Italian Roots and Genealogy
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Italian Roots and Genealogy
Uncovering Italian Ancestry: A Journey Through History and DNA
When John Vallillo lost his mother in 2005, he had no idea it would ignite a passionate journey into uncovering his Italian roots. Join us as John takes us through the meticulous process of tracing his great-grandfather Giovanni Vallillo's story, including the surprising discovery that Giovanni's name was altered at a cemetery in Cleveland. John’s emotional connection to his heritage and thrilling moments of discovery—likened to the adventures of Indiana Jones—will captivate anyone intrigued by genealogy and family history.
Our conversation with John also transports us to Italy, exploring the cultural richness of various regions and personal anecdotes from his repeated travels. John shines a light on the poignant story of Clotilde, an abandoned baby in the 1800s, and how DNA research can reveal long-lost relatives and intricate family histories. We delve into societal attitudes towards family history and economic disparities in Italy, showcasing the resilience of descendants who overcame past hardships.
We further uncover the fascinating world of DNA analysis and its ability to transform our understanding of heritage. John shares compelling stories of his great-grandparents' challenges, the early death of his great-grandfather from tuberculosis, and the subsequent remarriage of his great-grandmother. Through DNA discoveries, John has connected with long-lost relatives and even linked to notable figures like Fred Bungusto. This episode emphasizes the importance of cherishing family stories and how serendipitous moments can lead to meaningful discoveries, inspiring listeners to embark on their own genealogical adventures.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Farmers and NoblesRead about my research story and how to begin your family research.
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Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our blog and our YouTube channel, our podcast and our newsletter and our great sponsors, your Dolce Vita Italy Rooting Phil, italy and Abbiativo Casa. Our podcast on our newsletter and our great sponsors your dolce vita italy rooting phil, italy and abiotivo casa. And my guest today is john valillo. Uh, who's? Uh just came back from a from a trip over there, so welcome, john.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being here, thanks bob so glad to be here uh, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:No, it's my pleasure. Um, so, before we talk about the trip and what you discovered there, when and why did you start doing your ancestry research?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, like so many, grown up exposed to Italian traditions and other activities with relatives. When you're young, it kind of goes away as you go to college or start a career or start a family, and that's pretty much what happened to me. Um, by the time um, I was well into my career and my, my kids were grown um, the, the people that um were influencing me when I was young, uh were dying away. And you know when that happens. You, I think, you step back a little bit and and ask yourself well, you know where, where did my traditions go? Where where did I come from? And I? That happened right after my mom died in 2005. I really started looking into her family history and particularly her dad was adopted when he was a baby, and so my next youngest brother I'm the oldest of five, my next youngest brother, I'm the oldest of five he and I traveled to Washington DC, where her family originated, started doing some research there, and when I returned I had the bug right. I had to really start looking into all aspects of our family and I was particularly interested in the Italian side. So, 2005, 2006, I got some information about my great-grandfather, giovanni, great-grandfather Giovanni and nobody told me when I was younger, but I suspect that I was named after him and so I found out that he was buried close by in Cleveland, ohio, where there was a large Italian community in a number of neighborhoods, not only what is known as Little Italy today in Cleveland on the east side, but there was at least three or four other Italian neighborhoods, depending on where you came from in Italy. You know, the Sicilians went to one neighborhood and the Molise I guess it's Molise from Molise Capobasso area went to the Little Italy area and neighborhoods in between. So I went to where my great-grandfather was buried in Lakeview Cemetery and I went to the front office and I said I'm trying to find the headstone and the plot of my great-grandfather, giovanni Bellillo. I had the original spelling and they looked it up and they said, well, we don't have Giovanni Bellillo here. And I said, well, do you have a John Bellillo? And they said, yes, we have John Bolillo, with the last name spelled completely different, with a V-I-L-L-I-L-O. And I went to his plot and found his headstone and I think I did send a picture of that to you and it was spelled correctly it was Giovanni V-A-L-L-I-L-L-O, and so I'm thinking you know, so many people say that the names have been changed when people come through Ellis Island, which is generally untrue because there were Italian interpreters at Ellis Island, so they usually got the names right. My last name was changed at a cemetery. That's funny. Yeah, I think I have an internment record that I sent to you. It shows that the undertaker, the funeral home, had the name correct, but when it got to the cemetery and the Undertaker and the funeral home were in the Italian neighborhood, they were in Little Italy, so they had it right. But when it got to the cemetery it changed. And I think because our family, as most, were um illiterate. They, they couldn't spell, they couldn't uh write, um, they just assumed that that was the American way of spelling Bolillo. So they, they continued to use that spelling uh throughout the rest of their lives. So that was the start of it.
