Thursday, November 23, 2017
SANDRA Crashley has written a book about the search for her Rossi origins in Venice.
Photo Sven Carlsson OB4035-01
Sven Carlsson
PRAYERS are answered as two Kiwis on a chocolate business trip to Dublin end up spying an Italian shipbuilder who was kidnapped by Croatian pirates.
Having accompanied her husband Mike to Dublin on a business trip in 1983, Sandra Crashley didn’t know her husband looking in the phone book, then dialling numbers of families he thought might be relations, would take her on a whirlwind historical journey.
“Mike had been tracking his family tree for a while and he wanted me to get into it,” Mrs Crashley said.
“We knew my grandmother was born in Dublin.”
So, when her husband, who was working for Cadbury, dialled the numbers of random families and handed his wife the phone, she had little option but to speak – “I wonder if we are related.”
A couple of attempts with the McAree family name yielded nothing but abuse, so they switched to the Rossi surname.
A woman answered the phone and Mrs Crashley related her story as briefly as she could.
“Last time I saw you was when you were three years old,” came the reply.
“The woman at the other end of the line was Auntie Susan, who had bounced me on her knee when I was a child,” Mrs Crashley said.
It turned out that Auntie Susan had been praying she might hear from some unknown relative that would be interested in the story that Mrs Crashley would spend the next 12 years tracing.
Auntie Susan was dying from cancer and none of the nearby relatives were interested in what she had to tell.
“She died three months later,” Mrs Crashley said.
Thus, a Venetian shipwright became the focus and Mrs Crashley soon learned he was one of the hundreds of men forced to flee the Austrians who came to punish the Venetians after their failed insurrection in 1848.
“Most of these men settled in North Africa, but 20-year-old Gaetano Rossi was on a ship that got captured by Croatian pirates.”
Saving his life by telling them he could build ships, the 20-year-old was brought back to the pirates’ lair.
“All the others were killed,” Mrs Crashley said.
While living at the pirate base, a young woman fell in love with Gaetano and he had to prove himself worthy of her by impressing the other pirates by taking part in an expedition.
“Once they got to Marseilles he was able to escape and made his way to Scotland,” Mrs Crashley said.
“He wanted to get away from the Mediterranean because the pirates would kill him if they found him again.”
In Scotland he married a young Irish woman who would later die in childbirth.
As a Catholic, he also had trouble with the Masons and was only too happy to be recruited by an Irish naval pilot and go with him to Ireland.
“This was after the potato famine had ended and they needed shipbuilders to help with building up the country again,” Mrs Crashley said.
“So, he ended up in Dublin and married his second wife.”
Mrs Crashley said it would take her five trips to Venice before she found what she was looking for, evidence of Gaetano’s origins.
“I went there the first time in 1985,” she said. “I had to go to the churches to look at the birth records.”
Mrs Crashley visited two-thirds of all the churches in Venice and held 12th century books in her hands, which are stored at the back of churches.
Coming into a church and asking to see the books, she was invariably asked “Mormone?”
“I would shake my head, do the cross and say I was Catholic,” Mrs Crashley said.
“They did not want Mormons to have access to their archives.”
In 1986, Mrs Crashley was helping people with disabilities and a woman she knew who had ended up in a wheelchair after suffering a stroke wanted to go to Lourdes.
“We took her on an 8000-kilometre tour through Europe, went to Lourdes, and got to meet the Pope in Rome,” Mr Crashley.
“He had heard about us and spoke to us for five minutes.”
Whilst Searching for Gaetano
Sandra Crashley’s book Whilst Searching for Gaetano was launched at the Opotiki Library on November 8.
Librarian Julia Burrup said a small and diverse group turned out in spite of horrendous weather to celebrate the release of the book.
The book had enthused people about genealogy and researching their own whakapapa.
“As a result, the library decided to subscribe to Ancestory.com,” Ms Burrup said.
“This gives people the chance to come in and search through their huge online resources for more information on their family history.”
Ms Burrup said the Opotiki District Council website could be searched for information about who was buried in Opotiki cemeteries.
“A dedicated group, led by Sonia Edwards supported by Opotiki District Council and with the assistance of Creative Communities funding, has built a web resource allowing both locals and those overseas to access their heritage,” she said.
“This website provides access to information held at the Opotiki council about burials at three public cemeteries at Opotiki township.”