Italian Roots and Genealogy
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Italian Roots and Genealogy
Rediscovering Italian Roots: Montescaglioso Basilicata
Join us on a heartfelt exploration as George Gingerelli takes us on his remarkable journey of rediscovering his Italian heritage. Picture the scene: George and his sister, motivated by family lore and childhood stories, find themselves piecing together a family puzzle that spans continents and generations. Their emotional voyage led them back to Montescaglioso, Italy, where a century of lost connections was rekindled with newfound relatives. George's narrative is not just about genealogy; it's about the joy and profound sense of belonging that comes from reconnecting with family roots.
As we listen to George's captivating tales, we venture into the transformative world of DNA testing and unexpected family revelations. Through vivid anecdotes, we learn about his grandparents' resilience, their journey from Italy to Worcester, Massachusetts, and the vibrant lives they forged in a new land. George shares the surprises uncovered through DNA testing, offering insights into how these connections enrich our understanding of identity and history. These stories highlight the unbreakable bonds of family and the legacies that continue to shape our lives across generations.
The episode culminates in a celebration of Italian-American heritage and the vibrant communities that honor these cultural roots. George discusses his involvement with Italian-American organizations in Las Vegas, emphasizing their role in preserving culture and supporting the next generation through scholarships. From noteworthy figures like Frank Sinatra to the passionate endeavors of cultural committees, the narrative is a tribute to the enduring ties that bind us. This episode invites listeners to appreciate the power of storytelling and the shared memories that not only connect us to our past but also inspire our future.
In memory of our dear friend Gianluca de Francesco
http://www.gingerelli.com/famiglia.html
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Italians Swindled to New York
The story of the first Italians to enter New York in 1872
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Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our Facebook page and our blog and our newsletter and our great sponsors Abiativa, casa Italy, gruding and Phil Italy. And my guest today is George Gingerelli. So welcome, george. Thanks for being here and thanks for having me. Bob, my pleasure, and we had a few bugs to work out, but we're here now. Always the case, right Right. So you know, we have a sad thing to share about our good friend John Luca in Calabria. I was totally blown away when I saw that pop up on Facebook. He was such a super, super guy. I never got to meet him in person, but you met him in person, yeah.
Speaker 1:A couple of times In 2016,. He was our, our guide and driver and by the end of the three weeks, he was our best friend and and compatriot and so we used. We used him again in 2022. And, unfortunately, during that time, my wife was was ill and had to be taken to the hospital. And I'll tell you, john Luca was like. He drove us back and forth to the hospital, he took care of my daughter and her family while I was visiting my wife. He just he was like a brother and, yeah, I will miss him a lot.
Speaker 2:No, I'm sure, I'm sure, 'm sure, and it was just, you know, quite a sudden thing, and he's, he's got a. I think he's got at least one, a young daughter, right he has a teenage daughter. Yes, yeah, that's terrible. They're really really terrible. And yeah, we, when we went, when we were in calabria, he was on, uh, I was doing a tour with somebody else and he was doing a tour and we just we just couldn't hook up. So when did you start and why did you start researching your family?
Speaker 1:I got interested.
Speaker 1:My mother was sort of the center of everything that had to do with our family, and when she passed it seemed like nobody got together again. No-transcript, and my sister and I had heard stories for years from our grandmother and our aunts and uncles about this place called Monte Scalioso, which is where my maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather were both from, and so I made some inquiries about whether or not they were. I went to Ancestry and made inquiries about whether there were any people with that last name in Montescalioso, and my sister and I decided that the only way we were going to find out was to actually go there. We determined that my grandfather had a brother who had stayed in Montesoglioso and had children, and so if there were any cousins, they were going to be in that line. So we called around for a guide. We found John Luca. He took us to Monte Scoglioso and I like to say the miracle happened, because there had been no contact for 100 years. We expected nothing, and what we ended up instead was finding four generations of cousins in Montescalioso.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's something. So now did they know that they had family in the United States, the oldest of the and the oldest of the.
