We found it! After many, many switchbacks and a few wrong turns, we finally made it to Roccasicura. This is the town that my maternal great grandmother was from. We only had her name and the name of her sister, we didn't know their parents' names or their exact birth dates, so we weren't sure what we would find - if anything. AMUC had t-shirts made that said 'We are looking for the Ciarlone family' on one side and 'We are looking for the Amoruso family' on the other. They wore their shirts on this day, and I have to confess that I was kind of shocked that they worked!
Consider yourself warned: this is a really long post :)
Once we found the town, we stopped on the outskirts to take a few pictures and just take in the view. It was unlike anything I'd seen before: the village was built on an outcropping of rock, and the clock tower was constructed around the outcropping, so it was a mix of natural rock and cut stone. The population was about 700.
We then made our way a little deeper into town and happened to hang a left. We walked down a narrow road that opened up into a small square. In this square, we were greeted by a dog, Chico, and his elderly owner. The man read our shirts and indicated that Ciarlones did live in the town. Fortunately, we also ran into an American (Stuart) who was staying in town with his wife (Anna). Anna's family was from the town and still had a house there, right on this square. The two of them were able to help us track down people who knew the history of families in the town. One of them was an older man named Antonio who couldn't help us without the names of our great grandmother's parents. We then decided to try the records in the municipal office at the top of the square. By the time we made this decision, we had a small group of folks gathering around to see what was going on.
In the municipal office, we met Antonia who extremely helpful. It turns out that she was born in Sommerville, Mass., which is where my grandparents met and got married, and also where I lived when I lived in Boston in 2001. She was actually probably a distant relative because she was also related to the Ciarlones. :) She was amazingly thorough in her research and we were able to find my great-grandmother's original hand-written birth record, her sister's birth record, and the birth record for another sister who died shortly after she was born. We found their parents' name and the street that they lived on, which was right around the corner. The house numbers had changed, but we took a walk on the street anyway.
After our little walk, we went into the church that was right next to the municipal building. After a few minutes of taking photos and exploring the church, one of the elderly ladies we had met earlier came in (Eva) and started explaining all of the stained glass windows to me - in Italian. They were pretty disappointed that we didn't speak Italian, and clearly my Czech was no help at all. For some reason every time I tried to say something like 'Yes, I understand', I would say it in Czech... and of course yes in Czech is 'no' or 'ano', which is obviously no in Italian. So then I'd try to stop myself from saying 'no' and then I'd say 'jo' instead, which is like saying yeah in Czech, then I'd try 'rozumim', which is also not Italian, and then eventually I'd get around to saying 'si', long after Eva had moved onto the next thing she wanted to say. :) Somehow, though, I managed to catch most of what she was saying.
The windows in the church were donated by the emigrants from this village, probably to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the wave of emigration that happened in the early 1900s. The first three windows depicted the emigrants leaving the village from this main square, their entrance into the US at Ellis Island, and the villagers that were left behind. The other windows were related to the church: evening prayers, the patron saints of the church (Leonardo and Giorgio), a depiction of the Madonna found nearby, the Madonna as a protector of the world, and a festival celebrating the Madonna with the a promenade of the depiction found nearby.
After our tour of the church, we grabbed a bite to eat and were invited in to Stuart and Anna's house for some espresso, biscuits, and a nice chat. They were so incredibly friendly and helpful, it was wonderful. We learned the story of their house in Roccasicura and their life back in the states.
Refreshed and incredibly happy with our findings, we did a little bit more wandering (I could have stayed here for days just to walk around, meet people, and take photos) and then headed to Campobasso, a nearby city to find a place to stay for the night. The place we found was reasonably priced and fairly kitschy. We had a tasty dinner there and a good night's sleep. In Campobasso, we encountered the second ATM that wouldn't work for Sam, and shortly afterward the first ATM that ate her card. She did manage to get it back, though!
More Europe? Visit my great grandfather's village in Ripabottoni, Italy or go back to where Europalooza 2012 all began, Villeta Barrea, Italy on day one.
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