Italian Roots and Genealogy
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Italian Roots and Genealogy
Antenati and Italian Genealogy Research Tips
Discover the transformative journey of Bill Sallurday as he uncovers his Italian roots, tracing his family lineage back to the picturesque village of San Cipriano Picentino. With a passion for genealogy, Bill's relentless research has revealed his family's true surname, Sabato, and connected over 8,000 individuals through a comprehensive genealogical database. His dedication not only reconnected him with his heritage but also earned him honorary citizenship from the village, highlighting the profound impact of his work. Tune in to hear about the unexpected paths and serendipitous moments that genealogy can lead to, from newfound relatives to heartwarming family reunions.
Embark on a personal journey through Italy, as Bill recounts his visit to San Cipriano Picentino, a quaint village at the base of the Amalfi Coast. Through social media, Bill discovered a street painting linked to his ancestors' home, unveiling deep familial ties and showcasing the power of digital connections in tracing one's roots. Hear stories of unexpected connections, like a train ride that led to a spontaneous visit to Florence, illustrating how genealogy can bring families closer, bridging distances and generations. Bill’s experience emphasizes the importance of community resources like Antenati, and how they can help unearth rich family histories.
Explore the practical side of genealogy research with insights into using Family Tree Maker and Ancestry. Discover how to manage databases, identify duplicates, and creatively utilize search strategies to map the geographic spread of descendants. With tools like Steve Morse's advanced search interface, listeners can learn to navigate the intricacies of genealogy, from seeking dual citizenship to expanding their family tree globally. This episode is not just about tracing lineage; it’s about inspiring others to embark on their genealogical adventures, enriching their understanding of family history, and connecting with their past in meaningful ways.
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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 and our newsletter and our great sponsors, Italy Rooting, Phil Italy and Amitiva Casa. And today I'm welcoming back former guest Bill Salarday, and Bill's going to give us some insight on how he built an awesome database in his hometown. So welcome, Bill. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Great Bob, Thanks for having me back Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:No, it's great to have you again and see you. So just before we get into, you know everything that you built and found, just you know. Give us a little bit about where the family's from and when they came to the US.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So my story is unique I'll probably touch upon it a little bit more in some of these charts that I'll share is unique I'll probably touch upon it a little bit more in some of these charts that I'll share, but with the name like Salardé. I grew up knowing I was Italian, but no one believed Salardé was an Italian name, and so that kind of you know set me on this journey to try to understand what my real Italian last name was, and no one really knew. There were rumors about it, but no one really knew, with any definitive answers to say yeah, it's this name and it's from this village in Italy. And so I was searching for 30, 35 years before I finally broke through just a couple of years ago and identified the hometown, identified the real last name, which happens to be Sabato, which is Saturday in Italian. So it's not so much of a stretch.
Speaker 2:But after I found the village, I found cousins that are still living there, cousins that are living in the same home that my great great grandparents lived in. It's been an awesome experience. I actually did have the opportunity to go over and visit, and it's just been. It was a lifelong dream fulfilled when I finally made that final connection, the final piece of the puzzle. So it was really really rewarding.
Speaker 1:I know everybody feels that way when they come back. It's a life changing experience, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was cool. And what's even cooler is like just I think everybody's got this you know, connection to their hometown. And this hometown of mine is a tiny, you know, mountain town outside of Salerno called San Cipriano Pichentino, which is, again, it's maybe 15 minutes outside of Salerno. Salerno, if you don't know right, is along the Amalfi Coast and so it's just a spectacular environment to you know, to be able to call home right, and then the visit there and exploring the area is just beyond belief in terms of how it happened. So it's just really an awesome experience. And you know, basically every Sabato and Jonatazio that I found right, that were my great-grandparents. My great-grandfather was a Sabato, his parents were a Sabato and a Jonatazio. So once I made that final connection, I started going through the town records and identifying every sabato, every janitasio, and I would start logging them into a tree and then, you know, over the course of the last couple of years that tree has exploded into over 8,000 people and then I've been able to connect you know different Orphan families, if you will, within the tree, connecting them together. And as I connect them together, it's starting to really unfold All of the connections in that village. So it's been amazing.
Speaker 2:And then, working with people who were on a Facebook group For the village, I've actually then been able to share with them that, hey, I've got this database of people from San Gabriel. And so now people are searching me out to say can you help me find my American cousins that immigrated in the 60s or the 50s or the 70s? Right, that we lost track of, you know, can we reconnect them? And so I was able to start, you know, working my way through the trees, connecting them to people here in the US and then, similarly in the US, identifying, you know, people that have roots in that village, helping them understand that that is their hometown. I'd reach out to them proactively and say, hey, you know, did you know that your great-great-grandparents' home village was San Trippiano? And I can help you fill in the gaps? Right? And then from that it started to be hey, I want to go visit this village. Right, I want to meet my cousins that are there this village. Right, I want to. I want to meet my, my cousins that are there.
