This is Curinga, the Town of My Nonno

This is Curinga, the town where my grandfather was born. God willing, soon my feet will walk through these streets.

Making Hotel Reservations Brings More Surprises...

So, I am moving ahead now with making reservations in the towns where I will be staying while I am in Italy in October. I have selected my hotel in Rome, my hotel in Lamezia Terme, and my hotel in Curinga.

I called the Hotel Golden in Curinga just the other day to make my reservations. I successfully made myself clear in Italian, and I proceeded to ask the receptionist if he could email me a confirmation. He promptly responded and I felt assured by his confirmation.

It took me a few days to respond to his email which said:

"Spett. jennifer Rafferty le comunico che abbiamo ricevuto la sua richiesta di prenotazione per il periodo 08/10/09 al 19/10/09 per una camera singola. in attesa della sua conferma le mando cordiali saluti."

After I gave some thought to the conversation we had, I realized that I might like to specify a "room with a view". So, I sent him an email indicating that I would like a room with a window overlooking the city, if possible.

A few days later, I received another response from him:

"Spett. signora jennifer rafferty navigando in internet ho trovato una pagina web in cui cerca carmelo orlando mia madre si chiama orlando e spero che le possa essere d’aiuto domani le chiederò se ricorda qualcosa e le faro sapere al più presto."

So, in case you need a little assistance with the Italian: The man who helped me make my reservations at Hotel Golden, his mother's last name is Orlando. Yes, that's right. It seems as if the owners of the Hotel Golden in Curinga might just be distant relatives of my grandfather, Carmelo Orlando.

Is this not the most surreal thing you have ever heard? I choose one of two hotels in the city of Curinga, and that hotel happens to be owned by someone with the last name of my grandfather. Possibly my distant relatives.

This is no small coincidence.

This was supposed to happen.

When Grandma Piccione and Grandpa Orlando Tied the Knot

I don't know much about the circumstances surrounding the marriage of my Italian grandparents. I know that my grandmother was in the United States less than a year before she married Carmelo, but I can't tell you who arranged the marriage between the lady from Santo Stefano (Sicily) and the man from Curinga (Calabria).

What I do know is that I hold the original copy of their marriage certificate. The document is in delicate shape these days, and I usually keep it a transparent plastic sheet for protection.

Today I took it out of the plastic so I could take a picture of it for my cousins. I thought they might like to see this great artifact from our family! Thanks to Facebook, I am now connected to four of my cousins more regularly and I am able to keep them up to date on my research.

What got me back on the marriage certificate portion of my research is that I have requested a certified copy of the long form of my grandparents' marriage certificate. I need a certified copy of this document for the application of dual citizenship.

My nonni were married on December 20th, 1921. Just five days before Christmas. I wonder how they spent that holiday. They were the first of their siblings to come to this country, and in the case of my grandfather the only family member, so with whom could they have celebrated the holiday? What did they eat? Did my grandmother cook or did they get invited to someone else's house for the Christmas meals?

The long form of the marriage certificate won't answer these questions, I know. But I sit anxiously awaiting that form since it contains more information than the original certificate that I hold in my possession.

I will let you know what I find out when I receive a response from the Registry of Wills in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

A Response from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about My Grandfather

After a three month wait, I finally received word from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about my grandpa. The letter reads:

Dear Miss Rafferty:

Your index search request was received in this off on 4/18/2009 regarding Carmelo Orlando, born about July 16, 1887, in Italy. We have completed our search for records based on the information you provided, but did not locate any. While you are always free to request another search for this immigrant, for an additional fee, without new information one could not expect any different result.

If you need a certification of non existence of a naturalization record for the above immigrant, write to the following address (include a copy of this letter):

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Attn. Records Operations Branch
1200 First Street NE
Washington, D.C. 20529-2204

If you can provide new or different information about this immigrant and want to pursue another search, please submit a new search request for an additional fee of $20. The requirements for filing are available at our website, http://www.uscis.gov/.

Question

1. How will the Italian Consulate respond to the fact that I have a certification of non existence? Does that letter pretty much indicate to them that my grandfather never became a citizen? Or do they look at that letter with more scrutiny?


Finally it seems I have some sort of answer. At least enough of an answer that I can proceed with this process. An Italian passport just seems too far away from my reality right now, but I am going to forge ahead since everything seems to indicate that I am still elligible to become an Italian citizen.

Italian Blogger Strike- July 14th, 2009

In support of my fellow Italian bloggers, I am also on strike today. For an explanation of the strike, you can visit http://dirittoallarete.ning.com/. Freedom of speech for everyone!

You can also read this article in English.

The Intangible Nature of the Dead

Curinga, Calabria (Andrea Marutti)

Today marks the 8th week since I submitted to the USCIS my second, not first, online search request form for immigration information about my grandfather, Carmelo Orlando. Now that we have reached the 8th week point, I feel I am in my right to politely ask for a status update on the search. And that I did today by email.

