Pandemic Genealogy: Milano Mysteries
John's maternal grandmother Maria Milano and her father Antonio Milano
We've been in Laredo, Texas, staying with Emily this summer. It's always hot here in the summer, but this year has been beyond belief. It's been over 100 the entire time we've been here (arrived June 13), and most days it hovers in the vicinity of 110. I'm sure you've seen the memes!
True!
This was my personal favorite - a cake from HEB. But it needs to say 115 to be accurate for Laredo!
Needless to say, this has left me with the entire summer primarily indoors. The upside is that it gave me an opportunity to work on a couple of big genealogy project (and to write blogs, LOL). I had 3 ideas about projects to pursue. Since cousin Antonio Milano is always so supportive and enthusiastic about my genealogy pursuits, I decided to work on a project in his line.
Antonio is John's mother Virginia's cousin.
Virginia is standing on right, and Antonio is in the front appearing to throw the ball.
Antonio was part of Virginia's wedding party. He is 4 people to the right of Virginia in this shower photo.
Can you spot Antonio in the wedding party photo?
Following Sicilian naming conventions, Antonio, being the first born son in his family, is named after his father's father.
John's maternal great-grandfather, Antonio, then, was the starting / target person for this project.
A little background on him ... Antonio was born on 7 September, 1875 in Alcamo, Trapani, Sicily, Italy. He was baptised the following day at the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, Alcamo's mother church.
Civil birth record
Baptism location, from our visit in April 2022.
Baptism record, third entry. The notation on the right hand side also applies to Antonio.
This was one of the original problems encountered in researching Antonio. His surname was not listed as Milano. It was listed as Consolenti. The notation (of which there is something similar in the civil record on the left-hand side) has to do with a request to correct the surname, ostensibly in preparation for his upcoming marriage. A nice person in a genealogy group helped with the translation: The Italian part of the note says Antonio Milano, son of the late Giovanni and the late Maria Lombardo, formerly of Alcamo of this diocese of Mazara (del Vallo) requests the church correct his current entry in the baptism registry of the mother church of this town on 8 Sep 1875 in which he declares the name Antonio Consolenti should be Antonio Milano, consistent with the exhibited documentation. The next section is in Latin dated 4 Feb 1898 and says the change has been made.
I thought this was just an issue of a clerical error, until this project led me to search for Antonio's half-sister Maria's baptism record (I already had her civil birth record). While Maria's baptism record didn't have anything unusual, the index had the same surname, Consulenti, listed in parentheses after her name.
Uh-oh. Are the Milanos not actually Milanos? The fact that there aren't any DNA matches makes me more prone to consider this question. I'm not sure if there is any significance, but, it is certainly out of the ordinary.
Antonio married Maria Rosaria Giorlando in a civil ceremony on 19 February, 1898. Their church ceremony was held on 22 February, 1898, at Chiesa SS Apostoli Paolo e Bartolomeo.
Civil marriage record
Church marriage record
Marriage location, from our visit in April, 2022.
Antonio Milano's passenger manifest. He is on line 1. These documents contain some fun information. Can you find how tall he was? Or how much money he had with him? How about his occupation?
Antonio's wife Maria and 4 of their children joined him in late 1916. I covered this background in a previous blog, so I won't go into that here. Antonio and Maria had a fifth child after their arrival in the U.S. Their children, and their spouses, are in the graphic near the top of this blog. Some family photos:
The Milano siblings in 1975: Settimo (Sam), Benvenuta (Bessie), Giovanni (John), Vincenza (Jennie), Maria (Mary).
Some of the Milano siblings and their spouses. Back: John (Giovanni) Milano, Sam (Settimo) & Vita Milano. Front: Jennie Mancuso Milano, Jennie (Vincenza) and Joe (Guiseppe) Impellizzeri.
Antonio Milano, center, with his sons John and Sam.
Antonio with his grandson, Joseph Impellizzeri (son of Maria Milano Impellizzeri).
John with his godparents, Antonio and Anna Marie Impellizzeri. Antonio is the son of Vincenzo Milano and Giuseppe Impellizzeri. He is another Antonio Milano namesake.