Speaker 2:And so I started promoting that a little bit more and working with the village to try to build out an itinerary for people that go to the village and what they, what can they do, how can they really truly, you know, engulf themselves in the, in the entire experience of being in that village. So it's been really cool and it got to the point where the village itself, the mayor, awarded me with honorary citizenship to the village for my efforts. They wanted to recognize, you know, my efforts in maintaining community and you know how we can still connect. You know San Cipriano, this little village, you know, in the mountains of Salerno. I showed a map of you know where their reach is throughout the world, right that I've been able to identify, right, people from San Cipriano immigrated to a lot of in the US, but South America and Australia, et cetera. So it's just really cool for them to see and for me to see.
Speaker 1:So been been an awesome journey um, yeah, and that's fantastic that they, you know, recognize that and everything. Um, so I know you're gonna go through um your presentation here a little bit. That'll help people. You know either starting or the farm center piano or or whatever. You know either sodding or the farm center piano or whatever you know. Get them started and maybe building a database.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So let's jump in, right, we'll jump into this and again I'll share a little bit about my history, but then I'll share a couple of tips and tricks that I've identified over the, you know, over the last few years to really help people understand how they can do this Right, not only for their village, but then helping others, because I really, you know, I want to become that kind of, you know, central resource to help people connect back to that village, right, so there's so many people out there to thank for their efforts in the genealogy world to try to help you identify and get to that hometown. But then, when I look at that hometown of having all of these you know people connected in these family units connected, I think it's, I think it's really interesting and so, um, hopefully, what I've done here is we'll help more people right, to date, I think I've helped over 20 people on both sides of the ocean to connect and reconnect with cousins. Um, and hopefully that just continues to grow and hopefully we continue to drive tourism to that little. You know, the town in Italy that you know, hey, could benefit from the you know economic impact of having people come and spend money in the town, so pretty cool. But let's jump in.
Speaker 2:You know, I said like how it started? Right, how it started was really me trying to unravel this generational mystery in a 30-year search to find my true last name, and it's been awesome. And then how it's going right, it went from that not knowing where I was from or what my last name was to actually being awarded this honorary citizenship in the village of my great-grandfather, which is really amazing, in the village of my my, uh, great grandfather, which is really amazing. And then connecting others back to the commune, like I said, helping 20 other people or so to, uh, to connect, you know, either to or from that village, um, and then really, what I'm trying to do now is just promote ancestral tourism back to that village, right? So I've, I've created and said, you know, on, on my trip back, we did a few things. On my next trip back, I want to do a few other things and if you know, if I'm going over there for, you know, a once in a lifetime trip, this is what I would. You know, this is what I would love to be able to do, right, and so I'm working with, um, you know, the community leaders, the tourism, uh people that are in the village. Um, I reached out.
Speaker 2:It was another crazy story. The you know gentleman that owns a b&b in the area posted that he had americans um staying with him and they wanted to find connections um to their cousins that were living in the village, had the information, so while they were guests at his uh b&b, I actually went through and I created you know trees and documents and sent it over to him and they he was able to then present it to his guests from boston and said here you go like here's, here's your family. And they were. They were amazed. They've since reached out to me afterwards and said this is amazing, we're going to share this with our cousins, and blah, blah, blah, so blah. So I just take great joy in being able to assist them. So it's been really cool, and so, again, I think what happened here is this ancestral research opened my eyes to ancestral tourism. Right, there's so many people that I think are in my shoes that want to experience that, and so I'll do whatever I can to help others experience that.
Speaker 2:My quest was crazy, with a bunch of twists and turns, and I've actually documented it into a blog that I've got. That's you know it's listed under my blog on Wandering Spectator, called From Saboteau to Salarday. Right, how did I get from that Saboteau to becoming Joseph Salardé? So what you're seeing there is the headstone of, you know, my great-grandfather that immigrated from San Cipriano. An amazing story with a lot of twists and turns, and if anybody's interested in you know if they're thinking about giving up, I'd suggest you read that article, because it's just been an amazing journey and never give up.
Speaker 2:So I talk about San Cipriano, pachentino. You know where it is, at the kind of the base of the Amalfi Coast. It's known for their farming and crops and they've got one of the world's best wineries a little off-the winery, uh, called Montevatrano um, that's right in the commune. And then they do their annual chestnut festival, which to me was amazing, by the way, right, I grew up, you know, with my father, uh, having chestnuts. Right around Christmas time we'd roast chestnuts and I remember him saying yeah, my, you know, my father used to do it, so we eat chestnuts.
