The Italian Sailor

Searching for my Italian Roots

Italian ancestry in our family had been a secret for almost 100 years. It wasn’t until the 1970’s, when I was a teenager, that I became aware.

Let’s wind back to the spring of 1873: An Italian merchant seaman sets sail for England, arriving a few weeks later. There he had a ‘brief encounter’ with a sixteen year old girl, my great great grandmother. She became pregnant, and as things progressed her parents kept her indoors so that the villagers where they lived – in Wivenhoe, on the east coast of England – would not notice her growing belly.

Her father was a captain in the Royal Navy, and of considerable standing in the village. His daughter’s predicament would surely bestow disgrace upon the family!

Years later it is impossible to comprehend the exact circumstances of what happened that day. My great great grandmother could hardly be described as being a ‘lady of the night’. Perhaps she was assaulted, or goaded on by friends? Maybe she was wayward? Nevertheless, her pregnancy had to remain a secret.

Her daughter, Bessie, was born in April 1874. Her grandparents registered her as their own, and she was brought up believing her grandparents were her parents, and her biological mother, her sister.

Middle class life continued as normal. Bessie grew up, qualifying as a school teacher and piano tutor, like her mother. She married well, and brought up a family. All was calm – until 1920!

Her mother was taken seriously ill. The secret she had borne for 46 years could remain hidden no longer. I can only imagine the earthquake it caused in the family. Bessie’s husband thought he had married the daughter of a Naval officer, but now found himself joined to the bastard child of a sailor!

Fast forward to 2018: descendants of sailor decided to take the dna test. The first two revealed no Italian ethnicity. We wondered whether the story of sailor was untrue? Perhaps Bessie’s father was a local boy and not an Italian after all? At that point we didn’t understand that dna was like a chocolate chip cake. You make the cake, mix in the chocolate chips, bake, cool and cut into slices. One person might have 20 chocolate chips, one might have 10. One might have none. Then two more family members took the test, which revealed Italian and Greek and Southern Italian dna.

Transporting dna to MyHeritage and Gedmatch was very illuminating. We found ourselves matched with dozens of Italians from North to South, including Sicily.

It was hoped that Sailor’s descendants might have taken the test, thereby revealing his name. But by painstakingly cataloging matches’ ancestral names and locations I discovered that a recurring surname was Caruso from Campania, as well as various families from Sicily, particularly Palermo and Messina.

My sister bears an uncanny resemblance to Enrico Caruso, the well known opera singer, and my daughter trained in opera. Wouldn’t it be incredible if we are distantly related to him?