This blog post is being posted a couple of weeks after the fact. I found this information a couple of weeks ago but life and some medical issues got in the way and I was not able to share this great information with you until today. Please enjoy because I am still as excited today as I was on Tuesday, November 1st.
My grandfather is Celio “Jay” Capelli. He was born to Matteo Ciardonei and Adele Siletto. I have chronicled my grandfather’s story in several posts this Summer and Fall (an american dream, new documents add to the story of my grandfather, those places – cossano canavese, piedmonte, italy, and finding all 16 g-g-grandparents). My grandpa’s family are the last hold outs in my quest to find the names of all 16 g-g-grandparents.
When we returned home from our wedding adventures (wedding wednesday – creating genealogy), I immediately logged on and ordered from FamilySearch.org the microfilm that contains the church records from Cossano Canavese, Piedmonte, Italy. The Family Search index shows that the records contain baptisms from 1858-1899, marriages from 1651-1899, and deaths from 1669-1899.
The microfilm has arrived and I got a chance to look at the baptisms. I am very happy that I did my homework and showed up with a cheat sheet of words in Italian. It saved a lot of time in acclimating to another language. I had great success! I found the names of my missing g-g-grandparents!
I started by scrolling through the microfilm to see how it was organized. Quickly, I found that for each year there was an index of names, birth dates, and certificate number that showed up at the end of the year. In this small town there was anywhere from 10 to 43 baptisms each year. There are about 10 main surnames that appear in the baptism records.
Working backwards from 1899, I found Adele Siletto first. Her baptism record says that she was born 10 January 1892 to Guiseppe Siletto, son of Stefano and Ana Maria Maglione, daughter of Giarindo. I was really excited to see that someone in the church had added additional information to her baptism record by hand underneath Adele’s name. It also stated that she married Matteo Ciardonei on 25 December 1913 and died 18 January 1919.
I found Matteo’s baptism record next using the index of names for 1889. Matteo Stefano Luigi Ciardonei was born 12 February 1889 to Pietro Ciardonei, son of Matteo and Antonia Ciamporcero, daughter of Stefano. Again, additional information was hand written in stating the same marriage date and confirming the date of death as 14 March 1921.
I still can’t believe it. I only wish that my grandfather was still alive to hear all about it.
I am excited to get back to the library this week. My plan is to create an Excel sheet and transcribe the index pages for the baptisms. Since this is a small town, it will not be too much work and will hopefully help untangle the web of families later. I can then go through the baptisms for the Ciardonei, Siletto, Maglione, and Ciamporcero families to identify any siblings for Matteo, Adele, and their parents. I will tie in the marriage records as I identify parents for each family group. I do not plan on looking at the death records until I am done looking at the baptism and marriage records.
