MINICOLA FAMILY HISTORY <\/p>\n<\/div>
After the fall of the Roman empire in 476 AD, Italy was fragmented into various city-states and Kingdoms. Italy would not exist again as a country until 1871. By the 1840’s the southern part of the Italian peninsula also known as the Mezzogiorno had been ruled by various foreign powers for hundreds of years. Southern peasants lived in extreme poverty and land ownership outside of the ruling class was virtually non-existent. By 1848 the idea of a unified Italy under Italian rule had taken root and a series of revolutions began.<\/p>\n
Giuseppe Garabaldi and his volunteer army forced out the Spanish Bourbon rulers of southern Italy by 1860, laying the groundwork for a unified Italy in 1871. Rome became the capital of the new country but the government did little to improve conditions for the southern Italians. Already living in crushing poverty, the southern peasants were now compelled to pay high taxes imposed by the new northern government making it even more difficult to provide for their families.<\/p>\n<\/div>
By the 1880’s southern Italy was in the throes of emigration fever, and some of the small villages were literally decimated. The landowners maintained a feudal hold over the villagers and tried to oppose emigration, but with little success…. Most of southern Italy was in the grip of poverty toward the end of the 1800’s, and the villagers were especially drawn to the opportunities North America offered. The small town of Roseto Valfortore in the province of Foggia, where our Minicola ancestors originated, was no different as many there contemplated leaving for America.<\/p>\n<\/div>
In the early 1880’s Roseto Valfortore was a village of twenty-five hundred on the Adriatic side of southern Italy in the province of Foggia. The town is perched on a steeply slanting hillside near the top of a small mountain that rises abruptly from the coastal plain. The maximum elevation is 1,150 meters, but the center of town is only 650 meters above sea level. Roseto Valfortore is near the border of neighboring Benevento Province, approximately thirty miles inland from the Adriatic seaport Bari. During the Roman era its rose-covered countryside prompted the name Rosetum. The way of life of the paesani, or villagers, has hardly changed over the past hundred years. They farm small patches of rough ground on the terraced hillside and each year raise one or two pigs. The village, like half a dozen others scattered over the sides of the small mountain, is under the prefecture of Naples.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
Our earliest known Minicola ancestor (so far) is Marcello Menecola and his wife Catarina Carescia. Marcello was born around 1677 in Roseto Valfortore. Records from the time show our ancestor’s occupations as either Massaro (Farm Manager), Contadino (Farmer) or Bracciale (Day Laborer) . The implication with these occupations is that the worker does not own any farmland of their own and that they are simply employed to work land owned by a few wealthy landowners.<\/p>\n
Note that the family name in Italy was spelled Menecola but was changed to Minicola after their arrival in Canada. It’s most likely the name was simply transcribed incorrectly due to the language barrier and the change just stuck. It’s my understanding that the pronunciation of Menecola in Italian is virtually the same as Minicola in English so it might have just been transcribed phonetically.