Mezzojuso Heritage Pages

	Discovering Our Mezzojuso Ancestry & Heritage
	Article by Anthony Schiró

Music: "Con il Cuore"- by Massimo Di Cataldo

Anthony Schiró - - - E-mail: tschiro@scn.org

"Mezzojuso Memories: Researching My Ancestry";

written on 26 October 1997.

 

 

Except for a brief stay when he was one year old, my father never saw the town where his ancestors had lived, as I now know, for hundreds of years. Yet, he must have mentioned it to me more than once as I was growing up, for many years later, I can still hear him pronouncing its name, "Medz-ah-YOOZ", and explaining that it meant "half-way down," because it was built on the side of a high mountain. (Many years later, I learned that that was not the derivation of the name at all. But his explanation created such a strong impression, and, judging by photos of the town, is so apt, that I enjoy recalling it, anyway.) I never saw the name written, and my paternal grandparents, who had grown up there, never spoke to me about the place. My only knowledge of it was the strange-sounding, possibly mis-heard, name: "Medz-ah-YOOZ".

For many years, I didn't think about the town. My teens, twenties, and thirties were taken up by more urgent concerns, especially that of fitting in with my "American" environment and friends. I didn't - and preferred not to - think about my Italian, much less my Sicilian, roots. Only in the twilight of my forties, after my father and mother had both died, did it begin to seem that researching those roots might be worthwhile. That strange-sounding name came back to me, and I wondered whether there really was such a place, and whether it really was the home of my Sicilian ancestors.

 

 

 

 

Browsing in the genealogy section at the public library, I found an old gazetteer. Under M, there it was: "Mezzojuso", as the official sources spell it. Just seeing the name in print was like a bolt from the blue, confirming that the odd-sounding syllables that had persisted in my memory had a reality on a far-away island intimately bound up with my own origins.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Around the same time, I discovered on-line genealogy bulletin boards and made the acquaintance of a number of remarkable and generous people researching their Italian roots.

 

 

 

 

One of them was named John Cusimano. He was the first to open my eyes to the Arberesh villages and the heritage of Sicily. One of the milestones in my search was the day that he sent me copies of the telephone directory listings for the town of Mezzojuso. In these listings I had my first encounter with my surname, Schiró, spelled with an accent over the "o." Just seeing that and the town's other surnames excited me beyond reason. Later, the directory proved invaluable in deciphering unfamiliar names found in the civil records.

 

 

In early January, 1993, I made a fateful trip to a nearby Family History Center (maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the Mormons) to see whether, by chance, the genealogical Locality Catalog made any mention of my obscure little town. To my amazement, the catalog listed seventeen rolls of microfilmed records for Mezzojuso! Sure that I must be dreaming, I ordered two rolls of film, one of births and one tantalizingly called "Memorandum." When the microfilms arrived, I rushed to examine them. The "Memoranda" seemed to be marriage banns, but they proved to be too much for my inexperienced eyes and minimal Italian. I turned to the birth records, "Atti di nascita," with greater success. For one thing, I was fortunate to start with years (1859-1860) in which the births were recorded on pre-printed forms and indexed alphabetically. There were several Schirò births in the first year I checked. I was immediately hooked on the pursuit of possible ancestors in these records.

Reading the microfilmed records presented many challenges: the peculiarities of Italian orthography, poor and/or inconsistent handwriting styles, water-damaged or, worse, missing pages (even missing years).... But the joy and excitement each time I found a possible ancestor (or even a friend or acquaintance of a possible ancestor!) made the effort and difficulties seem worthwhile.

At first, the puzzles were numerous. What was that letter that looked like a large bird taking flight? (It turned out to be the letter "R.") Is that number actually a 2, a 7, a 4 or a 1? (I'm still not always sure...) Is this child's name Giuseppe or Giuseppa? Sometimes even the most obvious surname, my own, was camouflaged by the clerks' habit of writing its initial letter as simply a diagonal slash, rather than a clear "S."

 

 

 

 

The longer I worked on the microfilms, the more I felt as if I "knew" those families and the town of Mezzojuso of 135-175 years ago. The native surnames became so familiar that at some point I realized that I almost always could tell from a person's name whether he or she was a resident of Mezzojuso or one of its outlying frazioni, or an "out of towner." For example, the surname Perniciaro is quite common in Mezzojuso, but the name Pernice is not. The latter always, in my experience, indicated a resident of Fitalia (officially, Campofelice di Fitalia), a frazione of Mezzojuso at that time. Certain names I encountered were so unusual (e.g., Don Sigismondo Xhanino) that they stuck in my memory and made me wonder about the lives of their possessors and their families.

Donna Mariana Battaglia (in the portrait above) and her husband Don Calogero Maria Schirós

founded the school that is called Il Collegio di Maria in the early 1800s in Mezzojuso.

Days and months at the microfilm reader became years, and I came to feel so close to the lives of those mid-19th Century townspeople of Mezzojuso that I could not suppress a happy smile when I found the birth records of twins (even triplets once), or concern when I encountered "projetti", illegitimate children whose births were attested by the custodian of the "ruota".

