findingphilblog

All I can say is I freakin’ LOVE you, Ancestry!!

In the intervening months, I also circled in on the exact town where we are from. Sorbo San Basile. I cracked up when I found out they had their own website. There were pictures of people at local festivals and daggoneit if every single person didn’t look somewhat like me and my dad. Here’s the site.

It’s a speck on the map, really. So, if Catanzaro Province is like Pennsylvania and Catanzaro the city is like Harrisburg, then Sorbo San Basile is like Newburg. Someone from Newburg isn’t truly from Harrisburg. And when you start talking researching records, you’ve got to be specific.

Ancestry has message boards where you can post questions to see if you can connect. Well, I figure I might as well get on the Italy boards and see what’s what. There’s actually a forum for people searching Catanzaro, so I post there with Francesco and Saverina’s information.

I wait awhile and get a few responses. Then one guy tells me I need to check out a woman by the name of Dina. She’s apparently the person I want to connect with.

When we finally do connect, she combs through her extensive catalog of research and comes up with gold. This is our town, all right, and we go back a long way.

The name Venezia is not a “real” last name, per se. Italians would give orphaned babies the last name Esposito (meaning exposed. aw.) or the name of a large city in Italy. Based on the records in her tree, Francesco’s father Filippo Aristodemo Esposito Venezia (that’s a mouthful), was an orphan.

And get this. In the old days, churches in Italy had these things called “ruta.” They were little wheels that were in the exterior walls. There was a basket on the wheel. You can probably see where this is going. People put babies in the basket, turned the wheel so the baby was inside, rang a bell and ran. The nuns and priests took in the child.

It’s crazy how history repeats itself. Filippo was an orphan. Phil, who was likely named for his grandfather in the traditional Italian way, was an orphan. I realize that if my dad lives to see his grandchildren, he will be the first Venezia man in more than 100 years to do so. But, you know, no pressure. 🙂

That’s Francesco’s father. But it turns out Filippo Aristodemo married pretty well. Maria Giuseppa Gagliardi was from Sorbo’s upper class.  The men in her family, Dina said, would have had the honorific Don Gagliardi, meaning landowner. OK, so it’s no castle in Italy, but it’s still pretty cool.

In hooking my tree up to Dina’s, I’ve discovered lines that go all the way back to the 1500s. I’ll probably never know exactly what we were before Venezia, but I’m still pretty proud to claim them. Dina’s not found much of anything on Severina, so there’s still that angle to pursue.

In the meantime, I’m savoring the thrill of truly, finally finding home for my dad and our family.