Lost and found

"You look Italian. But 'Brenckle' -- that's not, right?"

I've been dealing with variations of that question all my life.

The standard explanation involves an abbreviated history of my father's family.

My grandfather was 8 when his dad died, and his mom died a year-and-a-half later. The Brenckles took in my grandpa and his brother and adopted them. Their real last name was Venezia, so that's where the Italian comes in.

That's the short version. As for the long version of the truth, however, well, that was a mystery -- particularly because my grandfather died when my dad was 17.

From the time I was old enough to focus on the smiling man in pictures who looked just like me, I wondered about Grandpa Phil. The older I got, the more determined I became to solve that mystery.

Finally, this summer, my mom got an invitation that lit a spark: The Brenckles were getting together to celebrate the marriage of one of their own. And we, the children and grandchildren of Fillipo Arturo and Giuseppe Rudolfo Venezia, who became Philip Leo and Joseph Raymond Brenckle, were invited as family.

I decided to prepare by doing my research -- by talking to family and using records at the Register of Wills Office, Orphan's Court, the Carnegie Library, the state Department of Vital Records and sites on the Internet.

What I found led me on a tour across time and the city. Through my grandfather's eyes, I walked the teeming streets of 1900s East Liberty, stayed in the crowded row houses in 1920s Pittock and, finally, found a quiet, gently rolling farm in Mt. Troy, Reserve.

At times, I was delighted by the generosity of Pittsburghers, the opportunity of this hard-working city and the faith that, in so many ethnic communities, underpins it all. Other discoveries evoked the struggles I see today -- how lack of health care can spell death from common illnesses and how grinding poverty can imperil even the strongest dreams.

But at its heart, this search was about one thing -- how a little girl who desperately longed to know her grandpa found him.

Phil, his brother, Joe, and sister, Mary, were orphaned as children.

Growing up, I was forever quizzing my grandmother (Phil's widow), my father and his sister, Mary Ann, about every nuance of the story.

What they knew was jumbled and vague.

Some questions were easily answered, like my great-grandparents' names. Those were printed on my grandfather's baptismal certificate. My great-aunt Mary Venezia -- Phil and Joe's sister -- never was adopted because of complications from tuberculosis and served as Venezia family historian. But she, too, died before I was born.

My mother had asked Mary some of the same questions I was asking, and the answers led to more questions.

My grandfather's mother died at childbirth, Mary said.

But no one remembered a fourth Venezia child, so what happened to the baby• Which parent died first• Where did the children go after that• Where in Italy was the family from• It was all seemingly lost.

My grandmother, Helen Brenckle, remembered Phil telling her he grew up in East Liberty, but my dad recalled his father driving him through Pittock, a tiny enclave in Stowe Township between McKees Rocks and Kennedy Township, and saying that was where he grew up.

Through Ellis Island's free Web site, I learned that the story of the Venezia family in the United States began, like so many others, at the Statue of Liberty. Like many Italians of the era, my great-grandfather, Francesco Venezia, came to America to make his fortune. He worked in the U.S. for about 10 years before returning home to Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy, to take a wife.

In July 1904, Francesco, age 30, his 19-year-old wife, Saverina Brescia, and her brother, Caesar, 16, left Catanzaro for America.

All three had train tickets to Pittsburgh when they stepped off the Koenigin Luise steamship at Ellis Island on Aug. 4.

America was booming, and Italians were streaming in through the Port of New York, driven to find better wages. While there was great opportunity, there was deep prejudice. Newspaper articles of the era decried Italians for taking jobs from "real Americans" and having associations with terrorist organizations like the Black Hand.

That didn't stop thousands from pouring into Pittsburgh for jobs at steel mills, the railroad and manufacturing facilities.

Francesco had a decent job as a tailor at dry cleaning and dyeing conglomerate Crandall-McKenzie & Henderson's East Liberty plant, just a short walk from a rented home on Frankstown Avenue.

Francesco and Saverina's first child, Maria Giuseppe, was born exactly one year after her parents' emigration. That same year, Saverina's brother, Pasquale, arrived in the city and lived with them.

In 1907, Caesar returned to Catanzaro with good news for their aging father. The family's first son -- my grandfather Fillipo Arturo -- had been born that March.

Little brother Giuseppe Rudolfo followed in December 1908.

All three children were baptized at Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church on Meadow Street, the spiritual soul of the Italian community, only six blocks from their home.

