One thing that I have found is that once you have some reliable information, there are other people doing very similar research. Since I knew the birthplaces of my grandparents, I would look for similar names from my family. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents followed the traditional Italian naming conventions. The first male was named after the paternal grandfather, the first daughter after the maternal grandmother. The second daughter was named after the paternal grandmother and the second son after the maternal grandmother. We had a lot of Luigi’s and Franks.
As my dad’s grandfather was Nicola Piromallo, which is not very common, I looked for Piromallo’s in Cercola, Naples, Sorrento and Caserta. If I came upon some one named Nicola, I would give it a shot. I found a couple of dozen 4th cousins that way. You will be surprised, in that you can often see family resemblance.
Updated 11/26/2021
About a month ago, with the help of my fourth cousin Cinzia Piromallo, who started a group with the family name, I found my second cousin Roberto. I knew that there was a relationship, but I was never able to confirm his grandfather Enrico. This took 12 years!
Cinzia, expected to find cousins in Spain or South America, but had no idea that there was family in the USA.
Updated 8/3/2022
One of the most amazing things that happened this year was being contacted by dad’s first cousin Nicola Di Paolo, who is several years younger than me. My great-grandfather was his grandfather. How is that possible you ask?
Well, my great-grandmother passed away in 1902 at the age of 41. In 1913, my great-grandfather Nicola Piromallo remarried to a woman half his age Rosa Cautiere, in fact, she was only six months older than my grandmother. She had a daughter Emilia in 1919 and another daughter Anna in 1921, who was 2 years older than my dad. Nicola is one of her sons. Making him my father’s first cousin and me his first cousin once removed.
I had been in contact with his nephew for years, but was unaware of Nicola. In any event, about three months before our trip he contacted me on Facebook. So we got to meet face to face this past June. But, wait, it gets even better. We met with some other family members for lunch and he said that he would meet us at the cemetery when we went on the following Tuesday and that he wanted to take us to Torre del Greco. I knew this town outside of Naples because my dad had mentioned something about family there 40 years ago.
Nicola brought us to an apartment building and as we climbed the stairs he told us to wait a minute. He went up and we heard a lot of Italian going back and forth. Finally, he told us tom come up and we were met by three women, all in their 90’s! The were my dad’s first cousins from my grandmother’s youngest brother Giovanni.
What really blew me away was when Zia Ida pulled out my mom and dad’s wedding photo from 1944 with my grandmother’s hand written message on the back. Besides photos of my aunts and cousins, they even knew the gossip from 60 years ago.
Since then, Nicola has sent me photos that my grandmother sent her father in the early 1900’s
Another recent find on Facebook was finding a fourth cousin from my grandmother’s mother, Emilia Caracciolo. I have been following Carlo Raso for about a year as he has several groups that deal with Italian roots and nobility on Facebook. One day he put up a post on Luigi Caracciolo, I had a Raso in my tree, but never made the connection. We finally were able to put it together.