Speaker 1:We met these three women, three sisters, who were the children of my grandfather's brother and the oldest one of them said she remembered that her uncle, my grandfather, had gone to America and that they had sent clothing back to the family, however, many years ago that was close to 100 years but they had lost contact and knew nothing of us and we knew nothing of them.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's really something. It's so exciting when you find that right.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how exciting. We had several attempts and failures while we were there trying to find these people. We didn't know if they were dead or alive. We just knew that these people had been born in Madrasa the John Luca and the woman from the hotel. Without them, this whole project would have failed. They took us to the town hall, went through the record books, found that the three women, the three daughters, who at that time were 72, 82, and 92, that all three of them were still alive and well and living in the town. So we called and weren't able to get through. We walked because, you might discover, this is not a big place. We walked from the hotel to the home of one of the three sisters, knocked on the door and no answer. So we were ready to say hey, we've done our best, to say hey, we've done our best, and both John Luca and the woman from the hotel, lucia, said no, no, let's go to the other house of one of the other sisters, and we did that. This was the 92-year-old woman and she wouldn't let us in because she was afraid. So we said okay, we tried.
Speaker 1:On our way back to the hotel, we stopped again at the home of the 72-year-old and again, no answer. But a woman came out from the next house and said that's my aunt. Who are you? We explained. She got on the phone. She called her aunt. Who are you? We explained. She got on the phone. She called her aunt. Five minutes later, a car pulled up with the 72-year-old and the 82-year-old and we explained who we were. But the 72-year-old who, by the way, was the same age as I was at that time, so it was kind of weird because she's my mother's first cousin, but she was my age and she was very skeptical. So I had an iPad and I showed pictures of my grandfather and that helped. But then I showed a picture of my grandfather's mother, who is her grandmother, and she had the same picture on the wall in her home and it was a magical moment. She just lit up, she hugged me and my sister and she said Cugini di America.
Speaker 1:From then on, people just kept showing up. They threw a party for us two days later and they rented out a restaurant, I think, and there were 45 people showed up, four different generations, from these little babies to this 92 year old matriarch and we partied until well after midnight and these people had to go to work in the morning, so it was amazing and anyway, yeah, it was so special. We still talk about it today because one of the things that my sister and I wanted to accomplish was, if we're going to and now that we know we have relatives in Italy, it would be a shame for that contact to go another hundred years with nobody seeing each other. So I wanted to explain to the younger people, the sons and daughters and grandchildren of Le Tereserele. I wanted to explain to them that I wanted this contact to continue with people from their generation, like my daughters.
Speaker 1:And it was an interesting conversation because I speak a bit of Italian and I'm talking to these young people who are talking a mile a minute. But we managed to communicate and I said here's my goal I want you and your generation to be in contact with your cousins in America. And we all looked at each other looking for a solution. And then this one young man, antonio, looked at me and said with bright eyes George, face the book. The next morning I had 12 new friends on Facebook and over the years that has been Facebook and WhatsApp and a few other forms of communication. We now have fairly frequent contact with people from Montescalioso, with my daughter, with another one of my cousins. Anyway, the smiles continue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I have so many contacts there now it's not funny and so many cousins that I never knew. And in fact I guess it was about three weeks ago now I got a message on Facebook with a picture that I have I have this same picture of my father's family and he said I'm your cousin and I knew he was because he had the same picture obviously, and I didn't know that I only knew of my father's brother here and sister in Italy who was a nun. I didn't know about any of the other family and they had four other siblings, two men and two women, and I didn't know that there were any Sorrentinos. I found my grandmother's family. I didn't know there were any Sorrentinos there and now we're going to Milan in May and actually two of them, I think, live in Milan, so hopefully we'll get to meet them and it's just so much fun and I've said this before I think they enjoy it almost more than we do.
Speaker 1:I agree. When the evening was over, I addressed the crowd and told them how excited we were to meet them, to know that we had relatives, and I thanked them. And this one young man got up and he said no, we thank you, we are honored to have you here, and I thought that was at first. I thought that was really a strange comment, but what? What was finally clear is that the fact that we took the um, the time and traveled to find them really really warmed their hearts, and they have. They have continued to send that message over the years that yeah, that that that what we did was something that they really appreciate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like I said, that's exactly what I found. So now do you know why your grandfather came? Yeah?