Cousin Antonio, right, with his cousin Anthony Milano, another Antonio Milano namesake. Anthony is the son of Settimo (Sam) Milano
Visiting with Uncle Tony and his wife Betty in 2015. Tony, son of Maria Milano and John Impellizzeri, is another Antonio Milano namesake.
I love this photo, and I call it "The Little Rascals." Taken in August, 1942, it has many of the Milano grandchildren. Front row, third, is another Antonio Milano namesake: Anthony Amato, son of Bessie Milano and Joseph Amato.
Here's one final interesting document related to Antonio, his naturalization papers. I find that these documents always have fun facts too. And, if you're lucky to get your hands on the Declaration of Intention, it typically has a photo. Bonus!
The Research
I titled this blog Milano Mysteries, because this is one of John's lines that has been the most problematic to research. There have been records I couldn't find, records with corrections, and records that were difficult to read or translate - and that continued with this round. In addition, there haven't been any DNA matches in this line to help focus my research into particular avenues. Since I didn't have a specific research question to address, I decided on two goals, which I'll discuss in-depth below.
For the research on both goals, I looked at hundreds of Alcamo church (from both Assunta and Paul & Bartholomew) and civil records. I pulled 186 records to add to our family tree!
One portion of my project notes.
While I was doing the research, I found that several of the people I was discovering were in the crowd-sourced mega-tree at familysearch.org. However, per usual, many had incorrect information and / or no records attached to support the date provided. As well, many of the people were not 'connected.' I tried my best to correct and connect, so that others can benefit from my research.
Goal One
First, I wanted to expand Antonino's father's line as far as I had his mother 's line for every direct ancestor.
Where I stood with Giovanni Milano's tree at the start of this project.
Maria Lombardo's (Antonio's mother) tree was much more developed, as I had built the tree up the past few years in the process of figuring out DNA and family tree matches. Also, the Lombardo line has Impellizzeris going further back, so work on Impellizzeris applied to this branch of the tree also, after a certain point.
For this goal, it meant my task was to go back 4 generations for Giovanni Milano. With this, I would have identified a complete set of 3rd great-grandparents for John's great-grandfather Antonio. (Or, if looking at it from John's generation, a complete set of 6th great-grandparents in the line of his mother.)
My second challenge had to do with the son of Giuseppe Milano and Anna Ficarra, Francesco Milano. He's the one with the construction sign a few images up. The problem, in short, is that I have five marriage records for a Francesco Milano, son of Giuseppe Milano and Anna Ficarra, and they overlap in time. In other words, one Francesco could not have been married to all 5 women, unless he was a bigamist, LOL!
Just for some perspective, this graphic shows how many ancestors you have at each generation. I was hoping my project would yield 16 new 6th great-grandparents of John in this line (to add to the 16 already identified for Antonio's mother) and 8 new 5th great-grandparents (to add to the 8 already identified for Antonio's mother). That's out of hundreds in all lines! You can see why my 'hobby' keeps me busy!
The Result: Giovanni Milano's direct ancestor tree (to John's 6th great-grandparents).
I was happy to be able to accomplish this! Here is a list of all the new family surnames: Cammarda, Sessa (x2, these will probably turn out to be related somehow in future research), Bonanno, di Leo, Ratto, Corso, Stabile, Risico, and Zappato. Which new name do you like best? My favorite is Zappato, which is the past participle of zappare - to hoe - in Italian. Maybe that family were farmers?
I had a couple of challenges during this portion of my project. One confounded me for several weeks, but I eventually resolved it (I think!), and another that I still haven't figured out. Challenge one was that Giuseppe Milano, grandfather of Giovanni, proved just as difficult and tricky to identify as his grandson Antonio had!
From Mariano Milano + Rosaria Adragna marriage record, I knew that Mariano's parents were Giuseppe Milano + Anna Ficarra. These parents' names were confirmed when I identified some of Mariano's siblings.
So my next step was to find the marriage record of Giuseppe Milano + Anna Ficarra to find out the names of their parents. These turned out to be Pietro Milano + Anna Bonanno and Giuseppe Ficarra + Caterina Sessa.
