For over 58 years I have worked on my family tree. But it grown well beyond a family tree into a family history covering my family in North America, Poland and Italy. This year I have been working on a mystery in Italy.
My great-grandfather Stanislao Bellotti (died 1901) was described to me (by my grandfather Michele Bellotti) as the son of a doctor and was adopted (for some reason that is still unknown) in Peschici, the town on the Adriatic in Italy where my grandfather was born.
It was early 2021 when I stumbled upon a family tree in Ancestry.com that had 900 people named Bellotti within it. It included my grandfather, his father and three more generations. This was quite an exciting discovery. Since this was during the height of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic I could not visit the closed LDS Genealogy library in nearby Saline to look for the files that contained the information that I wanted to see. However, the library is now again open, and I will pursue this discovery later this year.
Stanislao, and the last of my grandfather’s four brothers died in 1901 within weeks of each other. Stanislao died of malaria, presumably so did his brother, with my grandfather fortunately surviving malaria.
More on malaria tomorrow.
Michael's Place 