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Climbing the Family Tree In Basilicata's Hilltowns

Valerie

100+ Posts
By Valerie from New Mexico, Spring 2003

Prelude to a Trip: My Geneaology Search

My quest began a few years ago as I began exploring my family history, wondering where exactly my great-grandparents were from, when they arrived in the US, and how on earth did they end up in small-town Ohio. My grandmother died when I was young; her siblings are all gone, too. My grandfather, unfortunately, didn’t have many answers. Calabria, he’d always thought. They came from Calabria. There was a town there bearing the family name, so he’d been told.

I delved into the investigative frustration of online genealogy searches. The names were changed making the searches more fruitless and frustrating. Calabria was a dead-end. Internet databases promised results, but required payments to look at the information before I could even determine if it would be helpful or pertinent to my family.

I turned to Ellis Island's resources for clues. I knew the family surname had been changed at some point. I entered various spellings until I hit upon the correct one. My great-grandfather also changed his first name, from Egidio to Charles, a bit harder for me to figure out, but finally I netted the correct record and found his ship manifest.

Interesting Side Note: It’s a common misconception that name changes were perpetrated at the point of entry. Ignorant bureaucrats who couldn’t spell the foreign names jotted down what they thought it sounded like, the story goes. Actually, I learned that most names were correct at the point of entry because the ship manifest was compiled from the passenger tickets. And the tickets were purchased and written out in the homeland, where spellings were fairly well known. In my family’s case, the misspellings occurred after arrival. Due to my great-grandparents’ illiteracy, the surname was spelled as it was sounded by whomever they were dealing with (hospital staff, county clerk, etc) and in searching birth and death records I found four different spellings, none the original Italian name. My great-grandfather also deliberately changed his first name to Charles to sound more American. There is, of course, no actual (i.e., legal) documentation of these name changes, so it took a long time to figure it all out.

Armed with these morsels, I then visited the Mormon Family History Library for assistance. It was amazing to me that I could sit in a little room in Albuquerque, New Mexico and look at microfilm records from the turn of the last century obtained from a tiny hilltown in one of the most remote areas of Italy, Basilicata. I found his birth certificate on microfilm, along with the record of his marriage to my great-grandmother. This listed both their parents’ names. I returned to Ellis Island's website for more documentation, discovering that my great-grandmother arrived a year after her husband, accompanied by her two little sons and her father and her two sisters. A year after that, her mother arrived with my great-grandmother’s brothers. The entire family evacuated Southern Italy within a span of two years.

I discovered through all these eye-fatiguing sessions in the darkened room scrolling through film after film that my family didn’t come from Calabria at all, though there is indeed a town there bearing the family name. They came from Basilicata, remote, harsh and poor. The town names, Anzi and Laurenzana, were inscribed in twirling script on the birth records and marriage record. We looked at a map and, determined to visit, searched online for information. No hotels, no hostels, no affitacamere. No tourists. We were more determined to visit than ever. A slice of old Italy as it was!

We settled on Southern Campania for our stay and rented a beautiful villa. It put us in relatively easy reach of Basilicata while giving us other sight-seeing options (such as Paestum and the Cilento National Forest) and plenty of relaxation. My mom and my sister, Cara, would accompany me and my husband, Bryan.
 
The Journey

Armed with the accumulated knowledge, sparse as it was, we took a day journeying into the wilds of Lucania. The war with Iraq had started just days earlier while we were in Rome. Being remotely located has its advantages, no English newspapers or television to forcibly blare the unending news into our fretful minds. Instead, we drove a winding road and encountered shepherds on the hillsides tending their sheep, accompanied by their dogs. We stopped for a picnic in the woods. The landscape became more rugged and more arid. Steep, deep valleys wound between mountain peaks. The road twisted and provided beautiful views and a vivid sense of place. We passed only one other car in an hour.

