Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Joe's Leave Record

Included in Joe's military records is a list of all the times he went on leave.



I have been able to figure out from the dates listed why he was on leave (or what was going on) for five of them.

From 18 Sep 58 to 21 Sep 58 - First child was conceived.
13 May 59 to 17 May 59 - First wedding anniversary.
30 Jun 59 to 5 July 59 - First child born.
15 Nov 60 to 4 Dec 60 - Second child born.
4 Mar 62 to 16 Mar 62 - Hubby conceived.

What he was up to the rest of the time, Lord only knows.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Surname Saturday - Mangiafico

If you ask anyone with the last name Mangiafico, they will tell you that it means 'eat figs'.  But, according to the Dictionary of American Family Names:

The meaning of the name Mangiafico:
Southern Italian: from mangia 'eat' (from mangiare 'to eat') + fico 'fig', probably an allusion to a bird (the fig eater) and thence to a man associated with or thought to resemble the bird, rather than to a man who ate figs. 

I don't know what the brothers and sisters would say about someone thinking their ancestor resembled a bird.

According to Sicilia.indettaglio.it these are the towns where the surname occurs in Sicily: 16 out of 390.


Towns are ordered by province and then by number of occurrences. 
In the left hand column is displayed the estimated number of individuals having the given surname shown in the right hand column. The numbers are shown with a two-decimal precision, meaning that a number of 106.10 estimates there are at least106 people in the town with that name, while the number 75.78 means there are likely 76 people in the town with that name. 
28.82CataniaCtMangiafico
12.73MisterbiancoCtMangiafico
6.86Gravina di CataniaCtMangiafico
5.75Aci CastelloCtMangiafico
5.12Aci BonaccorsiCtMangiafico
4.38PedaraCtMangiafico
2.75Sant`Alessio SiculoMeMangiafico
7.72RagusaRgMangiafico
315.71SiracusaSrMangiafico
235.36FloridiaSrMangiafico
196.59Canicattini BagniSrMangiafico
39.89AvolaSrMangiafico
33.75MelilliSrMangiafico
25.47NotoSrMangiafico
15.30Priolo GargalloSrMangiafico
14.15SortinoSrMangiafico

Our Mangiaficos come from Canicattini Bagni

I found this cool site today called GENS.  You can run a search on  your Italian surname and see where people with the surname live in the United States and in Italy.  Here is where the Mangiaficos are in the U.S.