Speaker 2:Now I'm here to come to find out that the village in San Cipriano has an annual chestnut festival. That is on my bucket list. I will go celebrate with them one time. It's a pretty cool connection. As I said, once I discovered this I think I discovered it in maybe 2020 I and kovid's got everybody messed up, but it was either 21 or 22 is when I identified the village, and april of 23 I made the journey over there. Um, you know, I met with cousins, explored the area it was just awesome, right. And then just we stayed in salerno, outside of the village and if anyone's ever interested in exploring the area around there, salerno was an awesome place to to set up base camp, um, but it was just very cool. So I wrote up my little you know, my little time over there in in another um wandering spectator post called wandering in italy.
Speaker 1:Um, just to stop you for, just to stop you for a second uh bill, so, uh, so you went. So you know, the first time we talked, I guess I guess it was just as covert was starting maybe, or something like that so you, so you went.
Speaker 2:Since then, yeah, you hadn't gone in, right yeah, I think when we had talked, bob, I think, the last time we talked. I think I might have just discovered the village, either it was just at the cusp of discovering it, but I hadn't made connections to the cousins yet. Right, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I found it and there's, like I said, the twists and turns of that are just like Happenstance, was unbelievable in this Facebook group for the village and for the audience out there. You know, if you're searching Facebook group or Facebook and their groups are awesome for this, because there's a group in the village that talks about, you know, the people of UR San Cipriano, and so by joining that, I started monitoring a lot of the comments and then some someone posted a street scene painting of, uh, via capel, the street in the village, and that street sounded familiar to me. So I was like, man, this, this is really interesting, that that. So I went through my notes and I find that my great greatgreat-grandparents lived on Via Capel. I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And so I pull up Google Street View of Via Capel and I match the painting with Google Street View and I was like this is really cool. Now I'm seeing like a Google Street View image with this painting is really cool. Now I'm seeing like a google street view image with this painting.
Speaker 2:And when I zoom in on google street view, on the door that's in the, you know, in the home of one of the homes in this, in the in the painting it's number four, and number four via capel is where my great great grandparents lived. My mind was like blown that. I was like you got to be kidding me. This. Here's this painting that some, somebody, randomly posted, and it just happens to be the home of my great great grandparents. And so I commented on that photo and said my gosh, my great great grandparents lived in number four via Capel. Next thing, you know, a gentleman, massimiliano Sabato, comments and says my parents live in number 6, and so I start communicating with him. And then we, right after that, made the connection. I find. I find Massimiliano's parents and his grandparents, and it turns out that his great-grandfather and so his great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were brothers.
Speaker 1:I mean just mind-blowing.
Speaker 1:I know, and you know I tell people the same thing Facebook is an awesome tool. I mean, it's not good for a lot of things, but for finding family in Italy it's pretty good. And you know, just within the last few days, maybe it was five days ago, within the last few days, maybe it was five days ago, I got a message from, I think, guillermo. He's either second cousin or second cousin once removed or something like that, but fairly close. You know, considering I didn't know I had any Sorrentino cousins until just five days ago, still alive, crazy cousins until just five days ago, um, still alive, and um, it was.
Speaker 1:It was crazy because he, he messaged me and um said, uh, I know of your, you know your grandfather and and his brother that came to america. And I said so, like, like, well, you know who, and I thought I knew of my grandfather and his brother here. I knew they had a sister in Italy who was a nun, sister Alfonsina. There's another name which I wasn't totally sure of. I wasn't positive about this, carlo. I have to ask them some more, but they didn't mention them. But they gave me the names of two other sisters, three other sisters, no, two sisters and two brothers that remained in Italy that I had up until five days ago I had no clue.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Well, you got to go back again.
Speaker 1:Well, we're planning to go. Well, what's interesting is, we're planning to go uh, we, we've been twice since, probably since I talked to you but we're planning on going next may and what's? Uh, you know, we're going to start in milan and do bologna and florence, because we've never been to the north yet. That's just how happens two of the cousins live in mil Milan oh, that's awesome, that's there are no accidents? I'm convinced there are no no question, right, no question.
Speaker 2:And it you know, speaking of you know, happy accidents. When I, when I, when we were leaving Salerno, um, you know, we jump on the train to go back to Rome. And we were going to um stay in Rome that evening for an early morning flight the next day, and so we were just going to take the train to Rome, um, and hang and explore Rome a little bit. We had been to Rome, uh, several years prior. Um, we're, we get to Rome and I don't know, we're in a zone or whatever, we totally forget to get off the train. And I was like, oh, we're moving again, and we just missed our stop. And then my wife was like, where, we're moving again? And we just missed our stop. And then my wife was like, where are we going? We'll just get off at the next stop. The next stop is Florence. So we ended up, happy accident, we ended up spending the afternoon in Florence, a quick trip to Florence, and then turned around and came back and, instead of exploring Rome more, we got to explore florence for a day. So, another happy accident. But, yeah, so, so pretty cool.