Speaker 2:I had to find out which ship that Giovanni came over on, which I found was the SS Kredik, I think that's how you pronounce it 1905, he came over. Pronounce it 1905, he came over. My great-grandmother came over the year later, in 1906, with two surviving boys. They had had, I think, five children since the time they were married in 1891, and three of them did not survive. So the two surviving boys came with my great-grandmother and her name was Clotilda and there's a long story that I'll get into later with her, but they came over in 1906. My grandfather, antonio, was born a year later. Then his, the last child, was my aunt, nancy. She was known as Annunziata.
Speaker 2:So that got me started and coincidentally, there was an organization called Point, pursuing our Italian names together, that had a local branch in Cleveland, and I found out about them, joined the group and they helped me with online research and finding more background information specific to my family. That organization is still around. It's not, or Point is not around any longer, but the local group has evolved into CHOW, which is Cleveland Italian Ancestry Organization, and we're still going strong here in the Cleveland area. That's how I got started. It's been a real fun ride and I feel like everything that I discover. And I feel like everything that I discover. I feel like Indiana Jones. It's like I'm opening that golden box when I find out a new fact about my family.
Speaker 2:Luckily, I think it's a website called italiangenealogycom that I started posing questions about how do I get this information? How do I contact people in Italy to obtain documents, things like that. And I received a response from what turns out to be a cousin of mine who's in West, who was in West New York, in New Jersey. His name is John Armalino and John had put together the entire microfilm, microfiche that the family history centers had put or gathered over the last what you know, 50 years that they've been going to all these towns in Italy and microfilming all the records. Well, he has that for Campobasso, where my family is from the city of Campobasso, and I contacted him and he said oh yeah, I have your entire family tree. So, lucky me, right. I was able to kind of shortcut a little bit of the research and John was able to send me a lot of information going back to the 1700s. And then from that point I started hiring local researchers in Molise and Capobasso to take it back even further, and now I think I'm back to the 1500s.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's super. Now. You didn't know he was a cousin before you started doing this right?
Speaker 2:No, no, he just responded to my posts on Italian genealogy, and then we connected. I visited with him a couple times over the past few years too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it's great when you find somebody who does all of that kind of stuff. Um, you know, a few weeks ago I interviewed somebody who's doing it for one of the uh one of the towns in uh pulia, and I think he said he's got 160 000 records, if I remember right, that's amazing, it's just incredible it is yeah, the, the um, it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the file that John sent me has over 5,000 names in it and you know, in fact, when I went to Italy a couple weeks ago, I took that with me and I had the opportunity to meet with some cousins there and I'd pull out my cell phone and bring up that file and, okay, how we are related, it goes back to this person and that that's fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that that is fun. Um, you know, and they're so great about it. Uh, that they're. You know. I think sometimes they're more excited than us. My, my malise connection is capricota. I go back many generations to there, another one of those mountaintop towns.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're well known for. I guess they. I don't think. Well, the ski resort isn't in Capricota, but not far away there, and they get tons of snow. I had no idea how much snow they get there of snow.
Speaker 2:I had no idea how much snow they get there. I think that was the town that I said a couple of years ago got feet of snow in one of the storms and that was worldwide news because people couldn't get out of their homes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have. I'm not sure if it still operates. They have this big giant snowplow that was donated by people here in America back in like 1950 or 49 or something like that. My daughter, they wanted me to go sit in it. I said if I get up there, I'll never get back down again. It's like it's way up, but get it. They get it early and they get it later.
