The Sicilians

The mister is very proud of his heritage. Several years into seriously researching my family, he asked if I would take some time to look into his family tree. He was fortunate to have known his Sicilian grandparents very well as they all lived in the same town and the mister and his sisters spent every Sunday at their home. With that, the mister and his father gave me lots of good information and interesting clues to work from. But as with every family, there are those oft-told stories that seem to be on shaky ground. In this case it concerns the mister’s great grandfather Concetto Monreale.

The mister has an unusual and somewhat rare surname. He has worked in retail over 40 years and quite often someone will approach him and say “Do you know…? Or I know—-Are they related to you?”

On one such occasion in 1990, an elderly woman named Eleanor approached my husband asking who his father and grandfather were. An intense discussion ensued and she told the mister that she knew his grandmother, Prudentia, when she was a girl. She grew up on the same street as the mister’s grandmother and Eleanor knew the family well. Several days later, she returned with the photo above taken circa 1913. She said that this was Concetto Morialli and his son Walter. This would be Prudentia’s father and brother. She said that Concetto was also known as “Nino Frontieri” and that he had red hair. More on that later.

Unfortunately, during this time Prudentia was quite ill and in the hospital. The mister put this prized photo in his pocket and took it with him when he visited her. He showed her the photo and she confirmed that it was her father and brother in the photo and her father did have red hair. She was thrilled to see this photo but sadly, she passed away that evening.

And there the story could end. But it didn’t. It just slept for nearly 25 years.

The story about Concetto has always been that he was given up after he was born and that his mother was very beautiful and wealthy (or a prostitute, depends on which family member you ask). She came to visit him when he was a juvenile and he ran away because he wanted nothing to do with her. Ultimately he ended up in the US.

Nice story, but it smacks of the “I am descended from an Indian princess” line of stories. Therefore, after the first time or two of hearing it, I tended to want to stick my fingers in my ears and say La la la la la.

Then a couple of months ago several things happened. I was turned on to a book: Sacrificed For Honor  Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control by David I. Kertzer. This fascinating book revealed a world of adoption and infant abandonment in Sicily and Europe that I simply couldn’t fathom. But it did give me clarity in regards to the “adoption” story of Concetto. It now became clear that he was born to an unmarried woman who turned him over to the custody of the hospital as required by law. Then he most likely was taken to the “wheel” and interred into an orphanage. The orphanages were run by the Catholic church and they would have a literal wheel into which you could place an infant  then rotate the wheel until the child was now inside the confines of the  church building and the religion. Secondly, I read an article on the web about digging up roots in Sicily on the New York Times website. While the article was great, the prize was in the comments. One poster mentioned using a service run by two ladies with a business by the name of Memory Roamers. 

Enter my nephew, Russell. I am not sure at what point he became interested in family history or when we figured out that we shared this hobby but I am so happy to have him in my corner! Over the past few years we have bounced ideas and research plans off of one another. We have debunked theories, talked through the passed down stories and generally tried to untangle the family web.

Concetto and my father-in-law about 1936

One of the BIG things that Russell and I unraveled was that Concetto’s surname was originally Monreale….like the name of the town in Sicily. It is pronounced More-E-Alley and as the years in the states wore on, he began spelling it Morialli. In other words, phonetically. Next  after sharing the NYT story with Russell, he decided to contact Memory Roamers to locate a birth certificate for Concetto. We wanted to know if Monreale was a surname given by the orphanage based on it being located in the town of Monreale or was that his real name….and where does the Nino Frontieri name come in?

The ladies from Memory Roamers quickly found a birth certificate for Concetto that we probably would never been able to locate without their assistance. We now know that Concetto was born to an unmarried woman and fathered by an unmarried man. Children were often entered into the wheel by MARRIED couples, so this was important. We also learned that the mother wished to remain anonymous but that the father acknowledged the child. At this point it would be relatively safe to say that Monreale is the name of the father and not a name given by the orphanage.

Now what we don’t know is how did the “Nino Frontieri” name come about? In family lore, Concetto was taken in by a family but never formally adopted. His middle name was Anthony or Antonio…”Nino”. So, can we presume that the host family was Frontieri? I don’t know that I am ready to go that far just yet, but I am pleased that we can now prove that the given up at birth story is true.

It feels good to break down those walls and clarify those stories. There will be more to come on this story so stay tuned!

Concetto on right with unknown man probably late 30’s