FULL ACCESS to previously paywalled post: Curiosity, Compulsion, and Coming Full Circle, Part One

Eating the sweet fruits of a 5-year passion project

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This is the opening installment of a multi-layered story about blood, sweat, and tears (of joy). After bringing my two children and my mother to the European continent for the first time on an epic six-week trip in the summer of 2016, and out of concern for the potential destruction of the US as we knew it following the November 2016 presidential election, I began a long, dedicated journey toward obtaining dual US/ Italian citizenship via my ancestral bloodline. A dear friend of mine had suggested that I might be able to reclaim my lineage with the Italian government through the process of Jure Sanguinis, and she encouraged me to look into the possibilities in my family tree. Two weeks ago, I was notified that my claim for citizenship through ancestry was confirmed, and as the last phase moves forward, I want to share my elation with you! To put it mildly, it was an highly unlikely victory, as I had almost no information to start with thanks to over 120 years of assimilation and forgetting. At the start of my search, I knew more about my maternal Italian (Sicilian and Pugliese) lineage than about my paternal side. No one in my family could provide me with much information about my paternal great-grandparents beyond their names. However, I was looking at ten years till retirement, and being a single woman supporting herself and her family, it was my responsibility to secure beneficial options for our future. I was determined to forge ahead and explore the concept of repatriation in the land of my ancestors for myself, my children, and all future generations. My curiosity about my ancestry soon became more like an obsession.

The project required untold hours of research, as well as a good deal of expense and frustration, and it provided no clear answers as to whether my claim would ultimately be accepted. It was, and still is, truly an exercise of profound faith. It is not hyperbolic to say that I deserve an honorary license as a private investigator, or that I could certainly find a needle in a pagliaio at this point. I am now the family historian, and I cannot overestimate how much infusing my life with this knowledge (in essence, re-membering what had been lost) has enriched the quality of it in the last few years. Beyond the tangible benefits of dual citizenship, my intent in conducting the search for my roots was and is, more importantly, to try to mend the severing of the past caused by immigration, to feel more deeply connected to my cultural heritage, and to understand and heal family patterns of wounding by honoring the courageous lives of those who came before me. The rewards of my work have given back a hundred-fold already; I have been able to build a meaningful relationship with our ancestral paese and with many previously unknown living relatives who reside in both Italy and other American states. The turn of events has been nothing short of miraculous, and I need to acknowledge the divine intervention of my ancestors for that. If I had not lived these experiences, I would probably never believe that they had happened the way they did. I’d like to recount some entertaining highlights here, not only the miraculous, but the hilarious and ridiculous as well. Please consider a paid subscription, especially if you’re looking for a model to follow on your path. The story is still unfolding and evolving, and it may take more than one installment, as there’s still more processing time before we will hold our Italian passaporti in our hands…

For someone like me who had to start from square one, the process of piecing together my genealogy was tedious to say the least. Not for the faint of heart! It was like working on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for years on end. But each tiny breadcrumb found on the trail gave me the will and incentive to keep trying to solve the next step. Others may be fortunate to already have the documents they need, and just mail them off to the consulate with the proper stamps and translations. This was not my situation. After studying the Italian laws that govern Jure Sanguinis (citizenship through the bloodline), I realized that the path was not possible through my mother’s side, even though I knew more about those ancestors. I knew the names of my paternal Italian great grandparents, but I did not know from what part of Italy they hailed, if they were both from the same town, how they came to live in upstate NY, when they emigrated, etc. A grand mystery was at hand, and I was compelled to illuminate what had been hidden for over a century. With only a few key artifacts belonging to my grandfather that had been saved, memberships to several genealogy websites, and the invaluable help of said friend who thankfully is fluent in Italian and was adept at teaching me to read the clues within the antique records in the old script, I set forth. Certain small puzzle pieces directed every subsequent step, some appearing along the way with impeccable, seemingly magical, timing. I continued to feel that my ancestors were assisting me from behind the veil.

