Good morning to all!

It is a good thing I get up early. It was 4:00 am today. Received an email from the clerk in Lercara Friddi. She finally found not only my great grandfather Antonio's marriage to Angela in 1872 but also located my great grandmother's birth record.

Her father was Francesco Catalano and mother is Caterina Magro.

Now that all this has been found I can write to the Archives in Palermo to request Francesco and Caterina's birth records and hopefully gain more information.

The clerks in the Civil Records office in Lercara Friddi has been so wonderful in assisting me I can hardly believe it.

Just thought I would pass on the good news.

lilbees

WOW lilbees,
Now that's got to be worth a bit of dancing..... (just NOT bananas....)





Do keep us updated...

Thats wonderful!

Wow !! That's great.
Vincenza

I agree, thats wonderful!!

Congrats! That is wonderful news and thanks for sharing it with us. Whats your next step?

Thank you one and all. It is another waiting game until the birth records and the marriage record come in for Angela's parents from the Palermo Archives.

I have one Rescigno child to locate. I have the birth record but am searching for a record of her married family. I believe she went to France with what I believe to be her husband. Go figure, I always thought the name Helft was German in origin, but in this case, it is French.

I am also amazed as to the amount of children born to each family member. I have most of the records for each.

Would like to know a bit more about the Catalano side such as their professions, etc. At this point I know nothing about them.

I am still in disbelief as to what I have now. Wow!

Starting with myself and going back through each of my 4 main branches of family, I have been able to go back to 1750. If I want to acheve more I am going to need more records from Albania, Russia, Lithuania, Germany and Italy. On my in-laws side they are back to about 1610 but that involved England, Germany and the U.S. primarily.

Like many of you, being only 2nd generation American, there are not that many of us left in the US and the 1st generation has certainly passed on.

Again, thank you for all your kindnesses and assistance. Back to more research.

By the way, my eldest son thinks it is very important to write the various stories of my research and of our family. I have made a lot of research notes but am now trying to it all together is a reasonable format. If anyone has some good pointers let me know. I feel like him, I am not just collecting names and dates of my family. I hopefully have learned a bit about them and their lives.

lilbees

Great job lilbees!!! Did you ever think, when you first started researching, that you'd ever get this far?? It has to be an amazing feeling! Keep us posted on your progress.

Awesome..I am soooo happy for you. I have hit a brick wall that I just can't seem to break down but Riccardo is trying everything. Maybe, with any luck I can get as far as you. I am really happy..keep us posted.

If it wasn't for others working on different areas of various trees and finally all of us making connections in one way or another things just seemed to fall into place. Maybe someone had a document or informaiton which enabled so many to connect together. Coincidences such as naming patterns or learning the name of a wife in some instances may enough curious about a possible connection all that I have would never have happened. I others close to me pour over each forum we can find and googling a lot. Wondering how someone got from point A to point B.

My real expansion started with curiosity of another family who had immigrated to Chicago about the time my family did. Same names, etc. but were from Sicily. This is before I knew my family had lived in Sicily prior to going to Tunisia. The long shot of sending for records of a supposedly unrelated family that things rolling. The same thing with the US east coast family.

I know Riccardo always laughs about all the letters I write but in the end they really helped. As he and Luca have said, Patience!!

lilbees