My interest in my family's history began in May of 1996 when my second cousin, Marcello Schillizzi, and his bride Gaetana LaGattuta came to America on their honeymoon. My mother had planned a sort of American wedding shower for them in her home, since Marcello's father, Angelo, had shown her incredible hospitality the prior year when she returned to her birthplace, Mezzojuso, in Sicily.

The evening featured food, drink, and a lot of "American" gifts, such as sweatshirts sporting "USA" (or 'oo-sa', as pronounced by Marcello) and china featuring the Stars and Stripes and New York City references.

It was at that time that I also learned that their plans included a trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island the following day, which was now becoming a major family outing. My children and I joined them on the trip, and met the group in Liberty State Park in New Jersey.    

Since they spoke no English, I struggled with my Italian, but we all managed to communicate. I showed them the listing for my paternal grandfather, Rocco De Angelo, on the Ellis Island Roll of Honor.

Their subsequent plans called for them to visit my family and tour New York, head down to Disney World with "Tanina's" American relatives, then return to us later that week. Since I wanted to spend more time with them, I offered to drive them to Washington the following week, and they immediately agreed.

That Saturday, we made the three-hour drive from Staten Island at the crack of dawn, and got an early start visiting all of the national monuments. Armed with an Italian dictionary and a semester of Italian taken in 1978, we once again worked very hard at communication. They were particularly fond of my reference to "La Casa di Bill Clinton". They were also convinced that I would be speaking Italian if they stayed another week, which I felt was overly optimistic. At the end of the trip home, I promised them that I would visit them in two or three years.

Fast forward to August 1998: with that third year quickly approaching, and my parents back the following summer from a month in Mezzojuso, I began to consider my plans for the trip, and work on an itinerary. My cousin Tony Frasca had begun the reunion with his surprise visit to Mezzojuso in 1986, and had also undertaken the beginnings of a genealogy project. My interest piqued, I realized that this trip would be unfulfilling unless I learned more about my origins.

The first step was to establish a reading list, and begin to fully understand the plight of Italian immigrants. That summer, I probably read about two dozen books, but several really stand out:

• "Blood Of My Blood", by Richard Gambino
• "La Storia: Five Hundred Years of Italian Immigration", by Jerre Mangione
• "Christ in Concrete", by Pietro Di Donato
• "Unto The Sons", by Gay Talese
• "The Fortunate Pilgrim", by Mario Puzo

Both sides of my family had suffered tremendous hardships when they arrived in America, so it was comforting to read the stories of other Italian-American families with similar experiences and triumphs. It also occurred to me that I knew very little about my paternal grandfather, and had no idea of what he looked like as a young man.

It was about this time that I typed the word "Mezzojuso" into a search engine, and discovered web pages by Tony Schiro and Sal Lagatutta. When I realized how much information was available, I was determined to write my family's story, especially since both of my grandmothers were still alive.

On September 4, 1998, I made my first excursion to the Family History Center of the Mormon Church, across the street from Lincoln Center. I was amazed at the amount of information that was available, and ordered several microfilms of Castel Di Ieri and Mezzojuso, which would be available in about three weeks. And I also made a great discovery: I had found my paternal grandfather's Social Security records, listing his date of birth, that very same day (September 4) in 1894!

However, it all came to a crashing halt that evening. I had just finished eating dinner when I received a frantic call from my mother. My father had suffered what would be a fatal heart attack on their way home from Brooklyn. He died 104 years to the day that his father had been born, which I had just discovered that very day. I never had the chance to tell him what I had learned about his father.

Quite frankly, I was ready to give up the entire search. However, at his wake that weekend, his older brother, Vito DeAngelo, and my mother's first cousin, Joseph Pennachio, who had heard about what I was up to, approached me. They both impressed upon me the value of the endeavor, and encouraged me to continue. That motivation greatly helped me with the grieving process, and kept me focused on the contribution I would be making.

The next few months were very fruitful, uncovering much forgotten information about our family, culminating in the opening of this website -- the De Angelo/Bellone Genealogy Page -- on June 1, 1999. The research helped me learn a great deal about two places -- Castel Di Ieri and Mezzojuso -- that are now very special to me, and more importantly, gave me the push to reunite with "old" relatives in America, as well as "new" ones in Italy.

That journey took place in July of 2000, and was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. My family will always treasure the 17 days we spent seeing the beauty of Italy, and establishing the connection with the "new" relatives and ancestral homes with which we now have a permanent bond.

As I spent about 2 years doing all of this, I have to admit that there were a lot of steps, and it never seemed I would get "finished", such as it is. However, I can recommend a sequence that will make sense in Italian genealogical research of this sort.

There are two men we have to thank for our ability to trace our Italian ancestors: Napoleon Bonaparte (I guess you've heard of him) and Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church.

The "Little Corporal" is the man who at the turn of the century -- the 19^th Century -- required that Civil Records be kept on births, deaths and marriages, within each town hall. This began in about 1809.

Mr. Smith (I'm not sure if he's Mrs. Smith's husband -- although since there was probably more than one Mrs. Smith in his case, one of them probably liked to bake pies) and his successor church believe that ancestors could be converted after death, which led them to ship elderly missionaries around the world to microfilm said Civil Records. This is a good thing, since these valuable films reside at the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, and can be gotten in about 10 days for $3.50 per reel.

…should you choose to accept it, is to be able to link your family to a person that you know was born in the 1809-1865 timeframe (1820-1860 in Mezzojuso). Right about now, you're probably saying, "Gee Tom, why didn't you say so? Thanks for all the help!", to which I say, "You're welcome". But there is a way to pursue this.

