Discovering Cultural Roots in East Harlem, Bari and Ponce

As distant cousins intertwined by Puerto Rican roots, Valerie Evans joins us to unravel the vibrant story of her dual Italian and Puerto Rican lineage. Our conversation traverses the multicultural neighborhoods of East Harlem, brushes through the historical cobblestones of Sannicandro di Bari and Salerno, and touches on the personal transformations ignited by a family accident and the consequential search for identity. Valerie’s account of her mother's life and her quest to reveal her mysterious Southern Italian father’s past sheds light on the intimate struggles many face in piecing together their family mosaic.

The allure of ancestry pulls us deeper as Valerie shares her foray into DNA testing and genetic genealogy. Together, we navigate the complex web of DNA matches and the painstaking detective work of groups like DNA Detectives. Valerie's narrative is a testament to the persistence of those seeking to connect with their heritage, as she recounts the emotional journey that comes with sifting through the shadows of history to find oneself. Our guest's tenacity and the surprising connections she uncovers emphasize the shared human desire to know where we come from and the bonds that form through these discoveries.

Rounding out our exploration, we reflect on the ways in which digital platforms and travel serve as conduits to cultural preservation and self-discovery. Valerie discusses the role of her website and BariAncestors.com in safeguarding Italian-American stories and the power of stepping onto ancestral soil. We also venture into the heart of Puerto Rico, examining its nuanced relationship with the U.S. and the island's transformation from a land of emigration to a tourist haven. Join us for this heartfelt episode as we celebrate the resilience and diversity of our family legacies while encouraging others to embrace the journey into their own past.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hey everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check us out on Facebook, our blog and our newsletter and YouTube channel our Facebook, our blog and our newsletter and YouTube channel, and our great sponsors, your Dolce Vita, italy Rooting and Abiativo Casa. And today I have a great guest who happens to be a distant cousin of my wife through her Puerto Rican roots Valerie Evans. So welcome, valerie. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Thanks for having me, Bob. I'm so glad to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Valerie, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, bob, I'm so glad to be here. Yeah, me too. So I mean, what's really interesting is, like my wife, you are half Italian and half Puerto Rican, but the reverse In her case, her dad was Puerto Rican and her mom was Sicilian, and you both grew up probably less than 20 blocks from each other, from New York City.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Isn't that incredible, such a small world, I find. The more I do genealogy and DNA research, the more I'm amazed at how small the world is and how much we have in common with each other, no matter where we were raised or our backgrounds. It's amazing. So, yeah, I grew up in East Harlem and my mother was from Ponce, puerto Rico. She passed away in 2019.

Speaker 2: 1:35

And my father was a big question mark. For a long time I understood he was Southern Italian, so I was thinking I was under the impression I was also Sicilian, but it turns out he was from, on his mom's side, a small town in Southern Italy called Sanicandro di Bari, in Bari, and on his father's side he's from Salerno and on his father's side he's from Salerno, um, and it's been an interesting journey learning about who my father was, um and my Italian side, and I then also researched my Puerto Rican side, and so I discovered I'm related to your wife and I'm. I'm here to share my story because I feel like we as a society don't talk about that side of things so much. When you don't, when you have an unknown parent.

Speaker 1: 2:39

Yeah, so. So I mean, is it okay to ask you what? What happened now with your father?

Speaker 2: 2:45

So I mean, is it okay to ask you what happened now with your father? Sure, so, like I mentioned, I grew up in East Harlem and my mother had moved from Puerto Rico to East Harlem back in the 60s and she was the first person in her family to do so. She, so she came completely alone and then brought over her siblings and so forth and she was, she was in a really kind of tragic accident. She was struck by a drunk driver and as part of her recovery, you know, she was kind of homebound for a very long time. And I feel like, even though she was in her 30s, you know she was from the country, a rural Puerto Rican young woman didn't really know, you know, kind of America in the 70s, new york in the 7, 1970s, um, and east harlem, you know, no matter it's 70s or 2024, it's rough neighborhood, right, it used to be the biggest little italy in the states at one time, and so I feel like she was maybe a little naive one time, and so I feel like she was maybe a little naive, um, and she, from what the story she told me was, she fell in love with this.

Speaker 2: 4:12

This guy who you know was really well dressed, smelled amazing. Um really just treated her. Well, it turned out he was married and you know he gave her the story that you often hear the wife is sick, you know, and you know just, he's in love with, with my mom, and I guess they were involved for a while and then she became pregnant and that's where they kind of, you know, butted heads because 1970s very different climate than we're in right now and so you know he wanted her to terminate the pregnancy. My mom was a good little Catholic girl from Puerto Rico who didn't didn't have that same perspective, and so she decided to keep me and she told me that that was basically the end of it.

