Past Customs or Happy Halloween

With my recent hiatus from Cousins, I have not only lost my groove with writing but also with reading blogs. So, today I started surfing again. I just love reading family history blogs. One article leads to another, and soon I am lost wondering how I got to wherever I have ended up. Today I ended up reading about post mortum photographs. What???  Here is a whole topic I knew nothing about. How about you?

I started out reading someone's blog on this topic and one thing lead to another. You know how that goes.  According to some of the articles I read, taking pictures of the deceased was common in the past. Wikipedia says that this was a normal part of American and European culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  It was often the only visual remembrance of the deceased and the photograph was considered a precious possession. It also may have been the only image the family had of the family member.

I possess a few photographs of ancestors in their caskets, but none sitting up in a chair as I saw in several articles.  Some images appear to be professional photographs and others are snapshots. I remember when I was a little girl hearing my mother and aunt discuss whether or not to take a casket photo of a relative. They agreed to do it when no one else was around. It had a bit of a tabu feel to me. It seems that this became the general feeling as photography improved and people began to have numerous photos of their loved ones. I read that at one time 1/3 of all photos were post mortem. Amazing the things one can learn about past customs from just a recliner and an ipad.

I do not intend to be morbid, but became aware of a past custom practiced in Palermo, Sicily from the 17th -19th century that readers might not have heard of before. I know I certainly hadn't. The Capuchin Catacombs houses the largest collection of mummies in the world.  Prior to my September visit to this site, I had read a little about it. Unfortunately, a couple of friends who accompanied me had not. The place was a bit too morbid for them. I found it fascinating, but then I like cemeteries like most genealogists. The following is a list of thoughts or descriptions of the catacombs that are common to reviews.

Dehydrated corpses
Macabre
Beyond creepy
Almost looks like decorations
Underground passages
Peek back into history
8,000 corpses
Dungeons
Gruesome
Clothing of profession
Hung in niches
Glass sided coffins
Corridors for:
Children
Virgins
Monks
Families
Unique in the world

If you find this interesting at all or are just a little curious, here are a couple of sites to learn more.

www.palermocatacombs.com
www.palermo.for91days.com 

The first site will tell you about the site. The second will show pictures. After clicking on the link, look for Comprehensive Index which is hi-lited. From there find the article The Bone Chilling Catacombs of the Capucin Monks.

Actually unless you like Halloween, I would wait to view these pictures. It is probably about the spookiest place you could be.

We do need to realize some of our current customs could seem as odd to our descendants as the above customs seem to us. Then again, maybe not.

Sicily

Well, she just couldn't wait to turn this into a travel log, you say. Actually, this is going to be a genealogy tip for anyone interested  in Sicilian Genealogy.

On the second day in Palermo, Sicily, we visited the Cathedral of Montreale. As one of the members of our tour mentioned, she had seen enough cathedrals from her travels and approached this one without much enthusiasm. Once inside, we were all awestruck. The interior is done in gold mosaics that simply take away one's breath. We had a local guide whose English was without accent. It turns out one of her parents was American and the family moved back to Sicily when she was in her teens. She mentioned that she was an author and that her books could be found on Amazon.

After reading about her, I marveled that we were so lucky as to have had her as our guide that day.  Her name is Jacqueline Olio and is considered one of Sicily's leading historians. Just google the name to learn more. I haven't ordered any of her books yet, but I will be placing my order soon. One of the reviews of The People's of Sicily: A Multicultural Legacy caught my attention, and I wanted to share it with anyone who might be working on Sicilian Genealogy.

One reviewer says:

"Has answered many questions about my family history and even found family names listed.  Confirmed stories I learned from my grandmother and now I know they are not fable.  I am intrigued beyond measure, but more than that I have found so much information that I would need to go through many, many sources to find this history."

Another adds:
"Let me start off by saying this book is one of the most valuable tools for researching Sicilian genealogy."

The People's of Sicily: A Multicultural Legacy was co-authored by Jacqueline Olio and Louis Mendola. Mendola is the author of Sicilian Genealogy and Heraldry and Jacqueline Alio has written Women of Sicily: Saints, Queens and Rebels.

I hope this is of use to someone out there. It makes me wish I were Sicilian. Well, maybe if I dig far enough... after all it was a crossroads of so many cultures. I could have had an ancestor among the Normans, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Arabs, Germans, Greeks, or Jews. Or even one of the civilizations I had never heard of before this trip.  Yes, I know, I am stretching a bit.

Monday With Margie

At this point in my adventure, I will have visited a family farm in the countryside of Sicily.  I grew up on a farm as did many of my ancestors. However, we didn't make ricotta cheese. We stuck to corn and soybeans. Sometimes there were fields of oats and hay. 
 
Our next stop was a medieval palace where a countess welcomed us.  I don't think there is a chance of connecting genealogically with the nobility of Sicily. So, I left my pedigree charts at home. 

I have learned about the Valley of the Temples ruins. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world

 

and modern day Agrigento, Sicily used to be the Greek city of Akragas. In its glory days, it was one of the most important and most culturally-advanced Greek cities in the Mediterranean.

Now I find that interesting!

 

Not only is it interesting, but now I don't even need to go to Greece. More time for genealogy.