Searching For My Roots

Why is it so important to know where we came from? This search for one's roots is a national preoccupation with us in America. We are a lost nation, a people with no unified cultural history, in search of something that will link us together with unknown relatives in foreign lands. It is a basic human need to know where you came from.

Back when my ancestors first came to this country in the early 1900's they were searching for something better - escaping hardships I can't even imagine. I say "first came" because the man in our family tree went back and forth a few times, finally deciding to return to Sicily for good, leaving behind his wife and 5 children to fend for themselves in America.

This story, as told to me in bits and pieces through the years, has become a haunting tale that consists only of a few dots on a page in random order. My family was robbed of their personal history because my great grandmother wiped her husband's memory away along with all the history of the life she left behind. She murdered him in her mind because she was so angry at him for abandoning their family and starting another family when he returned to Italy.

My great grandmother may have tried to erase the memory of her past by not allowing her husband's name to come into a conversation, but I doubt she ever forgot the hurt and the loneliness he left behind.

This story of a strong woman surviving against all the odds of a foreign land, the Great Depression, World War II and raising five children by herself has been a salient force in my own personal life.

As I get older, I feel the need to find the beginning of the story so that I may connect all the dots and complete the line that will lead me back to where I began. So I posed a question to myself the other day: If my great grandparents were never divorced, shouldn't the land my great grandfather owned in Italy be transferred to my great grandmother in America, and, subsequently to her offspring?

I remember stories my grandmother told me of acres of property that her father had, in addition to a villa with tile floors and a factory where he made men's shoes. She picked lemons off of trees that were so sweet she ate them like we eat oranges in this country.

Just on a lark, I contacted an Italian search engine site that traces property owned in Italy and had a very pleasant conversation with a lawyer in San Francisco who does title searches for Italian-Americans.

"You would be amazed," he told me, "at how much people own in Italy that they aren't aware of." I told him my story and he said I could very well be one of those people who have land ownership rites in Sicily. "The second marriage in Italy is null," he writes in an e-mail back to me, "and the property may still be there and no update to the title ever having taken place (very common)...we should check the title to the property..."

Then he tells me about someone who became the property owner of 360 acres of abandoned property in the Province of Genova in the town of Varese Ligure.

I have begun searching fervently now for my ancestors in Sicily - specifically around the Catania area. Today I viewed antique maps on line, in search for a little town called Militello di Colania, Sicily. It probably doesn't exist anymore. Click on the link to see what I did find. (I'm not sure I want to go there!) I need the birth year and town where my great grandfather was born to begin a title search. It would be great to trace my lineage for my family history and nostalgia, but, hey! - now there also might be the possibility of land ownership over there too!

My mother laughs when I tell her this. She doesn't remember those stories. And she doubts there is anything left of his property, if he had property to begin with.

"They sold all their property when they came to this country. They needed the money for the passage," she tells me.

"No!" I disagree. "The ship's manifest, according to the Ellis Island website, documents him coming into this country with only $12 on his person."

She is laughing. "Do you think they told the government how much money they had? They sewed their money into their hems and lined their coats with it. The government is the last person they would admit to having money."

So, I'm a little naive. But I'm still searching. If anyone reading this has any information of the birth town of a Mario Riccioli, born around the year 1869 - give or take a year or two...because my mother says they also lied about their age, let me know. She also says that no one in his native town would know his name as Mario. Everyone in those little Italian towns had a nickname that was given to them when they were a child. No one would ever admit to knowing a Mario Riccioli. Maybe his town name was Frankie Soup or Mangia Bona.

So I'm searching for property somewhere, owned by someone, born at sometime.