Despite its glorious ancient and Renaissance past, Italy, as a unified nation, is very young. The reorganization as a country took place in 1861, and it turns out, my great grandfather Vincenzo was born in 1865. The people are passionately tribal, fiercely identifying with their regions and their individual villages, and remain so even to this day. In this vein, Vincenzo, as he embarked for New York from Naples in 1899 and filled out his paperwork for the ship’s manifest, had the insight to list his place of origin (as if he knew that 120 years later his great granddaughter would need this precious bit of information) not vaguely as “Italy” as many passengers stated, but with his particular beloved town: Cerchiara di Calabria. Mind you, the spelling of said town was completely butchered by the probably non-Italian ship clerk. But fear not, I was able to correctly determine the town of his birth, and through much combing over hundreds of birth records online, also discovered that his future wife, my great grandmother Caterina, was also a native of the very same town. Knowing that appointments at the New York City Italian consulate were almost impossible to come by, and that even if I obtained one, there was a two-year waiting period, in December of 2018, I got an appointment set for December 2020. The clock was now officially ticking, and in those two years I went from knowing almost niente, to rediscovering a substantial transatlantic family tree with which to build my case for citizenship. In July 2019 I departed for Italy in the hopes of driving to the small, historic mountain town of Cerchiara and locating the original baptism record of my bisnonno (great grandfather) in order to find his correct birth date and certificate. Without this record, I could not make a legitimate citizenship claim. Who would have guessed that there were at least seven different men in that town born in the same era with the same first and last name! By the time I got to Cerchiara I had already discovered the names of my great great grandparents, thanks to online records from both Italy and the state of Delaware (Delaware death records are in the public domain, unlike New York’s). You could not make up what happened next…

I asked a female friend/ colleague of mine if she wanted to see Italy for the first time by coming along with me, with the understanding that besides hitting the glorious tourist spots of the Amalfi Coast and Tropea, a good deal of our journey would NOT be close to any standard itinerary. We would be driving our rented Fiat 500 convertible into the wilds of Calabria, perhaps the region of Italy that most retains its authentic traditions because it has not been overrun by foreign tourism. We would be going to a remote, medieval mountain village to scour the records in the Church of San Giacomo Maggiore, where I believed my family’s vital records resided. I would later come to know that this specific church was highly significant to my direct ancestral line in a unique way, but at this point all that was still yet to be illuminated. My friend had never been to Europe nor done any travel beyond North America. She was a tremendous sport for agreeing to this grand adventure, now has the travel bug big time, and has returned to many countries in Europe since! This trip was epic, but was a bit more challenging because in 2019, my Italian was rudimentary at best. And in this region of Calabria, virtually no one speaks English (and why should they?). Simply getting to the sleepy little town at the top of a jaw-dropping, mountainous landscape on endless corkscrew roads with a quasi-automatic transmission that was not actually automatic (I did not know how to drive a standard shift) was a triumph in and of itself. We were hoping to blaze an impressive trail, but not end up like Thelma and Louise. What I didn’t realize was that my surname was a very intriguing calling card, despite clearly being an outsider, an American who had come in search of her past. On the second day of our stay there, we walked the narrow, winding streets, toured the magnificent Sanctuary to the Madonna which was another 20 minute drive up into the clouds, and sat outside at a local spot for lunch in the village, speaking to each other in English and getting odd looks from passersby. I had no plan yet as to how to view the church documents except that I had explained to our B&B hosts what I was hoping to do - maybe they had a connection to someone - and I had been in email contact with the mayor who knew of my citizenship claim and records request. The mayor is also a cardiologist and speaks some endearing broken English, but he was not around this particular day, and we were scheduled to drive two hours south that night. I attempted to explain my purpose for being there to everyone we encountered. We enjoyed a warm welcome from the restaurant owner who cooked us a delicious meal, and we were serenaded by a local teenaged musician who played traditional tunes on his accordion. We met the man whose job was ringing the church bells, and a few more folks in a colorful cast of characters. The scene started to feel like we were starring in a movie. Even now, after several more trips and time spent, public sightings of me seem highly interesting, evoking shouts of: “There she is! There’s the American Santagada!” That initial day, a man approached us after passing by a couple times curiously, and surprisingly, he spoke to us in English. He explained that he spoke Italian and French as well. He was originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. After several minutes of conversation I asked him how he found himself in this lovely but obscure little village. He exclaimed, “I am the priest!” May wonders never cease… I now had a new friend, who I could communicate with relatively easily, who was willing to let me view the antique church records in his office that evening. Further evidence of divine assistance was that he told me that he had done his seminary training in Catania, Sicily, specifically at the Cathedral of Sant’Agata. Saint Agatha is my namesake (Santagada). See my post from January 2023, "Let's Dream into Italy Together" for more on this topic. That night my friend and I perused the books that were neatly ordered in the priest’s bookcase (every birth, marriage, and death in that village all the way back to the 1400s!), and within 45 minutes, we had located both my great grandmother Caterina’s and great grandfather Vincenzo’s baptismal records. Jackpot! This paved the way for me to find the correct Vincenzo’s civil birth certificate, the atto di nascita. That was the only aspect of my record search for which I hired an Italian professional when the local commune office could not produce it due to a fire that had damaged records from that era. Thankfully, it was indeed found at the state-level archives - well worth my investment. Considering that there were few antique surnames in the town, and only a handful of first names that are repeatedly passed down in a traditional way from grandparent to grandchild, my great grandpa’s name was extremely common in the town. In fact, I know at least 4 other men alive currently (including my own father) who share his exact name! I am forever grateful to Father Yves for approaching us with his friendship and for being in the right place at the right time.

