findingphilblog

Well, that took a while

OK, so four years’ hiatus wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I last posted.

Buuuut, there’s been some major upheavals. Most of them pretty darn good. I moved back to the Harrisburg area and got a job with the main newspaper here, the Patriot-News. Jason got a job at the Sentinel in Carlisle. And oh yeah. We got married. 🙂

On the downside, my dad was seriously ill last year and hospitalized for some time. His being sick made me glad I’d done so much work on the family history. But it also made me realize that there was so much more to uncover.

I’d filled in the big blanks, but I want them all. Or, at least as many as I can.

Which is why, home alone tonight while Jason was on night shift, I started googling. I suppose February always gets me thinking about Grandpa. The anniversary of his death is this week. And with so many stones still unturned, I figured poking around wouldn’t hurt.

It’s not much, but it was so cool. Google has this amazing project where they’re scanning in old newspapers and you can search them. So, instead of microfiching it for hours, you can just google.

This is a news article about a produce strike in 1945. It was taking place in Pittsburgh right around the time my dad was born, actually. And Grandpa’s quoted because he was the only guy who’d thought ahead and ordered enough to get the store (Donahoe’s) through Tuesday.

February 5, 2010 0

Memorialized

The thing that’s always drawn me to newspapers is the sense of immortality. A hundred years from now, whether accidentally or on purpose, someone looking for information will find it, and find my name. Maybe they will like what they read. Maybe they will think it’s trite and old-fashioned. Either way, it’s part of history and, if there’s another girl, far into the future, searching for her roots, maybe something I wrote can help.

Which is why it means the world to me that my paper published the article based on my research. You can find the link here. I love what they did with the cover, using Grandpa’s picture. I grabbed a bunch of copies to send to Mom and Dad, give to Mary Ann, Arnetta — lots of folks.

Like the article says, I’ve learned so much in all these months researching. I feel I know so much more about Grandpa himself. I’ve learned about judgement and luck. About the things that should break you and don’t. About the power of humor, and family, and how this city, my city, can shelter and shun. I guess you could say I’ve learned a little more about what it means to be human.

And I’m not done. All of this has convinced me I need to write a book. And it has to be about Grandpa’s life. There’s one story in all of us. That’s what Harper Lee always said, right? This one’s mine.

So, I’ll search on and see where this tale takes me.

September 24, 2006 0

Answers

The long-awaited family reunion was a huge success.

Last weekend, my parents, Mary Ann and her husband Mike, Kristin, Bryce, me, Philip and Jason all made our way out to Hadley, PA, where Arnetta lives. Arnetta is the daughter of Anna Mae Brenckle, Raymond and Myrtle’s daughter.

It was funny for me because I looked at the Brenckles, who weren’t really all that different looking than all the rest of us (lots of dark hair, brown eyes, hearty appetites). But you could also see how the branch that belonged to “the Italian boys” (that’s how so many people remembered them, as “the Italian boys”) was so different.

I met (or re-met) Brenckles of all ages. That was great, because I had several direct connections to people with clear memories of my grandfather — including Arnetta’s older sister.

As I sat with the two of them, another memory of the type of person my grandfather was floated up.

“I remember one time hearing a story from my mother,” Arnetta said. “From right after your grandparents got married. Your Grammy, bless her heart, she was so wonderful. But she didn’t know anything about running a house. Oh, none of us do when we get married. But she served dinner to your grandfather. And he said to her ‘Helen, look in my ear.’ All concerned, she starts looking in Phil’s ear and asking what’s the matter. ‘Do you see a noodle in there?’ he asks totally straight-faced. ‘No, Phil. I don’t.’ she says, totally serious. ‘Well, look again, because that’s the fourth time we’ve had chicken soup this week and I think the noodles are starting to come out of my ears.'”

I can feel the grin split my face. It’s nothing, really. No grand historic import to this story. But it’s an absolute lock on what kind of person my Grandpa Phil was. This was a man who grew up in an era, and possibly around people, who’d have knocked the pot out of Grammy’s hands and no one — not even her — would have thought it was wrong. But not only did he not treat her like that, his gentle humor made her not feel bad about herself. I wanted to hug him so bad. Heck. I wanted to hug Grammy again and laugh with her over the sweet memory she’d never seemed to find all those times I’d asked.

“Do you want me to bring down some pictures?” Arnetta asked.

I practically raced to the attic myself. The box held a bunch of loose photos and old frames. There were a lot of pictures we’d already had. The dapper picture of Grandpa in his 20s, straw boater in hand, dressed in a sharp gray suit. It’s a strange feeling, seeing “your” family picture in someone else’s house. But, obviously, they were family, too.

