ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 5, 1996 TAG: 9611050041
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PEMBROKE
SOURCE: BOB MORGAN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
What's in a name? Well, everything, if you're looking for an ancestor.
Connie Saladiner of Narrows was stuck for five years as she tried to trace her family roots until one day an unexpected letter pointed her to a small town in rural Sicily.
With the name of Montevago, she went straight to the right set of microfiche at the Family History Center in Pembroke and immediately traced her family back four generations. Within a short time more, she had traced that line of the family back to the 16th century.
The Family History Center in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a well-known landmark on U.S. 460 in this small Giles County town, is one of 2,850 such centers worldwide.
On a chilly Saturday morning, eight men and women work intently with computers and microfilm units in a large room at the back of the church. They are looking for their ancestors, using the most extensive network of genealogical research facilities in the world.
Mormon Church members have accumulated hundreds of millions of names and masses of other data in their search for genealogical information they believe can bind generations of their families together throughout eternity.
Saladiner, who is not a Mormon, is described as the "star patron" of the Family History Center. She has spent "literally thousands of hours" researching her ancestors.
She might never have become interested in genealogy if it hadn't been for a question from her son 11 years ago. When the family lived in Houston, he came home from high school one day and asked, "Mom, do we have anyone who fought for the South in the Civil War? If we do, I can get a scholarship."
"This started me looking," said Saladiner. "I didn't find an ancestor at that time who fought in the Civil War - I did later - and my son didn't get the ... Daughters of the Confederacy Scholarship. But I was hooked on genealogy."
When she and her husband moved to Virginia, she began looking in court records and found a great-great-great-grandfather born in 1826 who was buried "somewhere on Bent Mountain." She searched in church and cemetery records without success. "I worried everybody on that mountain, made numerous trips." One day she found a person who pointed her to the grave site - not in any cemetery, but four feet off U.S. 221. "He said he wanted to be buried in the greens patch where he had worked."
It was when she tried to trace her husband's family that the name problem arose. A grandfather's birth certificate revealed a family name that seemed to be clearly Italian - Pietro Saladino.
"Many Italians who immigrate to the U.S. change their names - probably to make them sound more American. ... I wrote letters to every 'Saladiner,' 'Saladino,' and 'Saladina' in Houston."
Five years later, out of the blue, a letter came from a Mario Saladino in Houston who had lived two blocks from them. He was the grandson of Pietro's brother, Joseph Saladino. The letter also contained the name and address of one of Joseph's granddaughters. When Saladiner called, the woman was extremely reluctant to talk. The only thing she revealed was the name of the town in Sicily - Montevago.
Bingo! With the name "Montevago," Saladiner ordered through the Family History Center complete family records from 1820-1860. She also was put in touch with a genealogy group in California that did research on Sicily. They in turn put her in touch with a Louisiana priest who had family records back to the 16th century.
"It seems that families in small towns in Italy never move. The church records were complete, going back for centuries." Why was the granddaughter so reluctant to talk? Saladiner didn't know, but she did discover that Montevago is near the well-known town of Corleone in Sicily that is famous, or rather infamous, for its Mafia connection.
What drives Saladiner to spend so many hours on her family research? "Well, I want to leave some roots for my children. And it's better than watching television."
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Alan Kim. 1. Working on the computer using theby CNBInternational Geneological Index CD-ROMs, Charlene Long (right) adds
another name dating back to 1816 on her father-in-law's ancestors.
After two years of research, the Pearisburg resident has traced her
geneology back to Pocahontas and John Rolfe. 2. Connie Saladiner
(below) of Narrows talks about her research at the Family History
Center, with most of her work being done on the microfiche machine
in the background. color.