Not knowing what to expect, we drove into Anzi, past the newer, soulless concrete apartment blocks. As we drove into the older section of town we were stopped on the narrow street by a red light. It turned green, and we proceeded along the one-lane street which tunneled under a bridge of buildings and up into the main piazza. We followed the local custom of parking in the piazza below a “No Parking” sign, alongside six other cars. We found ourselves in a darling little hilltown with narrow and steep stone streets, steps cut into them, charm-oozing buildings hewn out of stone, many stuccoed. All seemed neatly kept.

We got out of the Fiat to see the town, but quickly realized the town came out to see us. The old men quickly evacuated their tables at the bar to assemble in the piazza. In an instant we became the spectacle of the small hamlet. People blatantly stared as we meandered the streets, reciting our buongiornos without much response, usually a nod of the head or a mumbled greeting as their eyes followed us. We were awed by every turn, as we frequently are in Italy, over the quaintness and beauty of the old buildings, and the views over the valley to a mountain beyond.

As we gazed at the church, the bar owner, who just closed up shop for pranzo, came over to inquire about the stranieri in the village. He addressed Bryan, who speaks zippo Italiano. I told him where we were from and why we were there. We chatted a bit and then he directed us to hurry to the municipio offices as they would be closing soon for lunch.

We arrived and luckily the office was still open. Mom and Bryan stayed outside in the courtyard, settling onto a bench while Cara and I went inside. My boots tapped heavily on the stone floors, echoing off the walls and announcing our arrival. I spoke in my stunted Italian through a hole cut into the plexi-glass, telling them why we were there. We were escorted into the smoky office by what appeared to be a hanger-on, a man in a leather bomber jacket who didn’t seem to actually work there but who stuck around long enough to hear our request for records, and who then quickly departed to disseminate the news. The town official, after spending some time fixing his eye glasses, smiled and then patiently perused the records to finally find the entry of Egidio’s birth. No records could be located for his parents or any siblings. “But we had a flood some years ago. Many records were destroyed,” he informed us.

Meanwhile, a distinguished older man entered and spoke with us, looking at the sheet of paper I brought along with the family tree neatly written on it, and said, “Yes, that is a Lucanian name. And your great-grandmother, she is from Laurenzana, no? Her surname is common there.” He nodded and smiled and told us to enjoy our visit to Lucania. The modern name of Basilicata is apparently not well-used in these parts. The ancient, historical name is proudly used instead. The man departed, and the official left us in the office alone, the rest of the staff having left for holy pranzo, while he took the large leather-bound book to make a gigantic copy of the hand-written birth entry. He then obligingly utilized the ancient typewriter to provide us with an official birth certificate also, which was signed, sealed and delivered. He smiled broadly, shook our hands, and thanked us for visiting Anzi. As we departed, we had to stoop down to exit through a little door that was cut into the large, heavy wooden doors which had been closed already. Cara and I walked out feeling somewhat victorious and a bit giddy.

We headed back to the piazza where we discovered news had quickly spread and what looked like the entire population was gathered. A sweet little (I mean little, about five feet tall) old man stopped in front of us and smiled, so Cara took his picture. He positively beamed afterwards. Four young girls had been huddled in a corner of the piazza and as we walked toward our car they came running over screaming “HELLO!” “Hello, how are you?,” giggling madly. We responded in English and they kept saying “hello.” We responded in Italian and they continued with their screaming hellos. They were adorable.

We got into the car and tried to drive up the streets to the shrine we had seen perched above the city, but as we started up the street a group of men yelled and gestured and told us, “No, no you can’t go that way”. The car, a little Fiat Punto, was too grande for the narrow street. They directed us around the edge of town to another street that hugged the cliff and scaled to the top of the town.

As we exited the centro and motored along the edge of town, which skirted a steep valley, we came upon an absolutely striking shepherd with a little flock. He was mesmerizing with long hair and piercing blue eyes and a long staff in his hand. He looked like a prophet of old. I wanted to photograph him badly, but he was glaring at us and not looking too kindly about our presence near his sheep. I wish now that I had asked him for a photograph. We drove on, but couldn’t find the shrine. The undulations of the landscape and buildings obscured it every time we thought we were getting closer. Defeated in this small quest, we set off down the winding road into the valley, then scaled the other side to Laurenzana, the hilltown which faced Anzi on the opposite mountain across the steep gulch. We drove through alpine-like terrain, craggy and peaked, but the tops of the hills devoid of trees. Off to the west we caught a glimpse of a decent-sized lake on the valley floor, clear blue amid the browns and grays and green trees of the landscape.

