Audio | Finding a Community

Listen now | How Italian Immigrants Built Community in Early California

Welcome to a newsletter themed at the intersection of longevity and wine history. 🍷

c.1978: John Gemello, founder of the Gemello Winery

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In this audio, you’ll hear how Italian winemaker John Gemello, my great-grandfather, found his community in California after emigrating from Northern Italy before World War I. It’s told partly in his voice, audio extracted from a nearly 50-year-old cassette tape.

Great Grandpa Gemello came to the Santa Clara Valley on a solo journey without his wife and daughter, telling them he’d send for them once he got established. A chance encounter a few months later in an Italian immigrant watering hole in downtown San Jose fast-tracked the reunification of the family in the New World.

This story was only partly understood when first listened to many decades ago. However, greater clarity emerged in 2002 when I listened to it with my grandfather, Mario Gemello, as a bonding project, soon after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Ten Deadly Sins of a Genealogist

Family Tree magazine writer Paul Chiddicks shares on his Substack some fascinating tips, or mistakes to avoid, when researching your family history. He calls them the 10 Deadly Sins of a Genealogist.

Two examples are:

Sin 3: Stopping at births, marriages, and deaths

Newspaper articles, military records, and local maps are some of the details that can bring your ancestors’ stories to life. They can tell you how they lived.

Sin 4: Trying to do it all alone

Genealogy might feel like a solitary pursuit, but it doesn’t have to be.

Local family history societies, online forums, and fellow researchers can offer insights you’d never uncover on your own. Asking for help isn’t a weakness, it’s a shortcut to better research.

You can find the list of the 10 Deadly Sins here.

If you’re new here—hi, I’m Kevin!

I’m the author of 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 my forthcoming memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Read the origin story of the book.) 🍇

The Centenarian Playbook is my newsletter, which features:

• Healthy aging/longevity tips and stories from Grandma Kay’s long life.

• Wine history & stories of the Gemello Winery

• Ancestry & family research tips

There are three buttons at the bottom of every post: “like,” “comment,” and “restack.” Restacking is sharing in digital form. It goes out to the Substack community. If you enjoy the content and click “Restack,” it helps a lot.