Speaker 1:I mean we were there in the summer and it was nice, and then by six o'clock the temperature must have dropped 15 to 20 degrees or something like that. Wow, yeah, uh, but you know, beautiful place, maybe like a thousand people in there, or something like that. And um, and what was crazy about it was, um, they, uh, the we, they had us go into mass. It was just at the end of the mass and we went in and the priest made this whole announcement about us going back and uh, and nobody left. And then they wanted me to speak and of course I have to speak in english and uh, and nobody left. I mean, they just mean, they just, you know, waited there from, you know, for the whole thing. It was just uh, it was just amazing and uh. So, um you know what was your experience like, meeting all of these people and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing. Um, you feel that you feel a part of something you feel at home. I first went two years ago and it was a trip that was planned for 2020. And we were going to go then but planned it again for 2022. And the plan was I was going to go with one of my brothers and with a friend of ours, and the day before we were supposed to go my friend's brother got deathly ill. He had to cancel and then halfway through the trip I was going to meet up with my brother in Campobasso and he got COVID in 2022. So I said, well, I'm going anyway, and I ended up going to Sicily. We have another friend, this part of this child group, that wants to move to the Palermo area, and he was there.
Speaker 2:So I spent a week in Palermo. That's where I met Michael Cavallari and saw his movie in another mountaintop medieval village and spent a week there and then went to Termoli is on the Adriatic, about an hour east of Capobasso, and that's where, for the first time, I have met relatives that I have discovered through DNA research. On my great-grandmother's side, my beast Nona, and we met for the first time. Then my cousin owns a pastry shop in Termoli, and so, of course, I had to go there every day and have my cappuccino and my cornetto and talk with them, which they couldn't speak English. I couldn't speak Italian, but thank goodness for Google Translate and we were able to communicate for Google Translate and we were able to communicate.
Speaker 2:And so this time, just a few weeks ago, I have developed more contacts, more relatives that are throughout Italy. I had a cousin that lives in Modena I think that's how you pronounce it near Bologna, and we met him for an afternoon when we were there this time and just continued from North to South meeting different people that I have contacted over the two years since I went in 2022, just by Facebook and other, you know, email and doing research. But it's just an amazing place, it's. I tell people this is my third time that I have gone back. If you want to experience Europe, you can get a little bit of the German-Swiss influence in Northern Europe. You can get more Greek or African influence out of Sicily. No matter what part of Italy you go to, you can get a little bit of different parts of Europe just in one country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, and the food is different and all of that. I promised my wife we're hoping to go again next year. I promised her this time that we're going to the north and going to Pisa and Florence and Venice and those places, because we haven't been there yet and I dragged her on two genealogy trips. So that's the deal if we go back.
Speaker 2:Just to be able to go to the normal tourist locations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean, I do have ancestors up there going back to the 1300th, 1400s. You know, because of my grandmother's noble roots, you know, I have, from you know, montefeltro and Gonzaga's and all the D'Este, so I'll squeeze in some of their castles. You know, I won't tell it till we get that.
Speaker 2:Right, right, oh, honey, we're going to a castle today, okay, but it happens to be part of my family history.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, I'll break that news when we get that. And she, you know, I did the same thing. I was carrying around the family tree with me, everything, and she's like don't take that out again, nobody cares.
Speaker 2:I said I can't yeah, yeah and believe it or not, they care they do.
Speaker 1:They do it's, it's. I, I think, you know, I think that over the last few years I think now they're starting to look a little bit different on it because there's so many of us are going back but when I started and started talking to people over there maybe you know in earnest, maybe six years ago or seven years ago uh, they really didn't pay that much attention to genealogy because they were in the same town for three, four or five hundred years. They could go to the cemetery and see everybody right they know their history.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, uh, but I, but I, I think we're, you know, I think we're bringing them around a little bit. So now you said you had an interesting story about clotilde. So what's that?