Marriage record of Giuseppe Milano di Pietro Milano + Anna Bonanno and Anna Ficarra di Giuseppe Ficarra + Caterina Sessa, 10 June, 1804, SS Paolo & Bartolomeo, Alcamo.
So far, so good. Now my task was to find the baptism record for Giuseppe. July 29, I start first thing in the morning with my cup of coffee. I target the years I think are reasonable based on marriage year, and off to the indices. Alcamo has two sets of church records, so this can get time-consuming. I first start with the church index from which the previous record comes. The majority of the time people stuck with the same church, but they also sometimes switched. (Also, a hard-learned lesson early in my genealogical efforts: Even though Giuseppe starts with a G, his records will be under J, because the notations are based on the Latin version of the name, not the Italian one. The same for Giovanni, Giacomo, and Gioacchino, while for Gaetano it is C. The Js are always several pages - UGH. I'm always happy when I get to search for a Bartolomeo, or a Leonarda, or a Tommasa.)
Well, that was a bust. I found lots of Giuseppe Milanos (maybe useful later, I console myself), but no Giuseppe Milano who is the son of Pietro and Anna Bonanno. I extend my search to a larger time frame, working with the idea that he might have gotten married outside of the traditional ages. Still no luck. Italy was not keeping civil records yet in this time period, so I didn't have an option to consult those. *sigh*
Giuseppe Milanos in our tree. There are two more that I have records for but haven't yet placed.
I decided to switch tracks and hunt for the marriage record of Pietro Milano and Anna Bonanno, since knowing their marriage date would put a limit on the years in which Giuseppe could have been born. Nothing! Something is definitely off. Maybe there is a misspelled name? To check this, I decide to look for Giuseppe and Anna's marriage publication. These are harder records to work with, because they don't have an index. However, I know the church, so I know which set of records to look at. I also know the marriage date. Since the publication is generally within a month or so before the marriage, hopefully I won't have to page through too many screens to find the publication.
Good news: It wasn't difficult to find the publication. Bad news: All the names were the same. There weren't any mistakes.
At a loss of where to go next, I decided to place a couple of the Giuseppes I found in the familysearch tree. When I placed the record below, I thought, "Aw, too bad, this isn't him. The year fits perfectly, and he is son of a Pietro and Anna, but her last name is Sessa."
Giuseppe Milano di Pietro Milano + Anna Sessa, baptised at SS Paolo &Bartolomeo, Alcamo, 26 September 1772.
For some reason I stepped away from my computer and returned to shut it down, frustrated and disappointed. Then, I saw on the familysearch tree that was on my screen: Anna Sessa's mother's surname was Bonanno! I believe that there was a transcription error on the marriage documents, where Anna's surname was listed as that of her mother instead of her father. While I can't say with 100% certainty that this was the problem, I feel it is probable. I searched 100 years of Alcamo records to find any other Giuseppe Milano born to a Pietro and Anna Bonanno. As well, I searched through 100 years of marriage records for the same couple. I found nothing.
After all that, it was the end of the day. Aside from studying Italian and cooking, I had worked the entire day on this!
Pietro Milano and Anna Sessa's family
Francesco Milano di Giuseppe Milano + Anna Ficarra, widower of Liboria Lamia (m. 26 Nov. 1850) and Agata Calandrino (m. 21 Jan 1867), marries Castrenza Stabile, widow of Damiano Provenzano, 28 May 1898. To make matters interesting, Castranza is the mother-in-law of Francesco's son!
Francesco Milano, also di Giuseppe Milano + Anna Ficarra, widower of Onofria Lombardo (m. 6 September 1847), married Rosalia di Giorgi, 29 April, 1869.
Now, sometimes there are siblings with the same first name, but not the second. It's confusing, but it can usually be sorted. However, all of the civil marriage records, which provide an age, indicate that the groom was born in 1825. Egads!
I encountered the same problem again with Giuseppe's grandson / Francesco's nephew, another Giuseppe Milano. He is listed as the son of Vito Milano + Giovanna Provenzano on two different marriage records. One is with Anna Biondo in 1870 and the other with Genuefa Cammarata in 1873. The second marriage records says that he is never married. I would normally take this as just a mistake, but Giuseppe and Anna Biondo have a son born in 1875!
