Over the past few months my interest in genealogy research has flagged. I continue to engage in hours of perusing various sources and searching for new ones, which might lead eventually to additional information about my ancestors; however, I don’t feel the same sort of exhilaration that I once experienced, perhaps, the absence of any recent discoveries simply deflated the high aspirations that once made all of my endeavors so buoyant. With some notable exceptions, most of my immediate family has been uninterested and/or uncooperative in joining in the search for information about our antecedents or in sharing available resources at their disposal. My pleas for co-operation have gone unheeded; the notion of continuity among family members has been relegated to an innocuous mythology trotted out at the proper moment to stabilize the teetering façade of family solidarity.
Yesterday was different in some ways while in other ways it underscored the problems I have encountered attempting to enlist my relatives’ aid in genealogy research. I received an email from one of my cousins providing me with a link to another cousin’s Flickr account. Among the photos I viewed I saw one that I had been told existed but had never seen before. I was told just a couple of months ago by my aunt that she had a photo of my grandmother’s parents; however, she was remodeling her house at the time and had stored the photo so that she was unable to let me see it. Of course, I expressed my desire to have a copy of the photo when she finished remodeling and retrieved the photograph from storage. Unfortunately, my request was either ignored or simply forgotten; however, mixed in with a variety of photos covering a number of unrelated topics were a pictures of family members, including my mother, my aunts and uncles, me, and the prize, the photo of my great aunt Jennie, my great grandmother Anna Licata, and, my great grandfather Salvatore Monte, whose image I had never seen before. Too bad the photo was rather poorly reproduced, scanned at such a low resolution that either enlarging or enhancing it was not very effective. I have already sent several emails to relatives seeking to track down the cousin who uploaded the images to Flickr. If past experence is a predictor of future behavior, the likelihood of my seeing the original photograph is probably nil. With the option to work with the original photograph eliminated, I would be greatful if my cousin scanned the photo again at the highest possible resolution and sent me that file so that I can improve it as much as possible with photo imaging software. The unexpected appearance of this particular photo lends credence to my speculation that there are more family photos and documents in my aunt’s possession, as well as other relatives, which, may contain more specific information about our ancestors, particularly the period of years in Philadelphia between 1906 and 1930; those 24 years are critical to uncovering the transition my grandmother and family and my grandfather made from Sicily to this country. That period may also contain a key to unraveling the mysteries surrounding the families origins in Sicily: the surnames of Dragotto, Mazzola, Pizzo, Benigno, Spero, Monte, Licata, Lo Vecchio, Santangelo and the comunes of Belmonte Mezzagno and San Giuseppa Jato.
It’s not a box of chocolates but it is at least an enticing confection.
On the left is daughter Giovanna (Jennie) Monte, mother Anna (Licata) Monte seated, and father Salvatore Monte on the right.