Speaker 2:she, um, uh, as as many babies were in the 1800s. Uh, she was a proietta, an abandoned baby, and when I started looking into some of her documents, I saw in her obituary that one of the people that had died prior to her was claimed to be her brother. And so how do you know if you're an abandoned child? How do you know who's your brother? And so I started contacting people with that same last name through Facebook and trying to find out if anyone knew more of this story, and a lady from Italy responded to me and she said try to bring it up on my screen. She said it's definitely.
Speaker 2:We are definitely related because the story is there is a wealthy landowner in Matrice Matrice is just outside of Capabasso that unfortunately had a number of servants, and the rumor was that the wealthy landowner, or one of his sons, had children with one of the servants, and each time they had a child, they would take it to Campo Basso and there's a wheel where they would place the baby and the baby and, anonymously, the nuns inside of the church I think it was San Antonio Obate, it's one of the churches in Campobasso would take the wheel, turn it, take the baby and then give it to the mayor, who would assign the baby to a family to raise, and usually it was a couple, a woman that had recently lost a baby that could still provide nourishment to a newborn. So that's the story she told me, and so I had to find out the names of all of the children that supposedly were abandoned and taken to the same place in Campo Basso and started doing research. And again, this is like around 2010. I think before Facebook, not Facebook Ancestry started with their DNA program. So I was able to develop a lot of documents that during their life, my great grandmother and this gentleman claimed that they were brother and sister.
Speaker 2:Well, I guess when you're growing up, you kind of know what the stories are, what the family stories are. Even if these children are being raised by different families, the word gets out right that they were probably a brother and sister. So there were two boys in Clotilda, and one of the boys actually grew up to be the father of a very famous Italian singer who was the Frank Sinatra of Italy in the 1950s, and there's a statue to him in Campobasso. So when we finally did give a DNA sample, all these names started showing up that were connected through my dad, my grandfather, my great-grandmother, and so, of course, I started contacting them and over the years, we've kind of developed not exactly who the natural father could have been or the natural mother could have been, but we kind of know that we're focusing in on the town and the families.
Speaker 2:So when I went in 2022, the cousins that I met in Termally were from that research and I went back again a few weeks ago and we just had a wonderful time and and they, they accept the story. They, they know that that's uh likely what happened, um, but it's interesting. There's there still seems to be um, not a caste system, but there not a caste system, but there is different economic levels in Italy that if you have something like this in your family history, they accept it, but they don't really want to talk about it. And so you know, my feeling is, look at us, we have succeeded in life. We've had good families, we've had careers, we've been able to overcome whatever hardships they had when they were young in Italy, and so here in America, we're proud of that, but there's still a little bit of it of um, not shame, but just not not wanting to talk about that type of situation when, when you're still there in Italy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean and you know. Yeah, I know what you mean and you know a couple of things. My wife's here, her mother's and her grandfather they use the name Poeta, p-o-e-t-a, but when I got back to Italy they were actually Proietto. So somewhere back then, you know, had this the same situation with, I suppose, a wheel or whatever right um and um, but it's probably so far back I'll, you know, I'll never be able to figure it out, but on my um, my paternal grandmother, her father um, in his birth record he's listed as um philia naturali. He's listed as filiae naturali, which means he was illegitimate in some way, shape or form. And what was interesting about it was I had some research done by somebody over there and I refer to it as like a birth card. It's not the full birth record which I have, but he came up with like an index card size thing and it shows his father, savarillo, and it has two different mothers on it. One card has one name, the other card has another name and when I was talking to one of my cousins over there, the same thing.