I have no hypotheses for either of these cases, and they will remain mysteries for another day ... or never! However, I think they provide a flavor of some of the obstacles that this line has presented.
Goal Two
For a second goal, I thought it would be fun to go to the 'end of the line' for one of the branches in this section. This is a term I use to describe following the record trail until I cannot get any further.
My graphic for when I've hit the end of the line.
The line I decided to target here was that of Giovanni Milano's mother, Rosaria Adragna.
I chose this line because we have a long-standing DNA match I've never been able to resolve, and I suspect that it might be via the Adragna line. Additionally, I feel that maternal lines tend to get ignored; I, myself, have been guilty of that. Perhaps it's more of a 'go to' to be interested in the names that we associate with our families, rather than the names that are 'lost' through marriage, even though we are equally of those names and families?
The Result: The complete Adragna line for Rosaria Adragna, beginning with her great-grandfather Diego Giuseppe Adragna. Going to the 'end of the line,' I was able to identify two 9th great-grandparents, ten 10th great-grandparents, and two 11th great-grandparents. Very satisfying! For family member readers, you can examine the tree to see some of the new surnames in the family - there are many.
The two oldest records I pulled in this line were for the 10th great-grandparents, Matteo Trupiano and Francesca Mandrello.
Francesca Mandrello was baptised on 21 August, 1612 at Santa Maria Assunta in Alcamo. (Record is bottom left.)
Matteo Trupiano and Francesca Mandrello, John's 10th great-grandparents, were married on 22 May 1633 at SS Paolo & Bartolomeo in Alcamo. (Record is bottom left.) Since their parents names are listed in the record, we also know the names of 1 set of 11th great-grandparents in this line. Unfortunately at that time, the mothers' surnames weren't recorded.
Introducing 11th great-grandparents: Egidio & Francesca Trupiano and Vincenzo & Vincenza Mandrello.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to resolve the DNA match that drew me to the Adragna line. However, I did have several interesting findings that resulted from my efforts. More on those below.
This is the DNA match I was trying to resolve. I've been working on it on and off since 2018 and have chatted with the match, Garilyn Bailey. As you can see, she only has one grandparent with Italian surnames. It shouldn't be this hard! Even though this round wasn't a success, I do feel like I'm very close now.
Unintended Goal 3
While working toward the 'end of the line,' I often find additional ancestors not in the direct line (these would be siblings of the direct ancestors and their descendants). So, here's another slice of the tree, looking at the descendants of Francesco and Francesca Adragna.
Those circled in red are John's direct ancestors. Along the way, I often find interesting tidbits or 'fun facts.' For example, for the two couples circled in blue, we have a brother and sister who married a sister and brother. To make it more fun, they married on the same day, so their marriage records are on two adjacent pages in the records book. 22 January 1708 must have been a big celebration day for the Adragnas and Sorrentinos!
As you can see from the above graphic, I was able to find a lot more people in this family tree. Imagine for each person an expansion, and you can see how the tree grows exponentially. Wherever you see a little arrow, that means I found and placed additional people in the tree. Here's an example of one of the expansions that ended up with an interesting twist.
Expansion of Francesco Adragna, John's 7th great-granduncle.
A word on methodology before going on. When I'm doing these projects, there are two types of ways I might approach the record indices. In the first case, I'm looking for a specific person or name based on naming conventions. In this case, I would look for all people of that name within a particular time range (depending on how many clues I have about what the time range might be). In the second case, less specific, I don't know the names and relationships, so I'm making a list of all the people with a particular last name. Then I piece together, like a puzzle, how people are related.
In this example, I used the first method to identify the children of Francesco Adragna + Maria lo Picciolo in church marriage records. I had used the second method to find Adragna marriages in a particular time period, where I discovered the marriage of Francesco and Maria's granddaughter Maria Adragna (can you guess who she's named after?!). When I got to placing Maria Adragna, daughter of Giuseppe + Giuseppa Ragusa, a surprise - she is married to an Impellizzeri! It's not the first time one of my non-Impellizzeri research projects has bumped up against the Impellizzeri line.