Caesar tried to return to the U.S. in November 1912, but was turned back when he came down with the infectious eye disease trachoma. He convalesced and was readmitted in 1913. It then was Pasquale's turn to return to Italy. He spent his year there and returned in 1914. Another brother, Ottavio Brescia, eventually came to this country.

But, just as the family's life was starting to take root, it was swept away.

A search of the state's Department of Vital Records provided the sad answer: On June 15, 1915, at Western State Hospital, Francesco died of tuberculosis after a three-year struggle with the disease. At age 41, he was laid to rest at Mt. Carmel Cemetery, a sandstone monument marking the place.

In his will, found in the archives of the Allegheny County Register of Wills Orphan's Court division, Francesco provided his wife with what he hoped would be enough to support the family. Three bank accounts back in Catanzaro contained 13,000 lira -- equivalent to $2,190 -- enough to buy a small home. He provided trusts for his three "beloved" children.

Energized by the amount of information found in my great-grandfather's death certificate, I pushed on for the resolution of one of the story's central mysteries: Did Saverina have another child?

Records in the Register of Wills Marriage License Department provided a stunning revelation -- six months after Francesco's death, Saverina married again, this time to a neighborhood man named Michele Natale.

From the cemetery records at Mt. Carmel, I know she died in 1917. It was enough time to get married, have a baby and die.

Information from the state Vital Records Department lists her cause of death -- "puerperal infection and peritonitis," an infection acquired after childbirth.

Aunt Mary was right. There was another sibling.

Saverina died Jan. 24 and was laid to rest beside Francesco two days later. There was no money for a tombstone.

There is no further record of Natale or the child or what happened to the money left behind by Francesco.

After their mother's death, the three Venezia children were taken in by their Uncle Pasquale, who moved to Pittock to be closer to the railyards.

Pasquale, like almost all men, signed up for the World War I draft in June of that year. He requested an exemption from service, because he was the sole provider for his niece and two nephews.

The four lived in cramped rented rooms on Fleming Park Avenue. Pasquale worked the rail lines up to Youngstown, Ohio, and down to Connellsville, Fayette County. There never was enough money or enough food.

Mary, born with a congenital hip problem, tried to care for her brothers as best she could. And then, in the late fall of 1920, sickness again swept through the family. Pasquale, 38, was taken to Woodville State Hospital, where he, like his brother-in-law, succumbed to tuberculosis.

Another unsolved mystery was the whereabouts of Ottavio when his brother died. It's likely that he had returned to Italy temporarily during that period, as many young Italian men did.

According to records in the Register of Wills Office, Pasquale Venezia died with about $1,500 in the bank and no will. When Ottavio resurfaced, he decided to share the money with the children. After fees, the children would get $600 -- that's about $6,800 today -- to split.

It took Ottavio a year-and-a-half to find the children, and, when he did, he petitioned the Orphan's Court to have the South Side Trust Co. hold the money until all reached 21.

"They have no guardian for their estates," the Orphan's Court document reads. "Mary Venezia resides at the Sewickley Fresh Air Home. Phillip and Joe Venezia reside at the private boarding home with Mrs. Mertle (sic) Brenkle, RFD #4, Millvale."

An infectious disease had ravaged Mary's already weak body, lodging in her hip, knee and shoulder bones. Near death, she was carried on a stretcher to the Sewickley Fresh Air Home, which specialized in helping physically challenged children.

The Fresh Air Home, with its hot food, warm beds and cutting-edge treatments for children with crippling diseases, restored Mary's health -- so much so that in a 1951 Pittsburgh Press article, Mary, then a kindergarten teacher at the home, was praised by the directors as "our gem."

The boys, healthy enough, were taken to an orphanage. A search of the archives for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, which oversaw all Catholic orphanages, turned up nothing. Likely, the archivists said, they were taken to St. Joseph's in Oakmont. But because no records were kept during the first few years of its existence, it is impossible to tell.

Orphans of the era, a county human-service worker told me, had to pay for their own lodging. If no one paid for them after a year, they were put up for adoption. But they still had to earn their keep.

If the orphanages did one thing for the brothers, it gave them the opportunity to meet Raymond and Myrtle Brenckle.

The Venezia brothers were put out to work in 1921 to the Brenckles, a German couple who had a massive farm in Mt. Troy. They were adopted by the couple in 1923 when they were 15 and 16.

Armed with all of this information, I set off for the family reunion at Arnetta Brenckle Andrews' farm in Hadley, Mercer County.

I needed the answer to the final question: Why?

