I grew up, as I’m sure many of you did, with a lot of Italian relatives who married into your family line, but some were a little different. There might be a godmother who doesn’t quite connect to the tree or folks who we call our “uncles” and “aunts,” but were they really related? “Who was Cooma Micheline? Is she a cousin of Nonna?” Nobody seemed to remember. More on them later. For now, let’s focus on actual branches, however tenuously connected to the trunk.

The relatives who married in Italy typically are from the same town, or from towns near to each other. Once they moved to Chicago, however, there was the chance that someone from another town or province in Italy married your aunt or cousin. Once they were outside of Italy and had the world, so to speak, from which to choose a mate, they didn’t always choose the guy that dad picked for them!