Family "Grapevine" Not Always Accurate

[jennabet]

My grand-father's naturalization record was a great help to me when I was looking for immigration information for my grand-father. In addition to the date and place of naturalization, it listed the name and departure and arrival dates of the ship he sailed on out of the port of Naples. I used his naturalization record to have my Italian citizenship recognized but when I subsequently looked for his passenger record on that ship, I could not find it.

So when I returned to Italy as an Italian citizen, I asked my cousins what they knew about when my grand-father immigrated to USA. They were all very insistent that my great-grandfather and his three sons (my grand-father being the eldest) all left Abruzzo and sailed for America TOGETHER in 1910, although I wondered how after almost three generations, they knew this for sure.

I couldn't confirm what actually happened until I joined this site and one of the researchers, Suanj found the ship's record. It was there all along but his name was so mangled, I completely overlooked it. Also interesting is that he was ALONE and not with his father and brothers. It turns out, according to Suanj's research that my great-grand-father immigrated alone in 1905 and his sons followed him on individual trips when they became old enough to travel alone.

Our relatives do mean well when they pass down information "written in stone" but often it's misleading so if you're new here, I would seek out the great researchers who devote their time to finding things. Suanj, johnny_on_the_spot, PippoM, Erudita, Tessa78 because they are really doing a great service for the participants of the forum.

[PeterTimber]

In addition I would also add to the sage comments above by Jennabet by encouraging the purchase of an excellet genealogy book of Italian Records titled ITALIAN GENEALOGICAL RECORDS by Trafford R. Cole which is an easy read and well illustrated so that you would be able to recognize documents when they come thru the mail from respective Comune Stato Civile (town municipal vital records offices) Of course we are also hear to augment and otherwise assist in every other way with your reserach objectives. Peter