaker 1:So they must have lived on they. So they must have lived in Manhattan, on the um, on the east side, I guess, because my father worked for the daily news and his phone number, the daily news phone number, was M1 1234. Yeah very easy number.
Speaker 2:Well, that's, that's nice yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, it was a business. You know it was the daily news number, so you know they, they probably got to pick that, you know so now. So now your husband's family, where, where, the, where they from, and you know what did they do.
Speaker 2:Well it's. It's, his family gets a little half. He's half german, um and half irish, and but his grandfather was born in south africa, so His family went from ireland to south africa and then came to the united states. Uh, the german side came over from germany and moved upstate new york, no reason for it. Uh, they weren't farmers, but I believe at that time, uh, they were promoting, they were giving germans Farms because they wanted the the land produced and it was an opportunity. Uh, they weren't necessarily good at it and they didn't last long. I think it was like a generation. They lasted and moved back to New York City for work because there was nothing up there. They weren't good farmers, but the land was important to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, I can understand that and so it's. You know, I guess you have to have. You know farming even back then. Yeah, I don't know what you're doing. I suppose even them. One of the toughest things that I've ever heard of you know trying to make a living at, you know, is farming. You know it's expensive to do it and the equipment there and all of that kind of stuff. You know very, very hard to do. So in all this research, what was your most fascinating find or story?
Speaker 2:Well, there's so many, but I think it took me 20 years to find my great grandmother anywhere. There wasn't a census record with Iran. There was nothing. I very, very difficult to find and I, when I did finally find it, after 20 years of searching, the name was spelled so badly that it was. I was so excited, though it took me I mean, I really have to understand the 20 years of research and to finally find this piece of paper that gave me what they thought her spelling of her name was and that was. It was worth the effort, but frustrating for people.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, and I tell people, don't give up. And sometimes you just have to walk away for a while, you know, and then come back.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Every once in a while you have to take a break. I get so immersed in the culture for whatever side I'm doing. At that time I tell my husband I just came back from Italy, I'm sorry I'm not really here, but you do. You get immersed in the I call it DNA, dna memory. When you start doing this and he laughs. But my grandfather was a marble worker, he worked in cement and I don't know if you've experienced it, but you find that you can do things without knowing why. You know how to do them and it's happened often enough. So I kind of believe that there's some type of genetic memory embedded in us. They haven't proven it yet, but there has to be something. In our family we see a long trend of musicians and artists. Where does that talent come from? Over the years? And it's very the numbers. When you start looking at the numbers of people that continue that profession without the assistance. There's gotta be something genetic there.
Speaker 1:No, I agree, and I interviewed somebody about that and she calls it emotional DNA and that's exactly what she says. We get our physical characteristics from our ancestors. We also get these other characteristics, and my example of my family is my brother will pick up anything and draw it. I mean he could look at, he probably could have done Rembrandt's, he probably could have forged Rembrandt's. That's how good he is. I can't draw a straight line, so how?
Speaker 2:do you explain that other than that?
Speaker 1:it's in green, somehow, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very odd. But when I start looking historically at what people did and you go, okay, now it makes sense, but nobody talked about it. It's not like I knew about it or anyone knew about it, but when you see the number of physicians, the number of artists, the number of musicians, you go it had to have come from somewhere. Just that ability, and maybe mine is searching people. No, no, exactly. I find it more of how did I know how to do that? I've never done it before, but it made sense to me. I can't explain it, but I encourage people to do this. It really does give you a sense of yourself when you do your family history, of where you came from. It's important for people to do this. It truly is. It's time consuming, it's aggravating, it's all those things, but it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:Well, and I believe that they want us to find them. It's just ingrained on some of us to do it.
Speaker 2:And it's very strange. It got to the point at one point that there were so many coming in you couldn't grasp how many people and then nothing for years, and then, all of a sudden, you'd get this little group of people saying hello, I'm here, could you come do this? It's been a wild time for this.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and my second great-grandmother was. She was from Lucerne, Switzerland, and I figured I'm never gonna find anything on this woman, it's just not gonna happen. And I just was Googling one day and I came across the two books from the 1850s that had listed the officers in the Neapolitan Army. And I'm looking through this book and I'm looking for my great-grandmother's name, karachalo, and I found my great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, and Khalib O'Karachalo. He was a lieutenant in the Neapolitan Army. And I look right above him and I see this Bernardo Moore, same spelling as my great-great-grandmother, and I'm like wow, this must be him. And he was a mercenary from Switzerland working for the Neapolitan Army. And I was able to find her family now back to the early 1500s in Switzerland. So these clues, like you said, they just appear, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny because the Swiss attacked my great-grandfather's town he came from in Germany and burned it to the ground, so in about 1600. So you know.
Speaker 1:I didn't know the Swiss did that. I thought they were peaceful, maybe, I guess. Oh no, no, no.
Speaker 2:You really annoyed someone, you know. But that kind of those little bits and pieces and they fall into your hands and it's you recognized that those were your relatives. That's great. Not everybody can do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I have, I have a. I found a painting of my ninth great-grandfather. He was, he was a, his, him and his son. They actually own much of what today's campaign is. That's how wealthy these guys were. And I found this picture of him and I said boy, I have a picture of myself when I was, you know, 27. I look like this guy, and so I was able to put it in black and white and change the aspect. So we're facing the same way and you know, we're not exact copies, but just certain things the eyes, the eyebrows, certain things. And I showed my wife and she would be the first one to say you're nuts, right. I showed my wife, I said look at this. And she goes oh my God, you look like. Who is that?