Feeling exhilarated by my success at the church of San Giacomo and with many photos of the precious baptismal records in hand, that same night we headed south through an epic rainstorm to the stunning Calabrian town of Tropea on the Tyrrhenian Sea to take a tour of secret beaches, swim through tropical caves and see all of its fabled glory. After midnight, upon settling into our top floor B&B in an antique palazzo, the storm knocked out the power and left us roasting in our own juices. Readers take note: the south of Italy is insanely hot and humid in the summer. Truth be told, there were other gaps in my ability to prove my lineage, and these gaps could have potentially ruined my chances to obtain the citizenship. One of these issues was proving the paternity of my grandfather Louis (Luigi) because he was born in the state of Delaware in 1903, fourteen years before birth certificates were mandated there. Several months before, I had been put in contact with the genealogist for the parishes in the vicinity of where Luigi had been born (which included parishes over the border in Maryland as well). Out of the goodness of her heart, not for money, she was on the hunt for the baptismal record of my grandfather in multiple churches. I had given her all the pertinent information I could think of, especially who might have been his godparents, but I had not heard from her after a few months. Well, that day in Tropea, after over thirty harrowing minutes of stepping precariously on large, uneven boulders with a recently wobbly right knee (torn miniscus and ACL) in the blistering sun, we finally reached the pristine beach and turquoise water along what is called, “the Coast of the Gods,” due to its being cited in The Odyssey. I was physically and emotionally drained, being wiped out from intense driving, trying to navigate unfamiliar road signs and warnings, not getting a good night’s sleep, and trying not to further injure my knee. For some strange reason, after throwing my towel down on the sand and before throwing myself into the sea for a refreshing swim, I decided to check my email on my phone, which I had not looked at in at least 24 hours. In a spectacular display of a truly impossible coincidence, my genealogist reported to me that she had found what was without a shadow of a doubt, my grandfather Luigi’s baptismal record in a book of sacraments from Immaculate Conception Church in Elkton, Maryland. Further proof was the addendum of his sacrament of marriage to my grandmother in NYC in 1940. She had sent me this email the previous evening, which means that, on the SAME EXACT DAY on two different continents, two very well-hidden father (born in 1865) and son’s (born in 1903) baptismal records had been located. Needless to say, after processing the magnitude of this convergence of magical events, I dove into those staggeringly gorgeous Calabrese waters and sobbed, enveloped in a sublime sense of, “welcome back daughter, you’ve only been away for 120 years.”

I will continue with the next installment of this incredible story soon. I’m only getting started. But you may be wondering…

Why would a great grandchild of the Italian diaspora want to pursue dual citizenship for herself and her descendants, anyway? I can provide more details in a later post, but essentially, the question we should ask is why WOULDN’T she? The nutshell version: benefits of being an EU citizen are many and have various aspects for me (almost of pensioner age), as it is much more affordable to live in Italy than in the US, especially in the southern regions, and for my children (opportunities for inexpensive university, widespread employment, national healthcare coverage, etc.) I see it as a massive insurance policy in an uncertain world. Having its citizens return to the Motherland also benefits the Italians and their economy, so do not make the mistake of thinking that we are taking and not giving in return. Also, on my most recent trip to Calabria, I had resolved that even if the citizenship by birthright did not work out (due to a missing key document), what I have gained and what I hope I have given back in terms of human relationships as a result of this process, far outweighs any official categorization. But I gave my follow-up “homework” packet my very best shot, including 20 pieces of supplemental evidence in lieu of the missing document, and hoped for the best. This was an unorthodox move, and many would have told me that the NY consulate, having a reputation for being strictly black and white with claims, would have rejected my argument. However, after years of work, my only option was to try. Three weeks later, my claim was approved. Hail to the ancestors, again working behind the scenes! Vincerò!

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