In order to build a family tree, you need to get to 4 or 5 of your oldest living relatives, and pick their brains. If your grandparents are gone, get to their oldest child. They may have legal documents and photographs, but even if they don't, Italian parents tended to confide in their eldest child. My Uncle Vito was about 12 years older than my father was, but he was the only one who had a real relationship with my grandfather, Rocco. He was a great source of information, as well as photos that I didn't know existed. He also pointed me to his cousin Anita in Pennsylvania, who was sitting on dozens of photographs from my father's childhood that were presumed lost in a fire 60 years ago.

Having both grandmothers alive at the time was a huge bonus for me, given their ages. They were reluctant at first to speak, probably because they were conditioned to be distrustful when they came to America, but by letting them reminisce about their youths (or is that yoots?), they seemed to become comfortable enough to answer questions, and help me get the information I needed. And even if the information they have is limited, the act of sitting down over coffee and biscotti with an elderly grandparent is a worthwhile event nonetheless.

While the information I received from my maternal grandmother was largely anecdotal (although no less valuable), my paternal grandmother was able to give me the rough birth years of both of my paternal great-grandfathers before 1865, my grandfather's U.S. Army discharge papers from 1918, and his 1920 U.S. Passport, which had photos of my grandparents taken around 1920, unseen for about 80 years.

My mother, a child of first birth (she's a twin), and the closer one geographically, had her mother's New York City birth certificate from 1915 (with my great-grandparents' ages) and her parents' marriage license from Mezzojuso in 1938.

Another tip: your older relatives may not be good at remembering dates. Try to frame your questions around major events, such as, "was your father-in-law old when you were married?", or "was your mother alive during World War II?" Then ask follow-up questions like, "how old would you say he/she was then?" You can then do the math yourself. By using this approach, the respondent will feel less threatened by the intrusion, and will become comfortable enough to open up.

Once you locate a relative born in that "magic" range of the microfilm, the next steps are like a puzzle. You'll need to be familiar with some elementary Italian, but the format is really easy to understand, since they were written into a pre-printed volume by year. Each year's births are alphabetized, with a page number for each record. The birth certificates (Certificato di Nati) contain the following information:

• Child's name
• Father's name, age and occupation
• Name of father's father
• Mother's name, occupation and age

My experience has shown that the husbands were generally 8-10 older than their wives were, and men married at about 30 years of age.

The significance of these records cannot be downplayed. If you find a birth record, you know exactly where to look for the father's record, and so on. I could feel my ancestors coming alive with each one I located. The excitement grew as I peeled away each layer of the artichoke (remember, an onion has nothing inside).

Once you have exhausted the birth records, death records are a good next step. If you can find these, they will list the parents' names, the age of the deceased, and the name of a witness, generally the oldest son.

Marriage records are also interesting, because they list the age of the couple, their parents' names, and will indicate whether their parents were still alive.

Using the Civil Records, you can trace your family back anywhere from 1730 through 1830.

The good news is that the Catholic Church began requiring uniform written records in 1555; the bad news is they were free form, written in illegible Latin, and earthquakes and fires beset Italy in the 1700's. Are we having fun yet?

I used researchers for this, with varying degrees of success. I was able to get back to about the late 1600's in both ancestral towns. Not bad, but not cheap, either. Over the course of a year, I probably spent $500 on this line of research, including the census research below.

This was ultimately a great source of information, because both Mezzojuso (called riveli) and Castel Di Ieri (called onciario) kept them back to the mid-1600's, which got me to about 1600 on all of my family lines. It also contained a narrative in Castel Di Ieri indicating that my family was titled into the middle 1700's. Not bad.

At the National Archives in New York, I was able to find some interesting information about the Schillizzi family in the 1920 U.S. Census, including their address, which I visited on the Lower East Side. The building probably looks the same as it did then. I also learned that my grandmother, born Providenza and now called Florence, was listed as 4-year old Grace in that census.

If your family comes from small towns, consider the "carpet bombing" approach I used to locate unknown relatives in Castel Di Ieri. I was able to get my hands on a copy of the telephone directory from the town, which consisted of only two pages. I sent a form letter in Italian to everyone named DeAngelis still living there telling them who was, why I was writing, and enclosed a copy of my family tree, linking back to my great grandfather Marco. I also asked them to write back in Italian or English if they were related to him.

Since the town consists of only about 200 people, my letter was passed to 2 second cousins, who were the children of his granddaughters, and thus were not named DeAngelis. That letter resulted in the entire town awaiting our visit in July 2000.

While I was at the National Archives, I looked up the Soundex reference (a code developed during immigration to file names by the way they sounded) on my great-grandfather, Vincenzo Schillizzi, and found that in 1911, he returned to New York on the S.S. America with his wife Domenica Grifo and their son Francesco. The really neat thing was that the manifest identified two of his brothers: Rosario, the eldest, who was listed as remaining in Mezzojuso, and Salvatore, whom he had listed as his sponsor, living on West 22^nd Street in Manhattan.

Today, you can get a head start by using the records from the Ellis Island database before you travel to the National Archives.

In doing this, I basically left no stone unturned. I was very aggressive, and fairly annoying, calling every known relative in the United States to get information. I also contacted the Veterans Administration for a copy of my grandfather's service record, and the Allegheny County (PA) Historical Society to learn about his likely employment in the steel industry. It was all worthwhile, however, as I got a great number of leads to pursue, as well as reestablishing a number of family relationships.

In the words of Rocky Balboa, "Go for it!"

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