Beautiful Lives
Our ancestors' memories resonate within us. They aren't our memories, and we don't recall them in an 'ordinary' way, yet they flow through us much like the words to a song we can't quite remember. We feel their influence; they are often the cornerstones for what's true (and untrue) about ourselves. For good and bad, they remind us that we do not escape what shapes us.
In writing about someone else's ancestors, it's easy to fall victim to our own interpretation of their lives. The memories that are the cornerstone of someone else's ancestry aren't always ours to see clearly. Even the facts may become obscured under this lens. It's easy to misconstrue an event, or mislabel a person, and in terms of research, all too often place the wrong person in the old genealogical queue. We don't share that unconscious collective consciousness that allows us to see or understand what's hidden in their ancestral memory. As a genealogist, and indeed as a human being, one must be mindful of this while researching someone else's life, someone else's family, and someone else's experiences.
Now I know very little about Italy beyond picture postcards, Michelangelo, great wine, or amazing food. As a wannabe genealogist, I know even less. Let's face it, my Italian isn't rusty; it's non-existent. So when Paige and Kevin asked me to look at Kevin's family lines, I was a bit daunted. I wasn't too bothered by Kevin's paternal Southern ancestry. Heck, I have my own ancestral memories that were weaned out of Chesapeake Bay and south of the Mason-Dixon. But many of Kevin's mother's family are first-generation Italian immigrants. How could I, a California Yankee, contribute anything here? Their collective memories, their ancestral consciousness, felt so unknown and so far away from the shores of, say, my old stomping grounds of WASP-y Huntington Beach.
However, then, as with anything. I figured I'd just start at the beginning. It's just a wee start, but what I've found initially are wonderful and extraordinary lives. I've found incredible resilience. I've found a terrible tragedy. I found silly things that Kevin's incredible ancestors laughed about rather than pass judgment on. Indeed, what I found were beautiful lives.
I thought I would share three of these lives with you. I think Kevin may know most of this already, or have heard about these lives and events whispered in the collective consciousness of his ancestors. Still, as someone familiarizing himself with Kevin's ancestry and these amazing lives, well, I need to mention that all three of them are certainly worth researching and always worth remembering.
So enough of my claptrap. Let's start.
I have 'bound off' much of this information from what I could find among submitted family trees, original records, and old newspaper stories. I may be way off on some of this stuff. If I am, I hope you will forgive me. Wrong or otherwise, whoever these lives and these events were, they need to be celebrated.
I. "RESILIENCE"
GABRIELE SERAFINO RANEDAZZO/MELLINO/MELINI (1893-1969) I'm pretty sure that Kevin will recognize his grandfather's name in one of its several forms. I'm guessing, too, that the picture above of his grandfather is one that he will know. He (Kevin) may have even seen his grandfather's naturalization paperwork. (Image below) These are all well and good; however, the document I found to be the most telling about Gabriele Melini was the ship's manifest (second image pictured below) for Gabriele as he came through Ellis Island.
Please pay attention to the last name listed at the bottom of the manifest:
Now, because I may have missed something in the images here, I am going to include the indexing to help clarify what the image contains:
That this is the correct image is indicated because it names Gabriell Mellini's father, "Randazzo, Gaetano" in the far right section, which is consistent with information supplied through family trees submitted by various family members. I have not been able to double-verify this record with the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation. I believe their website must have a transcription error, as the ship's manifest for Ellis Island is clear enough to discern if not read. The Ellis Island Foundation should be contacted for clarification or to point out the omission.
The curious thing about this record is that "Gabriell Mellini" appears to be not traveling with anyone, or, if so, with a family member I have not been able to identify.
By all appearances, this eleven-year-old boy traveled from Italy to America alone.
Please do correct me if I am wrong. Talk about resilience.
(As a side note, the following November of 1904, the ship that Gabriell Melini had arrived on that previous May, The Sicilian Prince, ran aground. There with 600 Italian immigrant passengers on board, causing quite a commotion. Fortunately, Gabriele had decided to take an earlier ship.)
Okay, it's time to talk about a different boat. Now, don't get me wrong here. As far as Gabriell goes, I can neither "confirm nor deny" that this is Kevin's grandfather in the following newspaper article. Let's just say that whoever this man 'Gabriel Melino" was that he was an enterprising young fellow during prohibition. That Kevin's grandfather Gabriel Mellini was also certainly a fisherman, and the "Gabriel Melino" in the article also owned a fishing boat with a man named Tony Scola (Scola being the maiden name Gabriele's wife and of Kevin's grandmother, and an "in-law" family to Gabriell Melinni/Melino, etc.) it tends to make me think that the article in the newspaper is another example of a resilient spirit. :)
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Or should I say "spirits?" lol.
I'm betting dollars to donuts that this is Kevin's grandfather.
Cheers to you, Gabriele Mellini!
II. TRAGEDY
There's just no way to dance around this one. I'm not sure why I am mentioning it here, other than to show the resilience of the Ranzanno/Melino family. There's a lot about the Melino/Ranzanno clan that I am trying to piece together. And while this particular article doesn't really fill in any "required researching blanks," it spells a lot about what a family - and in this case, what an immigrant family - might have had to go through. Did anyone listen? Did anyone care?