Speaker 1:There's this rumor in the family that somebody because they were again, they were from a noble family. So somebody had a child with one of the servants, and so I could only guess that it may have been my great-grandfather. He was never married this woman. Shortly thereafter he did get married and all the other children have her as the mother. So it's this big mystery. You know about my great-grandfather. You know it appears he was illegitimate. But mystery you know about my, my great grandfather. You know it appears he was illegitimate, but somehow, I guess because they were wealthy, you know they were able to, you know, make it look somehow that he was legitimate in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 2:And but well, I'll never know what the real story was. You know, I did is hire a DNA expert to help me, and they were able to put together a really nice report and actually sorting out all of the matches that show up on your record and how do they fit into your family tree, and without that help it would have been almost impossible for me. I'd have to really study DNA and centimorgans and all the things that you need to do to be able to figure out things like that. If you watch Finding your Roots on PBS, if you watch Finding your Roots on PBS, one of the DNA experts they use is CeCe Moore, and it's her company that I hired to help do this, and they just really provide a lot of good information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was supposed to interview somebody from there on Saturday and her dad, I guess, is very sick and she had to take care of him. So I'm hoping to get somebody from from there back on or have her back on. It wasn't CC, it was somebody who works with her, but I was very interested in in in what they do because of you know, just because of that, and I have to ask you, cause you have a very interesting genetic chart which I had never seen before. Um, so how it says at the bottom it says dna discoveries. Is that through them or is that? That's something else?
Speaker 1:that's through them yeah, that was really. That's a really interesting chart yeah so they build the chart based based on on the dna.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct and the the one name on the chart is the was the man that, uh, my great-grandmother claimed as her brother, and when I um, I guess part of the story is my when ganni my great-grandfather came over, he, not soon but within a few years, developed tuberculosis, so he died in 1917. And in 1917, there was no safety net, there was no Social Security, there was no financial net, there was no social security, there was no financial support for families. So my great-grandmother had to find somebody quickly that she could get married to, so she would have support for the kids that were still young, young. And so she married a man by the name of Rocco DeSantis. So Rocco was from Arce, I think, a-r-c-e, which is not in Molise, but he had come to Cleveland and he had had a couple of kids and did not have a wife with him. So they married and they were able to raise the youngest my grandfather and my aunt and they are buried together.
Speaker 2:Rocco and Clotilda are buried together in Lakeview. Giovanni is buried in a completely separate part of the cemetery, which actually overlooks Little Italy, and then the brother of Clotilde his name's Giuseppe Degnavivo is buried right next to Clotilde. So I think that was another hint, they're buried right next to each other. They claimed each other as brother and sister. I pretty much accept the fact that that's what they claimed, and now, with the DNA analysis, it brings everything together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and were they both for lack of a better word? Were they both abandoned?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, they were the Italian music scene. Fred Bungusto was very famous in the 50s and 60s, and that was the son or grandson of the one who had been abandoned.
Speaker 1:So now, because one of the big problems that we all have, especially here, is the Italians don't do DNA, not many of them anyway, unlike the Puerto Ricans. My wife has 10,000 cousins. Every Puerto Rican in America has done their DNA. But now have you been able to trace back to whoever this Randy guy was?
Speaker 2:It's actually.
Speaker 2:We know the family and we know there were three or four sons that were the folks in in italy and talking about this story, they gave me the name of a possible uh mother and when I went in 2022, I met up with one of the the cousins that we matched up with, and she took me to the family, the wealthy family cemetery, and one of the people that are buried within the crypt of this wealthy family is the same last name of the alleged mother. So that's all kind of matching up too. So we may not know the the complete story, but we're close.
Speaker 1:We're really close well, I, I had that happen, you know, here. Um, I had somebody contact me, um, we have both done, uh, I don't know if it was, I think she did 23 and me and I had sent my stuff over there or something like that. Anyway, she contacted me because, because we were matched now I have no clue who she was, but we came up, as you know, second cousins. So I'm like, well, gee, I don't, you know, I don't know. I said, but if you do ancestry, you know, both sides of my family were on there and you know we, we may find out.
