Throwback Thursday - The Notebooks

Front Row. The Brothers (left to right) Achille, Dad's father,
Uncle Alfred, Uncle Joe, Joe (Dad), and Dad's brother, Mario.

To clear up some confusion, the Notebook passages posted on Throwback Thursday were written by my father and found by me after he passed away. They were his attempt to tell the family history. He was in his late 80s or early 90s when he wrote them.

[ed: And so we reach the third and final notebook. At the time he was writing, dementia was setting in. Dad was upset he couldn't remember things, and he confided to me that he felt like he was losing his mind.  I'm not sure why there were three notebooks as they begin pretty much the same. Did he forget he had started writing? Did he forget where he put the notebooks? So, be patient with the old man. Though a lot of the stories you've heard, I'm hoping that Dad will reveal other details, names, and dates to further my genealogy research. As you are reading the stories in the notebook, so am I. Though Dad passed away in 2013, it wasn't until I started this thread in June 2016 that I was able to read Dad's stories. And now today's chapter:]

My Life, as I Remember It and Lived It

To my son, and my daughter, and my granddaughters The Eldest and The Young One, my daughter-in-law, and son-in-law.

Before anyone can have a life there must be parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, plus brothers and sisters.

And of course, Great Grandfathers and Great Grandmothers and Great great kins that established the so called family tree into the great past. Some people can do this. I can not do. I did not meet any of my grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides.

My parents on both sides did not talk about their childhood with us. They did talk amongst themselves about incidents of their childhood or growth. They did not draw us children into their talk. It seemed to me that they felt disconnected from their parents. The feeling that they would not be able to see their parents or relatives again.

Twice I remember my father said he had an aunt that owned an island and great aunt that lived to 106 years.

They did love their parents and I recall Uncle Joe and Uncle Fred coming to the house and asking my father for money usually 10 dollars, which added with the other two was $30.00, each time, when the time was good. During the Depression, it was cut and then stopped.

Uncle Vincent and his brother did send money. I know that Uncle Vincent when I was training at his law office would send a good sum of money to his sister in Italy. Here too I never heard her name.

I have cousins in Italy today and also in Switzerland, England, and South America. I don' know them and they don't know me.

On May 22, 1889 [ed: March 22, 1889] Saveria Todisco gave birth to her third child [ed: fifth child] and she and her husband named him Achille. He had a sister named Angelina and a brother named Joseph, at that time. These were my grandparents and there would be Alfredo, Roberto and another daughter. Whose name I never heard the brothers and sister ever call her by name. They lived in Torre De Nocelle [ed: le Nocelle] in the Naples area.

My grandfather was a shoemaker owned his own house with a plot of land which was also his place of business. In his time shoes were custom made. He must have done pretty good economically as he sent Aunt Angelina, Uncle Joe, Fred, and my father to America. In that order. [ed: The children were sent by birth order. Uncle Fred was younger than Dad's father, Achille. He sent Aunt Angelina, Uncle Joe, Achille, and Uncle Fred to America. In that order.]