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Greg and Mary Clare trip to Italy 2003 |
On our recent trip to Italy, we had planned to look for the Macinante family home, visited by Molly and Joe in 1982, but at that time damaged by the earthquake of 1980. As a starting point we had in mind to look up the registry of births where we expected to find an address. When we arrived in Rome on 26/5/03 we got straight on a train for Salerno where we had booked a hotel for 4 days. We were travelling with an old friend Mario who was born in Italy, and his wife Kathie.
Salerno is a busy coastal seaport on the Gulf of Salerno, south of Naples. It has a container terminal, fishing fleet, bustling shops and unbelievable traffic!!! The old part of town has a 1,000 year old cathedral where St Thomas Aquinas preached, a famous medieval medical school and other ruins dating back to Roman times. Molly had reminded us that the family lived in Pontecagnano which is a satellite suburb to the south of Salerno and we found a local bus to take us there. Unfortunately we arrived at siesta time when the Council was closing for the day, but a sympathetic official told Mario that the records we wanted would be in Montecorvino Pugliano, up in the mountains. This village did not appear on our map, but he said it was next to Montecorvino Rovella, a bigger village which did appear on our map. As it was by then too late to go there that day we spent some time looking around Pontecagnano. It is a busy suburb built along the main road south from Salerno. Behind the shop fronts on the main road were gardens and fruit trees. There was a large Citroen assembly plant on the other side of the railway line which carried finished cars to the port of Salerno. The next day we set off early, again by local bus to Montecorvino Pugliano up a narrow winding road into the hills. These 2 villages are built on the ridge above Salerno where fighting took place in the Second World War, when the Americans and Allied forces landed. After a lot of negotiation by Mario in Italian we got a photocopy of Candido's birth certificate from an old leather-bound book that was the Register – hand written and falling apart. However none of the entries had addresses. At the time (1888) the area was a small rural village and obviously everyone knew who lived where. We were befriended by the local policeman who drove us back to Salerno via Pontecagnano. He drove us through the old area of town and said that all the buildings that were damaged by the earthquake had been demolished. We looked in the local phone book and found that there are Macinantes listed in Pontecagnano but did not have enough Italian to phone them. Maybe someone is interested in writing?? We did not have time to go to the cemetery or look in local church Baptism registers.
Greg and Mary Clare* Holloway |
