Surname Saturday - Cefali/Cefaly of Cortale, Italia

I have written in the past about discovering a cousin who was an artist in Tropea named Giuseppe Naso. Years ago when I was researching Cortale in Calabria, the town my grandmother was born in, I read about an artist who was born there named Andrea Cefaly. Pictured here is a statue he made that rests outside the church Santa Maria Cattolica Maggiore in Cortale. Andrea Cefaly (1827-1907) is known more for his paintings than his sculptures and created one painting that hangs in the Louvre in Paris. But this sculpture is really quite interesting because it is a political statement that holds a key to the identity of this family as well as an interesting period in Italian history - the unification. He sculpted it around 1870 and named it "Italia". The statue of a woman represents Italy and you will notice her back is to the church. This was a political statement representing the separation of politics from faith. It was a strong and popular sentiment around the time of the unification of Italy. The family of Andrea Cefaly supported this movement with all their hearts and the father of Andrea, Domenico was also a supporter of a unified Italy, with the separation of church and state. The grandson of Andrea, also named Andrea (referred to as Andrea Jr.) was also an artist.

Years after first reading about the famous Cefaly family, I found the 1811 marriage act of my third great grandparents Antonio Frontera and Domenica Schinnea. This document listed Domenica Schinnea's mother as Vittoria Cefali. I wondered if there was any relationship to the more famous Cefaly family but I assumed I would never know since Vittoria was born about 1754, long before civil records were kept. I also assumed there was probably no connection since the names were spelled differently.

This week while extracting the early marriages that occurred in Cortale I made 2 discoveries. The most exciting discovery was the marriage record of Vittoria Cefali to a second husband named Giuseppe Cefali. This document provided me with the names and dates of death of Vittoria's parents. Vittoria's father was Giuseppe Cefali who died in Cortale on 7 October 1773. Her mother was Giulia Pellegrino and she died 8 September 1766. I will probably never know their parent's names. The second discovery was while reading each marriage record that occurred between 1809 and 1819 there were many Cefali marriages but not a single marriage that contained the spelling Cefaly. It is currently my belief that the spelling of the surname changed. That is not unusual and I found many changes to surnames in my grandfather's town. A review of more records is needed to be certain. I will also need to examine the early allegati records and will need a lot of luck to obtain enough information on the Cefali families if the 18th century. For now, I am happy I have the names and dates of death of Vittoria Cefali's parents. Still, I cannot wait until I can read more records on Tuesday!

Surname Saturday - Maiuolo

My grandmother was born Caterina Maiuolo in Cortale, Catanzaro, Calabria. I was named after her. I am ashamed to admit that I have not done much with her family tree. I have done extensive work on the family of her mother, Natalina Scrugli and have gotten all the records will allow on her family in Tropea. Of course her husband's family in Montalto Uffugo is complete also. But the family of her father in Cortale, kind of got lost in the shuffle. Perhaps it was because when I began years ago, we knew the most about my grandmother's family, but that is no longer true. Some of my frustration is the records for Cortale were only microfilmed up to 1861. Although I know my great grandparent's names and am able to go back further in my ancestry, I would love to see family relationships of the next generation - my grandmother's cousins. So many people came to Chicago from Cortale, many of whom attended family parties and my father was never clear on who was related. I also need family records of death and marriage after 1861 on my great grandfather, Giuseppe Maiuolo and his wife's parents. My many letters to the Comune di Cortale have gone unanswered despite phone calls a friend in Italy made on my behalf. So, it is time to return to the microfilmed Cortale records to see what I can find. I have ordered the microfilms I am missing and will be documenting all the Maiuolo surname events along with my other surnames Frontera, Schinnea, and Parisi.

So far, this is what I know of my ancestry.

• Giuseppe Napolitano and Caterina Maiuolo

• Giuseppe Maiuolo and Natalina Scrugli
• Domenico Majuolo and Maria Frontera
• Pietro Majuolo and Rosaria Parisi

At most I will be able to get 2 more generations but it is possible since Pietro Majuolo and Rosaria Parisi were both born in the 1700's, I may get no further back than what I already have. Although I still have a few lines in my mother's family that I have not gotten to yet, this is the last of my Italian research. That makes me very sad. I will miss looking for my family in Italian records.

My family

Today I will be writing a little bit about my family and where their roots began. My father's father was Giuseppe Napolitano who was born in the Parantoro section of Montalto Uffugo in 1892. The family of Joe in Chicago was very small. He only had 4 cousins here that we knew of. His wife, my grandmother, Caterina Maiuolo had a lot of family in Chicago.
Caterina Maiuolo Napolitano

The family called her Kate. She was born in Cortale, Italy, located in Catanzaro Province in Calabria. Her father was Giuseppe Maiuolo who was an official of some sort with the town of Cortale. The family story says he was a tax collector. He died some time before his family came to America. Kate's mother was Natalina Scrugli who was born in Tropea around 1866. Giuseppe and Natalina lived in "Donnafiore" also referred to as "Upper Cortale".
My grandmother arrived in this country on Thanksgiving Day in 1905 on the ship Sicilia with her mother, Natalina Scrugli, her brother, Domenico Francesco and her sister Maria. She was 8 years old. You can see her ship manifest here . The family came to the home of Natalina's brother Gaetano. Soon after Natalina purchased an apartment building located on Loomis Street in the heart of Chicago's "Little Italy" neighborhood. Since a large portion of the family from Cortale and a huge portion of the population of Cortale came to Chicago, my grandmother was always surrounded by familiar family and friends from Italy. Her family was very close.
Natalina's apartment building provided the family with a steady income and all of the residents were from Italy. Natalina sponsored many Italians which enabled them to come to this country. Among the tenants in her apartment building was Rocco Napolitano the cousin of my grandfather, who recommended a flat there to my grandfather. That is how my grandfather and grandmother met. In the lower level of the apartment building Natalina had a butcher shop. A very different life than the life she had in Cortale! In Cortale they owned properties and employed servants and dress makers to clothe them. In Chicago they had to do the work themselves or purchase their clothes. When my grandmother was a teenager she began a nut shelling business and employed her nieces and nephews to help shell the nuts. She sold the shelled nuts to local bakeries and candy companies.
Giueseppe Napolitano
I am not sure when my grandfather came to this country. A ship manifest has never been found for him. He was living in Paola, Italy in 1912 when he took, and passed his physical for the Italian Army. My best guess is he came here shortly after that. The family story was he followed his cousin Concetta Garrafa here. After Giuseppe's mother died in 1907, he was taken in by Concetta's father and step mother to live with them. Concetta and my grandfather were very close. She was the closest family he had in this country. In 1917 Giuseppe joined the United States Army and served in Camp Gordon near Atlanta, Georgia. During his stay there the base suffered an outbreak of influenza that was plaguing the world that year. He was honorably discharged in late December, 1918. The following April he married my grandmother in Chicago.

In my childhood we were surrounded by so much family it was unclear to me exactly who all these people were and how they fit in to our family. I would ask my dad, my aunts and uncles and no one knew. A cousin would always be the response but no one know who or how they were related to. My grandfather's family on the other side was small and mostly unknown to us. We knew so much about my grandmother's family and where they came from. But my grandfather's family was a complete mystery. A little orphan boy whose parents died when he was young, a cousin (we knew) named Concetta whose father took him in and a sister he left his farm to when he came to this country. That is all we knew. I always thought that was so sad. And it left a big hole in my family. It also left my father with regret. So many questions with no answers. That is why my heart has always been in Montalto with the family of my grandfather. A family I now know so much about!