There were many others I hadn’t seen. Myrtle sitting on an upturned vegetable box at the stand on Smallman Street. Grandpa and Joe in coveralls, standing in front of a greenhouse they’d built. Promotional photos of the Brenckle farm trucks.

And one picture that twisted my heart when I saw it. Phil and Joe in obviously-new suits, standing next to 8-year-old Anna Mae and 4-year-old Buddy, the Brenckles’ biological son.

“It must have been taken right after the adoption was finalized,” Arnetta said. Sure enough, another photo, of all the kids in the same clothes, standing in front of a large, black car on the Brenckle farm, seemed to verify it.

There were pictures of the old Brenckle farmhouse and the new. The old one burned down, but they rebuilt. One of the guys I met tonight lives there now.

“You know, guys, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. Why?” I asked. “Why them?”

Arnetta and her sister explained that the Brenckles took in a lot of kids for farm work. They took in a lot of adults, too. It’s likely that their being as young, but as old, as they were at the time they came to the farm made them perfect candidates to watch Anna Mae and Buddy.

“Oh,” I said. It sounded like a work arrangement.

“But there was something about your grandfather and his brother,” Arnetta said. “They were special. They had good senses of humor. They were hard workers.”

“They were helpful and handy?” I said.

Remember, Ray and Myrtle adopted them, they said. They didn’t have to. They could have just let them live on the farm, because there were a few other kids and older guys that did. They made them family, and that had to mean something.

It wasn’t the grand, movie-ending I’d hoped for. “You’re the missing piece of our family” and all that. Emotions, I suppose, weren’t the same in 1922 as they are now.

And I learned one more thing. Mary was always welcome. She was never adopted, but she was still a large part of the family. It seems cruel, but for a working farm, her disability would have been difficult; and again, feelings about those types of things were very different from today. Raymond, in fact, used to drive over to the Fresh Air Home, pick Mary up and bring her for the weekend. She’d sit in the kitchen and snap green beans or dry dishes. And after all the work was done, the three siblings could spend time together.

That, I imagine, had to mean everything.

August 28, 2006 0

Cry Uncle

Over the weekend, I decided to take my new Ancestry membership out for a spin.

I’d gone back over the guardianship documents, including the two other pages I’d not really examined carefully until now and I realized I’d circled in on a new fact. I could place Phil with his family in 1910. Both of his parents were dead by 1917. By 1922, according to the trust documents, Phil and Joe been placed with the Brenckles and Mary was living at the Fresh Air Home. So, there were four missing years. Where did the three kids go?

Again, a fragment of a fragment set my direction. There were two things I remembered Grammy telling me about how Grandpa had come to live with the Brenckles.

“They lived with an uncle who was terrible to them. He was a drunk. He wanted them just for the money,” she’d said. I had always presumed that meant the money people get for taking in foster kids. But maybe it meant their father’s money.

When I’d asked if they’d ever lived in an orphanage, she said she remembered Toner Institute. I always thought it sounded ominous.

I started with the uncle. The next Census would have been in 1920, so I pulled up Ancestry and started searching there.I now had at least four different uncles to pick from. Who would it be?

“Patsy Ritonda?”

Patsy. Patsy. Duh. Patsy is short for Pasquale. How the Census-taker got Ritonda from Brescia I’ll never know. But I did note the taker’s name was German. I pictured two men with thick accents trying to understand each other — neither one caring much how questions were answered.

I found the siblings simply enough, though their names were again misspelled. If it’s one thing all this research has taught me, it’s that misspellings are just as important as correct ones — if the other material adds up. There’s a margin of error every time you look for someone. A birthday that’s a day or two off. A name spelled close, but not exact. I’ve learned that our vital information really wasn’t standardized until after World War II, when a lot of returning GIs leaned on their war records as official documents.

So, anyway, there they were, living on 41 Fleming Park Avenue in a place called Pittock, Stowe Township. When I found it on the map of Allegheny County, tucked between McKees Rocks and Kennedy Township, I realized that I had been there at least two dozen times. Grammy liked to go to the tiny Catholic Church in Pittock — instead of her usual St. Malachy’s — every once in a while.

I called my dad.

“Did your dad ever say anything about living in Pittock?”

“Yeah.” I could hear his voice catching the thread of memory. “He did. I remember one or two times, when we were driving into the Rocks, we’d go past the bridge and he’d say he used to live over there. I didn’t put it together until now. Why? You said he lived in East Liberty.”

