Finding My Roots
When I began tracing my family tree on Ancestry.com, I was searching for more than names and dates—I was searching for a sense of belonging. I followed a trail from my grandfather Frank to my great-grandfather Salvatore, who left Sicily with his wife Giuseppa in 1910 and built a life in Chicago. Though the Italian language faded by my father's generation, the longing to understand where we came from never did. This is the story of what I found—and how identity can live on through memory, art, and the stories we choose to tell.
There’s something hauntingly beautiful about an old family photo—those sepia tones, the faded eyes of relatives you’ve never met, and the names that linger without stories. For me, that curiosity turned into a quest when I decided to trace my lineage through Ancestry.com. I didn’t know exactly what I would find—just that I needed to know more. More about where I came from, more about the people who carried my name across an ocean, and more about the parts of myself I could only feel but never quite name.
The Search Begins
It started simply enough—with my grandfather, Frank. I knew bits and pieces of his life. I had some photos, a handful of memories, and one name that kept coming up: Salvatore. That name—bold, proud, Italian—was my great-grandfather’s. And as I typed it into Ancestry.com, I felt the first real pulse of connection, like knocking on a door that had been closed for generations.
Piece by piece, the story came together. I discovered that Salvatore Scacco and his wife, Giuseppa, arrived in New York on May 31, 1910, leaving Sicily behind with little more than hope and each other. Eventually, they made their way to Chicago, where they would build a new life—one that would ripple down through the generations to me.
Leaving Sicily: A Story Carried in Silence
There’s no record of their voices, no handwritten letters, no diary entries to tell me what they felt stepping onto that ship. But I imagine the weight of that moment: the sights and sounds of the port, the rocking of the Atlantic, the quiet fear of the unknown.
And yet, somewhere along the line, something got left behind.
By the time my father was born, Italian was no longer spoken in the home. He never learned the language. Whatever dialect filled Salvatore and Giuseppa’s kitchen had faded, replaced by English, by assimilation, by silence. All that remains from that generation are a few Italian words I heard growing up—“mangia,” “bambino”—and a family Ragu recipe that still simmers in our kitchen on special Sundays.
What Was Lost… and What I’m Finding
I’ve always felt a tug toward something I couldn’t name—a desire to understand my identity more fully. Where did our name come from? What did the streets of their Sicilian village look like? What music played from their windows? What customs filled their days? Ancestry.com helped me answer a few of those questions. It gave me documents, maps, names. But what it really gave me was a direction—a path back to belonging. This summer, I’ll walk the streets of Caltagirone and Ragusa. I’ll breathe the same air my great-grandparents did. And while I may not speak the language, I’ll be listening—with my heart, with my eyes, with a hunger to reclaim what time and distance tried to erase.
Heritage Without Fluency
No, I don’t have dual citizenship. And no, I won’t be arriving with an Italian passport in hand. But I’m learning that you don’t need paperwork to feel a pull toward a place. Identity doesn’t only live in bloodlines or legal documents—it thrives in stories, in food, in names carried across oceans and generations. Through my art, through storytelling, through simply being curious enough to ask questions, I’ve started rebuilding that bridge. Because even if the language was lost… the longing never was.