Sicilian Family Search
Aspra, Bagheria, Santa Flavia
We spent two months in Sicily looking for Krystal's family. Join us as we search the streets of Palermo in this 20 min long documentary. Transcript follows in English and Italian (Google Translated). Make some popcorn and be sure to leave a little space for processing:
In the spring of 2023 I spent 2 months in Sicily looking for clues about two lines of my family, Salvatore Pecoraro and Angeline Distefano. There is a dark pain that rests deep in the minds and hearts of my family. I also wrestle these demons. My calling as a genealogist is rooted in the relentless pursuit of understanding the unsettled waters in myself and others. This is a story about seeking, being wrong, and not giving up until the truth is revealed. This is healing through storytelling.
Twenty one years ago my grandmother died on my father’s birthday. People recall my grandmother, Maryanne, as a rebellious teenager and unfit mother. She married my grandfather at the age of 16 and was three months pregnant when her mother and sister signed the marriage certificate as witnesses. My grandfather is listed as having no job and he would find himself in jail just a little over a year after their marriage leaving my grandmother with a new baby and pregnant with my father. The story continues from there and is rife with pain, more marriages, and unclear memories. On November 18, 1959 the Kenosha News paper ran a small excerpt on page 8: “Infant Son Dies Theodore John Mielke, the two-month-old son of Mr. and Mrs. LeRoy Mielke, died at Milwaukee Children’s Hospital Tuesday noon. The boy was born on Milwaukee Sept. 19…” and that is when things really came apart. All of the children were removed from the house. My father went to St. Amelian’s Orphanage and was raised by nuns and his brother and sisters we spread out through Milwaukee County.
My great grandfather was named Salvatore Pecoraro and went by Theodore in the United States. He married Angeline Distefano, my great grandmother. My second great grandfather was Giuseppe Pecoraro born in 1876 near Bagheria, Sicily. In June of 2022 I found an image on Ancestry of Giuseppe Pecoraro and I messaged the woman who posted it. She shared so much including tips about a trip she and her husband made 20 years earlier to Aspra, Sicily where the family still lives today. Details and connections were fuzzy because of the time that had lapsed, but she shared what she could remember. There is an Antonella and you must go find Antonella Pecoraro in Aspra. The photograph listed everyone, including Giuseppe’s father and mother: Antonion Pecoraro and Maria Vitale. I carried this photograph through the streets of Palermo asking everyone I could think of if they could tell me anything. The Archivio de Stato was able to locate the birth record for Antonino Pecoraro. Days of digging led to death records for Antonino and a marriage record for him and Maria Vitale. I added details and began figuring things out. Giuseppe Pecoraro was born in 1876 and Antonino and Maria Vitale were married in 1884.
I plotted all of the clues I had and discovered the location of the Pecoraro family home in Aspra. I had an image of the front of the building with cars parked perpendicular to the building. The streets in Sicily are very narrow and I knew not every building would have this feature. Sure enough I found it. We packed up a day pack and took the train to Bagheria from Santa Flavia. Aspra is about a 30 min walk from the train and Google Maps took us on a wild adventure down an old dirt road.
I wanted to stop by the anchovy museum. Something told me there would be clues there and I was absolutely right. Images and artifacts spread around old boats and tools guided our way as we wandered through the displays of past lives in Sicily. There were no tickets to this museum and it also seemed like there may be no people either. After a bit we turned a corner and found a man and couple capturing a video in one of the rooms. We entered quietly and then were greeted with a string of Italian. Google Translate to the rescue! After a moment it became clear: I returned to the land of my ancestors and the gregarious fellow, Michelangelo, was the founder of the museum. And so began our afternoon of immersion into the history of Aspra, Sicily and the importance of returning to the land of your ancestors. Michelangelo and the other folks that day taught me about the importance of returning to the places where we are from with our hearts open. The memories of fishing, song, and creativity are imprinted in my bones and having the opportunity to spend an afternoon learning and engaging was truly a gift. Magic is waiting if we give it a chance to find us.
We stopped in a small cafe by the sea for a snack before venturing to the door of the house of the Pecoraor’s of Aspra. Armed with a hand-written note explaining my mission in Italian: “I am a descendant of Giuseppe Pecoraro and Sheila Pecoraro shared information that helped me find you” we walked up to the door. Faded tape on the mailbox held the faint outline of “Pecoraro.” We found it and I rang the doorbell knowing full well that whoever answered was certainly not going to speak English. Gulp. The slats of the shutter opened and a suspicious woman grumbled. I slipped the note through the crack in the door and pulled up my trusty family photo. I do not speak Italian, but facial features communicate a thousand words and her face told me “WHAT?!” Just then Antonella came out from the side door with her daughter. On their way out and through broken English we shared that I am a descendant of Giuseppe Pecoraro and I have come here to say hello. Antonella had to go and said we should go inside.
Through gestures and Italian commands we were directed to sit at the kitchen table. One second. From the back of the house emerged an 85 year old man in a fishing hat and flannel. Time to get out Google Translate. Except he only spoke SIcilian…which is not Italian, not even close. We were able to suss out that this gentleman is the son of Giuseppe Pecoraro and who am I? Our dear friend Janel in Rome said to call anytime we got into trouble. It was time to phone a friend. Janel was on speaker, the daughter was shouting in Italian, and the father was pleading with Mary in Sicilian. “They are saying they do not know a Salvatore Pecoraro.”
