News To Me

In trying to stay organized and thoughtful in my research, I’ve become extremely overwhelmed.  I need to take a step back and evaluate what I’ve been doing, make sure I’ve been sourcing properly and that I know what documentation I’m missing.

I know that in order to find out more about my Meditz heritage, I will have to get documents from the Gottscheer Heritage and Genealogy Association.  So I did a little research into the Cachia line instead.  I checked out the 1930 census, and I noticed something interesting.

In the right hand column, it notes the year of immigration for each person.  I had always thought my great-grandfather Emanuel came first, in 1922, and the rest of the family followed after in 1928.  But now I see that my grandmother’s oldest brother came on his own in 1926.  I decided to track down his ship record and made an interesting discovery.

On the passenger list, they made note of where the person will be staying when they arrive at their destination.  According to this, Lorenzo was going to be staying with his father Emanuel, who was living at 411 West 19th Street in Manhattan.  I always thought my family always lived in this small area around Brooklyn and Queens, but now I know a bit differently!

Priest in the Family!

A while ago, when I was researching my great-grandfather, Emanuel Cachia, I started coming across some documents pertaining to a Theophilus Cachia who was a priest.  Of particular interest to me was a passport application that said his father’s name was Angelo Cachia, which I believed was the name of my great-great-grandfather.  I asked my father if his mother Jessie had an uncle who was a priest, since that sounded vaguely familiar to me.  My dad said yes, and that he was baptized by him.

According to my father’s previous research though, that uncle was named Carmen.  I demanded my mother pull my father’s baptismal record out of storage, and lo and behold, it was signed Theophilus!

Well, that passport application got me a lot of information.

Theophilus Cachia’s passport application

First, it confirmed that Angelo Cachia was my great-great-grandfather.  Second, it showed his birthplace as Sliema, Malta, which was a place I’d never heard of.  We had always believed the family was from Valetta, but could never find any church records from there.  Now we have the opportunity to check church records in Sliema to see what we can find!

Following Theophilus also helped me find another brother, John.  And it found me the first photo of one of my ancestors.

Theophilus Cachia

Pretty cool!