Cosimo's Parents, Brothers, and Sisters

I've been going through the Alberobello marriage and birth records from 1866-1900 for about 2 weeks now. I've found quite a few people and am now at the point where I can't keep names and generations straight. I've gone back 5 generations now on the Bini side and know the names of my great-great-great grandparents (Giuseppe Bini and Cosma Lippolis) and I've gone back 6 generations on the Annese side and now know the names of my great-great-great-great grandfathers (Francesco Annese and Emanuele De Leonardis). I'm hoping to learn the names of their wives in a few weeks when my next batch of microfilm rolls in.

I found the marriage record for Pietro Bini and Antonia Annese almost immediately after beginning my search through the marriage records (1877-1900). They were married May 12, 1879, nearly 10 years before Cosimo was born. Their parents were listed as Giuseppe Bini and Cosma Lippolis (deceased) and Giuseppe Annese and Maria Dilonardo. Pietro was 30 and Antonia was 24 and both held the occupation of contadino(a), or farmer. Pietro was born in and a resident of Alberobello, his parents currently residing in Monopoli (Coreggia, perhaps?), while Antonia and her family were from and living in Alberobello. The record lists the dates that their marriage banns were announced in both Alberobello and Monopoli (*to be translated).

As expected, Cosimo didn't show up in the birth records in 1889 because, as I mentioned before, he apparently lived in Coreggia, which was part of Monopoli until 1895 when it then became a frazione of Alberobello. Because his brother Francesco was born in 1891 I expected him to be absent too, yet surprisingly enough, he was there. I don't know what that's all about. Maybe they moved out of Coreggia and back to the city of Alberobello... In 1895, their sister Maria Addolorata was born. In her ship record it is estimated that her year of birth was 1900, so I don't know if the record is 5 years off (most likely) or if the Maria born in 1895 died as an infant and they had another daughter around 1900 (I didn't find a Maria Addolorata Bini born in 1900 or any other year in between). I'm going to assume this is the correct Maria and that the ship record was inaccurate, like they generally tend to be. Because (what I believe to be) Cosimo's ship record indicates that he came to the US to be with his brother Giuseppe Bini, I half hoped to come across his birth record (I didn't), but seeing as he was most likely older than Cosimo and Cosimo was absent, Giuseppe will probably be in the Coreggia civil records also. No siblings were found before 1891 or after 1895.

Because Pietro and Antonia were married in 1879 and Cosimo wasn't born until 1889, it is probably safe to assume that they had 2-4 kids in between. Since I believe he may have had a brother Giuseppe and I now know that Pietro's (and Antonia's for that matter) father's name was Giuseppe, it is likely that their first born son was Giuseppe. Because naming traditions dictate that the first son be named after the father's father and the second be named after the mother's father and both fathers were named Giuseppe, I'm not sure what they would have named their second son. Until the Coreggia civil records arrive, I can only speculate. Perhaps Cosimo was named after his father's mother Cosma. Did he also have an older sister named Cosma? We know that Maria Addolorata was named for Antonia's mother, so it can be assumed that they had no more than one other daughter before her. Hopefully the Coreggia civil records will contain the missing Binis and I will get my answers in just a few more weeks.

Up next: tying in the other Binis and Anneses of Alberobello

Cosimo: What We Know and What We Think We Know

Facts

1. He was born January 6, 1889 (WWI draft, SSDI, obituaries) or January 7, 1889 (birth record on Coreggia microfilm)
2. His parents' names were Pietro Bini and Antonia Annese (birth, baptism, and marriage record)
3. He had an older brother named Giuseppe Bini (birth record on Coreggia microfilm) 
4. He had a younger brother named Francesco Bini (birth record on Alberobello microfilm)
5. He had a younger sister named Maria Addolorata Bini (birth record on Alberobello microfilm)
6. His paternal grandparents were Giuseppe Bini and Cosma Lippolis (Pietro and Antonia marriage record on microfilm)
7. His maternal grandparents were Giuseppe Annese and Maria De Leonardis (Pietro and Antonia marriage record on microfilm)
8. His paternal great grandparents were Pietro Bini (Cosma Laneve) and Michelangelo Lippolis (Apollonia Savino)
9. His maternal great grandparents were Francesco Annese (Palma Rosa Lippolis) and Emanuele De Leonardis (Antonia Pantaleo)
10. He was living in Utica by 1916 (Utica directory)
11. He married Angelina Giacovelli in Utica in 1917 (marriage record)
12. He moved to Johnstown in 1935 (Johnstown directory)