Absolutely devastated, we walked back up to the Bagheria train stop as the sun set over the orange orchards. Just as we settled in the Pecoraro family from Aspra called and let me know they were IN Porticello. What?! The whole family drove to Porticello and they found us at the bar. They sat and explained the family tree again, and again. The family was right, the Giuseppe in Aspra was not related to me. What I believed to be true, based on clues from other family trees I found on Ancestry, was not true at all. I had spent weeks in Palermo looking for the wrong family which was a crushing realization. There is no way Giuseppe of 1876 is the same Giuseppe.
Mary pulled a muscle in her back and the next morning the only place she was going was the couch. I absolutely had to get to the city hall in Bagheria to pull the birth record for Salvatore and Giuseppe Pecoraro. It was the only piece of evidence that would lead to the truth. I arrived at what appeared to be the tax office which was crowded with people. Then I walked across town to another building that may have been a record office. Nope, that wasn’t it either. A really nice lady directed me back to the tax office. I stood across the street and watched the total chaos. Imagine the DMV only in a language you do not understand. I typed a message on my phone “I am hoping to find my great grandfather’s record” and walked up to the security guard. He yelled a few things at me in Italian and I just smiled and held up my phone. Frustrated, he pointed to a blue door across the room and I recognized “Anagrafe” - this was it. The door was closed and the waiting room was filled with shouting children. Five weeks in Sicily taught me to just open the door and that is exactly what I did.
An interesting man was sitting at a very messy desk punching keys in his keyboard with his index fingers. He was shielded behind a towering stack of paper and motioned for me to enter. I showed him my phone message and handed him a hand-writted family tree that included the details for the people I knew were related to me: Salvatore Pecoraro, Giuseppe Pecoraro, and his wife Maria Giagnate. He took the paper and left me in the room alone. I sat amongst the stacks of record requests and prayed. I don’t usually pray, but weeks in Sicily made me think the only people who would answer me right now would be listening for prayers. The man returned and indicated that he found all of the records, including marriage records. Follow him. So I did. He took me back into the stacks and there were all of the scripted records from 147 years ago. I cried. We used Google Translate to communicate and he indicated he would make official copies of everything. I went back to the office and waited. When he returned with all of the records he excitedly pointed at the name of Maria Giante’s father: Cosimo - that was his name too. How could I ever thank this person? He suggested a photo with the original record book, and then a selfie together, and then a hug. And that is when I realized Cosimo was eager to help for reasons that may not have been apparent to me, a married lesbian.
I am grateful to the Pecoraro family in Aspra for taking hours to explain that their Giusseppe was not my Giusseppe. This experience has grounded me in the importance of primary sources and generated a great appreciation for documenting and telling our ancestral stories for younger generations.
A story that hadn’t been told in my family was that of Salvatore Pecoraro’s wife, my great grandmother Angeline Distefano. The search for her began in Phoenix, Arizona. There we spent time with my great Aunt Janet and she shared stories of her mother. Was she adopted? Where was she born? What was her story? While we were in Berlin I had a phone call with Aunt Janet and she remembered a name: Emma Gioia. She remembered that her mother said this was her name in Italy and that she remembered living in a big house as a child. A quick search on Ancestry immediately revealed a ship manifest with an Emma Gioia traveling with her step mother, Giovanna Mercurio from S. Flavia. From Berlin we booked two weeks in Santa Flavia, Sicily and committed to searching for Emma.
Upon arrival in Santa Flavia I went to the city hall. The records are indexed online and I did not find anything for an Emma Gioia born January 12, 1912, but maybe there is something I did not know. On our way to the city hall we passed an old abandoned building with “Orfanotrofio Pezzillo” scrawled below a statue of the Virgin Mary. At city hall we were connected with several ladies who pulled down the 1912 record book. Nope not here. What about the Orphanage? Did they have the records at city hall? The lady responded “what orphanage?” Ah, we left the cookies we brought and went on our way.
A few days later the owner of the local bar caught wind of my mission and said he would take me to city hall to meet with his friend Nancy. Walking into the tiny city hall with the local bar owner turned many heads. I can only imagine. We walked through the familiar doors and knocked on the very door I had been to just days before. Nancy was the same lady I spoke to just a few days earlier. She still had no answers, but this time she shared that I should go to the records office in Palermo. I went to Palermo; I went to the church; I sat outside of the orphanage and begged Emma Gioia to come out of the woodwork; I asked our hosts who connected us to an older gentleman who knows everyone in Porticello, he asked all of the elders if they remembered a Giovanna Mercurio or a little adopted girl.
I am not one to give up. I will keep looking until I find a clue, but this was proving to be a monumental task. On our last morning I stood at the train station in Santa Flavia and accepted that I would have to leave without finding a single trace of Emma Gioia. As the priest repeated to me: mi dispiace (I am sorry). Just then, in the minutes before the train arrived to take us to Palermo, a second cousin posted Emma Gioia’s adoption record to a family Facebook group. The title of the document: “Istituto dei Trovatelli”, Foundling Institute. A foundling is an abandoned child of unknown parents. Child abandonment was so widespread in Sicily that the churches installed wheels that allowed mothers to set their baby in the wheel outside of the church and turn the baby inside without ever being seen. My great grandmother was abandoned as an infant in Palermo, Sicily. She was adopted a year later by Angelo Distefano and Giovanna Mercurio. Six years later they traveled to the US and Emma was listed on the ship manifest as having no family in Italy, the step-daughter, and paid her own passage.
This is only the beginning of a great unraveling of how my grandmother’s inability to be a fit mother was tied to my great grandmother’s experience being abandoned at birth. Where do the demons rest in this story that has never been told?
