Finale: At home with the Capobiancos

The culmination of last month's genealogical tour was the town of Fragneto Monforte in the region of Campania. This was where my great-grandmother, Concetta Capobianco, was born. 

An added attraction was that my daughter had found a book written by Fragneto resident Nino Capobianco, a psychiatrist turned historian of the town's folkways and history. When she told him that we were Capobianco descendants and that we'd be coming to visit the town, he was eager to meet. 

Fragneto Monforte is another pretty hill town surrounded by green fields and orchards, framed by the distant Apennines, the kind of place that has visitors fantasizing about living in such a storybook spot. 

But my daughter's research indicates that our Capobiancos weren't leading a storybook life. Concetta's father, Domenico Capobianco, was a construction laborer and her mother, Maria Teresa Sarpi, died in a hospital in Campobasso, a city more than 30 miles away from Fragneto, when Concetta was only 11. It's not clear why Concetta's mother ended up in a hospital so far from home or what she died of. She left behind Concetta and her sister Saveria, who was a year older, and three younger children.  

The family lived on via Cisternone, Cistern Street. Records show that while most of the street's residents owned their houses, the Capobiancos were renters, indicating they may have been even poorer than their neighbors. No street by that name exists any longer, but Nino Capobianco told my daughter that Capobiancos once lived in the house pictured below. She thinks this might have been where Concetta grew up. 

Sometime between 1880 and 1885 the family moved to Forlì del Sannio, 50 miles northwest in the neighboring region of Molise. Once again we don't know why they migrated to a new town; most likely Domenico moved in pursuit of work.

 

And it was in Forlì that Concetta and Vincenzo di Carlo met, married, and had six of their seven children. (The details were in this post.) 

Nino Capobianco was keen to tell us about the Capobiancos of Fragneto Monforte, who used to be thick on the ground there in the 1800s, before so many emigrated to the New World. We wanted to offer to take him to lunch, but when we arrived and called he told us he wasn't able to go out; we'd have to come to his house. The reason, we discovered when we arrived, was that he'd tested positive for COVID--an experience that everyone in my party was extremely eager not to share with him.

He lives with his sister, Maria Pasqualina, in a house near the center of Fragneto, and he begged us to please climb up the stairs to their home and come in. He was obviously a sociable fellow for whom the isolation of quarantine was real torture, and he was itching to talk Fragneto history with a fellow enthusiast, as well as give her the book he'd written about the town, Storia e Tradizioni Popolare a Fragneto Monforte ("History and Folk Traditions of Fragneto Monforte"). In an effort to abide by quarantine rules, Nino stayed outside on the deck, while his sister urged us to come in, proudly waving a piece of paper that showed she herself had tested negative.

My daughter and I looked at each other. She was scared but wanted to risk it--who knew when she'd get to meet these real-life Capobiancos again?--but she was even more scared that I might get infected and it would be her fault. She and her companion masked up and went in, bringing along their dog, while I apologetically stayed out in the fresh air, at what I hoped was a safe distance from Nino, and occupied myself with taking some photos of their deck's spectacular view.

Nino was so excited by the opportunity to talk to someone besides his sister, and particularly a fresh audience for Fragneto lore, that he couldn't bear to keep away. Soon he was talking to his guests from the open door to the living room where our daughter and her entourage were sitting, only nominally outside. Not long afterwards he was irresistibly drawn inside but stationed himself in the kitchen, separated from the sofa where his guests sat by several feet and a large kitchen island.

Nino is out of frame to the left.

I took this photo from the safety of outside the doorway. I think the kids' body language reveals how nervous all of us were about this situation. But since we were in Southern Italy, we could not depart without first eating something, although we probably disappointed Maria by accepting only a coffee for our driver and a piece of candy each for the ladies. My daughter was planning to stay in the area for several weeks after I returned to Fidenza, examining and scanning old records in various churches and town halls in the area, so as we said our good-byes she promised Nino she'd come back to see him again once he tested negative.

Nino and Maria Pasqualina: arrividerci!

None of the rest of us got COVID from our visit that day, I'm happy to report. But poor Nino! Although he didn't feel sick, he kept testing positive for several weeks, which meant he was trapped at home. When he finally got a negative result he urged my daughter to come back to Fragneto for a powwow.

During our visit Nino had told her that digging up genealogical information from previous centuries was arduous, often fruitless work, because records were scattered and difficult to understand. He hadn't reckoned with my daughter's research skills nor her genealogical obsessiveness. 

Some of the records were in a monastery archive in Cassino. 

While he was in quarantine she'd been examining and scanning thousands of pages of records in the various places we'd visited. When they met again she was able to show him our Italian family tree going back to the late 1600s, including the information that one Romoaldo Capobianco, born round 1710, who was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, was also the fifth great-grandfather of Nino and Maria. We're all cousins!

I am really sorry I wasn't able to be there for that conversation, or for what followed. Nino showed my daughter and her compagno around the town, stopping frequently to chat with all the people he hadn't been able to see while he was in lockdown. Then he invited the kids to lunch, which we suspect he would have done even if my daughter wasn't a relative.

Free at last: Nino giving a tour of Fragneto.

 When they arrived at the Capobiancos' house it was clear he'd neglected to tell his sister that there would be company, but she rose to the occasion with characteristic Southern Italian generosity. She whipped together a massive meal of wine, salumi and cheese, a frittata with wild asparagus, several vegetable dishes, and some fried cutlets, "She kept getting nervous and putting more food on the table," my daughter later reported. Pretty much everything she served was homemade or homegrown either by the Capobiancos themselves or their friends. 

This feast concluded with homemade tiramisu she'd pulled out of the freezer and then two "digestive" liqueurs, one lemon flavored and one of pomegranate, both also homemade. On the kids' way out the door Nino and Maria insisted they take a colomba cake for the road. 

One of our hopes when we embarked on this journey was that we'd uncover some living relatives. Now here they were, as charming and hospitable as you could wish, and sharing our interest in the area's history as well. Although I wasn't able to be on hand for that second meeting with our Capobianco cousins, I'm looking forward to having another opportunity when we return to the places our Italian forebears came from. And I'm hoping my daughter will eventually be able to locate some living di Carlo relatives, too.