Il Mondo è Cosi Strano Siamo Cugine?

By Andrea Balzano & Antoinette Silvestri Kellaher

We both joined AMHS at the beginning of 2015 and attended our first general meeting in March at Carmine’s. When at the start of the meeting President Marie D’Andrea-Yothers asked new members to stand, we discovered we were the only two new members in the group — and we were seated right next to each other.

Andrea and Antoinette

As we talked during dinner, Antoinette mentioned she was born in Bonefro in Molise. Andrea said that her grandmother was born in Bonefro, too, and Antoinette, doubtful, said, “You mean Venafro?” because she couldn’t believe she was hearing Andrea correctly. Andrea said, “Really, Bonefro, with a ‘b’.”

As we continued to discuss our Italian families, we learned that Andrea’s grandmother’s maiden name was “Lalli,” the same as Antoinette’s mother’s and paternal grandmother’s maiden name. We believed we must be cugine, as improbable as it seemed. And in fact, we began signing emails “la tua cugina.”

Antoinette Silvestri Kellaher came to the United States on July 28, 1958, at the age of seven on the Cristoforo Colombo with her mother, Concetta Lalli, and older sister, Rose, an auxiliary AMHS member living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to join her father, Gennaro (Jerry) Silvestri, who had immigrated to the States two years prior.

The terra vecchia section of Bonefro dates back at least 1,000 years

They lived in the Bronx, New York, close to relatives and other Bonefrani in the New York metropolitan area.

Andrea Balzano’s grandmother, Leonilda Lalli, was born in Bonefro on May 16, 1895, and came to the United States through Boston in 1913 with her sister Adele on the S.S. Canopic from Naples. Her parents, Celestino Lalli and Angela Marie (Lalli) Lalli, born in Bonefro in 1858 and 1861, immigrated to the United States in 1915. Her brother, Roberto Lalli, joined them, but continued to visit Italy over the years. On one of those trips back to Bonefro he married Lucy Silvestri. Andrea’s grandfather, Salvatore Balzano, was also from Italy (Potenza, Basilicata), but Andrea never met any of her Italian relatives during her childhood.

Andrea visited Bonefro for three days with her son in October 2015. Before she left for Italy she spoke to Antoinette’s cousin, Francesco Lalli, who gave her the name of his friend in Bonefro who speaks English — the only one, according to Francesco — and Francesco’s instructions were to go to the farmacia and ask his friend’s mother, who worked there, to put her in touch with Luigi. Before she left for Bonefro, however, Andrea connected with Luigi on Facebook. They used social media to plan to meet in the square in Bonefro, an amazing mix of old and new. Luigi gave Andrea and her son a wonderful tour of Bonefro, Larino and the surrounding area.

“Now we know for sure that we really are cousins. We plan to spend time in Bonefro connecting with family.”

Antoinette’s roots in Bonefro are more recent than Andrea’s, as many of her family remained in Bonefro or other parts of Italy, and she visits as often as time permits. She went to Bonefro in August 2016, and made a special visit to the municipio to retrieve birth and marriage records for Andrea’s great grandparents and her grandmother’s brother Roberto. It was a day of discovery. Looking through the ledgers with the help of the town clerk was truly emotional. And being able to help Andrea by securing photocopies of the actual birth and marriage records brought us closer to ensuring that we weren’t just kissing cousins.

View from the window of a pensione in the terra vecchia area of Bonefro

Andrea and her son, Ethan, did Ancestry DNA tests at the end of the year 2016. When Antoinette’s sister, Rose Silvestri Canahl, submitted an Ancestry DNA test in 2018, Andrea began looking through the long list of her possible relatives in her Ancestry account, and in May 2018 found “Rose Canahl” listed there!

Now we know for sure that we are really cousins. We plan to spend time together in Bonefro connecting with family and hope to someday complete research to find the names of our common ancestors. What started as an unlikely coincidence at an AMHS general meeting turned into an Italian family reunion. ❚