17 Nicastro - Borgia - Family Search Day 1

Day 1 of the "Great Alcaro Family Search". Borgia was home to the Alcaro family - Sam's father's family. (Sam's mother's family - Costanza) was from Nicastro.) In fact we found 14 Alcaro families still living in Borgia. First step - Borgia Town Hall - to meet with the mayor and then be given access to birth, death and marriage records. Here we found an enormous collection of records on the Alcaro family - tracing back to the early 1800's. Working backwards, we found records on Sam's father (Franceso), grandfather (Severio) and great-grandfather (Giuseppi).

We left the town hall with an armfull of information and headed to the Duomo at the top of the hill on thie plaza where we hoped to get baptism records. Only we found the church closed. We then visited the bar/ food stand on the opposite corner from the church on the plaza. We explained to the bar owner that we were looking for the records of the Alcaro family at the church and in the town. It was he who told us the church was closed until 5pm, and that there were 14 of them in Borgia right now - incuding his wife! After briefly speaking with his wife on the phone, he arranged for 2 men to take us to another Alcaro who owned a nearbye gas station. But before we could get there, those Alcaros disavowed any knowlege of Alcaros who went ot America.

So - we left - headed to the Borgia Communal Cemetary - lookin g for former family members. Bwdies being an emormous cemetary, there were a great deal of Alcaros buried here. We search and found nobody we'd claim as family member.

From there, we left for Rocceletta - further east on the Ionian Sea. Here we found and explored Scolacium - the ruins of an ancient seaside city on the Gulf of Squillace.

We returned to Borgia after 5pm to find the keeper of the records at the Duomo. Indeed we did, but learned that because of a floor, all the records were moved to a safe place. Sadly, it would be impossible to search those records at this time.