Photo from PA homepage.
This interesting bit of news came through my Google Alerts yesterday. Vice President Joe Biden (a Scranton, PA native), was invited to speak at the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick dinner held at the Genetti Manor in Dickson City, PA on the evening of March 17th. The Genetti Manor is owned and run by Gus Genetti.
Click here to see the local news broadcast of this event.
A new descendant has been added to the Genetti Family Tree! Congratulations to Frank and Elizabeth Bozek on the birth of their baby boy, Brody Nicholas. Born a week ago, Brody is the grandson of Valeria Genetti Bozek. He is also the great-grandson of Gus Genetti of Scranton, Pennsylvania and part of the fourth-generation of Americans in his family. Welcome Brody!
Thank you to Brian Genetti, a descendant of William Vigilio Genetti, for sending me a wonderful photograph of his great great grandparents! During the past year I’ve received many requests from this branch of our family who settled in Illinois. All have contributed information to our growing family tree. The photograph of William Vigilio Genetti with his first wife Maria Dolzadelli may be their wedding portrait, probably photographed sometime in the 1880’s. According to census records they had six children. Maria passed away in 1907 and Vigilio later remarried. He and his second wife, Margaretha, had three more children. Today there are many descendants of this family living in the United States.
Stop by the Photograph Gallery at the Genetti Family Genealogy Project to see this photo and many others. Click here!
Group photo taken in the meadows above Castelfondo.
Yay! Three new photos have been added to our Photograph page under the Gallery Section of the website. What a treat as these are from our Italian family in Trentino. Check them out, click here!
If you have family photos you would like to share on The Genetti Family Genealogy Project website, we would love to hear from you. Please email photos along with a description to: info.genetti.family(at)gmail.com.
Traditional Tryolean Folk Costumes
photo by Elzbieta Fazel, copyrighted
I just stumbled upon an interesting website/blog about Tyrolean culture. For those history buffs who would like to know more about our cultural roots, I found this to be a very informative site. It has a rather long official title: Tyrol Guide: History, Culture, Religion, Photos, Folklore and Present Day, but don’t let that put you off. You’ll find this website charmingly captivating.
The author of the blog, Elzbieta Fazel, lives in Telfs in the Austrian Tyrol. Not only a blogger, she is also an accomplished photographer. Many of Elzbieta’s posts are illustrated with beautiful images of Tyrol, which can be purchased through various sites as fine art prints. I hope Elzbieta doesn’t mind – I have included one of her lovely images here for you to enjoy. At the end of this post are links to Elzbieta’s portfolio where you can view more of her work and perhaps select a print or greeting card.
Although most of the information presented by the Tyrol Guide website covers the history and culture of Austrian Tyrol (north of the Brenner Pass), I’m sure you will still find it fascinating since this was also our history prior to 1918. Before World War I the lands of Italian-speaking Tyrol (our homeland) located south of the Brenner Pass, belonged to Austria. After the war, this region became the northern Italian province of Trentino. So to read the history of Austrian Tyrol is also a peak into our cultural past. In the right sidebar of the website you’ll find a Brief History of Tyrol, an abbreviated version of events that formed the region’s interesting and sometimes confusing past. It’s worth reading!
For easy reference, the site’s web address has been added to our Link section found in the right hand column section of The Genetti Family website. You can also access the Tyrol Guide at: www.tyrol-guide.com.
To enjoy more photographs by Elzbieta Fazel go to:
Redbubble: The Portfolio of Elzbieta Fazel
Baptismal record from San Nicolo Church:
Vigilio Genetti, born 1852 in Castelfondo, Austria.
Died 1932 in Collinsville, IL.