Speaker 2: 5:13

However, you know, a lot of people in the neighborhood seem to know my father, but because of the Italian, I would say, italian American culture. I know it goes back. It stems back from Italy. There's kind of like a culture of of silence. You don't talk about people's secrets or what they're doing. You kind of mind your business. And so, even though people knew my father, you know they would tell me you are the spitting image of your father. It's like if someone put a wig on your father's face but they wouldn't tell me about my father.

Speaker 1: 5:59

So for so you were still in the neighborhood.

Speaker 2: 6:03

I mean, this was I grew up in the neighborhood, people knew me as Vito's daughter, vito's daughter Spitting image of him, but and this is what I was going to say I never met the man. I didn't actually know his last name, because when you're growing up in that sort of environment, even on the Puerto Rican side, you know each other by your nickname. You know, um, and it's kind of it's again, the similarities between the cultures is amazing. So, um, I knew him as Vito. I had no information whatsoever other than that, you know, I knew he was older than my mom, I knew the age range, I had an idea of what he did for a living, I knew his first name and that he was possibly from Southern Italy, and that he was. He was from the neighborhood originally, from the neighborhood originally, and so for most of my life, you know, going on those leads, it was basically impossible to find Vito in a sea of Vitos in Little Italy, right?

Speaker 1: 7:22

But your mom, she knew his last name right, didn't she?

Speaker 2: 7:26

so that's the thing. She thought she knew his last name. She even told me, you know, more recently, um, before she was passing, when I kind of was able to find more information, I even asked her like you like, why did you think his surname was? You know what he said, like, did you just go on what he told you? And she said, no, I saw his ID. Now, my mom had dementia at the time.

Speaker 2: 7:57

So you kind of have to take, you know, a little grain of salt with some of the things. But the interesting thing about memory loss is that you tend to remember things that happened a long time ago better than you do more recent right. So I kind of, as now that I'm older, now that I'm married and you know I'm a mom myself, I feel like I have kind of a better understanding. Um, I was angry for a long time because I didn't have the details and I kind of, you know, I was angry at her. But now that I'm much older and I've listened to so many stories and you know the plight of so many people, I see that I think she may have protected me in many ways and then also, I think she was also taken advantage a little bit as well. So she didn't you know. She thought she knew his last name.

Speaker 2: 9:00

It turns out that was not the man's last name. So either he had a fake id, he was using an alias, um, you know there are many. There are many things we can speculate on, um, and sadly that's the. That's the piece that I'm still kind of struggling with, that I don't know the full story, I don't have all of the facts. Um, I've always been driven by, kind of like I want to know him, I want to know what person, what kind of person he was. I would you know. For a long time I didn't know what he looked like, uh, and so I wanted to see him and see my, my paternal family. And then the other piece was like what actually happened between them? Did he know about me? Did they have a falling out? And he said you know, you go your way if you choose to do that, and I don't ever want to have anything to do with you. Or did he know about?

Speaker 1: 9:59

me.

Speaker 2: 9:59

Did he ever, you know, drive by the neighborhood and sort of see how we were doing or think about me? And by that time I was able to find out who he was. He was in a nursing home up in the Bronx and I understand he might have been sort of, you know, also suffering from dementia and sick, and so within several months of actually discovering, with a lot of help, who he was, he actually passed away as well, so I never got the chance to meet him.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Yeah, that's so sad, so sad. So how did you find him?

Speaker 2: 10:44

So it's a long journey, right? Because essentially my whole life I've been looking for this man. And when I got into kind of my professional career, I started working a lot in sort of technology and digital and you know blogging and doing websites and digital and you know blogging and doing websites. So at one point I was thinking I'm going to set up a website like help me find Vito right and kind of like help you know crowdsource information. Because I had tried talking to friends who were lawyers. I had tried actually going around the neighborhood asking some of the old timers like do you know the video you know? Like do you know? And they were like, who are you? Why are you asking so many questions, kid Right? And so I went through all of these phases trying to, you know, get more information. And so finally, I think around 12 years ago, 10 years ago, whenever 23andMe actually became available, the very first thing I did was take a DNA test and at the time, you know, I got my results and I was flooded with relatives and I was still under the impression that, you know, his last name was something else. So I didn't really get anywhere with that test and so I put it aside. You know, I kept thinking about it, I kept feeling this like urge, this, this whole. You know this, something's missing. I really have to find out what's happening.

