We just returned from our outing with our friends from Paduli and I met a man who knew of my great grandfather's family. He knew that he was from a family of 7 brothers (new information for me). Just had to share...I am excited to find out more tommorrow!

That's great!! I can't wait to hear what you find out!!

Wow! Good for you, Lori. I can't wait to hear more too.

How can we help?

Wow!!

Hey that's so cool....
Have you searched any on this? Let me know what you find.

I am just settling in at work and will write more on this later. However, the man knew that my family were blacksmiths and bricklayers, which is consistent with what my great grandfather's birth act said. Unfortunately, the language barrier prevented me from finding out too much else, other than that the family is now big and scattered, but that he knows two branches of it. So, I made him an envelope with my family tree and I labeled in Italian who were the blacksmiths and who were the bricklayers in the old country. I also gave him a copy of my great grandfather's birth act and some family pics labeled in Italian (not that they will recognize anyone, but just so they see what we look like). Several people said that my dad looked like a family member of one of those branches.

P.S. I also met a relative of the woman who issue the copies of the birth acts from the Ufficio Stato Civile. *Can we say networking?*

Well, that could come in handy! Isn't that a stroke of luck!