Stories

*names in parantheses indicate who the stories were told by (mainly my grandfather Joseph and his sister Betty)

1. He came over from Alberobello by himself when he was 16 years old (Joseph or Betty)
   -He may have been avoiding the draft (my assumption based on a section in Italian Genealogical Records by Trafford Cole)
2. He was born in 1885 (Joseph)
   *Disproved by birth and baptismal records
3. He and his father worked with horses, traveling frequently to Napoli (Joseph or Betty)
4. He had a brother who moved to Brazil (Joseph)
5. He had a sister who moved to California (Joseph)
   -Unlikely, as I am fairly certain now that Maria moved to and died in Endicott, NY
   -His son Phil has said that Maria moved to Endicott, NY with her husband and died during child birth
   -I did find Anthony Palmisano living in Endicott, a widower in 1925
   *Disproved in 2014 by Maria's death certificate in Barnesboro, PA
6. He had a sister who got pregnant on the ship to the US, upsetting a brother who was also on the ship...He then proceeded to kick her in the stomach, killing her? (Betty)
   -This story seems least likely, as my grandfather says Cosimo's sister moved to California with her husband (unless it is a different sister) and it doesn't seem possible that she could get pregnant and then find out she was pregnant on only a two week boat trip.
   -It's possible this sister is Maria Addolorata Bini who came over in 1921, however I did not find any other Binis traveling with her.
   -There may have been a brother Giuseppe who arrived in the US prior to 1906 and it is possible Cosimo had a sister who came over with Giuseppe but there is no record that Cosmo had an older sister.
   -I have speculated that there may be some truth to the story, as Maria Bini did come over at the same time as her future husband Antonio Palmisano. It is curious that they were married only 2 months after coming to the US. Did they already know each other? Did she get pregnant by him on the ship and married him shortly after because of this? Why not get married in Italy before coming to the US?
   *As of 7/10/21: I have found no evidence of any other siblings born between 1895-1900 (when online records cease), and assume this is a story made up/misinterpreted. Maria died during childbirth in June 1922, 11 months after her marriage, so there is no evidence she was pregnant when she came to the US (unless she miscarried and got pregnant again, but no way to confirm this)
7. He disliked his sister's husband, saying he was a mean, rotten man and blaming this on his sister's early death. (Joseph)
   -Seems to fit Maria Bini, as she appears to have died before 1925

Cosimo Bini Lives On

One of the things I've realized over the past few months is that, while looking through the same records multiple times may be time consuming, I generally seem to find new, important information each time that I didn't notice initially or didn't pay attention to before gaining some other new piece of information.

This summer I worked in a library, where I spent a lot of time reading fiction novels and playing on Facebook. About halfway through the summer, and I'm not really sure why, I began doing my genealogical research again. I had spent a little bit of time in the spring on FamilySearch.org, where I found a marriage record for Cosimo Bini and Angelina Giacovelli but not much else. I don't know what brought me back there but somehow I ended up at work searching for Binos and Binis on the older version of their site (their older version has limited information but contains names and birth dates and marriage dates for some individuals in Italy, while their new site contains mostly US information that Ancestry and Ellis Island have). Shockingly (I almost fell out of my chair), I found a birth date for a Frencesco Bini, son of Pietro Bini and Antonia Annese (the parents of Cosimo). I was ecstatic.

This tiny piece of information led to another full-blown obsession with my family history. I checked out about half a dozen books on Italian genealogy and researching Italian ancestors and spent the rest of my summer reading through them and learning about the history of Italy, the history of their record keeping, the various types of records I should investigate and how to interpret them, how to request records from Italy, and a number of other invaluable pieces of information. I signed up for another free trial at Ancestry using a different username and dove back into the world of records.