Speaker 2:And I just think, like you know, like I said, through that whole process, um, this, what happened in me really trying to find out you know what my real last name was, was this unintended consequence of creating a database of 8 000 people, right, that are connected to the commune. Um, and so, you know, now I've helped over 20 people connect and you know I can. Now, I'm just now, I'm addicted to it. I said it's like you know, when I was a kid I used to collect baseball cards. Right now, I'm collecting people from sancho briano and I'm just adding them to this database and trying to, you know, know, do what I can to connect it and some cool stuff. Like I, you know, there's a kid that I grew up with in Scranton, pennsylvania, that you know his. I come to find out when I'm doing this genealogy stuff, I come to find out that he had, uh, his great grandparents were from the same village, San Gioferiano. I, you know, I knew him growing up. I never, never, still, we never, right, but it's just kind of cool to see now how that, how the world really is connected and and what a small world it really is.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, and then, and then, the unintended consequence of, you know, just helping to drive a genealogy group on Facebook that they were trying to find these, you know, their, their ancestors in the village and and sent you. They knew it was Sanche Brianna. So I started reaching out to her and said, hey, here's, you know, here's what I have on your, on your, on your family, you know, by the way, connect to this group because they can help you out. Um, next thing, you know she was leaving the following week for a trip to the Amalfi Coast. Well, she was like hey, I'm going to make a side trip over to San Trippiano.
Speaker 2:So she connected with people in the group and the people in the group that were helping me connected her with the mayor. She went in and met with the mayor and, you know, looked at the records and met cousins in the village and everything else. So it's just, it's just really cool. And, you know, looked at the records and met cousins in the village and everything else. So it's just, it's just really cool. And, and you know she was super thankful for me being able to connect her with somebody in the village, right, that that said, hey, come on in, we'll, you know, we'll help you discover more about your family.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's fantastic, yeah, so how did I do this? Right, it's just, you know, these are just a couple of sources that I used, right? Uh, antonati, I think everybody uses Antonati. Um, if you, if you don't know what it is, you should be using it If you're trying to find Italian uh roots, um, but I've got some tips and tricks that I'll talk about that I use Family Tree Maker desktop software. It's just, you know what you'll see. On the right, the top graph is the chart as it shows in Ancestrycom and on the bottom is the chart that it shows in Family Tree Maker. I use both and I sync them and they both have their pluses and minuses, but I use those tools.
Speaker 2:Another tool that was really helpful for me is Steve Morris. I don't know if you're familiar with that website, but Steve Morris has a website that makes it really easy to search immigration records. At least, that's what I really use it for searching immigration records, and I'll share a little bit of that. Um, there's another website of records for salerno that are out there, called the salerno draft lists. Um, that have been extremely helpful to me. Uh, and then newspaperscom, you know, is something else that I use um, um to to get in and I use newspapers to help me do a lot of my blog writing too. I think I told you I do some black hand mafia writing about some of the nefarious activities of some of the early Italian immigrants. But newspapers has a lot of information in it using Antonati, and it took me a while.
Speaker 2:Maybe you guys know this, maybe you don't, but, um, what I ended up doing was creating a series of bookmarks, um, for everything in the town. So when you go into Antonati and you want to search, you know the birth records for Antonati, it'll say, okay, well, where do you want to start? You know we've got records from 1809, all the way up to 1915 or whatever, for birth records. So instead of creating them or searching one at a time and trying to search through and search through, I took the time and the effort to basically build a set of bookmarks, um, for every single thing, every set of records in that village, right, and I'll show you you know what, what I done here. And then, once you create that bookmark, I kind of organize them in subfolders for each Right, and so when you look at this, this will give you an idea of what I did, right? So in my bookmark bars, you know, I'll have SCP births, for example. You'll see SCP births, san Trippiano births, over here, and then I've got a subfolder, for example, from 1900 to 1915. And then within that subfolder you'll see from 1900 all the way down to 1915.
