To Nonna
Thank you….
Listen Here
Cara Nonna
Grazie per il regalo!
It is nearly fifty years since I actually spoke to you and my daughter, Katie, has never been able to meet you in the flesh. We are sorry we have taken so long to contact you, but we are hoping that one of the wonders of our modern world – the internet – may make this possible!
The gift? Your little Address Book. It has finally ended up in our hands after cousin Nicky found it in his mum’s things after she had died. He then passed it on to cousin Sherry who sent it and some photographs to me and Katie last year. With Italian grandparents, I had always considered myself a European so after the Brexit vote Katie and I decided we would investigate the possibility of becoming Italian passport holders. All we had to start with was a battered pink photocopy of your birth certificate that Uncle Clem had given me in the late nineties – at least we had something official and not just hearsay! I am sure that you will have been quite disappointed that your grandchildren had not really stayed in contact with one another but our quest for information has meant that we are now in contact with most of them and in some cases, their children, on a regular basis. It has brought us all closer, which is important now that all our parents are gone and we are scattered geographically. Anyway, we have a sneaky feeling that you might know all this already!
Back to the Address Book and we know it is yours because the handwriting matches that on the back of a postcard that we have (that you sent to a friend in 1907 – have no idea how or why we have it). We have been able to use it confirm and discover more about various family members and their stories. So once again, thank you.
We hope that if you are watching us, you are pleased with our progress so far. What started out as a way out of disappointment – Brexit – has turned into something so much more exciting and important.
Lots of love
Pip xx
The Address Book
Actually, it’s not a real address book, it’s a small 1933 diary that must have originally belonged to Grandad Dom Clemente. There are a few pencil written notes about ‘Tractor rebore’, ‘engine number’,‘clutch model 9CE’. Dom had his own garage business but he must have used another book because they could not have survived on the amount of business recorded. However, it is lovely to know that he held this book and to be able to see his handwriting. He died in 1953 and we assume that Grandma Angela Maria must have found it and thought it would be useful. There is a note of the telephone number we had from 1961 to 1965, so she was definitely using it from 1961, if not before.
The first job was to photograph every page and then we transcribed all the addresses and notes onto paper – not the note about the bunion cure though. It is so precious we didn’t want to damage it by constantly touching it. The names are in no particular order and we could tell the later entries as her handwriting became a bit wobbly. We went through separating the names into three sections – Italians with Italian and English addresses, Family – names we knew and Friends. At this time we had no real idea how many of the Friends would turn out to be Family and we are still working on it. Unfortunately, and obviously most of the people are no longer with us or are very old and infirm, but we have been able to contact some of their descendants with varying degrees of success. We can place some of the pieces in our jigsaw puzzle and the stories that go with them.
We know that after Dom died Angela Maria was ‘employed’ as a housekeeper for a man who lived in Walsall called Mr. Wadsworth. I have a vague memory of going to visit her and meeting Mr Wadsworth who had an extraordinary twisted, waxed moustache. After he died she moved into a tiny cottage behind Auntie Pauline’s house where she lived until she died. We think she may have been left some money because she then started going on Mediterranean cruise holidays and we now know back to Italy with her half sister Caraminella to visit her other half sister Giacinta who lived there – who we didn’t know existed – the address book note just said ‘Giacinta sister’!!!
This is a little gift that just keeps giving, the more research we do on our own family the more the “address Book” helps us with its clues!
We wonder what else this book can help us discover!
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