This time I had an excellent new resource at my disposal, a website containing PDFs of newspaper articles for Utica, NY and Johnstown, NY (where Cosimo and many of my other relatives lived) going back to before my relatives came to the US. I found a large number of articles pertaining to Cosimo/Charles Bino, particularly in regards to his restaurant business. While this still didn't take me back to Italy, I got to learn more about his life when he first settled in Utica and then moved to Johnstown. Using this site in conjunction with Ancestry and Ellis Island and FamilySearch I managed to find quite a few new people with the same surnames (Bini, Annese, Giacovelli) as my family (who may or may not be relatives - I'm in the process right now of ruling many of them out).

One of my favorite pieces of information I've found so far is from a ship manifest. In the spring I found a ship record for a Maria Annese going to Utica to stay with her cousin Cosmo Bini and wife in 1921, traveling with another cousin Maria Giuseppa Annese who was going to Utica to stay with a cousin Orazio Annese. Maria Annese just so happens to have married Angelo Antonio Giacovelli, the brother of Angelina Giacovelli, wife of Cosimo (this was already known to my family, though). I'm not sure how I missed this before, but I was on Ancestry searching for Binis for about the 100th time and I happened to come across the record of a Maria Addolorata Bini. When I saw who she was coming to the US to stay with my jaw dropped. It was the illusive Cosmo Bini. When I saw what year it was I was again startled. It was 1921. Did Cosimo not have a cousin Maria Annese who came to visit him in 1921, as well? I went back to her record and discovered it was the same ship! Their names were not listed on the same page (Maria Bini was 2 or 3 pages later, I'm still not sure why) but it would appear that they came over together. I then went searching for Maria Bini in the Utica newspapers and found her marriage announcement to an Antonio Palmisano only 2 months later. Naturally, I then searched for his immigration record and, low and behold, he was on the same ship, his name immediately under the cousins Maria Annese and Maria Giuseppa Annese! I had scanned over his name at least a dozen times when I was pouring over Maria Annese's record but never had any reason to associate him with the Anneses or Binis (he was heading to Pennsylvania, not Utica). But I'll talk more about Maria Bini in a later post. Back to Cosimo...

Something that had really been bothering me about Cosimo since the spring was his place of birth. I was always told he was from Alberobello. The record I found of his brother Francesco said his birth place was Alberobello. However, at the top of Cosimo's birth extract it says COMUNE DI MONOPOLI and a stamp at the bottom says the same. His baptismal certificate is also written on a Monopoli form. Now Monopoli is also in Bari, but it is some 20 miles away from Alberobello. I could not for the life of me understand what this meant. But upon careful inspection of his records I extracted some new information. Italian records are stored in volumes and this information is included in the extract. It indicates on his birth extract that his record was found in Part I, Series Coreggia. At first I was confused. What the heck is Coreggia? I tried Googling it but for whatever reason didn't come up with anything helpful. I then noticed that on his baptismal certificate it says that his record is found under Vol. Coreggia. There it was again. Now normally a number would be included here. So I again searched for it and, using some helpful information I had gained from one of my Italian books, I eventually found out that it is in fact a place. Further, it is a frazione, or parish/hamlet, of Alberobello. This REALLY threw me for a loop. Why on earth would Monopoli hold the civil records of Coreggia if it is a frazione of Alberobello?! It made no sense. Did something happen to Alberobello that Monopoli had to store their records? If so, wouldn't I have read something about that? I had been planning to write letters to Alberobello asking for civil records of the Binis, but now what? Do I request records from Monopoli? Would all the records for his family be this confusing or was he the only one of his family to be born there? (I still don't have a good answer for this.) However, after a lot of searching for Coreggia and avoiding Coreggia, I downloaded Google Translator and began searching through Italian websites for information about the pesky little frazione. Eventually I found a page, part of a website for Alberobello, about the history of Coreggia. Based on what I found, it would seem as though Coreggia was once a frazione of Monopoli, but in 1895 it officially became a frazione of Alberobello, instead. This cleared up a lot of my confusion. But it still didn't answer the question of where to send for civil records.