Speaker 2:So now you know when I'm looking for something I don't have to research and go back through and say, okay, I'm looking at San Cipriano for the births for 1915 and then search it. That way I can literally go to the bookmark and click on the bookmark and it'll take me there. The other important thing with that, I said, is to take the bookmark and have it go directly to the index page. So a lot of these records instead of going to page one of the index, which would normally happen if you go through a normal search for it. But you can bookmark the index page and so for me I go now right to the first index page for births and it's super, super helpful, right that I can go right there, I can kind of go in and I can start looking for it. And it's super, super helpful, right that I can go right there, I can kind of go in and I can start looking for it immediately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great idea, right.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing is, once it's like set up in your cache memory on your computer, then it even seems quicker, right? So instead of you know waiting for it to chunk through and do all this stuff, it's in, it's in your cache and it'll it'll bring it up much quicker. Um, so it's, it saved a ton of time. Um, the other thing I did was if there was no index so some of these things, you know, the worst part is okay, you go through a site and it says, okay, I'm gonna go look for the 1878 birth records of San Cipriano. Well, guess what? There is no index page. So you've got to go through, you know, 100 pages. And so what I'm doing now is working my way through for a set of records for that year, say birth records for 1868 or whatever the year is. And if there's no index page, I'm literally taking the time to go through one by one and saying, okay, you know, uh, giuseppe sabato was born to these parents and these were his birth dates. So I'm going in and I'm creating, you know, an orphan family with that, with that, those parents and that child, and I create that, and I do that for every if there's 900 or 96 pages of like. In this case here in 1915, there's 86 pages of records. I'd go through one by one and add each one of those families into my database and then that way I know now if I go back to say, hey, I'm looking for somebody that might have been born around 1868 for a Sabato, I don't have to go through 86 pages all again. I know that I've completely indexed that record. It's done, that set of records. I don't have to worry about trying to page through 86 pages again. So it's been interesting.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing is too when you go into a village like this, it's not uncommon for all the names to be the same right Like. So you know there's, there's a lot of common names, and so when you do that, then all of a sudden you can start to like if someone were to look at this you know page, this index, they would be going my gosh, how do you even read that? How do you even know what names are there? But the reality is, once you start researching, you're going to start to know what the common names are in that village and it becomes kind of second nature when you look at it. So instead of trying to understand cursive handwriting. It becomes kind of second nature because you know what you're looking for. So anyway, pretty interesting stuff, I think when you go through the Antonotti records.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all my relatives, all my ancestors were indexed by the guy who can't write.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I definitely have some of those right. You go through and it's like, seriously, somebody teach this person how to use penmanship. On the other hand, there's some that are spectacular and I've got no room to talk, so no, no, me neither.
Speaker 1:No, I don't worry, I'm the same.
Speaker 2:The more I type, the less I write. You know another key thing for me the ability to have two monitors. So if you're going to dive into doing this type of research, you got to have two monitors Right. Some people have a vertical monitor where it's actually, instead of set up on, you know, landscape mode, it's set up on portrait mode right, and so the index that's out there or the record that's out there, they're on kind of portrait mode right, and so some people would actually turn their monitors around and view it that way. But regardless of how you're going to do it, two monitors makes it so easy because then, instead of flipping tab to tab, you can actually set up your you know, your data entry you know in Family Tree Maker or Ancestry, on one screen and your source record on another and you can start keying you know keying the information in without flipping back and forth. So to me that's that that was like that was also a kind of a lifesaver. But those are the things on Antonati that I think you know make a lot of sense and being able to do it that way and, by the way, not all records are out there right. I got so lucky that Centro Briano had a bunch of records out there, and then the surrounding villages that are there are in the, you know, in the records as well. So, again, no, there are no accidents. Right, that somebody wanted me to find that. You know my, my family, after 30 years. So that'll work that well.
Speaker 2:Um, as I said, I use family tree maker. Um, that's the. There's some great reports that I that I can generate there. To me it's easier data entry. Um, you know, when I'm doing these things, things, I like to actually enter the data in family tree maker and then sync it back um to ancestry. Um, uh, and then what I, what I am doing, just so everybody's clear, is I? I literally have one database for the commune. You know, I call it sancho briano families, um, and that's a.
Speaker 1:You know, that's a great idea. I never thought of that.
Speaker 2:That's really smart yeah, just when you put it in, it's all in one database and as you're adding, you know, now you see down the you know in family tree maker, at least on the left side, you've got a list of all of the people.
Speaker 2:And so when I add in, you know, uh, another, just my, my 45th, giuseppe Sabato, right, because there's tons of them you'll see where it falls. And when you put the birth date in it, kind of you know, sorts it by birth date order for Giuseppe Sabato's. And then when you do that, you know, I always kind of search around to say, hey, is this Giuseppe Sabato similar to the other ones? And when you start looking at that, it'll find duplicates. And sometimes, you know, a family tree maker will actually tell you, hey, is this Giuseppe Sabato the same as the one you've already entered in? Right, because it's already lined up the birth dates. And then, when it is, you start merging those contacts together and you know, unfortunately it helps you shrink the tree, right, because you've got now duplicates in there and it'll delete one duplicate, but it's also then connecting, you know, other families together, which is, which is really cool, um, and, like I said, so that's what it's really doing, is it's?