The Illinois Genetti Clan has proven to be very inquisitive and helpful concerning our shared ancestors. A few weeks ago I received an email from Brian Genetti with info about his family line. It turns out Brian is also a descendant of Vigilio Genetti who settled in Collinsville, Illinois around 1890. Why I say “also” is that I have had three other descendants of Vigilio contact me during the past year (Tom, Gary and Andrew). Each has contributed a bit more of our ancestral puzzle and allowed me to research further into their branch of the family tree. As a result of Brian’s info, I was able to add ten more descendants to our online tree and continue to extend Vigilio’s legacy in America. Brian says he also has photos of Vigilio Genetti tucked away somewhere. When he finds them we’ll add those pics to our photo archive page too.
Of course, I had to work out all of the cousin relationships. Here’s what I came up with:
– Brian is 1st cousin, twice removed from Tom.
– Brian is 1st cousin, once removed from Gary.
– Brian is a 3rd cousin of Andrew.
And Brian is my 5th cousin, once removed AND my 8th cousin once removed! Yes, my family twig is related to Brian twice!
Do you have descendants you would like included on our family tree? I believe we have only about a third of our ancestors documented so far. Feel free to email me with your information. If I can find documentation on the ancestor, I will add he/she to the Genetti Family online tree.
Many thanks to the Illinois Genetti Family for their participation.
Our very special congratulations to Bill Genetti of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. I’m sure most of you know Bill for his kind generosity, as the owner of Best Western Genetti Inn and Suites in Hazleton, as our family genealogist, and as the organizer of our Genetti Family Reunions. After 65 years in the hotel and banquet business, Bill is finally ready to retire. According to several recent newspaper articles and a wonderful news video, Bill has sold the hotel portion of his business. The catering and banquet end of Genetti’s will be taken over by his son, Patrick.
Congratulations Bill! The Genetti family owes you a great debt of gratitude for all you have accomplished and given. We wish you many happy years of retirement!
To read the full story and see the newscast, click here.
I’m back home in Santa Fe, New Mexico after our excursion to Australia. As always, visiting another culture offered a new view of the world and confirms just how much people are alike. I am so grateful that my husband and I are able to travel and make friends wherever we go.
This trip gave us many opportunities to chat and establish friendships. Along the way we conversed with people from Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and of course, Australia. We also discovered many Italians in Australia on work visas. It was a joy to strike up a friendly conversation with someone from Milan, Verona or Bolzano, ask them about their home town and share our own travels in Italy. I now have several new friends on FaceBook who originate from different points of the globe. Who would have thought a decade ago that we could post our thoughts on a website and have comments left by friends living in five different countries! Amazing!
While I was away, our website was busy. The stats show many new visitors, as well as return viewers, who have checked-out The Genetti Family Genealogy Project during the past six weeks. Thank you to all new family members from around the world who have stumbled upon our little website. During my trip I received emails from two distant cousins and one 2nd cousin through the Genetti Family website. Over on Ancestry.com, I’ve had two close DNA matches with people related to me through Genetti ancestors – one I believe to be a third cousin. For a genealogy geek, this is exciting stuff! Now it’s time to get down to work, dig into my archives and find out how each person fits into our family tree. So Marcel, Ann R., Brian, Mary and Ann T. thank you for writing and I feel privileged to be a part of your genealogy journey. I will be emailing you individually with the results of my research. This info will then be added to the online Genetti family tree.
Now if I can just get over this jet lag …
Have you ever wondered what your ancestors looked like? Before the invention of photography in the 1830’s, there was only one way to remember a loved one – a formal portrait painted by an artist. If your family had enough money, they might commission an artist to capture your image for posterity. But this was an expense most families could not afford. More likely than not, ancestors living prior to the 1840s (when commercial photography was first introduced) left no images for future generations to ponder.
I’ve spent many hours researching the details of the Genetti family – their names, spouses, children, birth dates and deaths. This information is all that we have to remember them by. Often I wonder just who they were, what kind of personalities they had, what did they do for a living, how did they dress and what did they look like.
A few days ago, I was visiting an art museum in Sydney (yes I’m still in Australia). A small oil portrait by an Italian artist of the late Renaissance period caught my eye.
