52 in 52 "So Far Away" The Italian Side (5 of 52)

Week four of the #52in52Ancestors prompt has been a difficult one for me.  Everyone is doing how far away their ancestors came from, and they all did; if you're American chances are your ancestors came from somewhere else, far across the ocean.  I thought about spinning a tale of that crossing, which I still may do one day, but not today.  While browsing some new features on my Ancestry app last night, I found this really cool section where it plots out where each of your ancestors were born and significant things in their lives happened.   It's super interesting to see it all out on that map, little dots spread out (in my case) all over Germany, England, and Scotland.  And then, all the way down in the bottom, are two little dots, far away from each other, in Italy.  One high in the Alps by Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, and one far over towards France.  I actually never realized just how far away those two very important places were, until I saw them plotted for me on that map. 

 Numbers 15 and 8 

Asiago Italy (Number 15 on the map) sits on an Alpine plateau in the Province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of Northwest Italy.  It's famous for it's cheese, (which my family uses religiously) and it's skiing, and of course they make wine! The locals speak their own language, called Cimbro, which is a dialect of Italian with some German mixed in.  My DNA actually shows no Italian at all (or such a trace amount that it's not a percentage) and this is probably why; despite the fact that my family had been in Italy for many generations, Asiago is basically a German cluster, so it gets mixed in with my 40% Germanic Europe totals.  Asiago saw it's own battle during WWI, "The Battle of Asiago" May 15-June 10th 1916, which my most recent Asiago-born ancestors would have missed by only a year.

Asiago, Italy

My great grandmother, Catterina Angela Nardin was born in Asiago Feb 7th, 1887 to Giovanni Antonio Nardin and Anna Maria Angela Strazzabosco.  After the death of her first husband, Valentino Paganin (which is an extremely old family in Asiago) Angela got on the steam ship the Duca D'Aosta with her mother and very young daughter, Giustina Maria Ain Zara "Rena" Paganin and arrived at Ellis Island April 1st, 1915.  Angela's brother Pietro was already here working in the coal mines, so they traveled most likely by train to Staunton Illinois and settled there, together again.

Angela Nardin

Brossasco Italy (number 8 on the map) is in the Province of Cuneo, in the region of Piedmont, on the far North Western side of Italy, and is less than 30 miles to the closest French border.  Today there are only about 900 people who live there, and three of the five most common surnames are my own family.  In 1900, when my family left, there were about 2,000 residents.  I imagine work was very hard to come by, which prompted a mass emigration not just from there, but all of Italy in the early 1900s, to come to America and work the mines. 

Brossasco, Italy

My great-grandfather, Guiseppe Antonio Barra was born in Brossasco on August 28th, 1878 to Guiseppe Barra and Margarita Giusiano.  He arrived in New York April 23rd, 1901 aboard the steamship La Gascogne from the port of Le Havre, France.  In the 1910 census he's living in a rental house with four other Italians in Roanoke Illinois, all working in the coal mines. In 1905, three of his four younger brothers would join him, and by 1910, all the Barra children with the exception of two girls would be in the States.

Giuseppe "Joe" Barra

I am not sure how Angela et Joe, I highly suspect he left Roanoke (near Peoria) to mine down in Staunton, which is where she was living, a distance of about 145 miles.  They were married December 1915, and started their family, including Angela's daughter Rena, on a farm outside of Staunton.  Unfortunately, Angela would be widowed with small children twice,  when Joe was electrocuted outside their home during a storm one evening, when it caught a light post on fire.  She would not remarry.

It's amazing to me how two Italians, from so far apart in Italy can find one another after crossing such great distances, for such different reasons, and come together and form a family through wars, hard labor, the great depression, and early deaths.  But here we are, Italians in the heart of the Midwest, hanging on to the memories of those who are so far away.