Speaker 2: 12:30

And so, about six years ago, I read an article. I don't remember where I read the article, but it was about this group called DNA Detectives that is dedicated to helping people like me mostly a lot of adopted folks, but also a lot of people with unknown parentage find the identity of their biological parent or a lost relative. And the group is actually associated or run by a very famous genetic genealogist whose name is cc moore, and now you, nowadays, you see her on the news all the time. She helps solve crimes and identify people by dna, and so I happened to look it up on Facebook. A huge group, and they have instructions on like how to get started, what to do Right, and so I had joined Ancestry 20 years ago, kind of plotting, you know, my mom's line, because my mom has a huge family, like a lot of us in Puerto Rico tend to do Right, like everybody's your cousin, which is what we were just started talking about, um, and so, um, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't missing any family on my, on my Puerto Rican side. But I thought it was interesting because when you come from Puerto Rico you tend to have a very diverse ethnic background. So you know, the official story is that you're one third Spanish from Spain, you're one third African from the whole institution of slavery and then you're one third indigenous from the Taino people who lived originally on Puerto Rico and across the Caribbean. So I took it as like fact that I was one third. You know, like I was basically mixed race, even though you look at me and everybody's like oh, you're Italian, right, puerto Ricans will tell me all the time like I would have never thought you were Puerto Rican. And it's funny because I grew up in a Puerto Rican family, in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Speaker 2: 14:54

At that time it switched over. So I started doing the research. I had joined Ancestry, I took the instructions to heart from DNA detectives and I tested my mom as the next step and I started exporting my results and putting them in all of these different databases. And little, I mean like little by little, I started compiling one or two it's like people who had Italian backgrounds, not just Puerto Rican backgrounds, and I what my results were flooded. I think I had something insane like 130,000 relatives with Puerto Rican backgrounds.

Speaker 2: 15:50

So at the time I was a very new mom, so I spent a lot of time rocking chair, nursing my son, putting him to sleep, and what I would do as he was falling asleep is I would take out my phone and every day for 30 minutes or so or an hour, I would organize and sort my DNA matches. These look Puerto Rican, these look Italian, and it was like I was just going on kind of like you know profiles and last names and and towns and things like that, just little clues still had no idea who Vito was. You know, I still was under the impression that he might have been Sicilian, didn't have his last name, was totally thrown off by the last name. He told my mom. And so, fast forward, about a year or so later, I got a match. That was, and I actually I'm kind of skipping a part, but I did have one kind of informational clue that that gave me an idea.

Speaker 2: 17:06

A man who had known my father's brother gave me a lead and he said you know, your father had a brother named Joey and I used to hang out with him. He grew up on 121st Street and I was like, okay, so I had taken note of that. So I was like, okay, so Vito's got a brother named Joey. We know that Joey could possibly be Joseph and so, you know, I kind of kept that in the back of my head and at one point I I found a match and I traced it to a veto in Joey and I called, I called up. You know, I got in touch with the person who put the tree together. They put me in touch with somebody else. I actually called the man's daughter and spoke to her. This is, like you know, terrible mistake. Like this is when you get super excited and you think you found something and so we talked. She was actually really nice.

Speaker 2: 18:19

I keep in touch with those folks and it turns out that we are related, except it's not the right Vito and Joey. It's actually a different set of Vito and Joey's in my tree. So it was heartbreaking for me because the relative, the distant cousin, had sent me pictures of the family and this Vito when he was little. His name was Vito Novielli. She sent me a beautiful black and white picture and Vito, that Vito Novielli, is related to me, and so I could actually see my face and my son's face in that photo and I fell in love with that story and that Vito had passed away right.

Speaker 2: 19:15

So fast forward turns out that wasn't Vito, because I got this match and this match was a second cousin. This match and this match was a second cousin and this match had a totally different last name that I hadn't wasn't familiar with at all. And then, almost like a month later two months later, I remember it was right around Thanksgiving I got another match with the same last name. This was a first cousin, so one match was on 23 and me. The other match was on Ancestry.

Speaker 2: 19:54

The first match, which was a second cousin, turned out to be related to the first cousin. That was his uncle. The first cousin, that was his uncle, and the guy was, you know, young man, kind of college aged, and we started talking and he started telling me that, you know, he was looking for information about his grandmother. The grandfather was a mystery and we just started exchanging information. And then I reached out to the first cousin and he kind of ignored me. And then I reached out to the first cousin and he kind of ignored me. So I persisted and I, you know, I hit him up on Facebook, I hit him up on Instagram, I was just kind of like I will not be ignored, somebody's got to tell me more.

