the birthplace of my great grandmother ~ Lapio, Italy

*This is my Lapio post (January 20, 2008) from 

my shaveicegelato.wordpress.com blog. 

At the end of this post ("Read more...) are the comments 

from this original 2008 Lapio post.

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Three months ago, I wrote about “my visit to Montefalcione“, where my great grandfather was born. After writing that post, four people with ties to Montefalcione left comments on my blog. I have also noticed quite a few hits on my Irish, Scottish, English side of the family post and hope one day to find a connection there.

So, today, I decided to write about the town of Lapio where my great-grandmother was born, with the hope that this post may help me to find connections to Lapio and possible relatives from there. I have not yet visited Lapio but hope to go there someday.

Here is one of the few photos I have found of Lapio:

(link to the source of this photo – Lapio town website – no longer works)

Like Montefalcione, Lapio is also located in the Campania region of Italy. It is 22 kilometers from from Avellino and is very close to Montefalcione. I can’t believe I was so close to Lapio but did not visit!

(I can’t seem to find the source of this map anymore.)

According to the 2008 Lapio website, there were 1,750 inhabitants living in Lapio during the 2001 national census. The inhabitants were distributed in 590 families with an average of 2.97 people per family.

I found this interesting bit of information on the ten most common surnames in town of Lapio.

Key to the chart: The left hand column displays the estimated number of individuals with the given surname displayed in the right hand column. For example, 106.10 estimates there are at least 106 people in the town with that name.

*edited in 2022: All of my direct ancestor names that I have discovered: Caprio, Carbone, Cataldo, Coluccio, Costanza, d’Alelio, Forte, Galante, del Grosso, di Ioanna, Membrino, Mottola, Padrona, Palladino, Perrotta, di Sessa, Statuto, Romano, Vozella and Zarrella.

The popular names above: Lepore, Cristofaro, Pasquale, Melchionno, Trodella & Iovine are all names of spouses – so basically, I’m related to almost every family name in Lapio in some way

Here again are my great-grandfather, Angelo and my great-grandmother, Giovanna on their wedding day. They were married at Sacred Heart Church, in Boston’s North End in 1902.

                          

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                   

I wrote this post many years ago. My intention at the time was just to share a little about my family ties to Lapio. I have been truly amazed at the number of comments left on this blog post. What a wonderful community of cousins with ties to Lapio. I did not want to lose any connections made, so I copied all of the comments from my wordpress.com post to share here as well. As I am rereading all of the comments now, I wish I had contacts for everyone. I think I have figured out a few family connections. I am so grateful to everyone sharing Lapio connections in these comments. 

For some reason, many of the comments on my Lapio post are not in the correct order. I never could figure out how to correct that on my wordpress.com blog. I have tried my best to put the comments in the correct order on this blog page. Hopefully I didn't lose any of them!

If you would like to leave a comment, it might be better to leave it on my https://shaveicegelato.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/the-birthplace-of-my-great-grandmother-lapio-italy/ original post. That way others can still interact if there is a common interest with a family name. You are also welcome to leave a comment here. 

Click on "Read more" (below) to see original comments...

my visit to Montefalcione

*This is my Montefalcione post (January 20, 2008) from 

my shaveicegelato.wordpress.com blog. 

At the end of this post ("Read more...) are the comments 

from this original 2008 Montefalcione post.  

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My second trip to Italy, in the summer of 2000, included a visit to the Campania region. This is the region where Montefalcione and Lapio are located. My great-grandfather was born in Montefalcione and my great-grandmother was born in Lapio. My hope was to visit at least one of these two towns while staying in this region.

I met a friend who would be joining me on my Sorrento leg of my trip in Florence the day before we were to travel to Sorrento. We traveled by train the following day. After a day or two, we stopped at the tourist information booth where I inquired about directions and transportation options to get to Montefalcione. The man at the desk offered to take us if he would be going that way during the week while we were in Sorrento, and if not, he would try to find someone else to take us there. I was thrilled as I thought the only way to get to Montefalcione would be spending most of the day on trains and buses. That evening, he called me and said that his brother, Luigi, would be able take us the following day.

Luigi arrived at our hotel at 8am the following morning. After years and years of genealogy research, Wednesday, July 5th, 2000, would be the day I would finally step foot on the land of my great-grandfather’s birthplace! I was a little nervous at first not knowing this man, but he turned out to be a very kind person. It took us about two hours to get to Montefalcione because part of the Salerno to Avellino autostrada was closed for construction. We had to take a long detour up and down a mountainside, stopping for directions a few times along the way. I know I would have never found it on my own. Montefalcione is located up high on a mountainside (monte=mountain). It seemed to me to be a pretty modern little town. We drove thru part of the town and then parked the car.

