Pandemic Genealogy: Giorlando Generations

As I've developed my genealogy skills and our tree has grown to unwieldy proportions, I have begun to follow the suggestion to always have a research question to guide my projects. For this project, I started with the question: Who is the woman on the left in the photo? The other people are part of the family of John's maternal great-grandmother, Maria Rosaria Giorlando. She is pictured here (l-r) with her 4 children born in Alcamo, Sicily: Vincenza, Benvenuta, Maria, and Giovanni. The oldest daughter, Maria, is John's maternal grandmother. From family resemblance, it's clear that the two women are related? Is it Maria Rosaria's mother, a sister, a cousin?

Family of Maria Rosaria Giorlando and Antonio Milano. Antonio Milano immigrated to the U.S. in March of 1913. Maria Rosaria, and their 4 children, joined him in December of 1916. Their 5th child, Settimo, called Sam, was born in Detroit, Michigan, where the family settled.

Passenger manifest for Maria Rosaria and her children. They sailed on the S.S. Giuseppe Verdi from Naples on 29 November 1916 and arrived in New York on 16 December 1916. The trip would have been considerably longer, as they would have also traveled from Alcamo to Naples and New York to Detroit. What a journey that must have been for her, particularly with a baby! This record is a good example of how you can gain additional information. In this case, we see that Maria Rosaria's mother is listed as the homeland contact on the manifest. If, for example, I did not know her death date, this is a useful data point: Since she is still alive in 1916, I know to look after that year's records for her death certificate. Some family pictures below ...

John with his grandmother Maria (Mary) at his First Communion.

Giovanni (John) and Settimo (Sam) with Antonio Milano.

Vincenza (Jennie), 2nd, Maria (Mary), 3rd, and Benvenuta (Bessie), 6th. Also pictured, l-r, Jennie Mancuso Milano (spouse of Giovanni), Virginia and Josephine Impellizzeri, daughters of Maria (Virginia is John's mother).

John and I were fascinated with Maria Rosaria when we first saw this photo of her. The eyes really drew us in, and she is quite beautiful. Later in time, John was tinkering with software that animates photos, and he created one for her:

At the point I had started this project, I had completed some research on the Giorlando line, in terms of a few generations of direct ancestors. I hadn't focused much on this branch mostly because DNA matches hadn't presented, or I didn't have a specific question to answer. With the size of our tree (approaching 19,000), there are a myriad of paths to go down!

When a DNA match, Rosalba Giorlando, reached out to me in 2019, I also had tinkered a bit and added some more records, building our tree sideways (as opposed to up and down, like direct ancestors) trying to identify her relationship with John. However, there just weren't enough records to identify the match. 

Rosalba's public profile on Ancestry.

In 2021, I completed a small project to fill in Maria Rosaria's missing  2nd great-grandparents (highlighted in yellow). At this point, the direct Giorlando line had also been expanded by one generation.

In order to get clues as to the identity of the woman in the photo, I realized I would have to tackle some portion of the Giorlando family records in the Alcamo church and civil registers. Since I was going down that path, I thought I might as well take a comprehensive look* at Giorlando birth and marriage records in Alcamo and, perhaps, solve the DNA puzzle. 

(*A larger goal I have set for myself is to do this with all of John's great-grandparent family lines. I've started with the ones with easier names - i.e. the surname is not as common. I've written a blog about my Moschitto investigations and am concurrently working on the Impellizzeri blog. I've never written about my Ciacchella research, but much of it is shared at the Ciacchella Family All Around the World Facebook group. I'll get around to it eventually!)

I took about 2.5 months to review records spanning from the 1700s to the early 1900s. I'm not sure how many records I looked at, but at this point I have uploaded around 300 into our tree! I have probably another 100 or so identified that may fit in eventually. 

The Giorlando project notes.

My records search became self-motivating fairly quickly, as I was finding patterns of relationships that helped me place a lot of people into our tree. It seemed that the majority of Giorlandos in Alcamo I was finding were somehow related. As in the past, the Sicilian naming conventions assisted with figuring out relationships, particularly as church records include names of godparents. 

Number of cases of these Giorlando names in our tree. Like many Italian surnames, Giorlando evolved over time ... La Giorlanda, Giorlanda, then Giorlando.

In terms of the direct Giorlando line, I was able to confirm records to extend back two more generations to the parents and grandparents of Cosimo Giorlando, born in 1699. (These are John's 6th and 7th grandparents in this line.)

A new surname in the direct Giorlando line is Bonanno. On this project, I was able to get back an additional generation in the Bonanno line (to the 8th great-grandparents, Lorenzo and Francesca). A new surname in this line is Stabile.

