Today I finished indexing the last of the Omignano death records that were in form layout, so I have now completed the years 1875 - 1929. That's the end of the civil records available in the image collection on Family Search. YAY! The next step in this indexing process should be to read the fully handwritten death records from 1866 - 1874, but I may postpone that in favor of birth or marriage record forms.
As I was indexing the death records in 1926 and 1927, I noticed that the name of the recorder on some of the records looked familiar - Silvino Lerro. I have a 2nd cousin 2x removed by that name! It turns out that he worked as a clerk in Omignano for a while. So not only am I reading records about my relatives, I am seeing the handwriting and signature of one of my relatives recording it! How cool is that?!? Pretty darn cool, in my opinion. Just a little icing on the cake for wrapping up this record set.
In the meantime, I will be taking an indexing break before starting the next batch. There are some other genealogy tasks on the to-do list!
A chronicle of genealogy adventures
Showing posts with label Omignano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Omignano. Show all posts
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Saturday, June 11, 2016
The Great War
Today I reached another indexing milestone on the Omignano records on FamilySearch.org - I've completed indexing the deaths from 1897 - 1917. The last few records were heartbreaking, as they were records of deaths outside Omignano reported back to the town of soldiers who died in World War I. Word was sent to the town in 1917 about the deaths of three soldiers that had occurred in the summer of 1915.
One of the deaths recorded in 1916 is that of Giuseppe Cammarota, my first cousin 3x removed through his grandparents (my 3x great grandparents), Giuseppe Cammarota and Antonia Petillo. Giuseppe served in Italy's 48th infantry regiment. He was injured with an abdominal wound at the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo, in Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. After his injury, he was transported to the hospital at camp 79, where he died of his wounds.
Prior to this, I didn't know of any blood relatives involved in WWI - only in-laws. But now, with a blood relative on the field, this part of history became more important to me. The death record, of course, does not indicate that my cousin participated in the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo. Learning of his death as a soldier at Gorizia on 3 Nov 1916, I did a little research on WWI to find out what was going on at that time and place. The Italians fought the Austro-Hungarians along the Isonzo river throughout the war. The conflict occurring Nov 1-4, 1916 was termed the 9th such battle.
According to the death record, Giuseppe was buried in an Italian military cemetery in Gradisca, Italy. I may need to visit someday!
One of the deaths recorded in 1916 is that of Giuseppe Cammarota, my first cousin 3x removed through his grandparents (my 3x great grandparents), Giuseppe Cammarota and Antonia Petillo. Giuseppe served in Italy's 48th infantry regiment. He was injured with an abdominal wound at the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo, in Gorizia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. After his injury, he was transported to the hospital at camp 79, where he died of his wounds.
Prior to this, I didn't know of any blood relatives involved in WWI - only in-laws. But now, with a blood relative on the field, this part of history became more important to me. The death record, of course, does not indicate that my cousin participated in the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo. Learning of his death as a soldier at Gorizia on 3 Nov 1916, I did a little research on WWI to find out what was going on at that time and place. The Italians fought the Austro-Hungarians along the Isonzo river throughout the war. The conflict occurring Nov 1-4, 1916 was termed the 9th such battle.
According to the death record, Giuseppe was buried in an Italian military cemetery in Gradisca, Italy. I may need to visit someday!
Friday, April 22, 2016
Keep On Keeping On
Today I completed the indexing of the 1875 - 1896 image set of death records for Omignano. YAY! To truly call that image set complete, I still need to index the completely handwritten 1866-1874 records, but I made it to the end of the set and will call that a major milestone in the process. I have been busy with other things this last few weeks, so it's good to get back to this genealogy project and make some headway on it.
I plan to finish out the remaining death record sets (Morti 1897-1917, Morti 1918-1929) using the forms before venturing back to the handwritten death records. Then there are 3 sets of birth records, three sets of marriage records, and three sets of marriage banns records, with the 1866-1874 records all being completely handwritten in the first set of each. Still a long way to go!