Luigi took the picture of my great-grandfather along with my genealogy list with of all my relatives’ names from Montefalcione and started to ask some of the people if they knew if any of my relatives were still living in the town. Because Montefalcione is not a town where many tourists visit, we seemed to be quite a curiosity to many of the residents of the town. They seemed quite amazed that I came all this way looking for relatives. We did find a woman whose mother had the same last name as my mother but her mother was very old now and would not be able to help us.

Next, we went to the main piazza. This is a picture of Luigi and the main street in the town. Pictures in this post were scanned into my computer. Unfortunately I did not have a digital camera at the time and did not take that many pictures of the town.

After we parked the car, I noticed a sign above the police station with the name “Montefalcione” on it. I started to take a picture of the sign. A female police officer was just walking out of the door as I took the picture.   

         

She was upset at first that I was taking a picture of the police station. However, once I explained who I was and why I was taking the picture, she devoted the next hour helping me find any of my possible relatives in the town. It was a good thing Luigi was there to help with the translation. They both were wonderful. I would have given up long ago and would have just been happy seeing the town, but they were determined to help me find a relative.

The police officer had us follow her as we drove to a house up on a hill of a woman who may have known some information about my relatives. She unfortunately was not home. We then drove to a to the house of a man with the same last name as my mother. He did not think that we were related.

View from his house:       

   

When doing my genealogy research and looking at the microfilms from the town of Montefalcione, it seemed to me that many of the people in the town married close relatives as there were not many surnames in this town back in the 1880’s. The police officer told me that there were many Martignetti’s still living in Montefalcione (my great great grandmother’s last name).

While wandering through the town, we walked by a few churches. One of the churches had the the name Angelo Raffeale Martignetti on it! My great-grandfather’s name was Angelo Raffaele and his mother’s name was MariaTeresa Martignetti. I was pretty excited to see my family’s name on this church. It was also on the gate of the church.

                       

Close up of the name on the church:      

         

Close up of a little boy peeking out at me while I was taking the picture of the church:

I don’t have a picture of the biggest church (which I assume was the main church) in the town as it had scaffolding on it. This is a picture of another church in the town:

               

My guess is that I was probably somehow related to many of the residents of the town. I could have even been related to the police officer who helped me. Even though I did not find any definite relatives, just finally standing in the town where my great-grandfather was born was very exciting! I was greeted warmly and everyone I met was very kind to me. I treasure the memories of this trip and hope to return some day as well as to visit Lapio, another town nearby, where my great-grandmother was born.

This is a picture of my great-grandfather, Angelo and my great-grandmother, Giovanna on their wedding day. They were married at Sacred Heart Church, in Boston's North End in 1902.                   

**EDITED April 2018 – I am back into genealogy now that I am retired! Comments continue to be welcomed. Hopefully we can make more connections.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wrote this post many years ago. My intention at the time was just to share a little about my family ties to Montefalcione. I have been truly amazed at the number of comments left on this blog post. What a wonderful community of cousins with ties to Montefalcione. I did not want to lose any connections made, so I copied all of the comments from my wordpress.com post to share here as well. I tried my best to put replies to comments right below (they were a mess!). I am grateful to everyone who took the time to leave a comment. Rereading them made me realize I might now know answers to some of the questions posed about Montefalcione family connections after doing more genealogy research. 

If you would like to leave a comment, it might be better to leave it on my: https://shaveicegelato.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/my-visit-to-montefalcione/  original post. That way others can still interact if there is a common interest with a family name. You are also welcome to leave a comment here. 

Click on "Read more" (below) to see original comments...

new blog

Welcome to my new blog!! 

I am starting this new blog dedicated mainly to genealogy posts. 

Back in 2008, I wrote 2 blog posts - one about Montefalcione, Italy and one about Lapio, Italy. They were my 2 most popular posts. When you search the word "Montefalcione" my post is still one of the top google search posts listed (number six!). You can find them both posts on my shave ice & gelato blog. I also plan to post copies of my Montefalcione & Lapio blog posts on this new blog.

I originally wrote both posts on my slow travel blog. Fortunately, I decided to switch over to wordpress & transfer all my blog posts before we all were surprised one day when our slow travel blogs stopped working and all of our posts disappeared. 

I was pretty active for a long time on my new wordpress blog, but then I got busy with other things like working on my genealogy. I eventually stopped posting anything new on my shave ice & gelato blog. It seemed silly to continue to pay for a personal plan & blog domain so I decided to stop paying for my personal plan this fall... 

BUT I screwed up! 😦  I guess I needed to do something to redirect my posts before my personal plan & domain expired! Because of this mess up, now if you do a search on google, my Montefalcione & Lapio posts, both will be directed to some empty site advertising my blog name. BOO!! 😡

SO... I am starting this blog in hopes of providing another way to find these posts... and just maybe I'll start blogging again one day and do some new genealogy posts.

I had a couple of blogger blogs many years ago but some things have changed. Bear with me as I figure out all the ins and outs of blogger. For instance, sometimes I can change the link color to blue and other times I can't. 

My old blog still works, but I won't be posting anything new there.