The Sicilian Connection

One branch of Lisa's family comes from a small town in Sicily, San Fratello. It's an amazing place that distills many of the elements of Sicilian culture and history. Because of its location in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily was invaded repeatedly, by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Punics, the Romans, the Vandals, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish and the Italians. (I'm leaving out a few) San Fratello experienced many of these waves of conquest, and, though it's not one of the official historic sites in Sicily, history is clearly recorded in the buildings that exist today and the stones that remain of the civilizations of the past.

We visited San Fratello in April of 2013, in search not of the city's history but of Lisa's roots. Amazingly, we found what we were looking for.

San Fratello

San Fratello is where Lisa's great-grandfather, Antonino Mancuso, came from. He was her father's father's father. We didn't know much about him before we went to Sicily. The family knew that he had been born in San Fratello, had come to America at some point, had a family here, and died in San Fratello when he was in his 30s. Lisa's father, Anthony Mancuso, told me long ago that he believed his grandfather was in the olive oil importing business. When he told me this he put his index finger on the side of his nose and pushed the tip of his nose a little to the side, indicating that his grandfather was in the Mafia. Tony didn't provide much evidence for this, except to say that when his own father, Salvatore Mancuso, was a young man, he never lacked for a job, even during the Depression. This indicated to Tony that his father was being taken care of by the Mafia.

Lisa's aunt Terry, Tony's sister, took her parents to Sicily in the 1970s, and they visited San Fratello. They were there for part of one day, a Sunday, so they couldn't do much family searching, but they met some old men who said they knew Antonino. Salvatore spoke to them a little in Italian. Before we took off for Sicily, we meet with Terry in a little restaurant in New York City, where Terry passed on to us what she knew about her grandfather, some of which turned out to be incorrect.

She said his name was Antonio Mancuso, and, in Sicily, he had been a mounted policeman. After he moved to America, he visited Sicily from time to time. He died there in 1915 at age 33. His wife was Teresa Chiovetta Mancuso. Her own mother's maiden name was Santoro, They had six children. She died at age 39 and was buried in Long Island City. That was it.

In Sicily, we made our way to San Fratello from Taormina, on the coast. We took tiny roads that led past Mt. Etna, an active volcano.

Mt. Etna from Route 120

Lisa and Steve crossing the Nebrodi Mountains

Downtown San Fratello

 San Fratello is essentially a Medieval town, with narrow streets and a lot of crumbling old buildings. It's laid out on the top of a steep ridge about 5 miles from the north coast of Sicily. About 4000 people live there now. There are a lot of abandoned buildings because of an earthquake in 1920 and catastrophic landslides in 2010. The people in San Fratello speak Italian, but some of the old ones also speak an obscure language that's a mash-up of Norman/French/Lombard. The town is called San Frareau in the old language.This town was one of the last holdouts of Norman culture. My barber in Pelham, Angelo, who grew up a few miles from San Fratello, told me after I returned that the Italians persecuted the Normans a few hundred years ago (slit their throats) and many of the families fled to San Fratello. Many people from San Fratello ultimately emigrated to the United States.

Within minutes of arriving in San Fratello, we met Salvatore Calcaterra, who had been born there but who lived and worked in the northern end of the Bronx for many years before retiring to San Fratello. (He worked about five miles from our home in Pelham.) He volunteered to be our guide. We walked around the downtown with him talking to elderly people in search of someone who had known Lisa's great-grandfather. A true long shot. We found one 97-year-old man, Paolo Bellito, but he was born about when Antonino died.

Sal Calcaterra, left,  and friends. Paolo Bellito is in the center.

 Sal took us to the Stato Civile Uffico to look for records of Lisa's great-grandfather. We hit the jackpot. The clerks quickly found his birth and death records. First off, his name was Antonino, not Antonio. He had been born in 1879, the son of Salvatore Mancuso and Maria Teresa Vieni. He was married to Teresa Chiovetta in San Fratello in 1907, and he died there in 1915 at age 36. No cause of death was provided. On his death record, his occupation was listed as "scultore." Sal explained that this meant he had been a stone carver.

A clerk finds Antonio's birth record

Lisa gets emotional as she views her family records

Later that day, we visited the town graveyard, a place where many centuries of bones are kept. For the past 80 years or so, most of the markers are above ground. In a small section of the cemetery, there are still traditional graves, most from the late 19th century.

