Вінок (Vinok)

A Вінок (Vinok), or Ukrainian wreath or flower crown, is traditionally worn by girls and unmarried women at festivals, on holy days, and during their wedding ceremony. Originally it was made by weaving together grasses and flowers (fresh, paper, or waxen) and decorated with bright ribbons.  Each flower had a symbolic meaning – roses for love, lilies for purity and innocence, daises for peace and tenderness, and sunflowers for faithfulness and loyalty. The types of herbs and grasses used as well as the colors of the ribbons all had distinct symbolism. During the Kupalo festival, a pagan holiday which marks the end of the summer solstice, young women would place their wreaths in the water with a lighted candle.  If the wreath floated it would float towards the man they would marry (or sometimes a man would retrieve the wreath in the hopes of winning the young woman’s affection).  If the vinok stayed in one place, the woman would never marry. If either the candle blew out or the wreath sank, she would suffer misfortune or even death.

Rachkov, Nikolay. (bef 1895). Ukrainian Girl [Painting].  Chernigov Museum, Ukraine. Digital image. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ukrainian_girl_by_Nikolay_Rachkov_(2nd_half_19_c.,_Chernigov_museum).jpg

Today, the vinok has become a symbol of Ukrainian pride and often women will wear them in everyday life.  I noticed on Facebook, a number of genealogists of Ukrainian descent making their own vinok and displaying them on their front doors or gates as a symbol of Ukrainian pride and support of the Ukrainian people during this war.  For approximately $30, I was able to design my own vinok from materials found at Michaels, Amazon, and Walmart.  I am not a crafty or creative person, but after a few hours and burning my fingers several times with a hot glue gun, I managed to piece together a beautiful wreath which I am proudly displaying on my gate.

Have you made any crafts lately that is unique to your ancestry, or have you displayed or shared your family history in a creative way?  If so, please send me your ideas and photos.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2017/10/06/the-ukrainian-wreath-interweaving-beauty-and-tradition/

https://www.postmarkukraine.com/post/traditions-wedding-vinok

https://natgeotraveller.in/spectacular-flower-crowns-rule-in-ukraine/

We Arrived - Civitanova Marche

L'Aeroporto di Ancona-Falconara was small, but really convenient.  There was only one baggage claim and the rental car kiosk was right past security.  Having a GPS in this area is a must.  I purchased a Garmin Italy maps SD card and brought my GPS from home.  The toll road was easy, but as soon as I took the exit to Civitanova Marche, it was one traffic circle after another.  

Standard B&B

We are staying at the Standard B&B on Corsa Dalmazia.  It is a three room B&B right in the heart of town.  For dinner we ate crescia (Umbrian cheese bread sandwich) at B.A.C. Cresceria a couple of blocks from the B&B.  My sandwich had prosciutto, mozzarella, tomato, and a hint of lemon. 

Letizia one of the owners of the B&B made us a delicious breakfast.  We ate so much that we did not eat lunch.

After breakfast we headed to the beach and the port which was only a few blocks away.

After the beach we attended mass at San Pietro Apostolo in Piazza XX Settembre (the main square). This was the church my great grandparents were married in 1914.  It was built in 1841 and was the only church in Civitanova Marche for a long time, so it is likely that generations of my family were married in that church.

Outside the church in Piazza XX Settembre there was an outdoor market.  I bought a couple small souvenirs for my daughters and my mom and sister.

After the market.  We visited the last address my grandfather lived at prior to immigrating to the United States.  I found the address on the family's Italian identity cards.

Via Cesare Battisti, 55, Civitanova Marche

After all that walking, we decided to treat ourselves to a little gelato - yum!

On Sunday afternoons, the main street, Corso Umberto 1, closes to traffic and the locals walk up and down the street and window shop.  There are a lot of young children riding their bikes and teenagers on skates.  A few shops are open, but mainly it is a chance for the residents to socialize.  Since we wanted to do what the locals do, we walked for a couple hours up and down the main road.

For dinner, we went out for pizza to Il Segreto di Pucinella on Via Regina Elena.

Finally, we had some take out dessert from Pasticceria Bar on Corso Umberto 1. My desert was layered with three different types of cream - pudding, whipped cream, then a stiff meringue on top.

