Thursday, December 11, 2008

Il Circolo Calabrese

Today I joined the Circolo Calabrese for a quarterly membership. It's a much better deal that the www.ancestry.com website, and the discussion board appears to be far more active that Ancestry

I have not explored all the membership perks in detail, but I started by exploring the discussion board tonight. I was happy to see so many Italian Americans of Calabrian roots doing research, but I was sad to see there were so few Orlandos there. I don't know if I conducted my search incorrectly within the discussion board, but my search terms, Curinga and Orlando, brought up nothing. I searched for them separately too.

I did, however, find two other people with the Orlando surname who are doing research. One is still an active member so I emailed her.

I find it odd that there are no people with roots in Curinga who are active at this site. After all, there were quite a few immigrants from Curinga and many ended up in Wilkes-Barre , PA like my nonno.

The highlight of tonight's search was the Catanzaro Exchange. At this website, I was able to find a spreadsheet that someone had compiled with all the names of the people who immigrated to the United States from Curinga. My grandfather was listed there, as were two more Orlandos, both women. I was hoping for a big breakthrough, but unfortunately my nonno was not referenced in the ship manifest for either of these two women.

The postive side to the story is that Elia Orlando, one of the female travelers, was destined for Wilkes-Barre, PA. Her mother's name was Felicia and she listed her cousin in WB as her final destination. There is no mention of Carmelo.

The ship manifest added a few questions since my nonno came 4 years earlier. They asked:

Whether a polygamist?

Whether an anarchist?


I got a kick out of those questions...

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Circolo Calabrese