Cerrito 1 Tyler Cerrito Mrs.

Raymond English 1103 17 October 2013 The Brief History of my Family As I walked through the hallways of my family history I discovered many places and people that I had not previously known. I learned about the history of some of my ancestors and about the everyday things that they did that affected their lives. Most of the information that I could find was from my moms side of the family. Information on my dads side of the family is very limited due to some animosity between family members and due to occupations so I will not touch on that side much. On my moms side of the family we have carpenters, landscapers, mortgage brokers, insurance agents, business owners, civil engineers, billboard painter, machinists, and electricians (Gringras). Many of these people were hard workers and great people. Some come from Italy and more specifically Caltabellotta in Sicily. Others come from Austria and others came from Germany, once the family came over to the United States they lived in Scranton, Pennsylvannia, New Jersey, Florida, and then finally North Carolina (Gringras). My dads side of the family mostly came from Palermo Sicily which is just on the other side of Sicily from Caltabellotta. It is very interesting that a lot of my ancestors originated from two obscure cities in Sicily (Speers). I learned many interesting things about some people in my family. For instance, my cousin Candace showed me a picture of my grandma Joyce on my mothers side in the newspaper because she was in a group of junior high kids that were being inducted

Cerrito 2 into an honors society. It is so amazing that we could find that newspaper article but something funny about it is that in the front row of the picture is none other than Martha Kostrya. You are probably wondering who Martha Kostrya is, she later changed her name to Martha Stewart and became famous under that alias (Gringras). I heard this story about my great great great great grandpa Philip Biehler that I thought was pretty ironic. The story goes that a messenger was talking to Philip and telling him about someone who had died in their town and Philip began telling the boy about living when Philip bent down to tie his shoe and had a stroke. He survived the stroke but passed away several weeks later. I am not sure where this story came from but my cousin Candace told me about it (Gringras). Joseph Huran, my grandmas dad, had an interesting profession throughout the mid 1900s. He was a billboard painter, he painted the children on the famous Campbell Soup billboards. It is funny to us now to think that they used to hand paint billboards, but I never would have known that this used to be an occupation (Gringras). My cousin has a lot of records from my familys past, she has electronic copies of the immigration papers from when our relatives came over from Europe. These records include lists from everyone on the boat coming to America and their certificates of residency. She has copies of when my relatives signed up for the draft during World War 1 and 2. This is amazing that I was able to see these records and that she was able to find them. It is unfortunate that I could not find any information like this on my dads side of the family. This is because my grandpa left my grandma with 4 boys when my dad was young and he never cared to talk to any of his family again. So I have no information about him or his parents. My grandma gave me some information about her

Cerrito 3 parents but not much. My great grandma on that side recently passed away this past year, but before she died my family attempted to get information from her about her parents but she would not talk about them much (Cerrito). I could not get my great grandmas parents names but I do know that they were in the Italian Mafia in New York in the 1940s (Cerrito). Unfortunately because of this my great grandma watched both of her parents get murdered in her house at a young age. And this is why it is understandable that she did not want to talk about them much (Cerrito). All the records of my ancestors religious beliefs have been very similar in that there is a consistent theme of Christian and Catholic religious practices. Of course there are those who do not follow this theme, but for the most part my ancestors have been Christian for the most part. Both of my dads parents are ordained pastors in the Catholic Church (Speers). Most of my living family attends church on a weekly basis and this makes me feel very lucky that I come from such a long line of Christians. This encourages me in my beliefs every time I think about that. Even though I come from a long line of Christians I still have a very broken family tree. There are many divorces among my ancestors that have made us the family we are today. My family history may not be full of celebrities, CEOs, or millionaires but it was very fun to learn about those who came over from Italy, Germany, Austria, and Ireland. It is amazing where these people moved and who they married to create the family I have today. They came from all over the world and did all different things. Both sides of the family are quite different but they came together in my parents and now I am a part of all of these peoples descendants.

Cerrito 4 Works Cited Cerrito, Sherrie. Personal interview. 11 Oct. 2013. Gringras, Candace. Personal interview. 12 Oct. 2013. Speers, Barbara. Personal interview. 12 Oct. 2013.