Very excited to meet up tomorrow with the genealogist I hired to help me research my Cacarozzo line in Fermo.  

My Long Awaited Adventure

I am sitting at the Denver airport waiting for my overseas flight to Italy.  My paternal grandfather’s family is from the Le Marche region of Italy.  Most people have never heard of it.  In fact, it is one of the least visited areas by American tourists.

Le Marche, is a region in eastern Italy between Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea.  Le Marche is divided into five provinces: Ancona, Pesaro, Urbino, Ascoli Piceno, Fermo and Macerata.  The largest town is Ancona and it houses the regions airport and it is home to the second largest Italian port on the Adriatic Sea.  The region boasts several beach side towns that draw many Italian vacationers in the summer months.

My great-grandfather, Mariano Cacarozzo, was born in the city of Fermo, which was back then a town in the Ascoli Piceno province, in August 1888.  His only sibling that I am aware of, was his sister, Adelina, who was born in 1893 in S’Elpidio a Mare, another small town in the region.  Mariano died long before I was born.  Growing up I do not recall any family members mentioning he had a sister.  I knew that he and my great grandmother, Emelia Pierluca, were married in 1914 and I knew that they immigrated from Porto Civitanova or now called Civitanova Marche .  When I started to delve in to genealogy and I found out about the free website Family Search, I discovered that the most the civil records from Civitanova from 1860s to the 1920s were on that website.  They have not been indexed, so they are not searchable, but you are able to browse the records here.  I browsed the marriage records for Civitanova for the entire year of 1914 and that is how I discovered Mariano had a sister named Adelina. 

Here is a photo of Mariano, his wife Emelia, and his first child Nella in 1915.

I asked my Uncle Lou whether he had remembered if his father had a sister named Adelina, since he lived in Civitanova until he was approximately 13 years old.  He did remember her and he believed that his siblings and parents lived in one house, his grandparents next to them, and Adelina’s family lived on the end.  He said although the homes were connected to each other they lived in separate homes.

I now know the exact location of where they lived in Italy.  Luckily, my uncle and my grandfather saved their identification cards which lists the address they were living at when they were issued.  Google maps show that there are still three homes right next to each other at that location.  I cannot wait to check them out in person.

55 Cesare Battisti, Civitanova Marche, where my grandfather lived in Italy.

The reason why I have anxiously been awaiting this trip, is because I exhausted my research in the United States.  I successfully requested a couple documents from the local town archives and my grandfather’s military records from the state archives by email.  However, I made additional requests and my requests have gone unanswered for years.

There is a major mystery as to my family’s surname.  Supposedly our true name was Pietracci and the family lore was that my grandfather changed his name to Caccarozzo prior to immigrating to the United States.  In my research, I found on Mariano’s birth record, his father’s name was listed as Raphaele Cacarozzo detto Pietracci.  So there is some connection to the Pietracci name.  It could be a nickname, or maybe he was a foundling, I am not sure, but I really want to know if any of the stories I heard as a child were true.

Since I exhausted my available research that I can do from the United States, I needed to either hire a professional or go there in person.  I decided to do both.  I hired a professional genealogists through the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG).  I asked her to help me get over my speed bumps, local any living relatives, and assist me gaining access to the various archives in that region to research on my own.   

I know I will not find out answers to all of my questions, but I know I will be cherishing every minute of walking in my ancestors footsteps this week.

Miss you Grandma!

It is always tough to lose a loved one, especially so close to the holidays. My grandmother Mary Ann Melnick died on December 18, 2016. We laid my grandmother to rest on December 22, 2016 next to my grandfather, Joseph.

Mary Ann was born on February 4, 1931, the youngest of five children. She was not the youngest by much, she had a twin sister, Helen. She had three older brothers, Arseny, Alexander, and John. Her father, Arseny Melnick, a native of Staraya Ushitsa, which is now present-day Ukraine, immigrated to the United States in 1916. Her mother, Rose Patek, a native of Cajla, Pezinok, Slovakia, immigrated in 1920. Her father, Arseny, died when she was only eighteen months old.