The name plate on the work of art stopped me immediately. “Portrait of a Young Man” painted around 1565 by Giovanni Battista Moroni. The artist’s name made me smile since there are many men on the Genetti family tree named “Giovanni Battista”. I snapped a photo of the painting and decided to do more research later on Master Moroni.
That evening I googled the artist to find a pleasant surprise. He was considered one of the best portrait painters of his time. Giovanni was born and worked most of his life in a small Northern Italian city, not far from Castelfondo (the Genetti’s village of origin). He had also worked for a period of time in the city of Trent (Trento), located down the valley from Castelfondo. Giovanni Battista was of Northern Italian descent, as most likely, were his clients and sitters. Wow!
My next thought was: “did my ancestors look like this too?”
The pensive young man in the painting with intense eyes, short-cropped hair and a ruffled collar probably represented the appearance and dress of men in the mid-1500’s. Which of my ancestors had been a contemporary of this era? After consulting the online family tree, I found Pietro Genetti, my 10th great-grandfather, had lived during this time. From clues left in parish records, we know that Pietro was born about 1530 and lived until 1580. He was married to Chatarina Segna.
How tempting it is to imagine Pietro dressed as the portrait sitter. Dapper in a ruffled collar, his sandy-colored hair short and beard neatly trimmed, peering at me with steel-gray eyes. Of course, this is all speculation and fantasy on my part. There is no record of Pietro’s appearance. But what fun it is using a little imagination to bring my 10th great-grandfather to life!
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’re probably wondering where I’ve been since December. Well I’m currently “Down Under” in Australia, exploring and soaking up the warm sunshine of Brisbane, Sydney, Manly Beach and Uluru. Yes, my husband and I love to travel. With every trip, I learn about other cultures, make new friends from far away countries and expand my personal universe just a bit more.
As I walked around the grounds of the beautiful Sydney Opera House, watching the busy harbor hum with ferries and ogling the massive cruise ships that put to port everyday, I couldn’t help but think of my ancestors.
Although they had lived in the same mountain valley for hundreds of years, a poor economy and no job opportunities had forced them to travel far from their ancestral home. From the mid-1870’s through the 1920’s, entire families left the Val di Non for a better life. They traveled to the United States, Canada, South America, and other parts of Europe. Unlike our ability to board a plane and be half-way around the world in less than a day, our great-grandparents had a much more difficult time traveling.
My branch of the Genetti family left their village of Castelfondo in the Austrian Tyrol for the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Their journey would have transpired somewhat like this. First they would travel down the valley to the city of Trento. Today this takes about an hour by car. But before the era of automobiles, our ancestors road in a horse and cart loaded with children and baggage or they walked. It would have taken the better part of a day to reach the city. Once in Trento, the family purchased train tickets to the port of Le Havre, France as well as their tickets to board a ship to New York City. After traveling by train through the mountains to the French port, they boarded a large steam ship with hundreds of other immigrants.
Due to the expense of moving a big family to a new country, my great-grandfather traveled to America first, bringing along his four oldest children. The passage by ship would have been about 10 days at sea, most likely docking in New York City. I say “most likely” because I have yet to find the ship records for this particular crossing made by Damiano and his children who arrived sometime around 1903.
Three years later Damiano’s wife, Oliva, arrived on December 3, 1906 at Ellis Island with the couple’s five youngest children. The little one, Angela Maria, was just three years old. We do have ship’s records for Oliva and the children. They traveled steerage. It must have been a long and difficult journey for a mother trying to keep track of five young children. In New York City they joined their Papa, boarded another train and reunited a few hours later with their older siblings in the new and strange city of Hazleton.
I have much respect for my great-grandfather. From online records I know he made the arduous journey between Hazleton, PA and Castelfondo, Austria (now Italy) at least seven times, between 1877 and 1930.
Even by today’s standards of air travel, I know it’s not easy to reach the village of Castelfondo, tucked in the alpine meadows. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been 100 years ago.
The Genetti Family Genealogy Project 