Saverina Brescia

The Results are In

My DNA test results are in (cue the Maury Povich music).

Actually, they came back a few weeks ago. The fact I’m posting now should tell you they were fairly unremarkable.

I knew my background regions all along. So, no surprises there. But what did shock me was how little of my DNA seems to come from Italy.

My profile states that I am 51 percent Western European, 24 percent Eastern European, 11 percent Great Britain and only 8 percent Italian. Whaaaat??? My grandpa was 100 percent Italian, as in, both his parents came from Italy and I’ve traced their roots very far back.

My grandmother was 100 percent Slovak. My other grandparents were 100 percent Polish and 98 percent Irish, with a little French Canadian thrown in because the Irish branch emigrated through Canada rather than the US.

I was expecting more Italian. But, ah, perhaps ol’ Fillipo Aristodemo had some other types of blood running through his veins!

I suppose it depended on what was in my spit that morning I took the test. Maybe the Italian portions were still sleeping.

I do take a lot of comfort in knowing that the majority of “me” is made up of the DNA most closely associated with my wonderful Grammy and my equally gentle, loving and kind Grandpa Krajenke (the Polish portion, if you couldn’t tell.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about how comforting this notion of inheritance is, at least for me and in my circumstance.

My mother-in-law, you see, is not doing well. She’s in the end stages of a progressive and ultimately fatal disease. My daughter, despite visiting her every week along with her Daddy, will only know her in pictures. However, there is a portion of her that will always be with her, that will always be with Jason, too.

My mother and father will be with me and with my daughter long after they are gone. A part of me will be with my daughter until the end of her days.

So, that means Grammy, and yes, Phil, are with me right now.

In physics, you learn that matter is neither created nor destroyed. With this test, it shows that is indeed the case. Lives echo on and on, catching the shore of the present day like the tide.

August 18, 2014 0

Baby Girl Natale

This is such a hard post to write. The title of the post is a warning; so, if these types of things are hard for you, read no farther.

For so many years, I’ve wondered what happened to the child my great-grandmother had just before she died. I’d hoped that somehow the child survived and there was a branch of our family just waiting to be discovered.

Now I know that was never to be the case. A few days ago, Pennsylvania released an enormous collection of death records, from 1906-1963. What I wrote away for all those years ago is now available right on my Ancestry page.

The baby, never named, was stillborn on Dec. 28, 1916. It was a girl. For some reason, I had always pictured the child as a boy. In fact, in my book, the child is a boy because I felt so strongly that she would have another son. Further proof, I guess, that your strongest assumptions can be total errors.

My heart cracks in half. I am writing this with my daughter’s monitor perched by my side, watching her sleeping peacefully. Mommy is hugging her extra hard tonight. I don’t care if I wake her up.

There is such a potent rush of emotions that occur when you give birth. I know the joy of seeing that little face held up for the first time, hearing her cry and know that the two of you — mother and child — have just come through the danger (no matter how modern the medicine or healthy you are) together.

The form does not indicate on the form the reason for the stillbirth, so we don’t know if the baby was premature, had some type of birth injury or was born in circumstances that prenatal care, fetal heart monitoring, C-sections and other basic medical interventions mostly prevent these days.

I also know why there was no body with Saverina at Mount Carmel. The child was buried in Calvary Cemetery. I will be calling them in the next few days to see what information they might have. It’s possible this is a potter’s field burial, with no stone and very little information.

This information again shifts my extremely conflicted feelings about Mike and Saverina. For all I feel they did wrong (not keeping the siblings together), it’s possible that the lens of grief led to decisions that perhaps were not fully thought through. I can’t blame them for that. I also can’t forget that while these types of things were more common in this era — spousal death at a young age and death in childhood or childbirth — they were no less tragic. Grief is different for everyone and no one way is right.

My great-grandmother suffered so much in the two short years between Francesco’s death and her own. The death certificate for the baby notes her maiden name as Saverina Venezia, and I wonder if she never did get over losing him. Because her death occurred in such a short period of time, she also never got the redemption that sometimes comes with years and understanding. I am hoping, at least, that the faith she had was her final comfort.