Mary Ann's mother, Rose, never remarried. All the kids helped to contribute, including Mary Ann and Helen. By age twelve, they became the first female news carriers for the Youngstown Vindicator. Since, girls were not allowed to be newspaper carriers at that time, they worked under their older brothers name.

The family lived very frugally and Rose also sent money home to her mother in Pezinok, Slovakia. The money sent to Slovakia allowed the family there to live a bit more comfortably, buy allowing them to buy a second home which they rented out for additional income.

In 1949, Mary Ann graduated from The Rayon School and went on to attend two years of college. During the Youngstown bus strike, she met my grandfather, Joseph. Mary Ann and her sister were dropped off at Idora Park Ballroom. In those days, the Ballroom was the place to be; however, when they got there the place was practically empty due to the bus strike. Mary Ann turned around to leave when a Youngstown patrolman stopped her and convinced her to stay, saying you never know, you may meet your future husband here tonight. Well she stayed, Joseph asked her to dance, and they danced the night away.

On June 16, 1951, Joseph and Mary Ann married at St. Patrick's Church in Youngstown, Ohio.

Mary Ann worked as a pharmacy technician at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown up until she was seven months pregnant with her first child. My father was born just over a year after their marriage. His younger sister was born ten years later.

Mary Ann devoted her life to her children and her family. She was an amazing cook and seamstress. She was a loving mother, aunt, great-aunt, great-great aunt, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother.

Joseph, her husband of 45 years, died on June 22, 1996.  She continued to live independently for another thirteen years until she moved into an assisted living facility.

I am so grateful that I had so many years to spend with my grandmother. I started researching my family history in 2010. Unfortunately, my three other grandparents died by the time I was eighteen - about 20 years ago. Long before I was interested in recording their stories.

When I heard the news, I had a good cry and a good soak in my tub. Then I decided to go through all the photos and create a photo slide show for the funeral. I was still sad but the process of scanning, editing, and labeling the photos was therapeutic for me. I saw most of the photos previously, but this time I really looked at them. I realized what a long and fulfilling life my grandmother had. Her family was her life and it showed in all of her pictures.

I am also blessed to have some audio recordings of my grandmother. I did not have the opportunity to interview my other grandparents. Much of my adult life I have lived across the country from where I grew up, which is also where my grandmother lived. Every time I came home for a visit, I would try to have a list of questions to ask her or photographs for her to identify. I made sure not to overwhelm her with questions. I also wanted to just enjoy our time together.

If you perform a Google search you will find a lot of sample questions to use to conduct oral interviews of family members. The most comprehensive list that I have found is located in the book, Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy, by Sunny Jane Morton. I highly encourage you to interview as many relatives as you can and answer the questions yourself. Everyone has a story to tell.

I will miss you Grandma!  Thank you for all the love and support you have given me through the years.  I especially appreciate you being so supportive of my genealogy research and even agreeing to multiple DNA tests.  I love you!

навчання українською мовою

This fall I decided to register for Ukrainian classes through the University of Arizona's Critical Languages Program.  The University offers traditional language courses for the community, but they also offer small group or individual tutoring sessions for members of the public.  This semester, the University is offering the following languages:

Cantonese, Chechen, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Modern Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Norwegian, Polish, Scots-Gaelic, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

I am meeting with Oksana Lisetska, who by the way is a fabulous tutor, once a week.  The University also produces its own interactive language software.  The Ukrainian language is very challenging, just like I thought it would be, but I am also pleasantly surprised that I am actually retaining a lot of what I learn.

Why Ukrainian?

My great-grandfather Arseny Melnik was born on February 28, 1895 in Stara Ushitsia, Khmelnitskiy, Ukraine.  His parents were Stah Melnik and Marja Jaroshevska. On June 11, 1912 he traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  I have not yet found any information on what he did during his three plus years in Canada.  On January 29, 1916 he arrived in the United States through the Port of Entry in Buffalo, New York.  He indicated upon his arrival that he was to join his cousin, Isidor.  His daughter my grandmother, told me that her father had a cousin which they called вуйко for uncle, but she did not know his true name.  Possibly вуйко could be Isidor?