Her spouse, Gaetano Impellizzeri, was not yet in my tree. However, based on my theory that all Alcamo Impellizzeris fit in our tree somewhere, I went back and consulted my paper records of unplaced Impellizzeris. There I found a listing of Gaetano's parents, Filippo Impellizzeri and Caterina Canzoneri, including record notations for several of their children. Although Filippo was not yet in my tree, a little research helped me place him and connect all the dots. The only bad part is whenever there are cross-overs like this, any DNA or family tree match descendant is a double relationship. It gets very confusing!
Filippo Impellizzeri, spouse Caterina (circled in green), and son Gaetano (plus his wife Maria Adragna) are now in the tree. (John's direct line is circled in red for context.) I've not yet had a chance to add Filippo's and Caterina's additional children. They are in the 'million things to do list pile,' LOL. Most importantly, the take away implication here is that any descendants of Gaetano Impellizzeri + Maria Adragna are related to John two ways - through his Milano and Impellizzeri lines.
Also in the graphic, circled in blue is another example of a sister and brother marrying a brother and sister: Filippo's grandparents, Filippo and Antonia, married each other's siblings. They, too, were married on the same day, 12 June 1659, and they also appear on adjacent pages in the record book. Celebration for the Impellizzeris and Marsalas!
Unintended Goal 4
Antonia Marsala brings me to another surprise from this summer's research. In the tree above, you can see that Antonia has a brother Nicolo Marsala. Via John's Impellizzeri line, Nicolo is his 8th great-granduncle. However, working on one of my other large-scale project this summer*, I discovered that Nicolo Marsala is also John's 8th great-grandfather in another line!
*To be discussed in a future blog.
In red, John's direct ancestral line to Nicolo Marsala + Antonia Accardo. In this branch, we have yet another example of a siblings marrying siblings. In this case, two brothers (Andrea Ferro and Francesco Ferro) married two sisters (Maria Fundaro + Leonarda Fundaro). They were not married at the same time, as in the previous examples provided.
So which line is this? That of Maria Rosaria Giorlando. Do you remember who she is? The names circled in red should help.
Maria Rosaria is the wife of Antonio Milano. We've come full circle!
Milano DNA Matches
At the beginning of this blog, I mentioned that I'm puzzled by the lack of DNA matches in the Milano line. Coupled with the weird name situation on the documents, it makes me wonder if Antonio Milano's father, Giovanni Milano, may not have been a Milano. It's possible he could have been a foundling, a child of another family member, or one of many other possibilities.
So, I was happy to see as I added all these records to the tree that Ancestry's algorithm suggested 3 potential DNA matches. As I built up the tree to records-verify these matches, I identified 2 more that the algorithm hadn't picked up yet (by examining shared matches, names, and ancestry trees, as available).
The shared ancestors for all of the matches are John's 5th great-grandparents, Pietro Milano + Anna Sessa.
Red are the shared ancestors, while the green and blue show John's director ancestors and the matches' direct ancestors, respectively.
The DNA matches (circled in red)! The are all 6th cousins to John and his generation. Sadly, one of them passed in 2020.
Of course, being this line (LOL!), there had to be a twist! For those who are following along because of a general interest in genealogy, see if you can see the twist in the graphic below showing the matches' direct ancestor line.
Yep! All of these matches are double related in the Impellizzeri line. (The couple circled in yellow are sister and brother to John's direct ancestors. We looked at them earlier in the blog.) The matches and John are 10th cousins in this line.
What's the implication for the DNA match? Since this relationship is back even farther, it's doubtful that any of the shared DNA reflects the Impellizzeri line. However, this reminds me that the DNA match doesn't definitively prove that the match is coming via Milano. It could be from another line, like Tartamella, which has not been researched as deeply, or another surname I've not yet identified. But, at least it's a step in the right direction.
Well, phew, if you're still with me here at wrap-up, here's a reward - pictures! These are the pictures of people in the DNA match lines that I was able to collect from Ancestry profiles, yearbooks, and obituaries.
Son (DNA) and father
Father and daughter (DNA)
Father and son (DNA)
Aunt to DNA match
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