Speaker 1:He came over right after the turn of the century. It was during the Italian diaspora, when so many people from southern Italy emigrated and ended up in Europe other parts of Europe but so many came to southern Italy, emigrated and ended up in Europe other parts of Europe but so many came to the US and a lot of them settled in places like New York and Massachusetts and when they settled, they settled with other people that they had traveled with. But my grandfather needed a job. There were no jobs in southern Italy, and when I talk about southern Italy, we're talking south of Naples, we're talking about places like Calabria and, in my case, basilicata.
Speaker 1:These people not only didn't have jobs, but after Italy became a country in 1861, when the country unified, all the power and all the money was north and no money seemed to filter its way down to the south, and the bottom line is there were no jobs and people like my grandfather left to find work, and he did. He came to Worcester, massachusetts, and got a job hauling in the winter and ice in the summer, and that was his job and he managed to raise a bunch of children. And I'm here.
Speaker 2:My mother's father was an ice man and people don't realize what kind of job that was, especially in New York City, because they used to carry them up 100 pounds on their back on five flights of stairs.
Speaker 1:Same here. He lived in a three-story tenement and that's where he delivered ice to all of those. Yeah, I don't know these people. My grandfather was small. None of us in that family are much over five foot six, five foot seven and he must have been the strongest at ox. He must have been the strongest at ox.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know my uncles when they were young, you know, I guess in the 20s and 30s they did it too, and my uncles were like, they were like bulls. I mean, my mother's family, my father's family is like short, short. My mother's family was a little bit taller, In fact, a couple of my uncles were probably close to six foot, but they were like bulls. I mean, they were really, really strong guys.
Speaker 2:And they were like I always tell people, besides my parents, I had eight other sets of parents Because my mothers, brothers and sisters they were like our parents growing up back then and you didn't dare get out of line with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I didn't. My grandfather's siblings. As we know, one of them stayed in Monte Scoglioso. I don't know anything about the others, but my grandmother, her sister, also came over, and in fact it was because her sister had come over and gotten married in Worcester. And the story goes that my grandfather went to his good friend and said I want a wife like you have, and the only way I can do that is I want a wife from Monte Scalioso. And so the story goes that this woman contacted her sister, who's my grandmother, and said you need to come over here and I have a man that you can marry. And the rest is history.
Speaker 1:My grandmother came over in 1912. I think the requirement back then was you had to have a reason for coming. You had to have somebody in the US that you were in contact with. And so the ship manifest, which I have a copy of, shows my grandmother, and her contact in the US was her sister, and her reason for coming to the US was to marry Miguel de Donato, my grandfather. And sure enough, she gets to the US, and three days later they were married just outside of New York Harbor and had 13 children.
Speaker 2:My goodness, wow. So they got married three days later. Yeah, that's something, that's something, wow. So they got married three days later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something. That's something. As children, we were told a much more romantic story that they got married on the boat.
Speaker 2:But three days later is pretty close. Yeah Well, you know, that's the way it was back then. So now have you done DNA?
Speaker 1:Yes, so did you find anything that blew you away with that? It's interesting that I'm finding lots of new cousins on my father's side. My father's family's from Calabria, which John Luca was so happy to show me his Calabria, and he considered us to be true paisanos. But the cousins that I'm getting through the DNA test mostly seem to be from that side of the family, which is strange to me because we were so much closer to my mother's side of the family, mainly because we all lived in the same neighborhood. But yeah, I'm finding lots of cousins. The problem that most people need to be aware of when you do DNA is you're not going to find all good news. You hope that you find only information that makes you happy, but occasionally you find something in your family's history that you wish you didn't know, and that's happened to me on my father's side.