I plan to finish out the remaining death record sets (Morti 1897-1917, Morti 1918-1929) using the forms before venturing back to the handwritten death records. Then there are 3 sets of birth records, three sets of marriage records, and three sets of marriage banns records, with the 1866-1874 records all being completely handwritten in the first set of each. Still a long way to go!
Friday, March 25, 2016
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match....
A Smart Match on MyHeritage has led me to my first Italian cousin, as opposed to the Italian-American cousins I have been connecting with up to this point. In my experience, MyHeritage, being an Israeli-based company rather than US, attracts more European users. So if you have European ancestry and want to connect with living cousins, put a tree out there. Unless your ancestry is the British Isles, in which case Find my Past is probably the better bet. If I ever find Irish townlands of origin for my Irish lines, I might finally spend some time on Find my Past, but I'm not there yet!
I've connected with many Swedish cousins on MyHeritage (lots of cousins of Buzz Aldrin!), but had not updated my Italian line recently. Adding in some of the recent Italian discoveries from my Omignano focus the last couple of months brought up some new hits. I sent a message via the web site to contact my potential cousin, and a couple of weeks later, she replied! And even though I don't speak Italian, and she doesn't speak English, we've traded emails and exchanged pictures of our Italian Giordano ancestors. So now I have a cousin to visit when I finally get my Italy trip plan together. And maybe local feet on the ground to hunt down records, especially if they are OUR family records and not just MY family records. :)
Working through the Omignano records is reaping benefits! Time to get back to it....
I've connected with many Swedish cousins on MyHeritage (lots of cousins of Buzz Aldrin!), but had not updated my Italian line recently. Adding in some of the recent Italian discoveries from my Omignano focus the last couple of months brought up some new hits. I sent a message via the web site to contact my potential cousin, and a couple of weeks later, she replied! And even though I don't speak Italian, and she doesn't speak English, we've traded emails and exchanged pictures of our Italian Giordano ancestors. So now I have a cousin to visit when I finally get my Italy trip plan together. And maybe local feet on the ground to hunt down records, especially if they are OUR family records and not just MY family records. :)
Working through the Omignano records is reaping benefits! Time to get back to it....
Sunday, March 20, 2016
OMG No! The Saga Continues....
I have been continuing to index my Omignano (OMG, No!) records, in between hunting down family of DNA matches. Every time I locate a record for one of my DNA matches, I add that record to my index, so even when I'm chasing matches I am still indexing! So I have some indexing that is done by year and other runs by surname. I've filled in a few more of the deaths for 1866-1874, completed the deaths for 1875 through part of 1889 and the births for 1866 and 1899.
The DNA match tree building has yielded some results - the Mobius strip twists further! I've managed to connect two sets of DNA matches (a woman and her nephew; a man, his first cousin, and his nephew) to one set of common ancestors, Francesco Giuliano (1808-1869) and his wife Carmela La Palementa (1815-1875), making the woman and man 4th cousins 1x removed. I've just merged a couple in my tree that I added from two completely different line building exercises (Francesco's parents via his sister Carmella), so now I am connected to those DNA matches via one marriage instead of two, but I'm not there yet. :)
I have a few potential connections that I have no paper trail to support. How many Nicola Chiariellos can there be in Omignano? In records that list only a father, that name appears alone. In records that list both parents, there is a Nicola Chiariello and his wife Luigia Giuliano. My suspicion is that those are all the same Nicola, which would connect two more siblings to the two with the known mother of Luigia, but given the number of name repeats in this town, I don't think I can make that claim yet. Maybe I will find another Chiariello record in the set to make those connections. <fingers crossed>
The index spreadsheet is definitely helping with the DNA matches. Being able to filter on surnames and find all the children from a particular couple is definitely a great time saver! At least, when they are all entered. The data entry continues....