“Because I think I found ‘the uncle.’ You know, the one who mistreated them? His name is here in the census as Patsy Ritonda.”

“Patsy Ritonda? Never heard of him.”

“It’s Pasquale, Dad. Your grandmother’s brother. The guy who left them the 1500 bucks. I think he’s the guy. They were living with him.”

We were both quiet. The thing is, more than “simple” hardship came out of the siblings’ time with their uncle. Grammy had told us it was during that time that Grandpa had contracted the strep throat that ended up weakening his heart. The heart that would eventually kill him long before his time, and just a year or so removed from the invention of life-saving valve replacement surgery that would have given him so many more years.

Joe, who was known his whole adult life by the extremely un-PC nickname of Crip (as in cripple, because he walked with a limp. oh boy), had fallen off a horse and broken his ankle. It had gone untreated. And Mary had contracted the tuberculosis that twisted her bones and stunted her growth.Three years in a body cast.

“That guy sucks,” I finally said.

As we hung up, something at the top of the third paper caught my eye. I shuffled back and forth between the computer screen and the paper.

The guardianship papers had Pasquale’s date of death as November 29, 1920 at Woodville State Hospital. A quick cross-reference (thanks again, Google!) revealed that Woodville was a home for the insane (gulp). But they also took a fair amount of tuberculosis patients. That was more likely, and it explained Mary’s exposure. If she had somehow managed to fight it off when her father was sick, being exposed by Pasquale was surely too much.

The census had been taken in January of that year. By the time that census taker reached their door, the siblings were living on borrowed time. I searched for Pasquale again, using a variety of misspellings, and pulled up a World War I draft card, filled out June 5, 1917 — five months after Saverina died.

It was requesting an exemption to the draft because he was “sole support of three nieces (sic).”

The address was the same. The job was the same. And so was the place of birth.

I had my man.

But beyond that, I had a real timeline now, and an apparent chain of custody. From both parents to their mother to Pasquale to the county.

But my mind flipped back to good old Mike Natale. He was their stepfather, for pete’s sake. Why didn’t he keep them and their half-sibling together?

August 7, 2006 0

Proof of Life, and Death

After the cemetery visit, my research slowed down a little. I got busy at work and was exhausted when I came home.

But about a month ago, I tried one more angle. Now that I had the death dates for both of my great-grandparents, I could write to the Pennsylvania Division of Vital Records for death certificates.

The forms were pretty easy to find. You can download them online and send them off. It takes a few weeks and only costs $9 per certificate. I think it’s hilarious the title of the PDF is Death_By_Mail. Someone in the department has a sense of humor.

Francesco’s arrived first and brought its own revelations. He’d died of tuberculosis. And at the time of his death, the family had obviously moved from St. Andrews Street (from the 1910 Census) to a new location — 6343 R (rear?) Frankstown Avenue.

He’d worked as a tailor for a company called Crandall-MacKenzie. That was new, and interesting.

He’d suffered for three years with this? Oh man. And he’d died at Western Pennsylvania Hospital of respiratory failure and tuberculous peritonitis, which he’d had for a week. It sounds dreadful.

But hold up a minute! I see a passel of new names. Francesco’s father! His name was Philip Venezia! His mother was Maria Guiseppe! My great-great-grandparents. Oh yeah!

And oh my lord. Antonio Venezia. Address 6347 R Frankstown Avenue. A brother? Francesco had a brother? What’s more a brother who apparently lived like two doors down.

Suddenly, it felt as if the entire picture of my family had shifted again. At least one more sibling, carrying the name Venezia. Could that mean that there were cousins. Legit, blood Venezia cousins somewhere in America? Did they look like me? Like my dad?

Saverina’s was waiting when I got home last night. And ho-boy, does it get interesting.

First, her name is backwards — last name, then first name, both spelled wrong. Then my eyes race to cause of death. Puerpual Infection and Peritonitis. What’s Puerpual Infection? A quick Google search. “Puerperal (correct spelling) infections, also known as postpartum infections…”

“Jason!” I scream. “She did! She had a baby. Oh my god, there was a baby.”

For a minute, I can’t move. I can’t think of anything other than the fact that there might be a half-sibling of my grandpa out there somewhere. Hell, they could still be alive. That would explain the lack of a body interred with her at Mount Carmel.

After I calm down, I see that the record also holds the names of my other set of great-great-grandparents. It’s impossible to tell because the spelling — like most of this document — is atrocious. It looks like it says Jesse or Jurace Bresau and Philippina Oliva. But I know this is my great-grandmother because the next of kin is Mike Natale, 123 Enterprise Street.