Speaker 2: 20:36

Um, and I was just kind of like something, this is something, some, there's something to this. And so I had found this woman who is what they call a search angel on DNA detectives. So search angels God bless them are volunteers who are professional researchers, genetic genealogists, who offer their services to people that are looking for help in that group, and they will basically overnight solve the mystery of their unknown parents or whoever they're looking for or whoever they're looking for. And so I knew there was a person who kind of focused on Italian genealogy and I went to her and I said, you know, I've been sorting my matches for a year and like all of a sudden, I thought I had it figured out. Turns out it's not this branch, because out of nowhere, these two cousins popped up and their names are completely new to me, they don't match anything. And like I did something wrong here.

Speaker 2: 21:53

Um, so within a couple of days, she was able to find out who my father was. So it turns out that the young man and his uncle are the are are related to my aunt, and my aunt is one of a number of kids I can't remember if it's like eight children and there were three brothers and maybe five sisters, and so one of them was Vito, one of them was Anthony Joseph, and over time, um, and so over time I've been able to trace through the DNA matches, through the tree, my relationship to that family and at first, when she told me, I had a really hard time accepting it because I had fallen in love with the other, vito, and his picture and his whole tree, and they had accepted me and I had talked to them. This time around I talked to, I didn't really talk. I never talked to the first cousin. I only, like you know, texted or sent messages with him, um, and he seemed nice enough but wasn't really very forthcoming, didn't really tell me much, sent me a few pictures and then, like a year later, I got another match who also turned out to be a first cousin. I think she may have misinterpreted some of our communication because she sent me an amazing bundle of photographs and information and then later realized that I had never actually met my father. So I think she was kind of under the impression that I was known and they knew about me. So I think she kind of retracted a little bit when she realized that, you know, I, what I hadn't been like, accepted and then at one point I did so I wrote.

Speaker 2: 24:24

I wrote Vito a letter, not knowing that he was in a nursing home, he wasn't home, not knowing that he was in a nursing home. He wasn't home and didn't hear back. I waited a few months and so I don't remember I may have written another letter, or I ended up trying to reach out to what I found online his, his daughter, his daughter, um, which incredibly, you know, also looked a lot like me, um, and so I had a hard time accepting it. But my search angel and incredibly her name is is Dawn. She's a beautiful person, um, she kept calling me and checking in on me and saying, like you know, no, this is it.

Speaker 2: 25:15

I'm really good at what I do. You know, like we do this, you know it's. It might take a while for you to digest, but it might also take a while for them. They had no idea about you and so kind of talking to her helped a lot and I ended up calling his daughter eventually, which I felt, like you know, kind of putting the shoe on the other foot was a horrific thing to do to somebody kind of pick up the phone and say like oh hi, I'm, you know kind of pick up the phone and say like, oh hi, I'm, you know, the sister you never knew about because your father was stepping out on your family.

Speaker 2: 25:59

Um, but I also felt like I struggled with it for a long time. But I also felt like in this life, if you don't take the chance, if you don't take the risk or kind of go for what you want and what you need, you'll end up, you know, on your deathbed with a bunch of regrets yeah, well, you know this.

Speaker 1: 26:23

The same thing happened to my, my cousin, um, and she found the half-sister. The same way.

Speaker 1: 26:32

I had been contacted by her first and I told I said, well, you know, she was on 23, and I said try Ancestry, because there's a lot more people in Ancestry, and I knew she was a second cousin and it's going through my mind like who is whose daughter is she? And so she did it. And it just so happened that, um, my cousin, larry, his, all three of his children had done ancestry, uh, so as soon as it popped up, I contacted my cousin and I said did you see? And she said I saw, but you know they, they uh, they contacted, they contacted each other very quickly and you know they, my cousin was shocked, you know, donna was shocked, but you know she said, you know, wasn't her fault, you know, uh, and I, I don't know how much they talked, but I know I'm pretty sure that they met and and you know, and I asked her did you know anything?

Speaker 1: 27:31

And she said the only thing she remembered when she was maybe like four years old was her mother crying in the bedroom for like two weeks. So it somehow came out, you know, um, but now, so now did your, did your assistant was she? She was in the neighborhood.

Speaker 2: 27:50

Yeah, when, when you were growing up, she wasn't in the neighborhood because the family had moved out from the neighborhood and I guess he used to still drive back to kind of visit his friends and, you know, kind of hang out or do business. I don't know what was going on on that side of things to hang out or do business. I don't know what was going on on that side of things, but when I was a very young child, like elementary school age, there were still plenty of Italians around and had Italian businesses. So you know, my sister, who's from my older sister's from a separate relationship, you know we used to go to every Sunday to the Italian bakery.