Arseny married my great-grandmother, Rose Patek, around 1925.  Rose was also a recent immigrant from Slovakia.  So far I have not been able to locate a marriage record either in the civil marriage records for Mahoning County or church records. Supposedly they married at a Russian Orthodox church located on Arlington Road in Youngstown, Ohio.  The church was torn down many many years ago.  My aunt, Olga, suggested that I try the Nativity of Christ Orthodox Church in Youngstown.  She said that my great grandmother Rose also made something that was hanging on the wall near the front of the church.  I left a message and the priest personally called me back. He had recently transferred to the parish and he said that he could not find their marriage record.  He said the records were in disarray, so that did not mean the church did not have the records.  He told me he believed that my great-grandmother had sewn a burial shroud that was still hanging in the front of the church.  I stopped by the church while I was in Ohio last month, but unfortunately, it was closed at the time.  I hope to stop by when I am in town again next summer.

Arseny and Rose had five children - Arseny, Alexander, John, and twins Helen and Mary.  He worked at a steel plant in Youngstown, Ohio like many other recent immigrants.  Arseny naturalized on February 2, 1928.  He died on August 30, 1932 at the age of 37.  His youngest children, the twins, were only 16 months old at the time.  This photo is both amazing and heartbreaking at the same time. This was a photo taken at Arseny's funeral.  My grandmother is the little blond girl in her mother's arms behind the casket.

My grandmother has no memory of her father.  Arseny's wife Rose, raised her kids alone.  She raised them Roman Catholic and passed down some Slovak traditions.  I do not recall any Ukrainian traditions being passed down in the family. However, my extended family did keep in touch with some relatives that remained in Ukraine.  Last year, I had the privilege of meeting my third cousin who lives on the East Coast.  He immigrated from Ukraine to the United States several years ago.  I had a wonderful time exchanging old photos and stories.  He is approximately the same age as me and we both have kids of similar ages.

When I started working on my family genealogy six years ago I did not know much about my Ukrainian roots.  Now, after learning some of the language, speaking to my relatives, and reading about the history of the region, I feel much more connected to my roots.  I hope to continue to become more proficient in the language and someday visit my great-grandfather's hometown.  

Who is the barber?

In July 2014, on one of my trips home to Ohio, my mom's first cousin, Noel, gave me an envelope of old pictures that supposedly belonged to my great grandparents Nick Volpe and Rose Apone.  One or two photos were marked, but the majority of them were not.  One intriguing photo was a picture of a young Italian barber.  I did not recall any family members ever having an occupation of a barber.  I scanned the photo and emailed a few relatives to see if they could identify him and unfortunately they could not.

Then one day as I was reviewing my family tree online on Ancestry.com, I noticed there was a gap or lack of information on the Carano family.  Nick's sister, Angeline married Andrew Carrano January 26, 1907 in Agropoli, Salerno, Campania, Italy.  On May 25, 1912 she immigrated to the United States through Ellis Island with her three year old son and joined her husband who had previously immigrated a couple years before in New Alexandria, Westmoreland, Pennsylvania.  I have not found a death record yet, but I believe this son died at a young age, because I could not find any reference to him after his arrival.

I did not realize that Andrew and Angeline had another son until Ancestry added the database - Pennsylvania Veteran Compensation Application Files, WWII, 1950-1966.  On this database I found an application for Constabil Rudolph Carrano with a date of birth as June 4, 1913.  On the application he listed his parents, wife, and children.  I researched Constabil a little further and found him listed on Find A Grave.  Not only did it have a picture of his headstone but someone also attached his obituary.  BINGO - It listed he was a barber for the past 70 years in East McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

So could Constabil Rudolph "Speedy" Carrano be my mysterious barber?

I found someone on Ancestry.com that had Constabil Carrano in their family tree.  Lucky for me that person responded and told me he was the son of Constabil.  I emailed him the picture of my mysterious barber and he confirmed it was a photo of his father as a young man.  He said his father began cutting hair at age eleven and continued until he was 89!  He had never seen that picture before.  I am so glad I was able to figure out the mysterious barber picture and share it with his family.  I will keep working on the rest of the stack...