Speaker 2:Really, there were some people who weren't very. Yeah, I mean, I didn't find anything like that, but I did. One of my cousins was adopted and her mother had an affair with my cousin. He was still married and when I saw it pop up on ancestry, my cousin's three children were on. They were, they were on ancestry. Uh, I, I called my cousin, don arman. I said did you see on ancestry? She goes yes, I saw. I said did you have any idea? And she said the only thing she remembers around that time, because this woman is about the same age as my cousin that she remembers her mother crying in the bedroom for like two weeks. They must have known, they had to have known. Yeah, and my friend, he found an older brother that he never knew existed and it was a child from before his grandparents, I'm sorry, before his parents were married in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1:Perhaps the most interesting thing that's come from the DNA is I was contacted by a woman who said she was my second cousin, and you end up with a lot of second and third cousins, but in this case, this woman told me a story that her father had just passed away and she was going through his affairs and discovered that he was not her biological father. Apparently, her mother had had an affair when she was a young girl, and the father of the baby didn't want to have anything to do with her, and instead this man came and married her and adopted her baby and moved them from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. And so this woman grew up thinking that her mother and father were her biological mother and father, and she was 70 years old when she found out that her father was not her biological father, and so, through DNA, she figured out who her biological father was and was asking me if I would help her make contact with the family. Well, long story short.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you don't want people to know about their parents' sordid past, and so this guy had turned out to be a wonderful man, had a very successful business, had five beautiful children, and the last thing the family needed was to find out that he had had an affair and they had a half-sister. I have not stayed in contact with this woman, but it turns out she decided not to soil the family's memories. But she had a daughter and her daughter is now on Ancestry putting together a family tree and is putting in her actual grandfather. So everybody's going to find out and I don't think people really care as much now as they did back then.
Speaker 2:Excuse me. No, no, I think you're right and in fact I mean you know some people. You know some people want to know this kind of stuff too, because you find your, you know your real family. So it's nothing to say that you didn't. You know, love and respect your adoptive parents, but you know you find your own family. I mean my kids are adopted.
Speaker 2:So I we've been through that and and I had them both I did them on ancestry and my daughter found her birth mother, um in in florida. They can do a. There's a registry that you could sign up for, and but her birth parents didn't do that, so I had to get a private investigator to to find them and so she's in contact with them. And then my son he was never really that interested until about I don't know five, six years ago. I got a message on Ancestry and she said you know, my mother is Crystal and I'm Matthew's sister and I'd like to meet him. And I said, well, I have to ask him. I said you know he's a grown man, I can like to meet him. And I said, well, I have to ask him. I said you know, he's a grown man, I can't decide for him. But yeah, so he did and he stays in touch with them with his, you know, birth mother and stuff like that. But you know, things have changed with respect to all of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:You know. I think it's wonderful. My experience it was, and continues to be, so important in my life now when I met these strangers. It didn't take more than a few minutes for us to feel what people feel when they're from the same bloodline. We were cousins who didn't know each other and by the end of the day we were as close as any cousins I'd ever grown up with.
Speaker 2:I know there is a bond there. It's hard to explain, right.
Speaker 1:And I really and truly want that to continue. I'm 80 years old now, so I'm not going to be around. Well, I'll say 20, I'm not going to be around 20 years from now, and I want this contact to continue.
Speaker 2:You never know. You look great for 80,. I'll say that Thanks, you look really good for 80. And you know, that was the thing that blew me away. Same thing my father's first cousins. They were all in their 90s Because they were from my grandmother's youngest brother. So there was 18 years difference between my grandmother and them, years difference between my grandmother and them. So they were basically just a little bit younger than my father was or would have been at the time. And, like you said, as soon as we walked into the apartment there was that bond.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, having met them and having especially keep using that phrase, because my mother was one of three sisters and here there were another set of three sisters and, as I mentioned at the time, they were 72, 82 and 92. So the 72 year old is is now 80, like I am. The other two finally passed away, but only recently, so there's definitely longevity in the Taranto family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so the Taranto. Are they from Taranto originally? Do you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what we found out when we went to the town hall is there are an awful lot of people with that last name, and the reason is, as one of your participants recently was talking about, he wrote a couple of books about the origin of Italian names. Well, this is a perfect example. Those people are from Basilicata, which is Montescalioso, is very close to the Gulf of Taranto, and their last name is Di Taranto because they're all from there. Di Taranto is like Smith in Montescalioso, so you see people with that last name marrying other people with that same last name and they're not related. They're just all from the area around Tottenham.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have cousins there in Tottenham. They're from one of my grandmother's brothers. He was an admiral in the Italian Navy. It was a big Navy base in Townsend. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Have you been there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were there last year. Did you go to Matera? We went to Matera last year too. Yeah, yeah, I could live there. I'll tell you, the place that we loved more than any place was Sheila. I don't know if you've been to Sheila.
