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408: Re: Possible relatives still in Cervinara.Heritage Forums - Avellino 1 |
Posted by karenneve- AT - realtor  -- NAME: cioffi
on 11/12/03 at 2:20 AM In Reply to: Possible relatives still in Cervinara. posted by Ralph Muscatell on 02/19/03 at 12:17 AM: We have just returned from Cervinara. We spent approx a day and a half there. We drove to the town the long way but with beautiful scenary. It is really only about 30 minutes or so east of Naples. It is a quaint town with old and new. The Municiple is newer as they had an earthquake there in 1982. So we have been told. We parked on a small street and actually parked right in front of a street named Via Cioffi. What a coincidence. As soon as we got there a woman who was looking out her window tried to help us find the municiple along with our namesakes. Not many people speak English there but we were able to find a woman at the Municiple that did. What luck. She had spent years in England and has now returned home. She and everyone at the Municple was very helpful to the Americanos. We realized that our grantmother's maiden name was Iuliano not Juliano, since there is no J in the Italian language. We then found two birth certificates, my aunts, my grandmothers and then the marriage certificate of my grandparents had where my grandfather was born. The place where he was born is Northwest from there. They say that many of the men may have went there for work and brought their wives with them and had babies there but that did not mean they lived there. We are in the process of requesting that information from that town by mail. We were able to get more names and dates for the family tree, and actually walked on the street where my Grandmother grew up, so we are going back over 110 years. The town is a wonderful quaint town and the townspeople were so friendly and generous. We ate a restaurant that you would have drove by without even noticing a few times as we did. Before we knew it the owner who spoke a little English had out the telephone book and started calling all the people who had my Grandmother's name. By the way, there are hundreds of Cioffi's there, they say they are not all related. so it was more difficult to track that side of the family especially since we did not have my Grandfather's birth certificate.Before you knew it we had townspeople coming in to see if they were related. Although we were not able to actually confirm we feel comfortable knowing that the Iuliano's who own a butcher shop on the same street my grandparents grew up on are related. It was a wonderful experience,we went back the following morning to get more information and also then two evenings thereafter for dinner again on our way back of researching our other side of the family. We were told that they rent rooms there so if anyone wants to stay in town to do a lot of research I would suggest staying in town. The town is a beautiful town in the foothills. They tell us a home there costs between $300,000-$400,000 and that a lot of the young men are out of work are living with their families. they teach English in school but not well and the children will make up any excuse not to go to school. We were told that some of the Naples residents may come there for dinner on weekends since it is inexpensive. The food we had was wonderful. There are no menus. They will cook whatever you like. They grill a lot of meat and make homemade wine. Oh and by the way for those of you who call the red stuff on top of pasta, sauce. It is now confirmed that they call it gravy. I rest my case. Sundays most of the families go out to dinner at this restaurant. The cemetary has many Cioffi names in it. /All the mausoleums and graves have fresh flowers and the families take care of their dead as if they were living in a second home. The markets and magelleria's were plentiful and the bread and cheeses and italian cold cuts superb. We ate a picnic on a bench in the park in the center of town. This was our best experience in Italy. Better than Capri, Sorrento, Pompeii, etc. We loved the people there even though we had a hard time communicating. We met a priest who was helping us who did not want us to leave, we were looling through the Italian dictionary together in the dark outside his small church. We met a butcher who invited us in to look at his Meat lockers. The woman at the Municiple spent a good few hours with us and the people we met on the street were fun and friendly. If you ever get a chance to go you must walk the street of your relatives and maybe even find the house,which we think we did. Ciao. Follow Ups:
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