Speaker 2: 28:49

Like I have some Italian kind of heritage because I grew up in an Italian neighborhood but I never really felt Italian because that whole, that whole piece was missing. I felt very Puerto Rican, which is kind of ironic because when I've I've you know now I've been to many places, I was in in Munich in Germany and somebody said, oh, you're Italian, you're like the um, uh, what is it? Uh, architect, like if somebody drew an Italian girl like that's, this is what they would draw, and I thought that was so funny because I was missing my whole Italian, you know, heritage. So I find it really, I just I find it really interesting and I've been driven by kind of reclaiming that information and then also diving into my mom's side as well to kind of reclaim some of that information that has been lost. You know, there was a, there was a big fire in the church in Ponce and all of the records that they kept, and the Spaniards kept excellent records.

Speaker 1: 30:11

Yes, they did.

Speaker 2: 30:13

They were completely lost. But I also later on was able to hire locally a genealogist who helped me trace my mother's line all the way back to like the 1300s, and so what I find really interesting and I want to write a book about this one day. I know you're the guy to talk to and the reason a lot of us are so related, you know, stem from that, from those branches, and so very distantly we're related through that, through that lineage, and so he traced my, my roots to Christopher Columbus, the founding governors, even as far back as the founding for the founding conquistadores of the Canary Islands. Right, yeah. And so, as an Italian-American, being able to say that I have some connection to Christopher Columbus, but it's through my Puerto Rican side, is like mind-blowing. Well, yeah, and that's. You know, it's through my Puerto Rican side is like mind blowing.

Speaker 1: 31:51

Well, yeah, and that's you know. It's funny. You mentioned that because I traced Marion back to the first governor I don't remember his name now, but I traced her back as a, you know, descendant of the first governor and back to Spain and all of that. And her, her father was actually born in Dominican Republic because her grandfather had coffee and sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic and in Puerto Rico, so he obviously had some money, but he also he liked women a lot.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Her grandfather, he had three separate families. Her father was from the second family and then he had she actually has aunts that are younger than her through her grandfather and he lived a very long time. But she said that every Sunday her grandfather in Puerto Rico would dress up and go visit his second wife, her grandmother and my guys because that's where they lived. And you know, same thing. And, like you said, she's got I don't know boy. She's got like 10 or 12 different nationalities in the mix, mostly from the Puerto Rican side, and I think every Puerto Rican has done Ancestrycom. Italians don't do it, but Puerto Ricans, for some reason, all do Ancestry.

Speaker 2: 33:18

And I'm hoping that changes, because I saw some of the Ancestry folks. Interestingly enough, it was on LinkedIn. Interestingly enough it was on LinkedIn. I saw them talk about how they're now offering kits in like 23 different countries, including Italy, and what's interesting about I find, like my search is that I had, like technology was such a tool for me to connect with people. So for our anniversary next year, we are my husband and I are planning to go for a family trip back to San Icandro, Dubai.

Speaker 2: 34:05

I have found living relatives through my grandmother who I'd never met. I have been able to get in contact with people back in the little tiny village that time forgot, and I have also made. We met through this journey. I met someone incredible who's been documenting and digitizing the records from that town for most of his life, and so he has a website. It's called body ancestors dot com.

Speaker 2: 34:55

Fill out my entire tree on my grandma, my paternal grandmother's side, back to maybe the 1500s I can't remember how far back, but like eighth grandma, eighth great grandmother, um, basically, and it's all thanks to that man's work and he's put it all online for you know, for free.

Speaker 2: 35:09

And so I met him. I met some other researchers helping him. I had people help me find some of those great grandparents and it's just been incredible how, how generous people are. And so, even though kind of going back to talking to my half sister and that you know, vetoes children, even though I guess they haven't found it in their hearts to accept me or embrace me as part of their history, I have found this incredible community online that has helped me find the information I needed regardless, and so I was able to see my father's face. I was able to even find a photo of my grandmother and her mother online. Have been able to. Every time I get a new italian match, um, if it's above like 20, um, uh, centigrams, I can't remember what centimeters, I can't remember what the uh cms yeah, centimorgans, I think it is.

Speaker 1: 36:26

Yeah, it's like it's not centigrams.

Speaker 2: 36:29

That's another measurement. If it's above a certain amount, even if it's a tiny amount, most of the time I am able to figure out where on my tree they belong and figure out the connection. And what I've been doing is that I have my profiles online. Anyone who emails me, anyone who is looking for information, I share what I have. I always respond to people because I want to pay it forward, and so that's kind of why I'm mentioning that if you're in a situation like I was, it's online. Like the technology, ai, it's getting to the point where there's not going to be any more secrets. And I mean, you know, 1970s was sounded like a really fun time for the folks back then.

Speaker 1: 37:27

It was when you were 19. I'll tell you that.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Yes, and so I feel like it's time to shed sort of the stigma around. You know, sort of this unknown it's it. You know it happens right, like, and it's more common than than you would think. And so I think it's kind of time to move behind the shame, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to come to you and and share this story.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Yeah, no, I appreciate it and and so. So how did you, how did your mom cope? I mean, how did she, you know? She obviously raised a fine upstanding daughter. So I mean, how did she, you know?

