shave ice & gelato

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.

We then 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.

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, Giovanna Romano, 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:

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 this 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.

My great-grandmother, Giovanna Romano, was born in Lapio on November 20th, 1878. Her parents' names were Gennaro Romano and MariaTeresa Zarella. Besides Romano and Zarella, direct descendant family names further back include Carbone and more Romano names on the Zarella side. Hey, maybe Ray Romano and I are related somehow :)

Here again are my great-grandfather, Angelo Raffaele and my great-grandmother, Giovanna on their wedding day. They were married at Sacred Heart Church, in Boston's North End, on April 6, 1902.