Speaker 1:But now, for like two or three months, I'm trying to like, okay, which one of of my I knew it had to be one of my first cousins. And I'm like, okay, which one of my first cousins is? For, you know, uh had a child put up for adoption and uh, yeah, so, uh, she did it and it was a cousin on my, my dad's side, and all three of his children had done ancestry. Oh, wow, it was an immediate yeah. So I contacted my, my cousin donna, and I said have you seen? And she said, yeah, I did.
Speaker 1:But you know, you know she realized it wasn't the girl's fault, you know she, she didn't have anything to do with it, um, so you know they've, I know they've. I don't know if they met in person, I know they've, they've talked and everything like that. But I asked her, I said did you have any idea, did you? And she said no. She said the only thing she could remember that when she was about four years old or so, that her mother went into the bedroom and was crying for like two weeks. So obviously they, they knew something. You know right, and I have a very good friend who happens to be my wife is half sicilian, half puerto rican, and my, my friend is, he's sicilian and, uh, they're like fifth cousins and, um, my kids are adopted and my wife is, my son is my wife's fifth cousin through puerto rico. So you know, when you start, you know some people. Really, as you probably know, some people are really don't, they don't want to know anything right, and I'm like just the opposite.
Speaker 2:I want to know everything that's going on yeah, oh yeah, and you know, once, once the truth gets out there, you know, I think everyone likes the fact that, oh, I've got more family, that's good he found the older brother that way that he never knew, apparently, his father.
Speaker 1:You know he had a child um, he had a child um with somebody, they think, in the neighborhood in brooklyn, before he was married and, um, I guess he's probably, I think he's about a year and a half older than now, and then he found out that he had a, you know, a half brother.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic, this this DNA stuff is crazy. I, my, my grandfather, full Italian on the East side of Cleveland, somehow met a full German woman on the West side of Cleveland from the German neighborhood, and so they got married and only had one child, my dad. So, like I said, I ended up being oldest of five. My, my Italian DNA has never shown up on any of the sites any more than 20 to 25% Italian. My next brother, who's two years younger, he just submitted his to MyHeritage and he comes back at 53% Italian and it just blows my mind that from child to child, that type of difference in dna I know, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1:did you ever hear the? The? Uh, I don't know if they call it the jelly bean test or the jelly bean, whatever, uh, but you know, if you put you know uh, jelly beans in a, in a jar, and then everybody, you know if you, if you pick out, you know uh, 20 through or for 46, and you know your brother picks out 46 and your sister picks out 46, that's going to be a completely different match and that's true yeah, that's, that's.
Speaker 1:That's the easiest way that I've ever seen anybody describe it, right? Yeah, it doesn't have anything to do with it, with uh, with anything other than that. It's just the way the mix goes. And, and you know also I've I've interviewed her a couple of times um, but you know what people are starting to realize now. It's not just the physical characteristics that you inherit, you're also, you know, it's also your um, I guess your uh, you know traits, your you know, uh, artistic traits or musical traits, or you know bad habits.
Speaker 1:You know you could be completely different than a sibling right based on dna alone, you know, right, uh, which is know pretty strange when you think about it, I suppose, right.
Speaker 2:It really is.
Speaker 1:So now are you the steward of all of this? I know I am in my family.
Speaker 2:I am, you know, I get to the point I'm 68, and it's like all right. I got to make arrangements for all this stuff to be stored and and passed on because, yes, my one brother has, has interest in what I'm doing, but the rest are kind of ambivalent. The kids are not at the point they're. They're like we were when we were in our 30s and 40s. We've got careers and family to worry about. But there may come a point in time where they want this information. So I'm going to make sure that I preserve it and it's available.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just recently talking to one of my I think she is. She would be my second cousin, once removed. I guess she's in her late twenties, early thirties, probably early thirties, I guess and I said, oh good, you're getting all this stuff You're getting. I'm leaving everything to you, I said, cause you're the only one who seems to have any interest in any of this stuff. So, yeah, it's good to be able to do that and and you know, the sad thing is is talking to you, know some of the people, because we had the same thing with the trip we were supposed to go in April of 2020 and we had to postpone for two and a half years.
