In 1973, my mom got the idea to have a family reunion of her brothers and sisters on the day before Labor Day. The idea got legs. This past Sunday we had the 32nd one. We have missed a few years and some years we had a family event that was a surrogate reunion, like Aunt Rose and Uncle Ray's 50th anniversary celebration or Mary Lou and Bob's wedding. We have gathered 32 times in celebration of family on a September Sunday. About half of the reunions were in New Castle, PA, hosted by one of my cousins in her home. The rest were held in other PA locations, including Mars, Somerset, North Huntingdon and Indiana.
Our reunions are mostly about reconnecting and keeping people connected. There have been games (egg toss, badminton, sack races) and competitions (cookie bake offs, creative uses for zucchini) and group projects (a family quilt and two cookbooks) and songs ("Hello Aunt Mary" and "We are the Fredas"). We keep a 'family tree', with biographical details, up to date, thanks to one of my cousin's daughters.
I love this family. As previously written, growing up it was only my mom's family that I knew in any depth. My dad's family was scattered and distant. But on my mom's side, I have two first cousins that were born in the same year as me. And of the 16 'first cousins', seven of us went to the same Catholic grade school and high school. And two of my cousins married people we went to high school with. So there is a lot of history and shared experience.
When the reunions started, it was my mom and her six siblings and their children and grandchildren. Now my mom is gone and there are only two of her siblings left -- aged 96 and 92. This year nearly 60 descendants of Nicola and Carina Freda gathered. This year for me was a kind of watershed event. The family homestead has been sold. It was the house my grandparents bought in 1931 and it held 80 years of both memories and stuff. I wrote and posted the reflection below on one of the display boards at this year's reunion.
Thanks to my cousin John, a talented artist who created replicas of the family homes in Whitsett and Munhall, we can remember these special places that housed such special people.
The Places of the Freda Family
Family histories are the stories of people and places. In the case of the Freda Family, Nicola and Carina and their children, these stories are inextricably linked to three places on two continents – Rivisondoli, Italy, Whitsett, PA and Homestead/Munhall, PA.
Nicola Freda was born on February 24, 1876 in Rivisondoli.
Carina Adele Buono was born in Rivisondoli on June 28, 1881.
Rivisondoli is in the province of l’Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy, southeast of Rome. Thanks to the Internet, there is a site devoted to “leave a trace of the Rivisondolesi’s emigration in the United States, a True History that deserves of being handed down to the future generations, because they don’t forget and knows to give the just value to the work for which, supporting inexpressible renunciations and sacrifices, they threw the solid foundations on which it rests, for better of for worse, our today’s life.”
The website contains the “first ten recurrent last names of our country”. One of the ten names is ‘Freda’; another is Iarussi (Aunt Irma’s maiden name). It also includes a list compiled by the local parish priest of donations received from emigrants for the ‘Mother Church of S. Nicola’ in Rivisondoli in 1922. That list includes the names of Angelo Freda (presumably ‘Uncle Angelo’) and Antonio Iarussi.
Nicola (Nick) arrived through Ellis Island on January 16, 1900 via the S.S. Auguste Victoria (departed from Naples) with his brother Marco. The date of Carina’s arrival is unknown.
Upon arrival, Nick promptly got to work. In his application for Railroad Retirement Benefits, he recaps his employment history beginning on January 20, 1900 as a laborer with the Union Railroad in Homestead, PA.
He was employed by the P & L E Railroad on July 3, 1901 where he stayed until August 8, 1916. He then returned to the Union Rail Road in Clairton until September 8, 1921. The family lived in Wilson, PA – the exact dates are not certain.
From 1921 to 1931, he returned to the P & LE as a Section Foreman in Whitsett Junction. I remember a few stories my mom told me about Whitsett. She said that Nonna told her when the truck arrived, she told them not to unpack it. Nonna was apparently not impressed by the small, isolated coal mining town, having spent the early part of her married life in a more urban setting. And the Whitsett house had an 'outhouse', not the indoor plumbing that she had in the city.
Whitsett is about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. Founded in1845 by Ralph C. Whitsett,Sr., the community is made up of mostly “company” houses that were built for workers that worked in a large coal mine located nearby, Banning #2. Most of the houses were ½ houses built to accommodate two families.
Now the Mon Yough Trail, part of the Great Allegheny Passage, runs through Whitsett. The trail was built on the old lines of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie railroad. Whitsett was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
Then there is Homestead and the house in Munhall. The family moved back to the Homestead area in November 1931. This year, the house was sold.
Homestead has seen glory days and hard times. It was once the steel capital of the world, with U.S. Steel’s Homestead Works, ethic churches and a bustling retail core. Today, a shopping and apartment complex called the Waterfront occupies the site of the former Homestead Works. It also is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Yet this reunion – of the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and yes, great-great grandchildren of Nicola and Carina is a celebration, not of place, but of family.
