I also discovered that my grandparents were married at St. Joachim’s Church on Roosevelt Street in Manhattan, now long since demolished. What makes that detail notable is that I am a member of the Saint Rocco Society of Potenza, which originated at St. Joachim’s in 1889.
By a curious coincidence, I am also a knight in the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George, and St. Constantine the Great is the patron saint of San Costantino Albanese.
The documents confirmed something else: my great-grandfather served in the Italian military with the 2° Reggimento Fanteria during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya. While I did obtain a photograph, the reputed one of him brandishing a captured, oversized Ottoman scimitar still eludes me.
The documents yielded something rarer still: the names of four great-great-grandparents.
Some family rumors, it turns out, were simply facts waiting to be confirmed.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, February 10th, Feast of Santa Scolastica da Nursia