The oldest record I pulled in the direct Giorlando line was the marriage of Felice Giorlando and Vita Bonanno, 28 August, 1695. They were married in the mother church in Alcamo, and Felice's parents, Cosimo and Antonina were living.

Felice and Vita's marriage record. You can see that the surname on this record is Giorlanda. A bit of luck, the previous record, on this page (same date) was the marriage of Felice's sister, Brigida, to Vita's brother Lorenzo! So, I was able to add a sibling to the tree, which always has the possibility of helping with DNA matches in the future.

Shortly into the project, I was able to determine the cousin relationship between John and Rosalba. Yay!

Descendant chart from shared ancestors Liborio Giorlando + Francesca Arcilesi. Liborio and Francesca are John's 4th great-grandparents and Rosalba's 5th great-grandparents, making them 5th cousins, 1 x removed. This is a pretty distant relationship, so it's possible that they could be related another way. 

In addition to going back generations in the direct Giorlando line, I made a lot of progress on expanding the tree 'side to side,' meaning that I identified many siblings (and their descendants) of direct Giorlando ancestors. This is the part that is like putting together a puzzle. Here are some samples of discoveries:

Cosimo Giorlando, 5th great-grandfather's children. Aside from he and Rosaria Calandra, and Liborio + Francesca Arcilesi (4th great-grandparents), all of these are new people in our tree!

Identifying Cosimo's brother Antonino was also fruitful. He and some of his descendants, pictured here, are all family that we didn't know about before this project.

More closely related family, descendants of John's 4th great-grandparents Liborio Giorlando + Francesca Arcilesi, are pictured here. Before the project, we only knew of the direct ancestors (3rd-great-grandparents Giuseppe + Tommasa Ferro), and two other children. Additional siblings and their descendants are new additions to the tree.

Similarly, for Giuseppe and Tommasa, we had only initially identified direct ancestor Settimo and his wife Maria Vincenza Lombardo (2nd great-grandparents) and one other child. They actually had 8, they and their descendants being new additions to our family tree.

In order to address my initial research question, I needed to identify the siblings of John's great-grandmother Maria Rosaria Giorlando (more on that later). I found 11. It is possible I could have missed some, because sometimes the handwriting in the indices is faded. However, looking at the spread of birth years, I feel fairly certain we have them all.

I enjoyed learning about all of Maria Rosaria's siblings, but the most productive and interesting one, research-wise, was her brother Giuseppe. Born in 1862, and married to Ignazia Benenati in 1890, he had 12 children! As you can see in the photo, I was able to find images of several of them. This is my favorite; I love seeing pictures! Not many of the Giorlandos immigrated, but in this family two of the siblings immigrated to Australia. 

Tommasa Giorlando (m. Lombardo) and Giuseppe Giorlando, Australia. These two would have been first cousins to John's grandmother Maria Milano. Thoughts about family resemblance? We have a family tree match with a descendant of Tommasa, but I haven't had a chance to reach out to them yet.

Vincenza is another first cousin to Maria Milano. I'm sharing her family tree because I found several pictures. As well, two descendants have trees that match. I have reached out to both Enza and Andrea via Ancestry, but I have not received any response. People sometimes aren't interested or just don't read their email, but you have to make the effort. You never know when you'll get to meet a cousin, learn more stories, or see more photos.

If you recall from earlier in the post, I mentioned identifying the brother, Antonino, of 5th great-grandfather Cosimo Giorlando. This proved important in resolving a DNA match that had confused me.

Joanne Barresi is a descendant of Antonino Giorlando, so she and John share the direct ancestors Cosimo and Antonina Giorlando, making them 6th cousins 1 x removed. I wouldn't have discovered this relationship without going back so far in my research. The reason the DNA match had confused me is that I had already resolved this match! If you are familiar with John's family names, you might have noticed that there is an Impellizzeri in her tree on her mother's side. Joanne and John also share the ancestors Giachino Impellizzeri + Maria Bongiovanni, both their 3rd-great-grandparents, which also makes them 4th cousins. Now I understand why the DNA estimate seemed a bit high. 

 

Sadly, Joanne passed in 2019, before I figured out their relationship(s). This is a photo of her with her 4 children at their home in Detroit. I learned in her obituary that she and her husband met on the Boblo Island Ferry and that she was very proud to be a first generation Italian-American. It would have been fun to chat with her.

While tracing Joanne's Barresi line, a name caught my attention ... her aunt by marriage, Caroline di Benedetto Berresi. Why does that sound familiar? Then I remembered ... After Maria Rosaria Giorlando died in 1931, her husband Antonio Milano (John's great-grandfather) remarried in 1938 ... to Caroline di Benedetto Berresi! So, Antonio's step-children and step-grandchildren (all adults) are also the distant cousins of his first wife!

