It is said that researching family history is second only to scouring the web for porn in popularity. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I can see how it might be so. If ever there was a medium perfectly suited to establishing lineage and contact with unknown family it is the Internet.

I’ve always had a simmering interest in genealogy, but the sorry state of family tree applications never got me very excited. These were almost always legacy beasts that could import the archaic GEDCOM standard file format and do little more. Where these apps really failed was in areas of collaboration and visualization. What good is a family tree if you are the only person who can work on it? And, much thornier, how do you slice and dice such a fractal dataset so that it is actually useful?

In recent years Ancestry.com has stepped in and taken care of much of the problem. Ancestry is run by the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) as a commercial offshoot of their ginormous genealogical holdings. The site is strictly secular though and offers an amazing array of backend research services that turns one’s offline family tree into a portal to dozens of historical record repositories. Just upload (or enter) what you know and the site begins searching census records, immigration manifests, military archives — and the best of all, other people’s trees that link up with yours back in the mists of time. Depending on where you’re from you can flesh out your family rather easily. Just a few nights ago I actually got bored after taking my mom’s mom’s line back so far through the UK that my line proceeded through a reverse Norman invasion back to France in the 11th century. Goodness knows how far back the recorded lineage goes.

Perhaps the most entertaining feature of Ancestry.com is the “Find Famous Relatives” function, six-degrees of separation on steroids. Basically if you have a pretty fleshed-out tree (and especially if any branches of it stretch back through the UK), Ancestry returns a bewildering collection of well-known relatives. For instance, I am the seventh cousin twice removed from William Faulker. This means ol’ Will and I share the same great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent, though this person is two generations off from me. (Twice removed is what you are to the first cousins of your grandparents.) Not exactly thrilling. Ah, but there is thrill. I am the twelfth direct cousin of Werner Von Braun. This means we share the same great-grandmother¹². Let’s set aside that Herr Von Braun developed the V2 rocket for the Nazis and instead focus on his role as the father of the American space program, OK?

Even before I found Ancestry.com the web has been an inadvertent boon to family-finding. All you really have to do is get your name indexed by Google and it is off to the races. In the last six years I’ve been contacted by dozens of people with similar surnames or lineages who think they might be family. There’s Roberto di Tolve, a citizen and resident of Holland who was born in Barile, Italy and who is now a close family friend. Roberto travelled to Barile with my family and I in 2003. He’ll be back with us this July. There’s Stephanie Saville of the Paternoster line who traces her line to the famous winemakers of Barile. Most recently there’s Mike Botte who lives in NY and who grew up in Barile. (My great-grandmother is a Botte.) This may be the closest to true relation that’s been established simply from an e-mail. Mike’s cousin is the current mayor of Barile, who I will meet in July; so we’ll know soon. Much more on Mike and his extraordinary brother John in a future post.

So, ok, you get it. Online genealogy can be fun. But I am already seeing the underside of it. For one, it really does make you think hard about what family is. Genealogy is really about bloodlines, not family in the broader sense which includes step-relatives, foster parents, and illegitimacy. It charts gene propagation not family structure. In this way it is conceptually similar to The Genographic Project.

Also, you do come across people who treat genealogy with the same trainspotting zeal as online discographers. For example, finding a limited pressing of a Rolling Stones LP with a typo in the liner notes makes it more valuable; finding a misspelling on an emigration document might be a useful clue — but it might also be (and usually is) merely a massive pain in the ass. There’s a kind of genealogy buff I’ve come across that doesn’t really get this distinction.

Sunday May 20 was The Day of the Lucani when Italy celebrates all those of Basilicatan descent wherever they may live. Now, references to this “holiday” are mighty scarce and not altogether consistent, but the Internet says it exists. And I believe everything the Internet tells me.

In a stunning coincidence the day truly was of the Lucani for my parents and I. We set about a trek around the Chicago area to talk to older relatives on the Tolva side and to pilfer through their photos and documents. It was depressing in a way, because talking to these few living family members reminded us that we’d already lost the majority of the family history. There’s no one on that side alive from my grandparents’ generation. Why do you only become interested in genealogy once your primary sources are gone?

But memories remain and what we found is that sometimes those memories aren’t rosy. There’s a tendency — OK, I have a tendency — to romanticize the past and ancestors. Giuseppe Tolve, my great-grandpa and the man who came to America from Italy with his wife Grazia, has reached almost heroic status in my mind, for instance. But it turns out he was not what you’d call a great husband.

We’d long known that Grace died in childbirth with my great-uncle Paulie in 1920. However, the story of her burial were made clear to us this last weekend. The Botte family would not bury Grace in the plots owned by Giuseppe because of how he treated her during her life (details are sketchy, but the word “conniver” was tossed about — most think he was a philandering drunk). They buried her under her maiden name in the Botte plot. Ouch.

Decades later when my great-uncle Bill was near death he asked Paulie to donate his body to science. Paulie made some inquiries and was told that he would need to make backup arrangements in case science did not want Bill’s body. So, he thought, we can just use the empty plot next to Giuseppe, since Grace was never buried there. When Paulie contacted the cemetary he was told that this was not possible since “Mrs. Tolva” was buried right next to Giuseppe. But Paulie knew for a fact that Grace Botte was not buried with him. It turns out that one of Giuseppe’s girlfriends (perhaps a barmaid, perhaps someone he legally married) indeed occupied the original plot for Grace. Double ouch!

Also, we learned that the four (of seven) children young enough to be placed in an orphanage earned the nickname there “Boozy Tolvas” because whenever Giuseppe came to visit he was drunk.

