Jeannine Miceli Martin

A Door to Their Hearts Jeannine Miceli Martin

Growing up in a Sicilian family with most of its members born and raised in America, Jeannine was eager to grasp a deeper understanding of her true heritage, not the Americanized version. She'd known that her maternal grandparents, Giuseppe Ferro and Angela Luca, had immigrated to the United States to Waltham, Massachusetts, where her mother was raised, but she hadn't known from where, why, or when they'd arrived. She'd begun her quest for answers on Ellis Island, and from there, her grandparents' journey had become her journey as she'd traced their paths by going to Sicily herself to learn about their lives there and what made them leave. To her surprise, Jeannine found more than their childhood villages of Ucria and Bronte. She'd discovered more Ferro cousins in Ucria. When Jeannine found a door, she'd enlisted the help of the New England Historic Genealogical Society for a quick lesson in ancestry research, which led her as far back as her three-times-great-grandparents. From that point, she built her family tree and returned to her cousins in Ucria to experience her true authentic heritage. Through legal documents, she'd followed her grandparents and other Ferro ancestors who emigrated to Waltham with them and chronicled the changes in their family lives in America, not necessarily for betterment. She'd learned from medical transcripts of a dramatic twist in her grandfather's life as a patient in an insane asylum. While Jeannine had opened the door to her ancestry, she'd bridged a gap between the Ferro family of the past and present and the miles between Ucria and Waltham.