If you remember what happened the first time, I was sent a letter after about 8 weeks of waiting for a response. The letter I received informed me that they had found a file for Antonio Orlando. For a moment, I stood there looking at the letter thinking, “Did my grandfather have another name?” Then it hit me that I was dealing with a government agency, and clearly and a state employee who didn’t even bother to do a spell check before sending me the response. I was fuming.

So, now that I have sent that email to USCIS, I am nervously waiting for another response, hoping they don't tell me they did a search for Guido Orlando, not Carmelo.

What could possibly go wrong this time? They are going to find the files, right? And they are going to send me the information I need so I can proceed with this investigation I started back in 2007. Of course they are. How many times could they possibly get it wrong?

I need a pep talk. I have entered into a deep valley of doubt. I come back to the same sad conclusion that goes against everything this journey has been about. I think, and for what am I doing all this? My grandfather is deceased. I will never meet him. No matter how hard I try to give life to this blood relative of mine, I don’t have a picture, I don’t have relatives who remember him, and the few vital records that I’ve looked at endlessly have now lost their novelty. And when I get to Curinga in October? Will I be disappointed that Carmelo is not there waiting for me at the threshold of the house where he was born? Will I be ok with the fact that it’s just me going back to my grandfather’s village and he and my mom are not there to share the joy?

It’s important for me to share my frustration here. I don’t want to discourage others who might be thinking about getting their Italian citizenship or doing genealogy research. I just want to be honest about the highs and lows. If I document only the high points of the journey, I would be misleading you. Hopefully your process will be an easier one than mine has been.

Well, tomorrow is another day. Another day for hope. Another day closer to the time when I will come face to face with my Calabrian roots.

Antoinette Picione

My grandmother, Antoinette Picione, was 27 years old when she arrived to the United States on August 18th, 1921. When she arrived, she was posing as a surrogate mother for two children who were traveling with her: Caterina and Gaetano Girolamo, the children of Rizzo Girolamo. Caterina was 11 and Gaetano was 9. All three were detained upon arrival because no one came to identify them as family at Ellis Island.

I can’t help but wonder what my grandmother went through when she got off the ship with two children that didn’t belong to her and her fake husband wasn’t there to pick her up. Poor nonna. I can remember what happened to me when I arrived to Paris for my year abroad and my luggage was lost. I went into a complete panic and I almost passed out in the customer service area while waiting for someone who spoke English to help me. Yes, I got my luggage eventually, that same day in fact, but what could it have been like for my grandmother who spoke no English, had never set foot on American soil, and no family member was there to welcome her when she arrived to this country. She was the first of the siblings to come to this country. Then followed her brother Guiseppe and her sister Genoveva. So, grandma was really on her own when she got to New York, no cell phone, no Blackberry, nobody. Just a supposed Rizzo Girolamo who was listed as her husband on the ship passenger list.

You may ask, was this really her husband? Were those her children? I have gone through the story many times and I have reached the conclusion that she was posing as a surrogate mother so that she could enter the country. There has never been any mention of two children from a first marriage. And I have a very hard time believing that my grandmother would have abandoned these children to marry my grandfather, Carmelo, and start a new family. So, no, my grandmother was single upon her arrival to the United States. And thank goodness she didn’t marry Rizzo because I would not approve of any man who left his children and waiting at Ellis Island for two days!

The detainee record states that nonna was admitted to the country with the two children on September 6th, 1921. Yet, in the column that identifies who will be called to pick her up, it’s empty. Not only that, in the column that identifies the number of meals they ate while detained, it says, 6 breakfasts, 9 dinners, 6 suppers. Based on that number of meals, it seems to me that they didn’t stay until September 6th. I would guess that they stayed for 2-3 days.

I am left to wonder who came to pick her up at the port. Did Rizzo ever come or did he send someone else out of shame? Could he have been sick? How did grandma end up in Wilkes-Barre, PA when Rizzo was from Trenton, NJ? So many unanswered questions from this ship passenger list. We are forced to fill in the blanks and use are imagination to complete the story.

One very important fact that I have found on one of the ship passenger lists, aside from my grandma's detainment, is the fact that my grandmother was naturalized after my grandfather Carmelo died in 1937. I would have never taken note of the annotations next to her name. Annotations mean something and we have to pay close attention to them. You can study annotations yourself by visiting, A Guide to Interpreting Passenger List Annotations. You see, the annotations include the following:On May 5th 1931 she left the United States to return to Sicily for a brief visit with her biological children. I have yet another passenger ship list from 1931 from that exact trip! In addition to that date, the following numbers and codes are written next to the typed up information: 719000, V/L814/535, 3-190326(505), 11/20/40. The last series of numbers is yet another date. According to my genealogy friend, it’s the date she was naturalized. If she became a citizen after Carmelo’s death, this leaves me some hope that grandpa never became a citizen. That, of course, would mean that I can still apply for Italian citizenship, unless they change the laws by the time I get all the documents collected!

Let me tell you, this job is not for the passive kind. You need to be extremely proactive in this process of digging up documents. If there is anything I know about myself, it’s that I persevere. I don’t give up. Right now, it’s a question of waiting. I persevere better than I wait. Oh yes, I told you about my patience. It clearly still needs improvement.