Speaker 2:you know your ability to see those individuals and then work through, you know, and connecting those floating trees of those orphan networks, or whatever you want to call them, within your database. So it works out really well. Ancestry, right. So I've been a subscriber to Ancestry for I don't even know decades, right since the very, very early days of uh subscriptions. I think I was a member of ancestry. Um, it does sync with family tree maker.
Speaker 2:That the cool thing now, and in one of the tools they have and they're, you know, pro tools is this and the heat map. Um, and that's one of the maps that I sent over to you know, the people of sanchoriano, and was like hey, you know, here's your reach. You know the little, the little village in in italy, where these, where all the shades of green are within the us, you know there's people that have connections to santiapriano. So it's really cool to see a really cool visual, to see how you know that one village is basically spread out throughout the world. Um, and again, are there others throughout? Yes, I haven't gotten to them. I had somebody that was in um, brazil, reach out to me and said, hey, what about us? Like we're, we're in, we're in brazil, you don't have us on the map and I'm like, well, hey, let me, let me find out, how are you connected? And I added them back into the database and then redid everything. Now it shows, okay. So now I've got connections going down into Brazil. So it's kind of cool. Just a neat visual. Steve Morris, I have the URL here. It's an awesome user interface.
Speaker 2:I guess I'll call it to allow you to go search the passenger lists and do it in a fashion that you know you can get creative with searches, and I think that's the other thing that, across all of these you know, whenever you're doing genealogy, I think you do have to get creative in terms of how you're searching for things. You know between. You know name spellings, accents, you name it. You really have to think outside the box. You can't just go and say I'm looking for you know Joseph Salarday and if I don't find Joseph Salarday, I'm done Right. So that's what you really have to get creative in terms of how you're looking for stuff. Right Again, through my records, in my search, joseph Salardé had probably at least six different spellings of his last name, right? So same thing is true when you're looking at you know passenger lists.
Speaker 2:So what I've been able to do there through Steve Morris, I've been searching for, you know, sonship, anybody that came to the US that listed their home village as Sonship, riano Pachitino. Well, that's not always the case, right, they're going to. You know, it's going to get misspelled, it's going to get misinterpreted, it's going to be punctuated differently, and so what I've done, this will give you an idea. When you go into Steve Morris, I use this gold passenger goal form. So it does this search of Ellis Island records in one step. It's called, and so within it, when you click on that link, it'll say, for example, the town name starts with or is. And so you know, hey, if you put in scip, it's going to come up with, um, a list of people that listed anything that starts with s-C-I-P that's been transcribed into the list. It'll bring up that person or those people.
Speaker 2:And so when it does that, if I got that hit, I would kind of call through that list and say, okay, these people, now maybe there's a town in Spain that might have that as well. Well, you can filter out by saying just give me the ethnicities you know down here of. You know Italian. So there's unique ways that you can kind of filter that list through and then, oh, by the way, you'll see last names that all start to line up with the same village, right. So through that and through these unique searches, right, I would look. For example, I put the common names of the commune in. Give me the names Sabato, that are from Italy. Give me Jonatazios that are from Italy, right, give me, you know, maradas or whatever the name was, and it would start. I would look at those lists and I would see where they were from.
Speaker 2:Through that process, I created another list of about 500. Let me see, did I put it in here? No, I didn't put it in here. But I created another list of over 500 people that listed some sort of San Cipriano as their hometown, right, so they came to the US, they listed San Cipriano of some sort. It was a transcribed, however, and now I'm working through that list to connect them back to the village as well. So those are, you know, people that came to the us and stayed in the us and now working to connect those families back to, uh, back to italy. So, again, just another. It's another really cool way to see you know who's come from that village and document them If you've got ancestors in Salerno, in the Frazione or whatever you want to call it right.
Speaker 2:The greater Salerno, not the town, not the town of Salerno. The greater Salerno, not the town of Salerno. But you can go into the Salerno draft lists and do some interesting searches. So I was able to go through and say give me all of the you know, all of the Sabatos that lived in San Cipriano, and you'll see, up here there were six pages of them, right? Uh? So what did I do? You know the crazy maniac that I am.
Speaker 2:I went through and said, hey, there's a pietro. Uh, pietro antonio sabato. His parents were pasquale and, uh, lucia barbarito. He was born on november 4th 1840. I would log that person into the database and then I'd go down to the next one, another one, and I'd log it into the database. So I would just go through and I was adding all of these people into the database and as you add these people with these parents again, you'll start to see these networks in these families form and you'll start to kind of add them together. So, but anyway, the draft lists are.
