Ok... being from Vineland, Im half Italian. Not a pre-requisite to be from Vineland, but Vineland ended up being a final destination for many of the Italian immigrants, as we all well know. Ive fooled around with Ancestry now for about 3 years. Dealing with the names in the Italian side of the family has been quite a challenge. My grandfathers first name, in Italy was Egidio. At Ellis island, I can only assume they thought it sounded close enough to Jim to write his name down as Jim Marino. Which somewhere along the line he formalized to James. Ok... so we have that to deal with. But what has become even more of a challenge is that families many times Americanized their Italian names on their own, I can only assume in an effort to fit in. So in comparing census records from 1910, to 1920, to 1930... many of the kids names changed, and sometimes more than once! Add to that many children dropped off the list. In the old days, infant and child mortality rates were much higher than we have today. A question on the old census forms actually asks how many children have you had and the next question how many are still living. Wow... the numbers you look at in those columns really make you think how much harder life was back then. And by the way... I opted in for the DNA test to see my lineage and possible matches to other Ancestry members. I now have 5,687 probable 3, 4, and 5th cousins I was previously unaware of. However odds are good well never get to meet most of them. But I have talked to some. Interesting to say the least.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:12:16 +0000