Speaker 2: 38:10

thank you, that's, that's very kind. Um, I feel like, you know, thinking about being a mother now and thinking a lot about her now that she's not, she's no longer with us. Um, I think she was a very strong person, like internal, internal fortitude. I think she suffered a lot because her life was, kind, you know, very tragic right. So she, she got hit by that car. She was devastated, she was. She had a lot of medical issues for the rest of her life.

Speaker 2: 38:46

And then, of course, you know, there's the heartbreak that comes from falling in love with someone who, who doesn't want to be with you.

Speaker 2: 38:55

And so, um, we were, you know, we, we were poor, we grew up in in what became Spanish Harlem during the 1980s crack era, and she, she protected me. You know, I was kind of like her apple of her eye, little girl, and so, even though I grew up in a really rough neighborhood, I'm always kind of proud of those of us that made it out of the neighborhood, because to be able to raise and nurture, you know, a child in that environment isn't, isn't an easy thing to do. And so, even though, um, you know, her life didn't turn out maybe the way she wanted, I am very proud of the fact that she raised me in a way that enabled me to succeed, and so, as a mom, I see the beauty in that, you know, and it's something I definitely want to carry forward, and I also think about these ancestors. You know what it might have been like for my grandmother, who was 19 when she came from from body Right and I.

Speaker 2: 40:14

I've researched the journey and so, um, I understand that many folks walked from their walked from their village, right, you know, if they were lucky enough to have like a mule or donkey, like they were able to put their bags or you know, and make that voyage. But a lot of them walked to the port in Naples and then it was a two day trip and not great conditions and you know, and and so, and then they got here and I can't imagine moving to another country, you know, after a journey like that and not knowing anything, you know, and so I think about that fortitude, um, and I see it, my mom, you know, my mom came by plane, but it was the same experience, right, like she didn't have anyone here in New York city when she came here.

Speaker 1: 41:19

Yeah, so. So why did two questions? Why did she come and then, and then. You know what did she do, you know what kind of, what kind of job did she have, you know what kind of what kind of job did she have?

Speaker 2: 41:30

My mom, yeah, or my grandma, yeah. So so my mom came because, you know, in Puerto Rico she was also growing up poor and so there wasn't, there wasn't work, right, like there wasn't any work, like the, the, the, the opportunities were in the mainland in New York, and so you have this huge community of Puerto Ricans in New York City. And so she came here because she wanted more than you know kind of the peasant, rural experience that she was having in Puerto Rico and there were so many opportunities here you know she was having in Puerto Rico and there were so many opportunities here, you know. And so she came and she had some work lined up as a domestic worker, but that didn't, that didn't work out, and then she ended up working in a bakery, which is really interesting because my grandfather, who, on the Puerto Rican side, my father's father, was a baker and in fact, if you go up to the Bronx and Rye, new York, that area up there, um, my father's last name, like there's a bunch of bakeries with that name, and so one of my research projects is trying to see if there's actually some connection with with that last name, as just is it just so happened that, uh, you know, all the bakers in Italy come from this family?

Speaker 2: 43:01

I don't know, um, but it's really interesting. Like I said, there's so many parallels, um, and so that is something that I said there's so many parallels, and so that is something that I've been exploring in terms of like, there's something here that I want to share with the world about these parallels and these experiences from both sides. Like I was saying, it just makes me feel like we're so much closer to each other than we actually think.

Speaker 1: 43:29

Well, yeah, no, that's for sure. And and also, you know one other thing, that that I've said before is that my children are adopted, and my son is fifth to eighth cousin of my wife. You know his father was Puerto Rican and his father was born in Puerto Rico. So so it's. It's like, I think, part of the reason, you know, in Italy they don't do ancestry there because up until recently they've all been in the same town for three, four, five hundred years. So you know, the family tree is in the cemetery, they just have to go there and look and everybody's there.

Speaker 1: 44:08

And the other thing was, in fact, we got a tour from somebody in Molise who's an expert on the Samnite people, and I asked him how long has your family been here? He's like 500 years. He said this is my heritage, is the Samnite. I could go back to these people who fought the Romans. I think that's part of it. They don't need to research because they know everything, unlike when our families came here, where they didn't talk that much about Italy they seem to talk about it all the time over there.