April 18, 2014 0

I’ve started writing

I think I’ve gone as far as I can with the research, at least for the moment. So, I figure it’s time to take all my notes and do something with all the hours and hours of time I’ve put into this over the last few years.

It’s strange. Sometimes, it feels as if something beyond me is dictating where the story is going. I could say it’s my own creativity, but that almost doesn’t feel right. Sometimes, and maybe I’m crazy, I feel like there’s another hand guiding mine. Some of the ideas I have are too vivid. I might consider a path, but then something back in the back of my mind says “No, it happened this way.”

The greatest thing about all of this is that it truly feels like I am spending time with Grandpa. In a way that transcends looking at pictures or hearing other people tell stories, I feel that, because of all the research I’ve done, I’ve gotten a much more clear picture about who he was, how he grew up, the forces that shaped his world and all the rest than I ever did before.

My goal is to finish by the end of the year so I can send it to my brother-in-law, who is an author. We’ll see how I do.

January 15, 2012 0

In which I hit the information motherlode

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.

September 1, 2010 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

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.

April 15, 2006 0

The Hall of Records: Marriage edition

I’m at a bit of a dead end with the money angle. But, I realized I was missing another huge trove of records. Marriage licenses.

Severina So, early this morning, I trundled into the Marriage License Bureau to start my digging there.

The woman suggested I start with the bride’s name, so down came the big book of Bs and I turned to 1904, the year (I presumed) Francesco and Severina had been married. But the search came up empty. I checked the year before and after, just to be sure. Nothing. Which leads me to believe that they’d probably gotten married in Italy and come over here.

I figured while I was in the Bs, I’d look for Raymond and Myrtle Brenckle, my adoptive great-grandparents. As expected, there they were. Raymond Brenckle and Myrtle Lager. I made a photocopy. Everyone’s coming over to our house for Easter, so I figured this would add to the show-and-tell fun.

As I stood there, trying to figure out where to look next, from the corners of my brain, a tiny memory fluttered up. Severina had either died of the flu in the pandemic, or she’d died in childbirth. There may have been a stepfather.

If there was a stepfather, there had to have been a marriage, right?

The will I’d found indicated Francesco had died in June 1915, so I started with July.

My heart dropped when I reached January 1916.

“Severina Brescia and Michele Natale,” I whispered to myself. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Six months? She waited six months?! Francesco’s body was barely cold!”

From “beloved wife” and widow to new bride in 180 days.

I know it’s wrong to judge people of the past by today’s morality and mores. But a part of me is really angry at her. How could she put her kids through that? My poor grandpa! What’s more, all of a sudden this vague notion of my great-grandmother dying in childbirth has suddenly taken on a whole lot more relevance. Was there really a baby?

I copied the certificate and walked back across the street in a haze.

“She waited six months!” I shouted into the phone when I relayed my news to my parents during my walk back. “Six months and she married some new guy. Looks like the neighbor. Their addresses were only a few digits apart. I can’t believe it.”

“It was 1916, honey,” my mom said. “It was probably that or starve.”

“I know,” I said. “But she had money. Francesco left her enough to buy a house, for pete’s sake!”

“How far do you think it went with three kids?” my mom asked gently.

I sighed. She was right and I felt bad. Bad for judging my great-grandma for making a choice I would never have to consider. She was a poor woman with no education. Hell, women didn’t even have the right to vote yet. I shouldn’t be so hard on her.

Later, I calmed down and really took a good look at the material. They’d applied for the marriage license at Christmastime 1915 and had gotten married at a church called Our Lady Help of Christians, which was the same church that issued Grandpa Phil’s baptismal certificate. A quick search of the archives on the Diocese of Pittsburgh website showed me this had been the center of Italian immigrant faith life in East Liberty. The church was still standing, but the congregation had been absorbed a decade ago.

I’d seen that they’d been neighbors, so I tried to find Enterprise Street on Google. It still existed, but it seemed the house didn’t.

Fading to ghosts.

Where do I go from here?

April 6, 2006 0

findingphilblog

In search of my grandfather's past … and maybe a book deal

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