Speaker 1:I think, that's my eighth, ninth great-grandfather.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing. I have a cousin and as she's aged, she could be my grandmother's clone. It's almost scary how much that they look like. I should put pictures together, because it's it happens. It's just that one person.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, and I found several things like that. I found one of my cousins, one of our cousins in Italy. I saw her picture and I went my goodness, she looks just like Susan. And you know, when they were young they have like a perfect match. I found another one. Somebody sent me a picture. I believe the woman in the picture was around my grandmother's age, my father's mother, and they were. I don't know if they were first or second cousins, but they looked. I mean they looked exactly alike. I mean you would think they were sisters. That's how close they resembled each other. And you know, when you come across these things, it's fantastic. And you know one of the people that I met just recently, kate Kelly, she's called the photo angel and she goes to antique places and yard sales and things like that and she looks for pictures with names on the back and then she researches that and when she finds the family member, she sends them the pictures and returns the pictures back to the family and it's just such a wonderful thing to do, you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's why I always feel this urge to do somebody's family tree for them, and it's you know, most people really don't want you to do that. It's fascinating. There's several people that do that on Facebook with the photos and they'll. They cannot help but buy that photo and track the family and go. Do you want this?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've been fortunate I have the family photos I don't have. I have never come across a something at a thrift store or a garage sale that I could say, oh, that's got to be somebody else's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I haven't yet. Not that I, not that I, not that I love. But you know, we were in Italy last year and I met my father's first cousins that I never knew existed. They had my parents wedding picture from 1944 that my grandmother had sent to them. You know, so that, and that was just such like mind blowing. But, like I said, those come out of the woodwork. So one last thing. So I'm assuming you've been to call the only yes. No no, no, italy, I haven't been to call the only.
Speaker 2:yet my son is off to take me next year to Italy. I asked him if he would go to Sicily. He said absolutely not.
Speaker 1:I'm going to talk to you. We love Sicily, it's so it's so nice.
Speaker 2:My brother love my brother goes over about twice a year and he he absolutely fell in love with the southern part of Sicily. He said he would definitely go back there. But they go over and he's probably been 20 times over the years at least, and he loves Italy. He absolutely loves Italy. My children's father was Italian, it was a Stefano, and they're more, they're from Italy and they're much more interested in that side of their heritage. So I'm okay with that. That's. It's about my grandson and my son.
Speaker 1:I mean, sicily is is. So my wife's mother was from Chaca in Sicily and you know, we, we we really liked it there. Yeah, cause you drive around the island and you look at one side is the blue sea, the other side is the mountains. I mean, it's just, it's just so, so nice. But yeah, you're going to have to, you're going to have to, you're going to have to go back to you know I'm not turning down a trip.
Speaker 1:No, no, I don't blame you, I wouldn't. I mean I I think if we were going to buy a house anywhere in in Italy right now, we'd be in Calabria, in this place called Sheila, which was just this stunning, and you could, from there, you could actually see Sicily in the background.
Speaker 2:Let's see, the dissident of size is Calabria, so that's the area that that side of the family came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know Calabria is, you know the Calabrian coast is just fantastic. You know some of the smaller places of the real Italy. You know that's the way I feel, anyway.
Speaker 2:I would love to see him because I know that the houses were painted for different reasons and they kept that house color and they continued to keep that house color If it was yellow or pink or whatever a color was. I would love to go back and find the relatives and figure out what they were at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But that always that fascinated me with the house colors, that they don't change them. It's not like you know. You go from one color to another. If your house was blue when it started, it's going to be blue now.
Speaker 1:And it's I'll tell you what really blows your way now in like one of the places we stayed at. From the outside and this was in the old, this was in the old city in Naples from the outside it was like, oh, my goodness, this is where we're going to stay. And then you go inside and it's this modern, modern place. It's so strange You're walking up these steps that you know you walk up the steps and you're thinking to yourself people have been walking up these steps for 500 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fascinating. They're all worn. They kind of let them different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, worn and steep and all that kind of stuff Not good for old people, but we made it through.
Speaker 2:Well, you asked at the beginning what brought me into this, and I did remember that this is a document I don't know if you could see it, but yeah, this was my great-great-grandfather's baptismal certificate out of Germany. I have the original, so it was one of the things that really got us started on the complete family tree, and those are the things that are important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, there's always that hook. I mean, what started me on my journey was my great-grandfather's card that always used to be in the family photo album. You know that my grandmother had bought and you know I'm so jealous of people who tell me oh, we have the family Bible going back 120 years and it's got everybody's name in it and all these things you know.
Speaker 2:Kills me when I hear that I have weird things. I have postcards that my grandparents sent back and forth to each other, and my grandmother was German, my grandfather was Italian, and they yelled at each other in German and Italian and neither spoke the other language. Well, you know.
Speaker 1:Italian said they didn't speak the same language either. So yeah, no they didn't.
Speaker 2:Well, even in Sicily, the languages just couldn't change from town to town.
Speaker 1:That's right, exactly, exactly. Well, mary, this has been a lot of fun, great stories. I really really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 2:I enjoyed it. I'm glad I've watched a lot of your cast and it. I watch a lot of the genealogy shows and it was never like that average person on there and this is what I'm doing today. I'm just the average person. I've spent a little bit more time than a lot, but it's important to get the stories out there. Thank you, I appreciate it and you'll probably get a few more subscriptions. It's a rather large family, oh great, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
