Geneablogy: An occasional Journal about our experiences exploring our heritage

Sunday, May 27, 2001

I found a page describing the statue of the ancient pre-Christian Slavic god that was pulled from the Zbruch River near Lychkivtsi (Ukrainian, Liczkowce in Polish). There's a picture of the statue, with a larger copy on another page.. Unfortunately, the page is in Polish, but by feeding the sentences to the Polish-English translator web site, I'm able to tell that the statue was found in the river by a bunch of children in 1848, that the locals fought over it and someone threatened to smash it, so the local leaders decided to send it away. It appears that it now resides in the Archeological Museum of Krakow in Poland. It's possible that the lowest part of the statue is still in the river, because the bottom apparently broke off as the locals were pulling the statue out of the river.

Posted at 6:56:42 PM Link to this entry

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Thursday, May 24, 2001

Here's something interesting I found as I was doing a Google search on Lychkivtsi, the village in Ukraine that my grandmother came from: "[I]n 1848 a statue of an ancient Slavic pre-Christian god was found in the Zbruch river near the village of Lychkivtsi." I'm sure my sister will appreciate this. :-) It would be nice to find a picture of this.

Posted at 2:35:08 PM Link to this entry

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Tuesday, May 1, 2001

I promised information from the Ellis Island site about Laura's relatives; here it is.

Vittorio Minnocci (Laura's great-great-grandfather), 45, came to America on the SS Neckar, leaving Naples March 1, 1907, and arriving at Ellis Island March 15, 1907. He was headed to New York to stay with his sister, Flavia, who lived at 62 Baxter St. in New York. Incidentally, there were a lot of people from Alatri, the Minnoccis' home town, who lived at this address. I assume it was a tenement of some sort. Vittorio's birthplace and last residence were listed as Alatri.

Vittorio's wife, Anna Magliocelatti (Laura's great-great-grandmother), came over a couple of years later at the age of 47, also sailing on the SS Neckar, arriving in New York on April 21, 1909. We hadn't known exactly what her last name was (we had two different ones from less-contemporary sources), so I was really pleased to find this record. I actually stumbled across this one while looking for other Minnoccis, and found Flora Minnocci (see below) on the same page. So when I noticed Anna Magliocelatti, which was close to one of the possible names we had for her, I actually gasped, because I hadn't expected to find her. Unfortunately, the Ellis Island site doesn't have the scan of the actual manifest for this trip, so I wasn't able to find out if she was going to join her husband, but I expect to be able to find that in the microfilms without much trouble now that I know exactly what ship she came on, what day it arrived, and what page and line her record appears on.

Sisto, 22 and Felicia (Minnocci) Pantano, 20 (Laura's great-grandparents, one of whom, Felicia, Laura knew as a child), came to America on the same trip as Felicia's father Vittorio did, on the SS Neckar, leaving Naples March 1, 1907, and arriving at Ellis Island March 15, 1907. They were headed to New York to stay with someone listed as their relation, Vincenzo Torrice, also living at 62 Baxter St. It's not clear when everyone moved to Paterson. They also came from Alatri.

Also on this page of the shipping manifest shown as coming from Alatri:

It's very interesting to see that the Di Vicos are related to the same people that Sisto and Felicia are related to, and that Tito Pantano, possibly related to Sisto, is staying with his relation Giuseppe Capone, who is the cousin of Severino Capone, also on this page, and of Sisto and Ermelinda Caponera.

Gioacchino Onofri, 48, Adele Minnocci, 40, his wife, and their children, Maria Onofri, 17, and Umberto Onofri, 2, came to America on the SS Berlin, leaving Naples April 3, 1914, and arriving at Ellis Island April 16, 1914. They were headed to New York to stay with Adele's sister, Flavia Minnocci, 103 Porth St. That would make Flavia, Vittorio, and Adele all siblings. Gioacchino left behind his brother Raffaele, and Adele and the children left behind Adele's (and therefore Vittorio's) father Battista Minnocci. The birthplace and last residence for all was Alatri.

The first 21 entries on this page are from Alatri, so this was another large chunk of the village coming to America all at once.

Flora Minnocci, 30, came to America on the SS Neckar, arriving at Ellis Island April 21, 1909. As mentioned in the entry for Anna Magliocelatti, there was no scanned manifest for this trip, so I can't tell how she's related, but hope to find out when I look at the microfilm.

There are 15 other entries on this page from Alatri other than Flora and Anna.

(Please note that all of the links in this entry to the Ellis Island Records web site are liable to come up kind of broken given the heavy volume and lousy servers the site labors under. I wish there was something I could do about that.)

Posted at 9:47:53 PM Link to this entry

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