Speaker 1: 44:48

It's a completely different culture in that respect. I think, um, but, like I said, the you know, uh, you know marion's puerto rican roots. You know I was able to get back to, I think, 1300 or something like that. Um, and, and you know most of well, not all of them, but you know most of them that can trace back to the first governor have some sort of noble roots back in spain, because if you were the governor in puerto rico in whatever it was, 1500, you know, uh, the roots go way, way back to those noble families.

Speaker 2: 45:34

Absolutely. And the interesting thing too is, like you said, with the Dominican Republic and everything. So in the Caribbean these families, these founding families, they often moved around from I, they had a property, you know, and kind of set up towns and governance all over the caribbean, sometimes even into venezuela or some of the other areas yeah that were being, uh um, colonized.

Speaker 2: 46:05

And so that is also mind blowing Because, like I said, I had this very kind of like basic idea, you know, like one third, this one third that Puerto Rico, they came straight over and it made me realize how narrow, kind of like, my mindset had been and how that history is so much richer because it wasn't, you know, a to B, it wasn't like that specific, that narrow.

Speaker 1: 46:44

Well, in the Spanish, we're everywhere.

Speaker 1: 46:46

You know, I'm a direct from Hernando Cortez because he's connected with the Pignatelli family in Italy. In fact, there's a museum in Naples, the Pignatelli-Cortez Museum, and so it does, and it well, it goes back 400 years. I mean, I guess in the scheme of things that's not that far. But um, I think that's what people don't realize too. Like you were saying, you know, the spanish had the footprint in the americas and south america, north america, central america, all those caribbean islands, uh and uh, and italy. You know they ruled italy for 300 years. So yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:31

And when I was researching my family, one of my cousins that I found the Piramalo family. They came from Spain, originally, in 1500 or thereabouts, and she thought she was going to find people in um south america, uh, and in spain.

Speaker 2: 47:55

She never expected to find anybody in america because just didn't dawn on her, you know, that they would be in america yeah, yeah, it's fascinating, I feel like, uh, in researching my mom's tree, I have found a lot of interesting information as well.

Speaker 2: 48:11

Right around the time I really started deep diving into her ancestry and I'm so glad I was able to convince her to take the DNA test.

Speaker 2: 48:22

Before she passed, I came across another researcher who's been doing DNA research on the indigenous folks of the Caribbean so ancient DNA research as it was a few years ago. That specimen, one of the specimens that the researchers were using, was from what is now the Bahamas, and so in the Bahamas, in the caves, they have found Taino they're called Lukayan Taino, and so these are indigenous people whose remains were found in the caves, and my mom and I matched these remains that are, you know, thousands, I don't know how old, and it was incredible to find, to actually find proof of that relationship, you know, and, like I said earlier, not in Puerto Rico, but in the Bahamas, and so it's really given me a lot of things to think about in terms of, like, how our people have moved around and so how, what we think of nation and states and borders. You know it's it's like it makes sense right now, but in in the long view of time, it's completely irrelevant yeah try, try um, try, my true ancestry.

Speaker 1: 50:06

I think you could send it there for for free and then you could you know. But they, what they do is they go to archaeological digs and then they match you to those, those different places. So you might get some interesting stuff from you know Italy, and then also from you know from the Taino population, because they, they pretty much do this from all over the world and it doesn't say that you're related to any of these people, but it kind of gives you a sense of where they were. And then they also do if you, if you don't have it, you probably do, but if you don't, they also do the, the haplogroups for the mother line and father line, which is, which is pretty interesting for anybody who cares to know that stuff and and, and I was amazed because my, my mom's, my mother line, come well, you would only have one, you would only have the mother line, but my mother line is almost 95% from the Caucasus, even though, as you know, as far back as I know, they were in Italy.

Speaker 2: 51:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:06

It's very. You know that that blew me away when I saw that. I was like how could this possibly be? You know that that blew me away when I saw that I was like how could this possibly be? But you know, that's what it is. It is what it is, I suppose. So now you have you, I know you have a website and I think you also have an Instagram where you put some of your stuff out there, right?

Speaker 2: 51:24

So if people want to look into that, where would they go? Yeah, so a lot of my social media accounts are under Literanista, which is what I used to blog under way way back. So I've been blogging for about two decades, lots of talking about these topics. My degree is in anthropology and I love reading and researching and writing, and so you'll find me on social media under Literanista. My website is now ValerieMEvanscom, and when I started doing this research, like I mentioned, I thought it would be interesting to do a curation of Italian-American photographs and stories, and so I have that under Instagram Italian at a glance and so it's all about kind of discovering, you know, my own Italian American heritage, history, but also making those stories more available to the world.

Speaker 1: 52:25

Yeah, and that's you know that's not dissimilar to what I do. I'm gonna have to check because there may be a few people I want to talk to and send you some of my stuff too, yeah, yeah so we could. We could go back and forth on that. Uh, and you mentioned barry ancestrycom. Who? Who runs that? Because I don't.