“She suffered for a month,” I groan. My ovaries twinge in sympathy. That must have been a horrific, painful death. And once again, my perception of the road she had to walk after Francesco passed away shifts. Her life, I thought, must have been really, really hard. Because how do you go from three live, healthy births in probably a lot less sophisticated circumstances the decade before to death?

So now I have an explosion of fresh leads to follow. Onward!

July 17, 2006 0

Resurgam

One of my favorite books is Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.” When her friend Helen dies, she’s buried at Lowood School under a stone that says “Resurgam.” Latin for “I will rise again.”

That word kept running through my head as Jason and I made our way to Mount Carmel Cemetery.

Because, after 90 years, Francesco and Saverina’s memories were rising again. We had to stop at the cemetery office to get directions to the site, which was fairly easy to find. It’s a nice spot, as these kinds of things go. Just below a dip in a hill, near the cemetery’s baby section. I try not to think of all those tiny tombstones with little lambs on them as I walk up to my great-grandparents’ grave.

There they are. I’m shocked to see that there’s only one stone. My feeling for my great-grandmother again fluctuates. Why did her new husband not see fit to buy her a stone. It makes me sad. Because I see that despite the missing picture (it would fit on that little notch), Francesco’s name, date of birth and date of death have withstood the test of time. The grass is neatly tended around the monument to his existence. Were it not for the little record card in the cemetery office, I might never know Saverina was right there next to him.

I sit down on the grass and try to feel whatever connection might still exist between myself and the bodies below. The weight of history somehow feels incredibly present. I think of my Grandpa. Did he ever come out here? If he kept his concertina-playing skills a secret, maybe he had a few clandestine visits to his parents. Or, maybe like a lot of men in his day, he just didn’t look back.

It’s a sunny day, and not too far removed, I realize, from the 91st anniversary of his death. I think about how there was no way Francesco could have imagined his little boy would have a little boy of his own, and a daughter as well. That they would go on to each have a boy and girl of their own. Two writers, a banker and a pharmacist, all living in Pittsburgh together.

Whatever Francesco and Saverina’s American dream had become, my dad and aunt, me, my brother Philip and my cousins Kristin and Bryce were proof that at least some of it had come true.

Photo credit for these awesome pictures to my fabulous boyfriend, Jason Malmont.

May 28, 2006 0

Lost and found

Not long after I started this search, one thing had always bothered me.

Francesco and Saverina had died a long time ago. They were buried somewhere. But where?

Today, I have my answer. Mount Carmel Cemetery in Verona.

My search began, as it almost always does these days, by Googling in between phone calls and deadlines. “Cemeteries in Allegheny County.” “Catholic Cemeteries in Allegheny County.” They could be anywhere. There were hundreds and hundreds of listings, including abandoned ones.

I decided to start with the biggest. Allegheny County Cemetery. They had big section for poor people. Maybe they’d ended up there. I called the office and the kind person on the phone offered to check for me. No luck. But he did give me some great advice.

“Were they Catholic?”

Yes, I replied. They went to Our Lady Help of Christians.

“There’s a few cemeteries associated with that church, but try Mount Carmel first.” Then he gave me the phone number.

When I called, I went through my spiel. I was looking for my great-grandparents. I didn’t know when exactly they died, but I had a month and year for my great-grandfather. Would they help?

The man told me to hold the phone and he’d be back.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “They’re here. Francesco Venezia, you said? He died June 15, 1915. And his wife, Sev-a-rina? She’s January 24, 1917.”

My heart is pounding. Almost 90 years’ mystery and it’s solved in half an hour.

“For real?! Oh my gosh, thank you! We’ll be out to visit this weekend!”

But I had one more question before we hung up. Was there a baby buried with her?

No, the man said. Nothing on the record indicates there was. So, another dead end with this potential half-sibling.

Maybe it’s inappropriate to be excited about visiting a cemetery, but I am. I practically ran out of the newsroom to call my parents.

“I found them! I found them! I found them!” I yelled when my dad picked up the phone.

“Who?”

“Your grandparents! Francesco and Saverina! They’re in Mount Carmel Cemetery over in Verona.”

“Really?” my dad said. “That’s incredible. I never remember my dad mentioning it.”

“I’m going to go this weekend! Jason will take pictures and I’ll send them to you. Maybe we can all visit the next time you guys come out.”

“Oh, and dad,” I said. “I kind of told the paper that I’d write a story about my research project. Is that OK?”

He said it was. Said the Brenckle relatives still living in Pittsburgh might get a kick out of it.

“In fact, here, talk to your mother. There’s something coming up this summer.”

