Topics of Related Interest

---

The above is the birth record of my great-great-great-grandmother Fortunata Cutillo. She was abandoned by her birth mother on the steps of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Cautano. 

Abandoned infants were a very sad but almost inevitable fact of life. Once you find one on your family tree, your eyes are opened to a history that changes your perspective on a lot of life and death matters.

Here is her story, and the mystery yet to be unraveled.

Italians  had very precise traditions for naming their children. They weren't  always followed to a "T" and like any "rule" there are exceptions but  knowing this will help you sort out who's who among all the similarly  named ancestors.

1. https://www.italiangenealogy.com/articles/italian-culture-traditions/italian-naming-traditions-and-their-ramifications
2. https://www.italiangenealogy.com/articles/italian-culture-traditions/italian-naming-traditions-and-their-ramifications

If you are searching for marriage or death records for the years 1865-1930 from the towns of Benevento province (not the city - that's different) I have bad news. They are lost. Of all the  frustrating situations I have encountered since beginning this journey  into the past, this is at the top of my list.  A real brick wall.   What's the story? 

When  vital records were created at the comune=town, the registrar had to  create two copies, one to keep at the town office and one to send to the  tribunal or state archives. I quickly learned that the marriage and  death records from the years 1865-1930 are nowhere to be found.  

 According to the website of the Archivio di Stato (State archives) of  Benevento, "Mancano del  tutto i registri delle pubblicazioni, dei matrimoni e delle  morti del  periodo 1861-1930 e, nonostante reiterati tentativi fatti  dall’Archivio  di Stato per appurare se e dove siano conservati,  il Tribunale di  Benevento non è stato finora in grado di fornire notizie  certe al  riguardo." in other words, "The registers of publications,  marriages and deaths from the period 1861-1930 are completely missing  and, despite repeated attempts made by the State Archives to ascertain  whether and where they are kept, the Court of Benevento has so far been  unable to provide information certain about it." http://www.archiviodistatobenevento.beniculturali.it/index.php?it/169/stato-civile

Maybe  someday someone will find boxes of record books in a closet or attic or  barn and we'll get to see them. For now, the best one can do is attempt  to contact the comune that should have the one remaining original copy (another post on that later) and  accept that like everything, this too has its limitations.

So what did your ancestor do for a living?   What was their "condition" or status? Here are lists of occupations you  might see on a document and their English equivalents: 

1. https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~mmange/genealogy/itengocc.html
2. http://www.conigliofamily.com/SicilianAndItalianOccupations.htm
3. http://www.lodico.org/mike/html/occupations.html#A
4. If you have a subscription to Ancestry,com (and maybe even if you don't - try this link) https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Occupation-Terms-Italian-to-English-Part-1?language=en_US
5. https://www.oocities.org/irishkenj/italjobs.html

This  is a myth that apparently got started with "The Godfather" movies.  The  ship manifests were filled out at the point of embarkation. The  spellings were taken from the documents the passenger had to present,  and we are back to a shipmate trying to quickly read all that scratchy  handwriting.

Sometimes,  once in the new country, the immigrant chose to change their name to  assimilate. Names like Calogero, Baldassare, Crocifissa, and Addolorata  do not have English equivalents so Calogero may have become Carl or  Baldassare changed to Barney, Crocifissa became Gertrude and Addolorata  became Dora or Dorothy. Sometimes a name was changed to something it  sounded like. Innocenzo and Vincenzo were often shortened to "Chenz,"  which sounded like "chainz," which then morphed into James. These new  American names were sometimes chosen but more often assigned by a boss,  or in the case of my Uncle Gennaro, it was his teacher who had never  heard of the name, so she declared she would call him Charlie. Years  later, he had to get an affidavit to prove he was the same person as on  his birth certificate!

All  this is to say yes, names sometimes changed, and sometimes what they  changed to has no logical explanation, but they were NOT changed at  Ellis Island.

The Story Tellers

(attributed to Della Joann McGinnis Johnson)

We are the chosen. In each family, there is one who seems called to find the ancestors – to put flesh on their bones and make them    live again, to tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve.  

To me, doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but breathing life into all who have gone before. 

It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am and why I  do the things I do.  It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, and their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. That we might remember them. 

We are the storytellers of the tribe. Those who have gone before cry out to us: tell our story.  So we do, with love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence. And in finding them, we somehow find ourselves. 

It is up to that one called in the next generation to take their place in the long line of family storytellers.  And so I do.  I tell the story of my family.   

Honestly, I wish I could say this better, but I can't, so I re-print this with gratitude to the author.

I have created three family history books, with a fourth nearing completion and a fifth in the thought process. Here is where you can see and order them.

I do have several pages of tips and resources typed and printed out. If you would like, please email me and I will send things to you. 

Details coming soon.

Not written by me but excellent sources of information. Coming soon.

What does Napoleon have to do with my research?  Stay tuned for all the scoop!

Because  they are your family, of course you'd go out on a limb for them!   Seriously though, most of the time we think of genealogy as building a  tree from self to father to grandfather to great-grandfather as far back as you can go. But there will inevitably be a snag or something that you can't verify, or as we say in  the business  "a brick wall".  Sometimes, there will be a birth year given in one place and an age stated in another document, and the math  doesn't add up. How do you get around, over, or through this thicket?  This is where it's necessary to go sideways on the tree and look for  children, siblings, aunts/uncles, and gather as much information as you  can that may corroborate, triangulate or at least narrow down the  possibilities. Plus you have the added bonus of seeing the complete  picture of the family. If your ancestors lived in a small town like mine  you will be fascinated to see all the interconnections with other  families in town. You will undoubtedly learn about more births,  marriages and deaths, occupations, trials and tribulations,  and get  more experience looking for documents, reading old handwriting, and  translating the language of your ancestors - all of which will enrich  your family's story in countless ways.  So go ahead, go out on a limb!  It's for family after all!