Speaker 2: 52:43

I've never heard of that site before so his name is John Krugerio and he is just the fellow that has been researching and had all of these records that you know. He was putting into his computer and creating a database of everyone in town and at one point he decided well, I have basically the whole town mapped out for generations, let me put it online. And so that's his passion project website that are all basically like you can look up an individual and find their marriage records, their civic records all have been digitized and are available on that website. And so if you have family in those little villages, those little communes outside of Badi, you should definitely take a look at BadiAncestorscom because I can guarantee you it's a treasure trove.

Speaker 1: 53:57

Yeah, no, I'm going to have to look, because my mom's family is from Tarito, just 30 minutes outside of Badi, and we went there last year. So when you go, I know a really really good restaurant in Bari, in the old town. I don't need all the recommendations, I'll let you know where it is and then if you go to the torito, there's a really, really good place there. Um, but yeah, we stayed in the old town, embody, and that was quite an experience.

Speaker 1: 54:23

It took us I think it took us three days to figure out the best way to get back to our apartment, because the streets are like the streets, it's nuts, you know. There's no street signs or anything like that Little things. Usually, you know, in Italy they write the sign everything's on the building, so you have to kind of try and get used to that. But we finally figured the quickest way back time-wise not not mile-wise or you know uh was to walk along the water, and then we were able to find our apartment pretty quick. But that was certainly an adventure for sure. Um, and then one last question before we go now have you been to panse? Have you been to puerto rico?

Speaker 2: 55:07

So, incredibly enough, I've traveled all over the world, all over the Caribbean. I have not been to Puerto Rico, so I keep kind of nagging my husband about that. I have to do something about this, especially with with my son. I want him to kind of, you know, have that worldly experience, because I lived in, you know, I didn't leave Harlem until I was an adult, um, and I was a underprivileged kid, and so I feel like, you know, the world is huge, right, we're talking about the world is small. The world is also a really big, interesting place, and so I want to travel everywhere I can, including those hometowns, those ancestral hometowns yeah, my, my, my wife's sister.

Speaker 1: 55:56

She lives in um agnasko, which is right outside of aguardia, um, and it's um, aguardia actually has one of the largest runways in the world because they used to, they used to uh fly b-52s into there or something like that. So it's got this two big, huge runways that don't get used anymore. Um, but yeah, it was uh, it's pretty. You know pretty nice stuff. I mean the beaches and everything. Certainly has probably been told they're incredible. But you know, in the research I found you know she does, she does go back to ponce at some point in time, because that was probably, I guess, outside of san juan you know the biggest city in puerto rico, so you know a lot of the.

Speaker 1: 56:42

A lot of those people were there, um, and we did actually get to go to one of the plantations up on the mountains coffee plantations that her grandfather owned. It's not working anymore because they don't. You know, that's the sad thing about Puerto Rico. I don't get it. I don't understand why, a we never made it a state a long time ago. I don't understand why, a we never made it a state a long time ago and B why we don't. You know why the states doesn't use it to build stuff, to do things. I mean, it blows me away.

Speaker 2: 57:26

Yeah, I mean, there's so much there and there's so much there to unpack. But I was just thinking, as you were talking too, that one of the areas I I like to think about and sort of explore in the research too, that I again I can't get over um and I I know we're about to wrap up, but it's this idea of um. If you look at you know the travel, travel and leisure, you know all of the, all of these lonely planet, pulo, yeah, and ponce and puerto rico are like the top destiny, you know travel destinations, the most beautiful beaches in the world, um, and I think about our ancestors, la La Miseria, and you know struggling and like they were, they were fleeing these places and here we are, generations later, you know, trying to make our way back and and they're kind of, you know, for a lot of people they're out of reach, right Like we're talking about um. Boogaloo and Barry, you know um have become kind of like the influencer you just see a celebrity is. You know everything happening there and it's just so interesting to me, um, and so you know it's it's all kind of cyclical and and and has a lot of relevance.

Speaker 2: 58:49

But yeah, I can't wait to go to body. I definitely have to go to Puerto Rico, otherwise I'm getting my my Puerto Rican card revoked. I'm not even a New Yorker anymore, so I can't even say I'm a New Yorican. But yeah, this has been great, bob. I. There's so much that you know I wish we could talk about. I. There's so much that you know I wish we could talk about.

Speaker 1: 59:10

There's so much there uh, well, we'll have to. We'll have when you come back, when you go to pull you and you come back, we'll have to do another one definitely well, thanks again.

Speaker 2: 59:19

I really really appreciate it thank you, bob, thanks for having me.