WTI Magazine #65    2015 July, 24
Author : Giuseppina Dede      Translation by:

Maybe you are wondering... Museo del Cognome? What could it be? This is not the first time I heard these questions but well, you are right, you are curious and curiosity is often something good and I think you will be more curious after reading what I am going to tell you right now. The story begins right with a question, a dialectal expression: "ma tu a chi appartieni?", I mean "Who do you belong to?".

I know, it is not a question everyone hears everyday and everywhere, but believe me, these words, nearly sound like proverbial to those young people who live in the old villages in Southern Italy. They heard them at least once time in their life from the mouth of pretty and rather curious elderly people. And tell me... Who refused to reply? Not me, I was always surprised and fascinated when they talked about names, people and families of my little old town.

Families, stories, names, origins, roots, curiosity, that is what I hold in only one word: Genealogy. To me, Genealogy is not a simple reconstruction of family trees, numbers, dates, but something stronger like people, stories, places that bring new life when we decide to put the pieces of our own past together. This is what happened to me when I was only a child. No one was able to give me all the answers I need to learn something more about my family, so I thought it was the right time to gather my memories and dust old books off.

Day by day, one family after the other, my passion for Genealogy became a job and my job took the shape of a museum on April 2012. Here it is the Museo del Cognome. It is one-of-a-kind place in the world, located at the ground floor of a building placed in the old town centre of Padula, in the province of Salerno (south-east of Campania region). Here it is the place where people learn how to become genealogists of their own.

It is a true journey into the past. The documents affixed to the walls such as birth, death, marriage and census records of the Church and Municipality archives date back to 1800-1500 and outline the family history of every one of us. The tour inside the museum is also a true journey abroad, because the section dedicated to Emigration helps people to discover the long road the famous "rich uncle" had to take once he arrived in the USA. Boarding lists from Ellis Island, passports, naturalization documents, census records, World War I and II draw registration cards, just to mention a few.

The USA and South America are the places where many Italian descendants live. They contact us asking for a genealogical research help. We help them to create their family tree and learn about the life their ancestors had in their birthplace before emigrating abroad.

The museum strengthens the contacts abroad taking part at the RootsTech, the largest genealogical show in the world. It was held last February in Salt Lake City, Utah. A true step forward who let me showed all the projects and activities of the museum. Among all, the Ancestors Tour – In cammino con gli antenati.

The Ancestors Tour is the result of what the Museo del Cognome has been doing for years in the genealogical scope and in the so called "turismo di ritorno". It is an idea born from the will to give the possibility to those who want to dive into the past, discover their own family origins and the typical traditions of those times, too. The museum can be considered the bridge, the connection between Italy and the Americas.

This and much more at the Museo del Cognome, one-of-a-kind place in the world about Genealogy. The right place where to find your Italian roots.