Ah, family history. I suppose if you dig you have to be prepared for dirt.

But there were also gems. Such as locating the original naturalization document for Giuseppe from 1904. This is step one in determining our eligibility for dual citizenship with Italy. What we need to determine is if the line “renouncing and abjuring all foreign allegiance …” is the same as officially renouncing one’s citizenship. If so, we’re hosed. If not, I may be on my way to EU citizenship. Any lawyers out there deal with this sort of thing?

So what’s the relationship like between the north and the south in Italy? In many ways it is similar to 19th century America where an industrialized, urbane north interacts with a rural, agrarian south. Yet, as in the American case, that’s a gross simplification. Being independent states and kingdoms for most of their history, the individual regions of Italy have a much more complex relationship to one another than American states have ever had.

We need look only to current events for an example. Basilicata was recently in the news regarding the bizarre tale of a would-be assassin and the lingering effects of regional tension.

Giovanni Passannante, a native of Salvia, Basilicata, tried to kill King Umberto I of Italy 120 years ago. He failed, was jailed, and went insane. As further punishment, the kingdom of Italy forced his hometown to rename itself. You will find Salvia listed on maps today as Savoia di Lucania (Umberto was of the house of Savoy). But it didn’t end there. Passannante’s skull and brain were removed and preserved in formaldehyde for study by criminologists. They’ve been on display in a museum in Rome for the last 70 years.

That is, until last week when the remains were to be publicly removed and interred with the rest of the body in a full ceremony in Basilicata. But that’s not what happened. A day earlier than planned officials squirreled the remains away secretly to bury them with no fanfare. Certain activists, especially in the south, are upset.

“No one wanted to deal with this case,” said Vito De Filippo, president of the Basilicata region. “No one had it in mind to confront this problem.”

Others see nefarious forces at work. Pesce lays the blame directly at the feet of the current mayor of Lucania, Rosina Ricciardi, who he claims was under pressure from traditionalists in the region to delay the burial and who he says had hoped to put Passannante’s remains once again on display, but this time in Lucania.

“In Italy there is a strong monarchical movement that should not be underestimated even though it seems ridiculous,” Pesce said. Repeated calls to Ricciardi’s office seeking comment were not returned.

De Filippo sees a parable in what could be the end of this long tale. “Passannante is a symbol of the south, and while everything is not resolved and the south still has many problems, we have the civility to close this story, by bringing him home.”

Full story: Dead anarchist becomes cause célèbre in Italy. Ironically, friends in Italy tell me that this story is not receiving nearly the coverage at home as it is in US press.

Of course, America has its own conspiracy theory regarding a southern assassin and his remains.

“There’s only one thing for certain. I will be back to Barile.”

I wrote that on a private family blog in 2003 at the end of a visit to Barile. I had no idea I’d be returning so soon. Over the coming weeks I’ll get into more about exactly why I’m headed back, but for now let’s look at what an interesting place this small hamlet is.

Barile, Italy is in Basilicata, one of the twenty regions of Italy. It is the instep of the boot, not the toe (that’s Calabria) and not the heel (that’s Puglia, which the NY Times loves). Basilicata is also known by its ancient name, Lucania; people from Basilicata are referred to as Lucani. The region is still one of the poorest in Italy, though it has made much progress since the 1950’s.

The town is situated on the slope of a gigantic, seven-peaked extinct volcano called Vulture. This geological phenom is the reason that the best wine in the region (really the best wine south of Rome) is made here. The volcanic soil and high elevation makes is the perfect environment for the late-blooming Aglianico grape. The particular local varietal, not surprisingly, is called Aglianco del Vulture and is sumptuous, a meal unto itself. Think of a Cabernet, then make it heavier and more tannic and you have Aglianico. It is not a light summer wine. In fact, it goes best if you can slay a wild boar with your bare hands and flame-roast it drenched in olive oil over a spit. When we did genealogical research in Barile in 2003 we learned that my great-great-great grandmother Carmela Paternoster, is an ancestor of Vito Paternoster, present-day owner of the Azienda Vinicola Paternoster, the premiere winery in Basilicata for the production of the Aglianico. Nice pedigree, eh?

Still, the town is rustic. I’ve been twice and never seen anyone under 30 who was not a child. Maybe this is changing as the region becomes more appealing to tourists and industry. It will be interesting to see in July. The town is known for the caves, called sassi, which line the ridge of soft rock underneath the town. Up until the 1950’s this is where most townsfolk lived. In fact, many families are still in possession of the caves, such as my “cousin” (relationship unknown) Anita Di Tolve, who like most have converted it into a wine cellar/self-storage unit.

In 1993 when I was studying in Rome a buddy and I made a first trek to Barile. We were completely out of our element, barely speaking Roman Italian and arriving in the middle of siesta, but we did happen upon a man who understood us well enough to be intrigued that we were there in the first place. I can’t recall his name, but I do remember that he took us straight to his family cave. In retrospect it was probably a foolish thing to do. Two American idiots following a man they could barely understand into a dank cave to drink his homemade hooch. But we did it, the wine did not kill us, and we emerged unscathed and frankly quite pleased with ourselves. More on this first trip to Barile later.

Vulture was also the stomping ground of the young Roman poet Horace. It is a bit of a claim to fame for the area. Up near the caldera of the volcano which is now a gorgeous lake is a plaque embedded in the terrain with a stanza from his Orations where he describes lounging on the slope of the mountain.