		MEZZOJUSO CIVIL RECORD: Atto di Nascita -- Act of Birth
		This is the Civil Birth Record written on 22 September 1830 (birth number 132 for that year), in regard to an abandoned female child, that was thus given the name of Maria Concetta Projetta. Her parents and relatives were unknown, as noted on page 1 (first column, line 15): she was therefore declared of "ignoti parenti".
		The mayor ("sindaco") of Mezzojuso at that time was Tommaso Dimarco, who certified this public record, and whose name appears on page 1 (in the first column - municipal declaration, line 5; and at the end of the second column - baptismal declaration), as well as at the end of page 2 (declaration of witnesses).
		The main presentor (page 1, column 1, line 9) and the chief witness (page 2, line 10) -- on behalf of this abandoned female infant -- was Mezzojuso's official midwife ("la mammana"), Domenica Maddi (age 53), who with her husband Francesco Maddi, directed the comune's orphanage. The "ruota" or 'wheel', that collected Mezzojuso's abandoned children since 1783, was at the Vicaress convent near the Collegio di Maria. Signora Maddi possibly knew the actual birth mother of Maria Concetta Projetta, and probably took this infant for her baptism at one of Mezzojuso's churches (undisclosed).

I remember well the most difficult week I spent on this research trudging through the death records of the terrible year 1837. There were more than twice the usual number of death records during that year, probably due to an epidemic of cholera that swept through Sicily at that time. I felt a great sense of relief when I finished with that year and went on to 1838. That one year gave me a sense of how hard and precarious life was for my ancestors.

 

 

I have now finished my first look at the town of Mezzojuso's birth, marriage, and death records. The extracted records now constitute a sizable database. I'm nowhere near done yet. There are still the Memoranda, the Allegati, the Riveli ... You can see the fruits of my genealogical research on my home page, "Domani ... ".

 

 

	"Domani ..." -- by Anthony Schiró
	http://www.users.uswest.net/~tschiro

Tony's writings are about his paternal ancestry from Mezzojuso (in the Palermo province) and his maternal ancestry from Pietragalla (in the Potenza province). This terrific website also features a beautiful photo tour of Mezzojuso, extensive extracts from the Mormon's Family History Center microfilms on Mezzojuso births-marriages-deaths (1820-1860), and the 1891 "Utopia" shipwreck at Gibraltar (when Tony's great-grandfather from Mezzojuso perished).

 

For the time being, however, I've left off my father's home-town of Mezzojuso (in the Palermo province within the region of Sicily) to research the long-awaited microfilms from my mother's home-town of Pietragalla (in the Potenza province within the region of Basilicata).

At some point I will return to the Mezzojuso records. I know my first glance at the first Mezzojuso microfilm will feel like a homecoming. Some day, with luck, I hope to actually set foot in the little town of Mezzojuso, "half-way down" the mountain. I'm sure that, when I do, many of the people I meet will seem familiar: after all, I've followed the lives of many of their ancestors from birth to death.

Saluti,

Tony Schiró

Discovering Our Mezzojuso Ancestry & Heritage

 

Blackburn, Mollye Bilao - - - "A Little of My Family History, and My Visit to Mezzojuso"; written on 20 April 1997. - - - "Cucidate: Fig Cookies for Christmas, A Mezzojuso Recipe"; written on 15 December 1997.

Briggs, Thomas - - - "My Family and I Visit Mezzojuso (during July, 1990)"; written shortly after the visit, and updated on 26 October 1997.

Cusimano, John - - - "My Trip to Mezzojuso (in the Province of Palermo)"; written on 7 November 1994.

De Angelo, Thomas - - - "My 'Discovery' of Mezzojuso"; written on 29 November 1999.

Di Stefano, Richard - - - "My Mezzojuso Immigrant Ancestors (Who Arrived in the U.S.A. in 1890)"; written on 1 November 1997.

Dunne, Laura Cutaia - - - "Genealogical Research on My Family from Campofelice di Fitalia"; written on 25 March 1999.

Frasca, Anthony - - - "Our Mezzojuso Reunion"; written on 10 May 1999.

Gallo, Frank - - - "Coincidence or Destiny? An Amazing Surprise during My Mezzojuso Research"; written on 29 April 1998.

Lagattuta, Salvatore Joseph - - - "My Family History from Mezzojuso"; written on 8 October 1999.

Lagattuta, Salvatore Joseph - - - "Remembrance of Visiting Mezzojuso (during the Summer of 1969)"; written on 26 April 1997.

Schiró, Anthony - - - "Mezzojuso Memories: Researching My Ancestry"; written on 26 October 1997.

Tavolacci, Giovanni - - - "I Soldati Garibaldini da Mezzojuso nel 1860" - "Garibaldi's Soldiers from Mezzojuso in 1860"; written on 12 April 1999. - - - "Campofelice di Fitalia e Mezzojuso" - "Campofelice di Fitalia and Mezzojuso"; written on 12 April 1999.

 

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