Hundreds of day workers and farmhands passed through the Brenckles' farm through the years. What was it about these Italian-American boys that made a German-American couple adopt them?

Arnetta Brenckle Andrews, Raymond and Myrtle's granddaughter and now matriarch of the family, provided the answer.

Her family took the boys in because, in addition to providing labor, they were old enough to be baby-sitters for the Brenckle children, Anna Mae (Arnetta's mother) and Jacob, who were about 8 and 5 at the time.

The boys' adoption was convenient for farm business, she said, but beyond that, they were loved for their good humor and loving hearts.

In Arnetta's black-paged albums, brought down from her attic, are snapshots of the life the boys enjoyed after their adoption: Their first formal portrait shows them in new suits, standing next to their new siblings. The brothers grin broadly at a low-lying greenhouse they've just constructed. Even more heart-warming, there are pictures of the boys with their sister, whom, Arnetta said, always was welcome at the farm.

The brothers would maintain contact with the Brenckles throughout their lives.

Phil and Joe went on to have their own families and continued to watch over their sister.

In 1938, Joe married Ruth Broglie. He became roadmaster of Kennedy Township, and the couple had two children. He died in 1970.

Phil waited to wed, becoming produce manager at Donahoe's Market. In 1943, he married Helen Spock, a shopkeeper's daughter from Uniontown. They had two children -- Dennis, my father, and Mary Ann. Phil died in 1964 of heart failure, a complication of illnesses -- strep throat and subsequent rheumatic fever -- contracted during his childhood.

For the remainder of their adult lives, the brothers lived on the same street, in almost identical houses on Ehle Avenue in Kennedy Township.

Mary outlived her brothers and became keeper of the family legacy. She fought fiercely to maintain her independence after the Fresh Air Home closed and died undergoing experimental surgery for severe arthritis in 1977.

Just before she died, my dad told her that my mother was pregnant with me.

When Grammy Helen and I would sit down with our own family pictures, the trips down memory lane always ended in a promise: I'll find it all out someday, Grammy. I'll come back to Pittsburgh and find all the answers.

Solving one of the central mysteries of my childhood brings my family resolution, but it also brought something I didn't expect: new memories.

I thought I heard every story about Grandpa there was to tell in my childhood. But since my investigation began, my dad, my aunt and Arnetta have all recalled long-buried moments with my grandfather: his knack for creating stunning fruit baskets, the long hours he put in sorting produce at the Brenckle's Strip District stand and the pranks he played that left Grammy, him, my dad and aunt gasping with laughter.

It is that last memory, and the picture of him young, strong and optimistic, that I hold in my heart.

I found you, Grandpa. I hope you're glad I did.

Additional Information:

Tips for searching

&#149 Go with what you know. The first link to the past is the present. Talk to parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and figure out how everyone in this generation is connected. Ask your parents the names of their parents and grandparents. And remember: Until about the 1940s, there seems to have been little concern for proper recording of names and places.

&#149 Beginnings and endings are most frequently recorded. The Register of Wills Office's record books are a good place to dig, with the Orphan's Court division holding records on trusts, guardanships and wills. The books contain records, dating to the county's founding. Copies can be made for 25 cents a page. The Marriage License Bureau holds marriage-license records, which list the names of the couple's parents, residences and occupations, along with date, location and presider of the ceremony. Copies can be made for a $10 fee. Recently, the county transferred all birth and death certificates to the state Department of Vital Records. If you have the date of someone's birth or death, you can obtain copies of birth and death certificates for $10 and $9, respectively. Sometimes, especially if you are reaching into the 1800s, churches might have more accurate records than the state. The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh will search its archive for a $15 an hour fee.

&#149 Adoption records are not open to inspection under Pennsylvania law. However, an adoptee can see his or her file upon reaching age 18.

&#149 The library is your new best friend. The Carnegie Library's Pennsylvania Room has an extensive collection of documents and helpful staffers willing to assist you. The library also has a free version of Ancestry.com, an enormous, fee-based genealogical database. Census tracts contain information about jobs, education, residence, age, year of immigration and marriage. Copies cost anywhere from 10 cents to 25 cents a page. World War I draft cards, accessed through Ancestry, provide supporting information.

&#149 So is the Internet. www.ellisisland.org has an extensive collection of immigration records and a free, searchable database. I found it best to hit this site after obtaining enough personal information about individuals to sift through the record collection. Although obtaining copies of ship manifests and pictures costs money, they can be viewed for free. Again, names might be recorded incorrectly or misspelled.