The DNA match tree building has yielded some results - the Mobius strip twists further! I've managed to connect two sets of DNA matches (a woman and her nephew; a man, his first cousin, and his nephew) to one set of common ancestors, Francesco Giuliano (1808-1869) and his wife Carmela La Palementa (1815-1875), making the woman and man 4th cousins 1x removed. I've just merged a couple in my tree that I added from two completely different line building exercises (Francesco's parents via his sister Carmella), so now I am connected to those DNA matches via one marriage instead of two, but I'm not there yet. :)
I have a few potential connections that I have no paper trail to support. How many Nicola Chiariellos can there be in Omignano? In records that list only a father, that name appears alone. In records that list both parents, there is a Nicola Chiariello and his wife Luigia Giuliano. My suspicion is that those are all the same Nicola, which would connect two more siblings to the two with the known mother of Luigia, but given the number of name repeats in this town, I don't think I can make that claim yet. Maybe I will find another Chiariello record in the set to make those connections. <fingers crossed>
The index spreadsheet is definitely helping with the DNA matches. Being able to filter on surnames and find all the children from a particular couple is definitely a great time saver! At least, when they are all entered. The data entry continues....
Thursday, March 10, 2016
O Little Town of Omignano....
My last name, Jordan, is an Americanization of the original surname of my great grandfather: Giordano. Francesco Giordano came to America in 1889 from the little town of Omignano, Salerno, Campania, Italy. My father's family knew him as Frank Jordan.
In October 2013 I discovered that Family Search posted unindexed digital images of the collection "Italia, Salerno, Vallo della Lucania, Stato Civile (Tribunale), 1866-1929" on their web site, including Frank's birth record. Using this image set, I traced back a few more generations, which led me to my first set of direct line kissing cousins. A pair of first cousins once removed married, so one set of 4th great grandparents double as a set of 5th great grandparents. (Does that count as killing 4 birds with 2 stones?)
Given the small size of the town and the high likelihood of intermarrying, it occurred to me that I might be related to quite a lot of people in the town. And so, an idea was born, The Great Omignano (OMG, no!) Indexing Project!!! But it was just an idea, and like many ideas, it sat on the shelf for awhile. There are gold mines of information in all that Italian text, but to get to them, you have to filter though all that Italian text, an endeavor both time consuming and fraught with bad handwriting. I worked back a few generations, concentrating on the Giordano surname and not much else, but did not roll forward to closer generations that lead to living cousins. And after that flurry of excitement on the Italian hometown breakthrough, I moved on to other things.
Fast forward two and a half years. I'm starting to see Italian line DNA matches on the various testing sites. Trying to figure out where these 4th cousin and further out matches fit in is tricky when my tree is not fleshed out both forward and back. I found myself creating private individual family trees on Ancestry for each DNA match so I could try to build out their trees to figure out how we connect. After spending two weekends building trees for OTHER people, I finally remembered my epiphany from 2013 and decided to take action on that idea. The Vallo della Lucania images include births, marriage banns, marriages and deaths starting in 1866. In 1875, the Omignano record books were converted to fill-in-the-blank forms, but prior to that, the entire record is one big handwritten paragraph.
So the past few weekends, instead of building out yet another DNA match tree (no doubt more of those will happen later), I turned to building spreadsheets. I started with death records, capturing a number of data elements for each record, including the URL to the image. For the totally handwritten 1866-1874 records, I've only captured the year, order number, name and URL information for about 200 people - those will take more work to decipher than the form-based ones to complete the index. I have recorded all the information from the 1875-1887 deaths, about 320 people. Since I was not focusing solely on the name Giordano, I actually added several more dates and people to my tree just from those records! I'll take that as a sign that I'm on the right track. Already I recognize the common surnames of the town, and they are an immediate clue of a potential shared line in the trees of my DNA matches.
So we'll see how long this project stays at the top of the to do list - hopefully I'll be able to finish some record sets before something else jumps the line. And then I'll be able to use this spreadsheet index as a tool for looking up potential ancestors of DNA matches!