Showing Joanne's relationship to Caroline di Benedetto Barresi.

Joanne was not the only one I discovered who is also an Impellizzeri and a Giorlando! I've been working the past year or so with a distant cousin of John's, Vince, on the Impellizzeri line. While working on this project, I noticed that his great-aunt Marianna Impellizzeri was married to a Felice Giorlando. Surely, especially with the name Felice, he is in our Giorlando line? In fact, it didn't take long to identify where he fit into the tree. Hold on, because it gets more complicated! Felice is a descendant of a couple who are related to John two ways through the Giorlando line. To further complicate matters, we already know that John is double-related to Marianna Impellizeri, through his direct Impellizzeri line, as well as through his Milano line, as the Milanos are also Impellizzeris several generations back. So, John is related 4 different ways to the children of Felice Giorlando + Marianna Impellizzeri. In the Impellizzeri line, John is their 8th cousin; in the Milano line, John is their 5th cousin, 3 times removed. The Giorlando relationships described below. 

Felice Giorlando + Marianna Impellizzeri. Felice's great-grandparents (circled top in blue) are Sebastiano Giorlando + Vincenza Lombardo. Sebastiano's parents are Liborio Giorlando + Francesca Arcilesi, and Vincenza Lombardo's parents are Sebastiano Lombardo + Rosaria LaVecchia. As you can see from the photo below, these two couples are Maria Rosaria Giorlando's great-grandparents, so they are related two ways in this scenario!

Through the Giorlando line, Maria Rosaria and Felice are double 2nd cousins, 1 time removed. For the descendants: John is double 4th cousin 1 time removed to the children of Felice and Marianna.

My head hurts, LOL! All I can say, is thank goodness for the cousin calculator!

One final interesting finding. Not all of the Giorlandos I researched were related. This was not surprising, as I had a Matteo Giorlando in our tree, who was the spouse of a cousin, Maria Scibilia (a shared descendant of a set of John's 4th great-grandparents in the Milano line). I actually had worked this line in 2018, as there was a DNA match, Mary Ann Bellanca, who I discovered was John's 5th cousin. Since Mary Ann's family also settled in Detroit, I reached out to her, but she never responded.

The Matteo Giorlando (in-law) - Scibilia project. As this was one of my early DNA discoveries, I was hopeful that Mary Ann would be interested in chatting. I wonder if any of John's family members recognize the names or photos from this family? They were / are located in the East side of Metro Detroit.

Since Mary Ann and John's DNA estimate was a bit higher than expected for 5th cousins, I suspected that they might also be related to Matteo. Although I was able to collect many records related to Matteo's ancestors, I haven't been able to link them to our existing Giorlando tree. It may turn out that those Giorlandos are not related to our Giorlandos, especially since I discovered a few generations back, some of the people were from Calatafimi, not Alcamo. I haven't given up hope, though, because these two comunes are both in Trapani province and are not very far apart. If I do find a connection, the records are all notated and can easily be found and placed into the tree. For another day!

A final tangential activity I completed related to this project was to clean up the memorials for the Milano-Giorlando family at findagrave.com. For those who don't know, findagrave is an online site for electronic memorials attached to physical memorials. Many volunteers go out to notate and / or photo gravesites. Also, individuals can create memorials for their family members. Sometimes these memorials will have additional photos or obituaries. I have created memorials for any of John's immediate Milano-Impellizzeri ancestors who did not have one. So for this project I requested (for those I do not manage) to link any memorials that were not linked, and I can report that this little family is now united on the findagrave website. 

So, now at the end of this project, I revisit my question: Who is the woman in the photo? For now, the question remains unanswered. My current hypothesis is that she is one of the women circled in blue in the tree below. Maybe I will discover one day, but I'm certainly happy with all the interesting findings from this project, even without my question not answered!

I don't think the woman is Maria Rosaria's mother because her mother is 40 years older than her. As well, I don't think the woman is her younger sister Francesca, because she appears to me to be older than Maria Rosaria. That leaves 3 older sisters (the ones in blue). However, the woman could also be a cousin.

In closing, I wanted to dedicate this blog post to John's cousin Antonio Milano. Antonio is the grandson of Antonio Milano + Maria Rosaria Giorlando, and the son of Giovanni Milano + Jenny Mancuso. He has been such a wonderful resource for information and pictures, as well as such a big cheerleader for my ancestry efforts. We love and appreciate you Antonio!

Antonio, center, with his Uncle Sam (Settimo) and father John (Giovanni). I think John is the twin of actor Joe Mantegna!