Speaker 1:But, you know, talking to some of the people over there, you know, one of them told me that there was a, there was an uncle that had a whole bunch of stuff and he passed away and nobody knows what happened to it. Um, and then, uh, my dad's first cousin was actually younger than me uh, long story there but uh, his father uh passed. He was and he was in his 90s, who apparently knew the whole history of the whole family, and uh was, uh, was it, yeah, his father? Um, he knew the whole history of everything and he he passed away at like 92 and 93, just before I found nicholas, you know, and so you know it, it's, it's sad, I mean, I think what I tell people now is, if you have grandparents that are still alive and you're just starting out, you know, everybody's got a camera on their phone go videotape all of this stuff and you know, and save it. You know, we didn't have that opportunity with our you know, even our parents. Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:I tell everybody, you know, if you, if you still have grandparents alive or great grandparents, sit down and record those stories, because those stories will disappear when they disappear and it's something that maybe your kids or your grandkids would like to know about. So do it now, don't wait. And you know, I am trying to piece together this family history from a blank sheet and it's a lot of work. It's fun and it's great when you discover things, but it would have been so much easier if I had had those stories before everybody was gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and you know, my one of my cousins had the foresight to interview my uncle in bodies before he passed away, because they lived there until 1950. The way, uh, because they lived there until 1950, and uh, so it's a, you know, it's a, he, he said he had it on tape. He said I never translated, I never really wanted to go back and here and I told him I said you have to translate, you have to do this for you know the family and everybody. So finally he did it with his sister and it was such a great insight into, uh, you know, torito bari and you know, from like 1920 through 1950, and to your point about the caste system.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know my mother's family. They were, they were farmers and, um, you know, and then my uncle says that he, when he met my aunt, he wanted to marry her and the family said no because they were, you know, a little bit of a station ahead and he went in the army and when he came back they allowed him to marry her. So maybe they were running out of men in the town, who knows why, or the fact that he served in the army.
Speaker 2:Maybe he gained some respect because of that. And that's all they need. They just need a little bit of a sign that, okay, you're acceptable, so you're fine for our daughter. Kind of going back to recording the family history and trying to find resources On this trip, a few weeks ago we met one of my cousins in Siena.
Speaker 2:We were there to see the Palio and he works in. He's actually from Campo Basso but he had moved to Siena to work in a wine shop right on the piazza. It overlooks the piazza. So we're talking with him and talking about family history and connections and he said well, there's a book about our family that sits in a home in Campobasso that's been empty for two years because the person that lived there one of the Valillo family members passed away and I guess he tried to get the book but the family would not part with it yet they're still going through what they're going to do with the property and the possessions. So this book is sitting in this house.
Speaker 2:I said, well, I've got to see that, I've got to photograph it or something. He said, well, I'll try to make arrangements and I know that there's somebody that can get access to the house. Well, that's great. And later on in the trip I met another cousin in Campobasso. We were just cousin in Campobasso, we were just sitting having a glass of water in the afternoon and I mentioned this book. He said, oh, that was my uncle so-and-so, who passed away. I know about that book and I'll make sure that you get photos of it. So it's just making those types of connections yeah well, there's no accidents.
Speaker 1:I'm a firm believer in there's no accidents. You know these things, these things are meant to be somehow. You know exactly, exactly. You know I I found my cousin chintzy, just, you know, by accident, kind of uh, and but I've heard so many, you know stories like that where something just pops up and you know. That's why I tell people. I said, you know, sometimes you need to walk away from it for a month or two and clear your head and I said, when you come back, you're going to find something that you never saw before. Right, right, it shows up. I don't know how, but it just shows up. Yeah Well, listen, john, this has been a lot of fun and you know I enjoy all of this stuff. I love hearing the stories because, while all our stories are similar, there's always that little twist in there that somebody didn't know about.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you know if any of this information can help someone else take the next step or think outside the box. This is exactly what this whole show is about.
Speaker 1:Yes and yeah, exactly, and that's the point.