In October 2013 I discovered that Family Search posted unindexed digital images of the collection "Italia, Salerno, Vallo della Lucania, Stato Civile (Tribunale), 1866-1929" on their web site, including Frank's birth record. Using this image set, I traced back a few more generations, which led me to my first set of direct line kissing cousins. A pair of first cousins once removed married, so one set of 4th great grandparents double as a set of 5th great grandparents. (Does that count as killing 4 birds with 2 stones?)
Given the small size of the town and the high likelihood of intermarrying, it occurred to me that I might be related to quite a lot of people in the town. And so, an idea was born, The Great Omignano (OMG, no!) Indexing Project!!! But it was just an idea, and like many ideas, it sat on the shelf for awhile. There are gold mines of information in all that Italian text, but to get to them, you have to filter though all that Italian text, an endeavor both time consuming and fraught with bad handwriting. I worked back a few generations, concentrating on the Giordano surname and not much else, but did not roll forward to closer generations that lead to living cousins. And after that flurry of excitement on the Italian hometown breakthrough, I moved on to other things.
Fast forward two and a half years. I'm starting to see Italian line DNA matches on the various testing sites. Trying to figure out where these 4th cousin and further out matches fit in is tricky when my tree is not fleshed out both forward and back. I found myself creating private individual family trees on Ancestry for each DNA match so I could try to build out their trees to figure out how we connect. After spending two weekends building trees for OTHER people, I finally remembered my epiphany from 2013 and decided to take action on that idea. The Vallo della Lucania images include births, marriage banns, marriages and deaths starting in 1866. In 1875, the Omignano record books were converted to fill-in-the-blank forms, but prior to that, the entire record is one big handwritten paragraph.
So the past few weekends, instead of building out yet another DNA match tree (no doubt more of those will happen later), I turned to building spreadsheets. I started with death records, capturing a number of data elements for each record, including the URL to the image. For the totally handwritten 1866-1874 records, I've only captured the year, order number, name and URL information for about 200 people - those will take more work to decipher than the form-based ones to complete the index. I have recorded all the information from the 1875-1887 deaths, about 320 people. Since I was not focusing solely on the name Giordano, I actually added several more dates and people to my tree just from those records! I'll take that as a sign that I'm on the right track. Already I recognize the common surnames of the town, and they are an immediate clue of a potential shared line in the trees of my DNA matches.
So we'll see how long this project stays at the top of the to do list - hopefully I'll be able to finish some record sets before something else jumps the line. And then I'll be able to use this spreadsheet index as a tool for looking up potential ancestors of DNA matches!
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Crossing the Pond - Italy!
I did a quick stroll through Family Search this evening and found they have posted images of records from the hometown of my great-grandfather Francesco Giordano (Frank Jordan), Omignano - I found my first Italian record, of my great grandfather's birth! (His is the last record on the page, the last for 1887.)
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-28331-2765-67
His parents are Giuseppe Giordano and Rosalia Cammarota. Now I need to learn some Italian....
Update 10/22/2013: Marriage record for Frank's parents, Giuseppe Giordano and Rosalia Cammarota: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-28331-2028-14
Update 10/31/2013: And Giuseppe and Rosalia were kissing cousins!!! His grandparents were her great-grandparents, making them 1st cousins 1x removed. This is the first set of married cousins I've found in my direct line. So now one set of 4th great grandparents double as a set of 5th great grandparents.
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-28331-2765-67
His parents are Giuseppe Giordano and Rosalia Cammarota. Now I need to learn some Italian....
Update 10/22/2013: Marriage record for Frank's parents, Giuseppe Giordano and Rosalia Cammarota: https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-28331-2028-14
Update 10/31/2013: And Giuseppe and Rosalia were kissing cousins!!! His grandparents were her great-grandparents, making them 1st cousins 1x removed. This is the first set of married cousins I've found in my direct line. So now one set of 4th great grandparents double as a set of 5th great grandparents.
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