This month's task on my 2026 Genealogy Projects Calendar is "find more immigrants". Sure, I've already found and documented my direct ancestors' passage from Italy to New York. There weren't a lot of them to find:
- 1 my mother's father
- 2 my father's father
- 3 & 4 my mother's mother's parents
- 5 & 6 my father's mother's parents
- 7 & 8 my mother's mother's mother's parents
No one else in my direct line emigrated, other than a great grandfather who was a bird of passage. But that doesn't mean there aren't countless cousins who left home for good. There are three great things about finding immigrant cousins:
- They may show you where your ancestors lived at that time.
- They may lead you to their spouses and children.
- They may lead directly to DNA matches you haven't solved.
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| When the hometown records end for someone in your family tree, this type of genealogy search can fill in the rest of the picture. |
A search for immigrants can pay off if your family tree extends beyond your immediate family. It's best to include all the siblings you can find from each family unit. Then search for who they married, and pad out their families. And this is why my tree has 86,986 people. Everyone from my ancestral hometowns is related, and I've got the receipts.
I use Ancestry.com for my searches. I've yet to find an Italian in my huge family tree who arrived at any port other than New York. So I went to the database called "New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists". In the search form I entered only a town name in the "Lived In" field. Then I sifted through the results for anyone I could identify.
I entered the town Circello, Benevento, Italy. My closest ancestor born in Circello is a 3rd great grandfather born in 1813. That's pretty far back, so I know my connections to his hometown need more exploration. Ancestry gave me 455 search results. One at a time, I tried to match the basic information about each person to someone in my family tree.
After a few tries, I found a result for a man I could identify with certainty: Luigi Golia. I opened another web browser tab to search for more information about Luigi, now that I knew he had come to America. What I found was a heartbreaking story.
Luigi arrived in New York at age 18 to join his hometown friend on East 148th Street in the Bronx, New York. The first search result I found was for Find-a-Grave, showing that Luigi died at the age of 30. He's buried in the same cemetery as my grandparents and most of my Bronx relatives. His grave marker contains a photograph of him, as is the tradition in Italy.
Now I know he arrived in New York in 1913 and died in 1925. What else can I learn about his life?
A summary of his 1925 Bronx death certificate lists his cause of death. It says "Traumatic Rupture of The Liver Probably Automobile". Oh no. I went to the New York City Municipal Archives website to see his death certificate. On the line for contributing causes it says, "Investigation Pending". His death certificate names his wife as Martha Golia.
I searched the Municipal Archives for a Bronx marriage using only the name Golia. I found them. The couple had married only a year earlier on 20 Jan 1924. They never even made it to their first anniversary. They married in my family's church—the one where I was baptized. On their marriage certificate, "Martha" is using the name Margaret. She signed the certificate as Immacolata Margarita Zadienla. The witnesses both have last names I know from Circello. Note: Other documents tell me Immacolata's last name was Gaudiello, which is a name found in my family tree.
When they married, Luigi lived right in the middle of the neighborhood where my parents grew up. His bride lived eight blocks away. In a year she would be a 21-year-old widow.
But it gets worse. It's rare that I find court records for anyone in my family tree. But there was legal action on "Margaret's" behalf once Luigi died. Here I found an explanation for his cause of death. Margaret was suing Martin Burke "for personal injuries sustained by the deceased on the 24th day of December, 1924, by reason of having been knocked down and run over by an automobile belonging to the proposed defendant, and which injury was a direct result of the deceased's death."
So Luigi died 12 days after a car ran him over. Just when I thought this story was as sad as it could get, I turned the page in the legal document. There I found that the couple had a three-month-old baby named John. Further research shows that John lost his mother when he was only 12 years old, yet he persevered.
In the end, I'm happy to discover that baby John lived a full and admirable life, dying in 2023 at the age of 98. To quote his obituary, "John's priorities in life were clear and ever present - Family, the Catholic Faith and Perseverance."
This entire story came from a search for immigrants from a specific town. Luigi went from a name and date of birth in my family tree to a tragic figure whose only child lived a life of education and service Luigi might never have imagined.
Luigi is not a blood relative of mine, so I don't expect to find any DNA matches connected to him. I can't find a World War I draft registration card for him, although there should be one. And I can't find him in the 1915 New York State census or the 1920 Federal census. But what I have found ties up another loose end in my family tree and adds depth that is priceless.
Where will your immigrant search take you?