Speaker 2:The draft lists are fantastic. You search by name, put the parents name in, you can do contained searches. So same thing. You don't have to, you don't have to nail the transcription. You could say you know, uh, you know the, the village of where they were born. It contains Pai Centino. It's a good way to do that. And then I use Chrome on a lot of these sites to do the automatic translation Right. I don't still don't speak any Italian, but I communicate frequently with the people in Italy using Google Translate and you know other tools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I do the same yeah.
Speaker 2:It seems to work out well. But yeah, then that's it right. Then I go through newspapers and I say, you know, I was looking through when I was looking for San Cipriano, I would go in and I would do a search in newspapers. And you know, again, same thing, varying how I would search a search in newspapers and you know, again same thing, varying how I would search newspapers to find anybody connected to that village. And here's a couple examples right, the you know, one thing was interesting I was able to find, like, hey, during the World War II, when the Americans came on shore in Salerno, there was an article here the American Fifth Army took San Cipriano, pachentino. Right, it's pretty amazing that you know to think that the village in 1943 was, you know, controlled, you know, by the Nazis. Basically, right, it's just amazing. But then you look and you know, then you find obituaries, right, martinangelo, which is a common name in the village. Well, there you go, right, they were residing in SCipriano Pichentino, salerno. So, and again, once I see that I'm adding that Anytime I would see that I'd add it to the database and then I would start, you know, connecting these people, you know, randomly. So, and again, and again, get creative in your searches Search by adjacent days, search for variations of spelling of the village, search by the Americanized name that might show up. All those things could really help you in the search. So, through all of that right over the last couple of years, I then created a dedicated web page on my site that basically includes, uh, a few things I talk about like what I did, how I did it a little bit Um, and then I've created some reports to put out there.
Speaker 2:So I've got an index of individuals. It's 177 pages of a PDF that's got every person that I've I've documented in the you know the 8,000 people, and for each one of those it includes their name, the date of birth, the marriage, date of death and their spouse's name, right. And so each one of those, it includes their name, the date of birth, the marriage date of death and their spouse's name, right. So if anybody's looking, they can easily look, you know, scan through that report online and search for their you know great, grandparent or whatever, and see if I've, if I've recorded um easy way to do that. And if they want to get in deeper, I give them steps to access the tree on ancestry, how you can go through, set up a free account on ancestry and then access that tree and then they can go and start doing some interesting searches, look for their tree, print out reports, whatever. Um, I've included the index of individuals who migrated to the us, which was basically the 500 people that I captured through steve morris. Um, and then you know just a fun report a list of surnames in the database by count, so you could see, you know the most often the most common surname in, you know, in the village. You know Sabato, jonatazio. They both happen to be one of the more popular ones in the village, which made it pretty difficult to log everything, but was able to do it that way. So you know there's activity on that website.
Speaker 2:People then reach out to me and say, hey, my contact information's out there. They'll reach out to me and say you know, can you help me find my cousins or whatever. So I'll, you know, I'll do what I can to continue to just help out there. People will say you know how much do you charge for your service? Uh, I don't. I just, you know I do it for free, um, I do what I can, right, um, so that's the. That's the downside of free is like, you know, I there there. I have no guarantee that I'm going to find anything. I have no guarantee I'm going to spend a ton of hours, but I'm going to do what I can for free. It is a passion of mine and if I can help them find them, I will, but I just find it. You know it's fun to do and you know, so be it, but that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2:So what I said, right, everybody that's out here is interested in this. You know ancestry piece and their Italian roots. But I say, by discovering your ancestors you could be helping to drive the economy of your ancestral village too. Right, the more that you know about your village, the more that you know you can help others discover that same village, the more it's going to help that village. And you know, we all know that, hey, that's a. Everybody would love to increase tourism and I think that can, you know, can really help some of the villages in Italy. We know improved data sets and technology are continuously made available. You know there's no way I would have found my cousins if it weren't for the technology that's available today DNA, you know, I'm a believer in using DNA for ancestry and it helped me tremendously.
Speaker 2:There's always new resources and source documents being added, even to Antonati. They continue to add more records to that. There's more people searching for their ancestors, which, oh, by the way, as you do this, you're going to find photos that others have posted, the more you connect with other people. So it's really cool. And then I say be creative in your searches and never give up. So you know, don't get locked in on Joseph Salarday, you'll never find him in Italy, um, but you will find a Giuseppe Sabato. So, um, and they just keep powering through, uh, but that, that's it. And then I said I've got, like you know I won't go through this, but I've got the proposal that I sent over to Italy that said, hey, the Tourism Board of Italy, if I were you, here's what I would be promoting, at a minimum to Americans that want to come experience the village.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, I try the same thing experience the village.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know I try the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't know, um, you know, I said the honorary citizenship somebody you know, um, when somebody asked me well, jesus, you know, can you, can you travel amongst Europe now, or whatever, I'm like no, no, no, no, you know, it's a little harder than that to become a citizen of, you know, of Italy.