We arrived to find we were unwittingly giving a second performance of our four-person traveling show, “the Stranieri”. People stopped in mid-stride to stare. One man, to get a good view, was hanging out of an upper-floor window, the metal bars not at all deterring him. We strolled the streets, again with eyes glued to our every move. It is somewhat disconcerting to be so scrutinized; every step echoing and every move being watched. It’s a strange sensation. We pressed on, feeling the eyes behind the windows. The town was pretty, also well-tended.

We arrived too late to visit the municipio office to search for records. We meandered instead. A kindly artisan invited us into his workshop where nothing was for sale; he taught handcrafts to young men and the displays showcased their skills. He was passing on the traditional wood-carving and delicate metal-working to another generation. He smiled generously and was immensely proud of his workshop. While I understood only parts of what he narrated, we enjoyed the tour and kindness he showed us, and he enjoyed showing his young workers’ talents.

We visited a gelateria, which oddly had no gelato, an unpardonable sin in Bryan’s book. The sign clearly declared “Gelato” but once inside there was none of the frozen delicacy in sight; pastries were placed in the glass cases instead. We ordered a few dolce as an afternoon boost along with caffe. The treats were all filled pastries and absolutely delicious. No one spoke to us, despite our friendly buona seras and smiles; they only stared and then talked about us among themselves. They wouldn’t speak directly to us at all. We’ve never felt more uncomfortable anywhere in Italy.

We roamed around a bit more, enjoying the pretty streets, and then drove along the perimeter of the town, up toward the ancient and ruined rocca above, taking photos of the town’s sign, the vistas, each other, standing on the edge of the precipice. The landscape was beautiful and yet forbidding. How on earth did my great-grandparents farm this terrain, or make even the arduous journey to Napoli before they boarded the ship? Just getting around these natural impediments would have been daunting. As we looked around, we had a greater appreciation for their poverty and their determination to overcome so many obstacles to start a new life in a new and unfamiliar country.

As we drove away and retraced the road back northward we gazed up toward Anzi and again wondered about the shrine above town. Bryan thought he saw a road approaching it and turned off toward the town once again. This time we circled the outskirts and the newer concrete buildings, then a road forked off along the hillside to the north and we discovered the road led to the church of Santa Maria del Rosario, perched on a lonely hilltop, an isolated sentinel. One last time our eyes were drawn to the panorama, rough and ancient, the time-chiseled valleys exuding the centuries. Peaceful.
 
Memories and Discoveries

I learned a lot about my grandmother during my research. She died when I was still fairly young and my grandfather, for many years, had a difficult time conjuring up the memories of the love of his life. Now, in his old age, with our persistent prying, he opened up.

She had endured much anti-Italian prejudice as a child and young woman, yet she had the brightest smile I’ve ever seen. She refused to speak Italian, yet she reveled in the foods of her parents’ homeland. The enduring qualities that are so typically Italian, she possessed: zest for a laugh, zeal for her family, living as a part of the community, involvement in the Church, emphasis on good taste, regardless of what was in the pantry or the closet. She was vivacious and petite and full of life. She learned, later in her life, to be proud of her heritage and she passed that on to us, her grandkids, before she died. She had seven siblings, and her father died at the age of 37, only a few years after she was born. I wonder about my great-grandmother’s life, her dreams and hardships and joys. I discovered through this quest that threads from the family tapestry are woven into my life in countless ways.

This was more than a trip; it was a journey…a journey into my family’s heritage. As I climbed the steep, stone steps of these out-of-the-way hilltowns, I climbed the family tree. And the view from its weathered branches was spectacular.
 

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