When I talked to my mom, it turned out that the Brenckles had invited all of us up to Arnetta Brenckle Andrews’ house this August for a family reunion. It’s the first time in quite sometime that they’d asked this branch of the family to come.

Oh, what a tale I’ll be able to tell.

May 26, 2006 0

Aunt Mary V

The closest I ever came to anyone connected with the events of this story is the fetal me, in my mom’s belly, when she visited Aunt Mary V.

That’s what everyone called Mary Venezia, who, as I now know, was born Maria Giuseppa Venezia in Pittsburgh, PA on August 5, 1905.

What my mom remembered of her was spotty. She was a tiny, tiny woman who always smelled like lavender. She lived alone the top room of a boarding house-style living facility. She died because some doctor convinced her he could help her retain her mobility (and therefore stay in this independent living arrangement). She died on the operating table in September 1977.

She was a prolific letter-writer and had pen pals from all over the world, many of them children who’d stayed at the Fresh Air Home. She wore a pink peridot ring and, at some point, someone brought her a lovely cameo back from Italy. I have them both , stored with the only baby picture we ever had of any of the Venezia children. I carried it around a lot in my childhood, and one day it went through the wash. Thank god for old paper made from rags or it would have been lost forever.

The library had a history of the Fresh Air Home, published by its benefactors. It included names of notable patients. Interestingly, it noted that, unlike many of the patients, she was a ward of Allegheny County. Most of the other children were placed there by their families. Yet, she was among them, and listed as having tuberculosis of the hip and spine. The Pittsburgh Press article I came across mentioned that Mary had been brought into the Fresh Air Home on a stretcher. She’d spent three years in a body cast.

After learning all this, I’m even more sad that I never met this fiercely independent lady. No wonder she fought so hard to stay on her feet. She figured it was better to go down swinging than become reliant on other people. I respect her even more for that decision.

April 15, 2006 0

The Carnegie Library is Awesome

That’s the title of my post because, well, it is.

I just got back from an all-day research binge in the library’s Pennsylvania Room.

I have a stack of census forms, a sheaf of photos and a whole lot of answers.

The biggest asset they have is access to ancestry.com, which I’ve been dying to join for ages.

The first thing I did was dig through their Census records. Thank goodness I’d found that will because I knew to search and verify information by everyone’s Italian name, rather than the Americanized version. Jackpot in the 1910 Census!

I now know that when my grandpa was 3, he lived with his mother, father, sister, brother and uncle Pasquale (who was listed as a boarder. Interesting.) on St. Andrews Street in East Liberty. I looked it up on Google Maps, but it doesn’t look like it exists anymore. But using Our Lady Help of Christians as a beacon, I was able to trace the boarders of his early life. The church is within walking distance of their house. Enterprise Street, where Saverina eventually moved, is only a few blocks over in the opposite direction.

This record has Francesco doing odd jobs, so I wonder if he’d been laid off. Maybe he was a Francesco was working for himself, kind of a freelance tailor?

I’d pictured them living in a walk-up apartment. Not real big. Maybe even something like this. But the address seems to indicate a house-house, rather than an apartment building where they might share a few rooms. All of their neighbors have different house numbers. Was it possible they lived in their own home, albeit a rented one? Francesco and Saverina had been married for 6 years. She’d had three children and three live births.

It made me smile to see the five of them and their uncle together. It’s the first real mental image I’d been able to conjure of my grandfather belonging to his birth family. And in this record, they really were.

Here’s a quick run-down of my other discoveries:

Cesare and Pasquale Brescia, Saverina’s brothers, were part of a group of people known as “birds of passage.” They sailed back and forth between Italy without becoming citizens. I found records indicating that Cesare, the brother who’d come with his newlywed sister to America, would return to Italy in 1907 and 1913. He’d tried to come in 1912, but had come down with the dreaded eye disease trachoma and had been turned back. Pasquale, who’d also come in 1904, left in 1913 and returned in 1914. How and when Ottavio, the uncle from the Guardianship papers, came to the US remains a mystery
Loads and loads of pictures from the ‘Italians’ picture collection. I now have a pretty good visual idea of what it was like to walk through the streets of East Liberty, how kids and adults dressed, what types of buildings and landmarks made up Phil’s life.
Information about the Sewickley Fresh Air Home, where my great-aunt Mary lived much of her life. I’ll write a separate post about her later.
Sanborn Fire Maps. Oh my god, I’m in love with them. Big digital maps that are overlaid. You can find all the old streets, see old buildings that were torn down, who owned them. And the best part about them is you can access them outside the library.