Home Movies Home movies from the 1950's through to about 1970. Memories of the cottage on Stoney Lake and family gatherings at Ev & Vic's home at 467 Rubidge Street before the move to Wellington St. 1:43 Short movie clips from the 1950s to 1960s. [...]

The town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was the subject of a study on heart disease in the early 1960's. It was found that the rate of heart disease was half the national average. The authors of the study concluded that close family ties and support within the community were the main reason the residents had [...]

I've often wondered about the origin of the Minicola surname. The original and proper spelling of the surname was Menecola back in Italy. For some reason, lost to history, the name was misspelled after immigration to Canada in 1883. My guess as to the changing of the spelling is that the language barrier caused [...]

Above photographs courtesy of the the Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images from the Peterborough Museum and Archives. Special thanks to Jon Oldham. [...]

Giuseppe Cardo was a medical doctor in Roseto Valfortore, Italy. He also served as the head of the Rosetan National Guard. In 1883 he led the second group to emigrate from Roseto to North America. He also sponsored some of that group by loaning travel money to those who didn't have the means to [...]

The 1921 Census of Canada was released to the public in June of 2013 and the images are now available free of charge at www.ancestry.ca. Indexing of the Census is not available yet, but if you know the district where your ancestor lived you can browse the images to find them. I knew my [...]

The Peel family's roots go back to England, Scotland and Ireland. John Joseph Christopher Peel was born in 1892 in England and immigrated to Canada around 1909. In June of 1914 he married Kathleen Waters in Peterborough, Ontario where they settled and raised their family. The Waters family immigrated from Ireland in the early [...]

April 2021 - A complete website redesign has been partially completed.  The family tree section has completely updated and moved to a separate area. Click here for the new genealogy area of the website. More to come as time permits including historic documents and photos. Click here to see the Minicola Family Tree. More [...]

From the Peterborough Examiner, February 22nd, 1889. "An Italian Lover" is an early reference to the Minicola family in Peterborough. My great-great grandfather, Filippo (Philip) Minicola, (misspelled Mainecola) apparently had trouble collecting rent from one of his tenants at the family homestead at 67 Elm St. The article goes on to say "There was [...]

Donata Menecola was born Oct 10th, 1853 in Roseto Valfortore, Italy. Her father Giuseppe Menecola was an older brother of my great-great grandfather Filippo Menecola. Donata married Nicola Finelli in Roseto Valfortore around 1870. Brenda Solarzano Marks is a descendent of Donata Menecola - she provided the following history on the family. [...]

The genealogy website http://www.familysearch.org now has a large number of historical scanned documents from all over Italy. Many of these documents aren't indexed so manually searching them is the only way to find specific documents. One of the regions covered is the town of Roseto Valfortore in the province of Foggia. Searching for relevant information [...]

Minicola & Hughes Family photographs