My Ancestry

In case you haven't heard, I have been researching my ancestry for the last few months. I can't even really remember why I started getting into this in the first place, except for the fact that I love all things Italian and wanted to know exactly where in Italy we came from. My mom's dad's side of the family is the only side with an obvious ancestry with a name like Alesandrini. I looked around on the usual ancestry websites, but they didn't tell me much since I didn't know much to begin with. All I knew of the family line was from: Me (Casey)--Mom (Stacey)--Grandpa (Ronald)--Great Grandpa (Louis). My mom had told me years ago that my grandpa's brother had all of the ancestry information. I don't see him very often, but when I saw him back in May at my cousin's graduation party I had to ask him what he knew. He told me that years ago he went to Ellis Island to find out everything. Since he used to be in the Navy he had travelled all over including Italy. He told me that now they have a website www.ellisisland.org to find out everthing you need to know. I told him that I was making a family tree on facebook and he registered on there that night and sent me all of his information. Here's the list of family members that he found on Ellis Island filesThe website actually shows you a picture of the original ship manifest that they signed in on. Which of course they wouldn't let me save to post on here grrrr... You can see how old they were when they got on the boat, their height, hair color, and eye color. Both of my great-great-grandparents were about 5' 1" which is strange because the Alesandrini side of the family has always been very tall. This document also shows that they used to spell it Alessandrini and must have dropped one 's' somewhere in America. The document lists all of the family together so you can see how many younger siblings my great-great-grandma had. It also lists where they were moving to, and the Drudi's were going straight to Peoria, Illinois where a lot of my family still lives. The manifest also asks many strange questions like "are you a polygamist or a communist?"

The passenger record states the place of birth, which when transcribed from it's original chicken scratch cursive, was listed as Eallamello. Well, I googled Eallamello and google replied "do you mean Talamello?" So it turns out that their transcription was misspelled. Here is a map of where Talamello is located, near Bologna and Rimini.

Here are some pictures of Talamello!! Also if you get on google Earth, they have a 360 camera there and you can see the vineyard hills.

Next up is the record for my great-great grandpa Terssilio Alessandrini. The manifest says that he immigrated to Spring Valley, Illinois which is also near Peoria where Rosa Drudi immigrated to. Spring Valley used to be a big mining town in the early 1900's when he came here. I was a little confused when I saw that the record states that he is from Southern Italy but lived in Greece. But, when I looked closer a few days ago the original manifest actually says born in Laurenin, Greece!! So this means that I'm Greek also!!! This is when it starts to get crazy. I have always said that the only two places I would want to visit in Europe are Italy obviously and Greece. I have always loved watching movies with the white buildings with blue roofs and cerulean blue waters. I always wanted to be an architect, and hello...Greek architecture!! I ended up majoring in Theater and the theatre comes from Greece!! I also majored in psychology and the whole idea of the psyche came from Greek myth!! I'm in the middle of re-reading my Greek mythology textbook from school right now coincidentally!! It was one of my favorite classes and I always felt a connection to these crazy stories in the myths. I always thought that all of my interests were so all over the place, they never made sense. But now it's like I finally had an Oprah AHA moment or something. So here is the passenger record for Terssilio Alessandrini. It says that he was from Laurenin, but of course another typo...it was actually Laurion or known as Lavrion today.

Here is a map of where Lavrion is located on the Aegean sea right down the coast from Athens!!! Where all of the Greek gods are worshipped and all of the temples are!!!

Here are some pictures of it today. It's right on the sea and it's a huge harbor town!! Hello, I love all things water too people!!

Ruins of what appears to be a temple in Lavrion.

Looking out at the sea...

These are ruins of an amphitheatre!!!

A map showing all of the tourist spots today in Lavrion.

Picture of one of the many mines in Lavrion where Terssilio may have worked.

P.S. I am taking donations from anyone who wishes to send me back to the mother-land where I belong...