Here we are, folks, nearly 10 years since my first post about the Bini family, and 10 years since I began my genealogy journey. I've continued to dabble in my family tree, but haven't devoted a lot of time to the Italian side in quite a while.
My great aunt Betty, youngest and last living child of Cosmo and Angelina Bino, died in November 2020. I don't know how many years it had been since I last talked to her, but I'm guessing it was sometime around 2014/2015. I apparently never shared it here, but in August 2012 she gave me a few old family photos from her collection. They were mostly photos of her and her siblings as children, their parents (Cosmo and Angelina), and great grandparents (Filippo and Comasia Giacovelli). She did not want to part with any of the rest of her photos, and I remember her telling me that I could have them when she died, that she didn't know who most of the people were, and she couldn't bear to look at them all because they made her depressed. I think I tried a few times to get more photos from her, but she eventually stopped answering my phone calls and that was that. Unfortunately for the family, she left everything she owned to a friend, and we never had an opportunity to go through her possessions to see if there was anything of sentimental value that the family might want. My only request to the friend was to please give me the family photos that I had been dying (poor choice of words?) to see for years. Last Saturday, my mother finally heard from the friend, and she met with her to get what little my aunt left to her family. There was a large box of photos (YAY!), a few needlepoints of Locorotondo done by my great grandmother, some paintings done by family members, and a bag of sympathy cards from when my great grandparents died. Betty had labeled all of these boxes/bags to give to my mother. I try hard not to wonder what could have been left behind that she did not label. Were there more photo albums that her friend just threw away? Items from Italy that had belonged to my great grandparents, or great great grandparents? I am trying to just be satisfied with what we did receive. But I wish we'd had a chance to see everything she left behind.
But on to the point! The photos I received have consumed me day and night for the past week. I've seen so many pictures of my great grandparents and my grandfather's siblings, and plenty of unknown people who I've been trying tirelessly to identify. I'm shocked by how many photos she had that have probably been sitting in boxes since my great grandmother died in the 80s (or maybe longer). Why she never wanted to share these with my mom and I I'll never know. I wonder how my genealogy journey may have been different if I'd seen them 10 years ago. I wonder what she'd say if she were here to see me identify all of these unknown relatives that she'd wondered about, or if I told her I'd finally found what happened to her uncle Giuseppe.
My mom and I spent an entire day going through all of the photos, sorting them by sibling so that she can give her cousins all of the photos of their parents, and then sorting out all of the aunts, uncles, cousins, and mysteries. Over the next few days I worked on re-organizing them, trying to group photos that looked like they contained the same people, and reading the backs of the photos for any clues. We had a mix of those big family photos that are pasted on a cardboard frame (mostly weddings), postcard photos, and the ones with the white boarders and deckle edges. I also read every sympathy card (there had to be over 100), hoping to find one from a relative in Italy, but no luck.
Then I found a scrap of paper, folded up and tucked in an envelope with photos of some random cousins I'd heard of, but never met. My mom recognized the handwriting and paper. It was my grandfather's, written on a piece of paper from his 1972 General Electric Log Book. I went digging through all of the stuff I have of my grandfather's and found the log book. Sure enough, the May 28 page was missing, along with the previous page. I'm not sure what happened to that page, but I can make out the faint impression of writing on the page before. Unfortunately, I can't figure out what it says. (Any forensic experts out there?) But this torn out page was full of useful information. As I mentioned in one of my first entries, my mom remembered my grandfather telling her that Cosmo had a brother who went to Brazil or Argentina, and a sister who went to California. She knew nothing about a second brother. By the time I began this genealogy journey, my grandfather had been gone for 3 years, so we couldn't ask him to confirm anything, and who knows how accurate my mom's memories were. But this piece of paper, this shows that my grandfather knew a lot more than my mom thought.
Dad had 2 brothers
1) Frank to Brazil
2) Joseph Bini: had 1 boy - Peter, 2 girls
Came before Dad - brought Dad - then went back when Dad 16
Aunt Mary (in Italy)
3) Sister - to Penna
- Cosmo did have 2 brothers and 1 sister.
- I found that Giuseppe did come to the US before Cosmo, and that his sister went to Pennsylvania.
- I was never able to find a trace of Giuseppe in the US, aside from Cosmo's ship manifest, so it makes sense that he went back to Italy.
- Cosmo was 17 when he came to the US, so the part about Giuseppe going back to Italy when Cosmo was 16 appears inaccurate, but probably not far off.
- I'm not sure what exactly "Aunt Mary (in Italy)" means. Is this Cosmo's sister Maria, who came to the US, or the wife of Giuseppe? It's written under #2, so I'm leaning towards this being Giuseppe's wife.
- I've never found any proof of Francesco going to Brazil, but I can only assume that it is accurate, since the rest of the information appears to be.
- The part about Giuseppe having 3 children was particularly intriguing.
No comments:
Post a Comment