The Delli Colli Family, Italy And Brazil
Typed November 15, 1995.


Now getting back to the Delli Colli domain, Maria Carmina was born on the 27 of September 1890. Some papers show September 26. Her father was Pietro Delli Colli and the mother was Giacinta Coppola. At this time I have no dates for birth of death. I am aware that they both died when we were in Canada and will fill in the dates if I succeed in getting them. Maria's childhood we know for sure that at some point, probably around 1900, while Roberto was in Canada, the Delli Colli had gone to Brazil. They were a family of six or seven children and settled around Sao Paolo and worked on coffee plantations. Maria would say that they lived in individual houses, they all worked in the fields, food was abundant, the remuneration was satisfactory and their living conditions were good. There were other Italians doing the same thing with the hope of returning home with a good sum of money. They stayed in Brazil for seven years.

The language there was Portuguese and they all managed to learn it. There were other relatives with them and later in Canada she would speak Portuguese with her aunt Agnesa when they did not want us to understand what was being said. Agnesa was her only aunt in Canada and more will be said later. When they had amassed a good amount of money they returned to Italy and resettled in the town of Vaglie which 1s a part of the Commune di Galluccio. They had a large house built with many rooms. The down stairs was for living, such as kitchen, dining room, other rooms to receive visitors. The bedrooms were all upstairs. To reach the second floor it was necessary to go into the courtyard where there were two stairways one going to the front loggia and the other to the rear loggia. The front rooms were for the girls and the rear rooms for the boys. There was no possibility to go from one quarter to the other without first descending in the courtyard. We saw this house in 1976 it was solidly built, the stone walls were three feet thick as was the style in those days.

There is a little history attached to it. During the Second World War the Germans sequestered the house and used it as their headquarters. When the allied troops arrived to chase away the Germans, the American troops took it over and used it as their headquarters, but allowed the family to occupy part of the house. During the ensuing battles many artillery shells hit the house and many pock marks were visible.

The Delli Colli also lived off the land and whatever animals they had such as chicken and pigs, fruit trees, vines for wine. All the children worked in the fields. The children were all educated enough to read and write. It seems mother read a lot of books where they got them I don't know. She was much into the historical novels or popular fiction novels of the day. In the evening she would sit down with the children all around her and she would recite a story from some of the things she had read, such as Genoveffa Dei Brabanti, its about the only one I remember the title. In reading all these books she came across a lot of names that were strange to her and this is where many of our names come from. Vitelmina, is a derivative of Whillemina, queen of the Netherlands, Litio, maybe a masculine version of the much used feminine name Lidia, Demetria must have come from a Russian or Greek novel, Neofito, was given to a cousin of the same age as Litio, who knows where it came from. The important thing is the person and not the name.

"What's in a name
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
"
(Shakespeare)
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