Speaker 1:No, no, it was on our list. When my wife got ill, I ended up spending. She was in the hospital for three weeks in Matera and it was amazing how good the care was. They pretty much saved their life. But while she was in the hospital, I was living in Matera, thanks to John Luca finding me a B&B, and I just fell in love with the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a cool place. It's really a neat place, for sure, and it's amazing that there were people living in caves up until the 60s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, john Lucas took us when we first visited there in 2016,. He took us through the caves and the churches and whatever One of the things about that man that people will miss. He wasn't just a guide, he was a historian. He was a historian, he was a storyteller. He made you feel, he made you understand how important what you were looking at, how important it was what the history was, and he had a passion, especially in Calabria, but also when we were in Matera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I sensed that too like I said, although we were in Matera, yeah, yeah, and I sensed that too. Like I said, although we never met him, I sensed that he had a great passion for Calabria. Did he tell you his grandmother's story about how God created Calabria? Yes, A great story. That was such a great story. Yes, so you had to live there for three weeks under not pleasant circumstances, I suppose. Right, yes, yeah, that's great. Did you have insurance to cover everything? I always get the insurance to make sure we cover everything. Make sure we cover everything.
Speaker 1:I hesitate to say this out loud because we have never received any charges. Really, what I found out is, if you're involved in an emergency situation which this was an ambulance had to come and get her, et cetera, et cetera. They never asked us for any insurance information, they just took care of her. She saw five or six different doctors, we have all the records, but nobody ever asked us for a dime.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. That's great that's.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. That's great. Yeah, I, I didn't.
Speaker 2:It's been two years and I opened the mailbox. I keep waiting for that charge to show up. Uh well, I guess if it hasn't shown up by now, it's it's. It's not going to show up at all, but who knows if jean lucco or someone didn't have something to do with that also, you know, you never know, yeah, that's, that's super.
Speaker 1:Like I said, we always get the insurance, just in case yeah, which I think is a really good idea, and we certainly will forever more going forward for sure.
Speaker 2:And, uh, the first trip we have my daughter's a nurse. So so the first trip that we went, two years ago, my daughter was there. So I figured at least we have a nurse traveling with us. So that's one good thing to have a medical professional in the family. And now she's in the last stage of she wants to be a nurse practitioner, a psychiatric nurse practitioner. She wants to be a nurse practitioner, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and I don't know why she wants to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner, but that's what she wants to do, right.
Speaker 2:So, well, george. This has been certainly a lot of fun great stories and reminiscing about the great guy, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I really appreciate what you are doing. I'm very proud of my Italian heritage. I've been involved in some Italian-American organizations here in the Las Vegas area and one of the things we keep preaching is the importance of having the generations that follow us understand their heritage, appreciate their heritage and honor their heritage, and I think what you're doing is a big part of that.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks, and you know, I just I was never part of an Italian-American organization until last year. My brother joined one in Florida and just, you know a great bunch of guys and they, you know, they contribute,100,000 a year for scholarships and they give back to the community in so many different ways and it's really great. And they made me the chairman of the cultural committee. So there you go, I got a job, but it's my passion and I think they sense that that's why they did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah, there's an Italian-American club here, because it's Las Vegas. The history of the Italian-American organizations includes some pretty neat names, like Frank Sinatra, and they trade on that a lot. But there's also a couple of organizations that raise scholarship money for Italian-American kids, and that's all good stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know it is. It is Well. Thanks again, I appreciate it.
