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Piero (Peter) Riva of Glen Cove, New York, now in his 70’s, recently reconnected with some 40 cousins in his hometown of Imperia, on Italy’s Ligurian coast. Independent family reunions and guided heritage trips are a growing sector of the travel industry, says Rachel Cooke of Kensington Tours, a bespoke travel company. “Home never leaves you; your...

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Many of us who have researched our Italian immigrant family history find it to be a very rewarding experience. We develop our family tree and may even find relatives we never knew existed. The research provides a sense of closure in knowing our roots, who we are and where we come from.  Just as in any aspect of life today statistics and its data/nu...

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Growing up and even more so later in life I often reflected on what exactly did it mean to be a third generation Italian American. I knew that meant I was a descendant from family that was from Italy. Through my early genealogy research, I was able to document and layout my family roots back to Italy. In doing so there was some sense of closure of...

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As the entire world quickly shut down in 2020 for the pandemic, my inner world slowly opened up in new and exciting ways. Finding myself at home on Hilton Head Island on the coast of South Carolina in the USA with extra time, I committed to an earnest and thorough effort to finally research my genealogy. It wasn’t long before I was completely engro...

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As many who know me know, I’m of Italian descent. My grandparents came from Italy, and we grew up in an Italian American home, with many Italian delicacies on our table, and many of the Italian influenced celebrations of holidays/feast days, but our family, like many of my schoolmates’ families, were proud to be Americans, just as much as being Ita...

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Many years ago, while interviewing my cousin Herby for family recollections, he had mentioned that our grandfather, Antimo (nicknamed “Tony”) operated a produce store, around the corner from Arthur Avenue (across from St.Barnabus Hospital.) *Note: The timeline for this story is around the mid to late 1950’s.* Herby clearly recalled the fact that, w...

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From a rustic, tiny synagogue she fashioned from her family’s ancestral home in this mountain village, an American rabbi is keeping a promise made to her Italian-born father: reconnect people in this southern region of Calabria to their Jewish roots, links nearly severed five centuries ago when the Inquisition forced Jews to convert to Christianity...

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This is the story of an heirloom that isn’t. Sometime around 1977, my mother painted a portrait of my grandmother, my father’s mother. The painting, oil on canvas, was pretty big, maybe two feet by three. My mother framed it in her workshop down in the cellar, and gave it to my grandmother, who hung it on a wall of her tiny, wooden house, one town...

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The old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” can literally apply to my vintage Leto family portrait (circa 1923). This famiglia photo of my Italian immigrant grandparents and their second-generation children tells a cherished story. This well-staged family portrait is a precious heirloom, a museum-quality artifact, a forever keepsake t...

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On Dec. 19, 1921, Gary Zuchelli’s grandfather, Guido Zucchelli, came to America looking for new opportunities. On the same date, 100 years later, his family came together to celebrate just that. “He came over from Pranzo, Italy,” Gary said. “When he was born, the land was under the control of Austria, but it was included in the land given to Italy...

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