From Whence We Came

From Whence We Came: An Italian Sojourn is a family history involving four grandparents, their ancestors and descendants. This project, which required more than three years of research, traces the ancestry of the Amorebello, Ingiamo, Mecca, and Paris families back to the mid-1700's. In eleven chapters and an epilogue, the origins of these four families are traced from Sicily and Italy to the present day. Amidst a historical background, the evolution of the families emerges among such catastrophic events as the Black Plague, invasions, wars, crop failures, economic hardships, and abject poverty. Individual lives are portrayed and photos are added to give dimension to the people who lived through these critical periods. Poetry and narratives are used to reveal what was known of family members or conjectured upon studying rarely seen photographs. What occurred on Ellis Island during the immigration of the families in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is vividly recounted with photographic enhancement. The significant dates, names of ships, and passenger manifests were thoroughly researched to validate the arrival and status of family members in the United States. Insofar as many family members participated in World War II, a segment of the book is devoted to those honored relatives. There is also mention of a great-uncle who participated in the Mexican Campaign to pursue and capture Pancho Villa. Finally, the DNA findings of ethnicity and the mitochondrial migration of the family through thousands of years are presented. This research will be of interest to other family researchers and encourage them to uncover their own family histories. It will be of special interest to the surviving descendants of the four grandparents studied in this book, and reveal from whence we came.