Sal shows us his parent's stones. He kisses his fingers and touches their photos.

Path in the cemetery

 The next day, we went back and met with the cemetery manager, Al Carrini. He looks through both paper and computer records, but can't find a grave/crypt for Antonino. He explains that many of the old graves were dug up at one point and the bones were put in a large common grave or people's remains were added to those of other relatives in family crypts.

In the cemetery office

Some mouse-chewed records

 We saw many graves for people named Mancuso, Chiovetta, Santoro and Vieni. (In fact, when we walked the streets of San Fratello and Sal introduced us to people, many of them had these names.)

Seems likely to have been Antonino's brother

Another potential relative

 Back in town, we visited Panificio Mancuso, a bread and cookie bakery and shop. We met some potential distant cousins.

Lisa with Rosalie and Salvatore Mancuso

We met some people named Chiovetta who invited us into their home. After a lot of talking in Italian, which we don't understand, Concetta Chiovetta, an elderly woman, tells Sal that she thinks Teresa Chiovetta, Lisa's great-grandmother, was cousin of her father.

Chiovettas

On our second day in San Fratello, we walked uphill to the oldest part of the city. There were a lot of crumbling buildings there. The main attraction for me was the ruins of an old church, which had been built in the 1500s and had collapsed in 1950. Here are some photos of the ruin. Notice the red marble--which had been quarried near San Fratello.

In that section of town, we met some more Chiovettas, Marianna Todaro Mordello and Maria Todaro, whose mother had been a Chiovetta. Marianna invited us into their home and gave us cake. She told Sal that she believed her grandfather might have been a nephew to Lisa's great-grandmother. Marianna's son, Filippo Mordello, gave us a ride back into the center of town in the family's Alpha Romeo sedan. The streets were so narrow that he had to do several 3-point turns to get around tight corners.

Maria and Marianna, on the right.

Sal introduced us to Salvatore Mangione, a former mayor of San Fratello who also had been a journalist and university professor. He's the unofficial historian of San Fratello. He showed us through the town museum, where he had an amazing collection of artifacts from ancient times. At the end of our tour he poured us some of his home-made wine that he kept in a water bottle.

Salvatore Mangione

Salvatore Mangione explained to us the naming tradition in San Fratello. At one point, the families gave up their Arabic and Norman names, now called sopranomma,  and traded them in for Italian names. The  people named Mancuso, for instance, had earlier been named Caiardh, Cedhe, Prefettien, Surgiuntina, Torru, Cocara and Zidhia. The Mangione's had earlier been Ciap'dhien, Pathr nascia, Pr'caccianti and V'rdheazz. Salvatore had written a book about this phenomenon, and gave us a copy.

We visited one of the churches in town, Santuario San Benedetto, built originally in 1617. San Benedetto is one of three saints from San Fratello. He was a Moor. In the statues and pictures of him, he's painted black.

Santuario San Benedetto

Historic photo of San Fratello in the church

San Fratello has an usual way of publishing death announcements. They're printed on paper sheets and glued to the walls of buildings. Here's one for Marianna Vieni, potentially a distant relative of Lisa's.

On our last morning in San Fratello, we walked up past the graveyard to the ruins of the ancient Greek town, which had been named Apollonia. There were rocks and ancient ruins of walls all over the mountain top, some of which were protected by fences and coverings.

Walls of the ancient Greek town, Apollonia

Our last stop was an abandoned church on the same hill, Church of the Three Saints. It was once a Capuchin Monastery. Every year, the people of the town hold a festival on the hill where they herd wild horses up to the church, though the ancient town of Apollonia, and then have a big feast. We went down into the crypt, a dark and quiet space. The spirits of the dead were with us. Salvatore, our guide, told us this was the tomb of Saint Tecla, an early Christian saint, but Wikipedia says she was buried in Syria.

Church of the Three Saints, built in the 1400s

Front door to the church

Frescos in the church

Stairway down to the crypt of Santa Thecla

A message from antiquity, on the floor of the church

I hope I have captured the amazingness of San Fratello. I have never felt closer to the past--nor more aware of the fleeting nature of our modern civilization--than when I was walking its streets and exploring its ruins. San Fratello spooks me. It scares me. But it also gives me a feeling of being part of the great march of humanity, in my own very small way.