This post is long overdue and needs a lot of “fleshing out”. It might be a work in progress.
We came back from Italy in November, and I find myself talking a lot about why we go there and why I find significance in our extended family and the territory that once housed my ancestors.
Inevitably, when I tell anyone that I have visited family in Italy, the conversation always goes like this… “Your last name is not Italian… You don’t look Italian… Shouldn’t you be going to Germany?” All fine observations, and it leads to more well-trod stories about family trees and how we are the sum of roots before us. Yes, I have German in the bloodline… I must with a name like Stahl and earlier generations with names like Schultz and Schwartz. However, I also have French ancestry with names like Fugate and Irish/English ancestry with Shepherd in the great and great-great-grandparents’ names.
My family tree is a real “mut” story. Stahl and Swartz, Fugate and Giancarli. If the German side might have been more functional, it might have had the traction to be the prominent foundation of my youth. As it worked out… Divorces and second marriages led to a weird amalgamation of my Giancarli and Stahl families being the tightest. That might contradict what I just said, but you have to understand that remarriages led to Giancarli’s later being married to Stahl’s. No other children were spawned from this later marriage, but it did lead to a confusing youth for me… Especially in grade school, when we talked about family trees. “My tree grows back together” is something I seem sure to have said. I’m sure the teachers in the small town all knew of our family’s wild criss criss-crossed relationships.
after the relationship dust settled… Stahls were essentially Giancarli’s. Giancarlis were THE family at get-togethers…. And that family was also tight with its in-laws, the Mattioli’s. Those… Those were my favorite memories, and those are the roots of what I call family.
That seemed overly complicated, and I was trying to keep it simple. Maybe I should have just drawn the tree?
To my surprise… I have a bit of this conversation with my extended cousins when we were in Italy in November… While at dinner, my cousin Mariano asked if Great Grandfather, Dominic (Giancarli) had married an Italian? I was taken aback. Does he not know the family tree in the US? Why would he? I think he might have met Dominic and his Wife, Sarah, in the late 60s when they made a final trip to Italy. But he would have been very young, and I am sure, like me, when we ran away from the English speakers in the way that we ran away from Aunt Dora speaking Italian. Children, especially boys, have no patience with culture. We can run off and find sticks or rocks to throw around to stave off culture or boredom.
“Yes, he married my Grandma Sarah. She was from Northern Italy,” was my answer to Mariano. I told him about my Grandma Sarah and how she was the dominant force in our family, as my Great Grandfather, Dominic, had died when I was a kid. I remember him and his thick Italian accent well enough, but my “Grandma G” as we sometimes called her, was part of what kept the Italian lineage going strong. She died when I was a teenager.
This is Dominic and Sarah at a much younger time than I ever knew them. And below is a photo of when Stahl’s and Giancarli’s were the immediate family. (It is strange to look at photos where the living are outnumbered by those who have passed.)
This is the side of the family that still holds till this day. My Mom’s generation, her sisters haves held onto ties with the family overseas, and that has been the catalyst for our recent ventures in Italy. I know it’s a thumbnail sketch, but it’s all I have the resources to put together at this time. (They also know the Mattioli side and I need to effort a trip to Paris (oh the horror!) to meet them!)
These ties are also the motivation that will get MORE of our family back to Italy in 2026. Keep tuned into my Instagram… There will be lots more photos from Italia this Spring.
I did do some googling on the Stahl side of the family recently… Looking for some of my Grandfathers siblings and their extended family. Roy Stahl Jr and Dean Stahl were my grandfather’s (Weldon “Pete” Stahl) brothers. Roy, the eldest, went on to success in the Air Force, and I only saw him a handful of times growing up. When my Great Grandmother Mable was not able to live by herself, she moved in with another of Pete’s brothers… Dean. Over the span of a year or so we were able to visit with Mable in Champaign while she lived and smoked cigarettes with Dean. I swear, that’s the memory of those days… Cigarettes! God, they could all smoke.
Roy Jr had some kids, but the next generation seems to have passed, and I never did follow up with Dean’s family. Honestly… It would seem that bridges between those brothers were torched and burned down a few times over. Mabel might have pulled them together a few times, but there was little bond in that group. I have told the story before on this blog… It sounds like the 3 brothers could not wait to get out of their home in Pontiac to get away from their Dad. Once they broke free, there was little interest in any side ever keeping in touch.
Now I am just telling stories for posterity. The Fugate name is rich with history. Fugates in the United States mostly owe their lineage to Peter LaFucate, who came to Baltimore in the latter half of the 1600s. There are tales of Fugates serving with George Washington as he crossed the Delaware… I have never been able to find that story on Google, but it was something we had in newspaper clippings as kids. It made for a great “Show and Tell”. Stories of inbred “Blue Fugates” were thankfully shielded from me!