A Genealogy Treasure In What's Often Discarded
Closing a gap in my late grandfather’s journal.
👋 Hello, I’m Kevin Ferguson and welcome to 🍷 Rain on the Monte Bello Ridge,🍷 a memoir about health, aging and winemaking. (Book summary) 🍇 This is my newsletter. It includes book research and early release chapters about winemaker Mario Gemello and his centenarian widow, Kay Gemello. 📖 They are my lovable maternal grandparents. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button.
Behind the Scenes of the book: For a while, I was stumped. I couldn’t find the first name of my great grandfather’s Depression-era banker. Can I write around it? Luckily, a lightbulb went on.
A Genealogy Treasure In What’s Often Discarded
My grandfather Mario Gemello, who died in 2005, left behind a journal of the early days of helping his father launch the Gemello Winery in the 1930s. It’s a treasure trove of memories, facts and stories of life during the Great Depression.
I find myself saddened when I stumble upon a story that seems incomplete, and he’s not around for me to ask him any follow ups.
In one case, my grandfather wrote about his father going to visit “Mr. Camp” at the Bank of Italy to get a loan. (Chapter: The Birth of Mountain View)
Mr. Camp? That name didn’t ring any bells with my grandmother, whose still living at 101.
The old Bank of Italy building in downtown San Jose. Credit: George Avalos, Bay Area News GroupI can’t simply publish “Mr. Camp” without his first name in a book chapter.
Bank of Italy was rebranded Bank of America in 1930, and is now a multinational investment bank, headquartered in North Carolina. Calling the PR department about an employee 90 years ago would be a fool’s errand.
For a while, I tabled completing that Depression-era chapter. Then one day, during a conversation with Jennifer Furlong of the Cupertino Historical Society, I was offered resources for further research about the history of winemakers on Montebello Ridge.
A lightbulb went on. It made me wonder what kind of resource would hold the answer to Mr. Camp’s mysterious first name?
My mind flashed back to a recent visit to my dad’s home to share lunch with him. He’s a bit of a pack rat. While looking for a serving bowl, I stumbled upon a kitchen cupboard full of outdated phone books. Ten or 15 years old. Unfortunately, not old enough for my purposes.
But it begged the question: Would a historical society keep old phone books as a resource?
The answer: Yes!
Since Mr. Camp worked at the Mountain View Bank of Italy branch, I called the Mountain View Historical Society first. Librarian Candace Bowers said the oldest Santa Clara County phone book it had in stock was from 1944. “But no Camp was listed,” she said, but suggested the Santa Clara library had a larger collection of old phone books, and may have one from the 1930s. However, it did not.
Since these were county phone books, I made a list of all the historical societies in the Santa Clara County. My next call was to the San Jose library’s California room, which housed the local history collection.
When I asked San Jose librarian Michael Lara if they had old phone books from the 1930s, he provided the most routine response.
“Sure. What do you need?” It was if I asked a barista if they had different types of hot beverages.
Not only did the 1931 phone book have a “Wilbur L. Camp,” it listed his profession: “mgr Bank of Italy.”
Jackpot!
I thought my request was a bit obscure. Perhaps it was unlikely these historical societies were collecting old phone books on the off chance that memoir authors were researching incomplete journals of deceased family members.
This next story led to the answer.
Genealogy Research
For years, I had heard stories of my grandparents’ 1940 Las Vegas wedding.
It was organized by my grandfather’s cousin, John Vinassa, who managed the Union Hotel in downtown Las Vegas. In researching some loose ends of the story I had been told, it led me to connect with distant cousins, Joe Pereira and Leslie Vinassa, the latter who still resides in Las Vegas.
Leslie has been researching the Vinassa family tree for years. She has had debates with her aunt, Silvia Pereira, about whether other Vinassa families, unrelated to their tree, lived in Las Vegas during Silvia’s childhood (1930s and ’40s). Leslie said her aunt’s stance was always “no,” but Leslie had her doubts. Silvia passed away in 2021 at age 89, ending that debate, but not Leslie’s curiosity.
It turns out, a Las Vegas resident named Pietro Vinassa, no known relation, died in a 4 am car crash in 1948 near the Las Vegas airport, according to a death certificate Leslie stumbled upon on ancestry.com. It also noted that Pietro was 69 years old and had lived in the Las Vegas community for 30 years.
This triggered a thought from my own research of Mr. Camp, the Bank of Italy manager.
A 69-year-old with deep roots in the community may also have siblings and/or adult children living in the area around that time.
“Perhaps the Las Vegas historical society would have old county phone books,” I told Leslie in a phone conversation.
After sharing that idea with her, I reached out again to Michael Lara at the San Jose Library.
“What is the most common request for researching your old phone books,” I asked.
“It turns out, genealogy research is the second most common reason people consult our old phone books,” he said. “Property research is number one. Renters, buyers and landlords use them to prove (or validate) how long a person has lived in a certain location.”
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