Speaker 2:Um, I won't get into anything beyond that for here in the us, but you know, yeah, you can't just show up over there and become a citizen. That being said, I did read recently that you know that the village, um, uh, can play a major part in supporting and sponsoring your, your request for citizenship, and so, um, some of the folks in centipriano were basically said that that, hey, you know, there's we're cutting back on on how, you know, people can get citizenship, but what bill is doing, you know, are the things that we should be looking at right, those that that have an allegiance to the country and and whatnot. So we'll see where that goes At some point. You know, you never know. I would love to go over there and spend extended periods in the village and hang out there and explore Italy more, and who knows where that will lead. But yeah, it'd be awesome to become a dual citizen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm working on it. I got a couple more pieces of paint. There's stuff from Italy I have. There's a couple of things I need from here to get. That's taken forever from New York State. I got to get some from my father but they said my mother would be easier and neither one of her parents became citizens. And I was able to get the document here, you know, saying that they never became citizens and that they said in Italy that that's like a huge thing, because it's very hard to get.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, they didn't renounce their citizenship to become an American citizen.
Speaker 2:So they were still technically yeah, and I think that's you know. I explored that too and I didn't go into a ton of detail on it. I know the Salardé going down that path was probably a nonstarter, just because of the name changes and you know, really proving that. You know, joseph salade truly is giuseppe sabato, right, um, I'm sure dna would do it, but they're not going to do dna, right? So, yeah, um, but the reality is on my, on my grandmother's side, um, my dad's mother was 100 italian. She, you know, there could have been a path there, but now I think that the new rules are basically cutting that out. She was born in the US, her parents were born in Italy, but I think they renounced their citizenship before she was born.
Speaker 1:Well, what happened with my father? I would have been okay with him. And then they said, well, before they changed the law, they said, well, some of the courts don't like it because your father was a minor when your grandfather became a citizen, some of the courts don't like it. And now they said if you were under 21 when your father became a US citizen, you're done. But I'm able to go through my mother, through the 1948 law, because I was born in 51. So, uh, and her there's, there's no question with her stuff. So, um, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now it's just a waiting game.
Speaker 1:Right now it's just uh yeah, I'm going through the court so it'll be faster once I get to these last couple of pieces of paper, um, from here, uh, and then I think I'm hoping it's going to be relatively quick. I'm doing it mostly for my kids, I mean for me. I'm 73, you know what am I going to do with it. But I want the kids to have it because it's good for them yeah, I do think.
Speaker 2:I think it's. It's for same thing, right, right, it's just anybody that's doing a lot of ancestral research to be able to grab that is like the final piece, right? Exactly what benefits come with it, it doesn't matter, it's insignificant, right, but just to be able to seal that fate that, hey, I truly am a dual citizen. It's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, thanks, bill, I really appreciate it. This has been good stuff and hopefully, you know, we educate a few people on some tips on the Antonati and how to you know set up those indexes and tools to use. And I didn't know about Robert Morse, I think the back of my head. I think I heard of it, but I've never tried it. So I'm going to check that out for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean Steve Morse. Yeah, it works great. I mean, for me I used it a long time ago. You know, when I was doing this search back in the, you know, probably in the 90s, I was using the tool. But now to do you know again, I guess that just goes to show like how you think about the research. You know you need to revisit the tools you use prior right to figure out how can I leverage that tool set today. And so by going through and doing unique things like that and the way you search and whatnot was really helpful and you could do those types of searches with Ancestry. But the user interface is not as crisp. When it's all said and done, and to be able to take that data you know for for for true um projects where you're looking at a village and saying I'm going to try to document everyone from that village, I think that you know using that tool steve moore's tool is much easier than going through the ancestry piece.
Speaker 1:But yeah, yeah, I'm gonna check it out and then, then the.
Speaker 2:Salerno draft list. I don't know To me. That was a goal of mine too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to have to check that because my grandfather was. They were in Pagani, which is just near Salerno, so I'm going to have to look at that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what you can do there, right, like what I was doing was saying, okay, like when I found out that Giuseppe Sabato, whose parents, were right, I went through and said, okay, I'm going to search that draft list for anyone named Sabato that had parents that included these names. But lo and behold, there they are right. So there's the brothers or whatever of you know my ancestor. Right, I had him, but I didn't know who his siblings were. Well then, when you go through and it says, oh well, by the way, here are these other Sabatos that had the same set of parents. So it's again just really interesting. You know ways to search and look and use the tools that are out there.