Instead of sending out letters and money to all the Comunes of Bari looking for Cosimo and his family (whom I didn't even know the names or birth dates of), I went on the FamilySearch website, found the microfilm numbers for Alberobello birth and marriage records, and finally ventured to the local Family History Center. I ordered 4 microfilms containing the birth and marriage records of Alberobello from 1866-1900 (fingers crossed that they would hold some valuable information and that I would be able to interpret them when they arrived). Two weeks later they were in and I got my first taste of post-unification Italian civil records...

Cosimo Bini and My Adventure into Genealogy

My great grandfather (my mother's father's father) Cosimo Bini (aka Charles Beno, Charles Bino, Cosimo Bino, Cosmo Bino, and Cosmo Bini) has been an illusive man with many aliases for quite some time now. My family seems to know very little about him, except that he came from Alberobello, Bari, Puglia, Italy. (My great aunt claims that he did not like to talk about himself, Italy, or his life there.) There were arguments about his year of birth among his children and while it is believed he had at least 2 siblings (a brother who immigrated to Brazil and a sister who went to California) no one seems to even know their names. It was claimed that he came here around the age of 16, but with no one being able to agree on his birth year, I have no idea whether this is accurate. Researching him has been a long and difficult process and I'm still not finished but the mystery that is my great grandfather has lead to my pronounced interest in genealogy and southern Italy.

When I became interested in the possibility of becoming an Italian citizen this past spring it required me to learn more about my great grandparents who immigrated here from Italy. The first step in my becoming an Italian citizen was to determine whether or not my great grandfather had been naturalized when he came to the United States. If he became a naturalized US citizen before my grandfather was born, he would have given up his Italian citizenship and, thus, the citizenship of his unborn children. If he was never naturalized, I would technically be an Italian citizen jure sanguinis, or "by the right of blood". For reasons still unclear to me, one cannot gain citizenship through their maternal side, so even if my great grandmother had not been naturalized and her husband had, I would not be able to apply for citizenship through my ancestry.

When my grandfather died he left us a wealth of documents, including some from his father Cosimo and his mother Angelina Giacovelli. My mother and I searched through every document we could find pertaining to Cosimo. We found a baptismal certificate (probably an extract, dated February 25, 1916) and a birth extract (dated May 22, 1957) that he requested from Italy for whatever reason (the baptismal certificate, perhaps was needed for his marriage in 1917) but that was all. In my research I found out that you can write a letter to the National Archives for a copy of an individual's naturalization record or lack thereof (in fact, it is one of the required documents for applying for citizenship), but I didn't feel like spending the money just yet. So my next step was to sign up for the free 14 day trial with Ancestry.com to see if I could find any interesting information there. This is where my obsession with learning my family history began.

I spent hours and hours every day on Ancestry trying to learn more about my family. It became overwhelming at times as I kept finding new people to add to my family tree (my mother's father's family, my mother's mother's family, my father's family, their husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, cousins, etc.) and frustrating at other times when I couldn't find information that I knew should be there, particularly for Cosimo, who changed his name a few times over the years and simply had his name misspelled in various ways by the census takers or whomever. Needless to say, after immersing myself in all this information for weeks and driving myself crazy, his naturalization papers materialized out of thin air (I still have no idea how we managed to overlook them multiple times...) and my dream of becoming an Italian citizen and getting a vacation home in Alberobello or Locorotondo came to a screeching halt. Shortly after, my free trial ended and, while I was happy with all of the information I had gained about what my family was up to after coming to the US, I still knew practically nothing new about Cosimo. During my initial subscription to Ancestry I found his WWI Draft Card, his name in the 1920 and 1930 Censuses, his name in the 1927 and 1932 Utica Directories, and a Social Security Death Index. I couldn't find his immigration record (although I did find another Cosmo Bini from Alberobello who was born in the same year, 1889) or anything else that would help me learn more about his life or family in Italy. Basically, I resigned myself to the fact that he seemed to be a pretty complicated fella and that to learn more about him I would need to venture out further than the laptop in my bedroom. My interest slowly dissipated and eventually I forgot about the whole messy genealogical situation...