I'm going to back up a bit here. I want to talk about Kevin's great-grandparents, Gabriele Melino's mother and father. They are GAETANO RANDAZZA (1853-1933) and [sic]GEROLMA "MAMIE"(TOCCA) RANDAZZO/RANDAZZA (1858-1933). I'm not going to say a lot about them, but curiously, family trees show them as having three children, all boys, each born ten years apart. (I have not verified other children) They are Salvatore (1883), Gabriele (1893), and Giuseppe "Joseph" (1903). I have no reason to doubt this information; however, Kevin's grandfather Gabriele, is always referred to as a "Melini/Melino" and not a Randazzo/Randazza.
The next part is a bit of a genealogical puzzle. That puzzle leads me to wonder whether Gabriele may or may not have been their biological son. Gabriele Melini/Melino may have been the senior Randazzo's grandson, a son of their daughter, already married (to a Melino) and deceased by 1904. The senior Randazzos would have been well into their forties by the time the last boy, Joseph, was born, making it an interesting family dynamic with raising a grandson as their own son and as the middle child. Sadly, both the senior Randazzos appear to have passed away on the same day (December 21, 1933) for what reason I have not been able to locate.
However, this story, this tragedy, isn't about them. It is about their grandson. It's about Kevin's grandfather's brother, [Gabriele's brother], SALVATORE RANDAZZO (1883-1946), and his little boy, Gaetano Randazzo, named for his grandfather.
He went missing. The worst nightmare a parent can have.
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Above: The Boston Globe, Boston, Mass., Wednesday, July 18, 1917, page 8
And yes, I'm not going to say anything more about this. There is often tragedy in and amongst the beautiful lives of the people we have come from. Grandparents who pass away on the same day, and little boys who never come home. Most times, these memories lie forgotten in our collective stream of consciousness. We might not even remember. We might not even know. Still, it remains.
And a family that overcomes it somehow finds resilience in tragedy.
III. JUDGMENT
Honestly, I wasn't too sure about this. As a genealogist, Hell, as a family historian, one is supposed to report only "just the facts" and not get involved with perceptions, historical, contemporary, or otherwise. So believe me as I bring up [Giuseppe] JOSEPH RANDAZZO, JR. (1931-1969) I am doing so with the greatest amount of respect for this beautiful man's life and out of respect for the family. I will admit, however, that I am also bringing it up out of a peculiar sense of what feels like humorous irony.
Please allow me to digress.
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This last sketch is about [Giuseppe] JOSEPH RANDAZZO, JR. (1931-1969). He was the son of [Giuseppe] JOSEPH RANDAZZO, SR., who was the third son of GAETANO RANDAZZA (1853-1933) and [sic]GEROLMA "MAMIE"(TOCCA) RANDAZZO/RANDAZZA (1858-1933). Kevin's grandfather, Gabriele Melini, was the little boy's uncle.
And no, I am not bringing this up because he was fat.
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I'm actually mentioning little Joey because he was also a near [unofficial] World's Record Holder for his size. I thought this was an interesting parallel (or a curious one) for Paige and Kevin.
An amazing sort of: "World's Record Ripley's Believe it or Not" kinda parallel.
Read on. You'll see what I mean.
I bring it up because little Joey Randazzo "grew" to worldwide fame in a contested weight class for big babies and children. This made the newspapers as Joey competed with another boy across the Atlantic in the UK. Fortunately and unfortunately, the boy in England ended up outweighing our hero, Joey, and relegating Joey Randazzo to 1936's [alleged] second heaviest child in the world.
(I think I have that straight...)
I realize that there was no official contest, and that Guinness or Ripley's didn't call on Joey; nevertheless, the singular title of [unofficial] World's 2nd Heaviest Baby is quite a title.
Humorous irony: Doesn't it make sense that a woman (Paige) who descends from "The 134-year-old man" would be married to a man (Kevin) who is a first cousin once removed of the child who was the [unofficial] "World's Record for Second Heaviest Baby?"
(Irony, I say. Irony.)
I don't know about you, but I have nothing like that in my family tree. No "extraordinary ordinary" people.
No "World's Record" or "Believe it or Not."
Heck, unless you count Dan. Lol.
The BEAUTIFUL part of all of this is that the Randazzo family took pride in Joey's weight. (Yes, we all know that having (or being an) overweight kid is not a great thing) However, they did not pass judgment on the boy. Maybe they accepted what they did not know how to change or what couldn't be changed. They felt a great sense of pride in Joey's size and in who he was. They gladly accepted the challenge from the kid who ultimately too first place for heaviest baby/child in England.
Okay, call me crazy, (whatever...), but we could learn a lot from people like that. We could learn a lot about not passing judgment on someone else and about simply taking pride in who they are.
I thought it was awesome.
No judgement. Total resilience. A beautiful life.
Postscript: I hope I have done a good job of representing the individuals here. I hope you will forgive my typos, errors, or misconceptions, or my unfamiliarity with the spelling of Italian names. I'm a bit of a bleary-eyed old man tonight, but my, what a privilege it has been "to meet" these amazing people along the genealogical road of life.
Thank you, Kevin, for this.
☮
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