Paternal side:
My grandfather, Guiseppe Ietto, immigrated to America around 1903 from
Delianuova in Reggio Calabria, Italy.
I believe he returned to Italy for a short time to fight in the Turkish-Italian
war. Guiseppe's father was Valerio, a shoemaker in Delianuova, who was married
to Domenica Costa. Valerio and Domenica had six children: Anna (who settled
in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, married Pasquale Battista, and had 11 children),
Guiseppe (my grandfather), Raffaele (who fought in World War I for Italy
and had 2 children in Italy, before emigrating to Erie, Pennsylvania, where
he worked as a tailor and had 8 more children with his second wife from
Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania), Francesco (nick named Cecchio, a shoemaker who
lived with his wife in Johnsonburg and then Brooklyn, New York and had 3
children), Arcangelo (who settled in Brooklyn with his wife but had no children),
Domenic (who died of malaria during World War I), and Pasquale (a shoemaker
who settled in Melbourne, Australia with a British wife and had one daughter).
Guiseppe (my grandfather) worked on the railroad in Brooklyn, then worked
for a short time in the open pit coal mines in Bessemer, Michigan and then
settled in Kane, Pennsylvania, working as a lumberjack. He had
5 children: Valerio
(
Bill, who worked for the railroad,
married Roberta Ponick and had three
children, William, Carolyn and Lynette), Mickey (who married Joe O'Donnell
and had one child, Pamela), Fanny (who is married to Dominick Antonelli and
has three children John, James and Nancy), Mary (who has one child, Paula)
and Bruno (my father, who married Gloria Amodeo and had 4 children).
My father settled in Buffalo, but his brother and sisters remained in Kane.
My oldest sister Cathy died as a child of
Thalassemia, an
inherited blood disorder common in many Mediterranean families. (I'm sure
that many of you are familiar with this form of anemia in your own families).
I have an older brother Robert, who is a dentist here in Buffalo and is married
to Carol (Lenz). He has daughter, Alex and a son, Robert, Jr.
I am married to Jean (Schummer), and have
two stepdaughters, Brandy (who is now engaged to be married) and Melissa
, along with our daughter,
Madison
and son,
Mark, Jr. My younger sister
Karen, is married to Dave Boatman and has twin daughters Cathy and Mary.
My grandfather told us that the Ietto's had dispersed from Italy to either
the USA (via Brooklyn or Kane) or Australia, between the turn of the century
and the end of World War I. Most of those in the US now use the name Yetto,
but most of them know it to have been Ietto originally. Do you know if you
are related to our family? If your name is Ietto, Yetto (or Letto in Erie),
and you know that your ancestry traces back to Delianuova in Reggio Calabria,
then I am quite certain that we are related.