52 Ancestors Week 39: Map it Out

Week 39: Map It Out

From Amy Johnson Crow: 

Week 39 is "Map It Out." (Fun fact: I can fold a highway map. It's a dying art.) Maps are *so* useful in our research. What discoveries have you made using a map? (Maybe you found that two ancestors were living closer to each other than you realized.) What types of maps have you used? Have you used a map to interest the non-genealogists in the family? Feel free to interpret this theme however you'd like!

Our small blue planet. Mostly harmless.

Maps? I've had some experience with maps. When I was little I used to draw maps of the continental United States just for fun. I did it all from memory, too. Though, some states were not to scale in the very beginning. Citizens of Colorado, you will be happy to know that I sometimes drew your state bigger than California. The same thing happened to Texas and Ohio for some reason. The only states I never drew that big was my home state of New Hampshire and the other New England states. Though, Cape Cod tended to just jut way out into the Atlantic.

I also drew maps for various school projects. One time my father and I drew a map of Italy on one of those poster boards you buy at a craft store. I forget what the context was. I think I was clearly doing a project on Italy for Social Studies or something. It was such a cool map, too. I wish we saved it. It's mainly because I had a great time drawing Mount Vesuvius, the Colosseum and several other Italian landmarks. Plus, drawing all those upside-down consummate "V"s for the mountains was kind of cool.

San Pietro a Maida, Italy

When it comes to genealogy, I've been revisiting my past interest in cartography and with the advent of Google Maps and Google Earth, it's been a great way to explore my ancestral towns in Italy without paying thousands of dollars for a plane ticket! And that's exactly what I did the first time I ever used Google Maps!

I didn't hesitate to check out San Pietro a Maida. When I started doing genealogy, I knew very little about the town. I knew my grandfather, my great-aunt and their parents were born there and visited from time to time. I also knew it was hot there for most of the year. The only snow they get would be in the mountains and higher elevations.

I used Google street view to walk around the town as if I was really there. San Pietro a Maida is bordered by the towns of Maida, Jacurso, Curinga and Lamezia Tierne. Like most of Calabria, it's flat with a few hills here and there.

Surrounding the towns are many olive tree orchards. I had a friend named Gattone who worked in the town commune office. He sent me many pictures of his orchard and the olive oil he produced. He once told me that the whole town goes out and harvests the olives. That is a pretty cool activity and it really brought to life what the people did in town. You can only learn so much from pictures!

Recently, my great-aunt heard that I was virtually walking around the town and she wanted to know who was living in the house she was born in. I wish I knew. My cousins in town didn't know as she didn't provide me with an address. I did find a house with "Tedesco" written on the mailbox in my travels. That provided me with some clue. Her mother was a Tedesco. It got me wondering. Were any of the Tedescos in the area? Well, I knew that part was true. But, I wondered if it was actually their house. It wouldn't have surprised me if it was.

Sadly, I didn't find any Ferraiolos. It was the strangest thing. Did they get run out of town? My father thinks that the family moved to Rome. That is possible. I hope I find out what happened to them and connect with a cousin on that side of the tree as the cousins there now come in on the Tedesco side. Time will tell.

Gesualdo, Italy

My next stop in my tour of Italy was Gesualdo where my great-grandparents, Giuseppe and Clementina were born. Surrounding that town are the towns of Fontanarosa, Frigento, Grottaminarda, Paternopoli and Villamaina. It's a town very, very far from San Pietro a Maida as it's in the region of Campania and is fifty-six miles from Naples and 180 miles from Rome.

Growing up, I knew a bit more about Gesualdo than San Pietro. My grandmother  taught me many things about the town. Unlike San Pietro a Maida, there weren't many olive trees in the area. Instead, there is an abundance of farms. This made logical sense because of what I found in my great-grandparents' birth banns. They were the children of farmers and it's clear that the town is a farming community. I like it when geography links up with the actual documents you find. If someone is listed as a farmer in those banns, chances are they are definitely a farmer. What she DIDN'T tell me was this:

Castle Gesualdo

In the center of town there is a castle named "Castle Gesualdo" and it has a bit of a history. When I first saw it I was like "Oh. This is a cool medieval castle in the middle of town. I wonder what the story is."

When I first saw it on Google street view, I had many stories running through my head. Did a vampire live there? Eh, probably not. Vampires wouldn't last too long in a country that prides itself on the use of garlic. It remained a mystery for quite a few years until I talked to a third cousin on the Carrabs side of my tree.

She and her son took a trip to Gesualdo and they told me ALL about it. Castle Gesualdo was the home of musician Carlo Gesualdo. Carlo lived from 1566-1613 and was known for his writing and pieces of sacred music. He was also a murderer. I am not joking. My cousin told me to look him up on Wikipedia and when I did I found that he killed a few people and suffered depression due to his actions. It's unknown if it was brought on by guilt. What was known is that he spent the last few years of his life in isolation in the castle. Some even say that his wife killed him. It's hard to say at this point.

San Pietro a Maida and the countryside

Walking around your grandparents' ancestral towns on Google Maps' street view is good. However, nothing can beat actually GOING to the place where they lived. You can only learn so much from pictures and stories about the town. Actually going there can be an eye opening experience for you. I've heard that it could even change you and change how you perceive your ancestors. This is where they were born, grew up and died. This is where they began their journey to other parts of the world.

 I definitely got that sense of gravitas when I "walked" around these two towns. You never know what you'll find. We live in an age where we can use technology to better understand our ancestors in the "old country". We can learn how they lived and it can help us better appreciate the people living there now and change how we look at the world. That's a great thing about Google Maps. It can be used to measure distances between towns when you're wondering if it's possible a person was born in one town dated someone else from another. Or it could be used to explore towns halfway around the planet. The technology is there and I encourage people to use it. You'll be amazed at what you'll find. And hopefully some day I'll see these places in person. Some day. I have showed them to my nephews and they have shown some interest in the towns.

When you look at these towns, you get a new appreciation for where the family came from and I hope to go there. Until then, I'll be using Google Maps to explore more of the world. I suggest you do the same! Like Calvin in the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip said:

"It's a big world Hobbes old buddy. Let's go exploring."

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.