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Posted by studioag- AT - rcn  -- NAME: Gregory J. Pietrocola III on 03/02/02 at 6:28 AM Subject:   Re: Filomena Pietrocola In Reply to: Re: Filomena Pietrocola posted by Greg De Francesco on 02/21/02 at 12:09 AM: Dear Greg, Yes I still reside in the New York City area. In fact, I live in Hawthorne, New Jersey. My parents live in Ridgewood, New Jersey. No one in my family is in the Bronx. Working with the www.abruzzo2000.com website is a little tricky. Every time I go to that website I learn something new on how to send and receive messages. I have receive some messages from people here in the states and some in Italy. But, one message from the states turned out to be a distant relative that lives up in New York state. I went to go meet him one day. It is a great experience to meet long lost relatives. We keep in touch and I hope to invite him to a family party in the near future. Another letter was from some person from Italy. I believe the northern area of Lombardy, but I believe there was no family connection even though we had the same last name. It was tough to type letters in Italian. Some people say I destroy the Italian language when I try to speak it. The reason why I am on the abruzzo website is that I am the family genealogist and I have been studying my family history for a long time. In fact in that book of Vasto that your relative took back, has my family name mention in it many times. All the Pietrocolas are family members. This whole family genealogy research all started back on 1990, when my grandmother, Filomena Pietrocola, past away in New York City. I was going through her belongings and found old addresses of my father’s first cousins that lived in Vasto, which is in the province of Chieti, in the region of Abruzzi, Italy. Since I had an interest in family history, also unemployed at the time, I figure I would try to locate these people in Vasto back in October, 1993. It was the best vacation I ever had in my life. Mind you, no relatives has ever been in contact with my father’s first cousins since the early 1970’s. It was hilarious, I would knock on a person’s door in Vasto, one of the addresses I found in my grandmother’s apartment, and they would answer and look at me as if I was some alien from outer space. But, to prove to them I was a relative, I also brought along some old photos of them that my grandmother had in her apartment. I my limited in Italian I would say that their aunt was my grandmother in the United States. The next thing you know, all these relatives start to come out the woodwork. I am invited to other relative’s home to eat, other relatives drive me around anywhere I want to go, and everybody was so happy that a relative from the United States would come to visited them in Vasto. They even opened the museum for me, which is closed in the winter, so I can see old artifacts of Vasto. I also was able to do some family research. It turns out that Pietrocola is common name in Vasto and I was able to find out what my name means. We are mentioned many times in a Vasto history book, there is a Pietrocola street, we have a family crest, and it turns out somebody in Vasto had started a huge family tree on my family. I made a copy of the family tree and brought it home. I made it a mission to upgrade the family tree and find more relatives. Last year I sent copies out to relatives in Italy, America, and Australia. One of the family members I met in Vasto was a second cousin named Alfonso Pietrocola. He had lived in Australia for thirty years and then returned to Vasto to live out the rest of his life with his brother. I was surprised he did that because he left many of his children and grandchildren in Australia. He told me about his family in Perth and how he ended up in Vasto with a new wife. It was in the year 2000, that I decided to make contact with my relatives in Australia in order to add more names to the family tree. On the internet I was able to locate four people with the name Pietrocola in the Australia phonebook on the internet. I sent out letters to each one through the post office and before you know it, we are exchanging email. I was able to expand the family tree and send them copies of the family tree to each and everyone of them. But, through all that email and searching, I have become quite closed to my cousin Lida in Perth, who is a daughter of Alfonso Pietrocola. We send email to each other almost once a week. Last year she accompanied her husband on a business trip to New York City and we able to meet in person for the first time. In the summer of 2001, I tried to do a mass mailing of all the Pietrocolas in the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. I used the phone books on the internet to look up these peoples addresses. The mission was to see if all these people were related. From those who email me back there was no connection what so ever. Some of the people from Brazil United States, and Argentina gave me information on their families that came from towns near Vasto, but none of them were on the family tree. I went to the Mormon Church in New York City to look up information on their families, but I found no connection in the civil records. What information I found I email to them. Some were very nice. I receive a Christmas card email from Brazil last Christmas. Cordially, Gregory J. Pietrocola III Follow Ups: PLEASE ASSIST ME AND MY SISTER ISAAC IHEANACHOR   Posted at: 12/13/03 (0 replies)