Finding the Facts in Your Family Story
There weren’t any letters or diaries for me to consult when I started my search for family records. My grandfather Concezio was too busy working two jobs to record his thoughts and observations.
I had only three pieces of information to rely on when I started writing my book, Searching for Concezio:
the ship manifest documenting my grandfather’s arrival on June 8, 1913;
the deed to the land where he built our house on March 21, 1921;
the papers he signed on the day he became a U.S. citizen, June 28, 1929.
Yet those three records were a lot harder to verify than I expected.
My father told me that my grandfather had arrived “sometime before World War I,” but he didn’t know the exact date. During a visit to Ellis Island in 2002, my niece Kristyn located the date of her great-grandfather’s arrival on June 8, 1913. Her eyes lit up, which made the trip to Ellis Island—nine months after 9/11—worth it for me that day.
The second record, the deed to the house, was puzzling. My grandfather’s cousin, Nicola Perrucci, deeded the land where my grandfather built our house, in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, for one dollar. “Why he did he do that? ” I asked my father. He shrugged his shoulders. “They all did that,” he said. But he didn’t explain why.
The third record was the most puzzling of all. A family friend who lived in our house as a boarder told me my grandfather finished building our house in 1926. Then why did my grandfather list his address on Cook Avenue, instead of on Stout Avenue, when he became a U.S. citizen in 1929? I asked. He couldn’t answer that question, he said—he wasn’t living in the United States then.
The records you have about your family history may uncover more questions. Where do you look for that information? That’s what I’ll talk about in my post next week.
Your search for documents and answers to tell your Grandfather’s story is very touching, especially as it reminds me of my own father who spent around 20 years documenting and researching the genealogy of both sides of his family. He gifted the family with two large volumes of pictures and stories that are very moving. Every detail, births, deaths, marriages, etc., is very precisely recorded. Part of the family is from Switzerland and Germany, while another part has mainly English origins. He goes back to the early 1600’s. It brings tears to my eyes as I realize the time and patience put into this research. What a gift for our family.
I’m really looking forward to reading your grandfather’s story, which is, indeed, as you have mentioned, the story of all of our ancestors. The ones who were the backbone of Amercia. Thank you, Dori, for writing this story. It needs to be told.
Sept. 25, 2023
Laura,
Twenty years! Thank you for recognizing what it takes to do research into a family’s story, but it took me–literally–more years than that to find the last few pieces of information that finally explained my grandfather’s story to me. I am happy to have finished writing, but I am especially grateful to have uncovered a story that tells a larger story that, as you put it so well–“needs to be told”: the story of all of our ancestors who sacrificed everything to give us what we have today.