Sassano to Chicago is a genealogy resource for those with ancestors from the southern Italian town of Sassano in the province of Salerno in the region of Campania who settled in Chicago. John Cavallone is one of those descendants and is working toward helping others discover their heritage! My goal is to provide the definitive resource for the Sassano families that settled on Federal Street in the early 20th Century. I am confident my continued work here will provide that resource to you. I encourage others of Italian descent to research and document your family history to preserve it for future generations.

If you find any material on this site helpful, I am accepting donations to help continue the research via PayPal Thank you!

I encourage all fellow paisano to document their family history before it is lost forever. The Casa Italia Florence Bartolomei Roselli Library is helping preserve our history through their "Saving Our Stories" initiative.

If you are of Sassano heritage and would like any photos from 1900 (or earlier) to 1950 posted on this site, please contact me at cavallonegenealogy@gmail.com

My personal goals within the Sassano Project now that the indexing is over 95% complete:

• Take the data Peter, Pasquale and I extrapolated from the documents and build out a Sassano Family Tree

• Assist descendants of Sassanesi find their pedigree

• Identify certain traits of the population such as what lines are most likely to carry twins; what lines have long or short life spans; what families tended to marry certain families; and similar characteristics

• Continue Chicago based research

Methodology

I am regularly adding individuals to my ancestry.com tree either randomly or if a request is made to help someone determine their pedigree. Every few days I sync my ancestry.com tree with Family Tree Maker to provide reports. Bi-Weekly I export the Family Tree Maker file and import it into RootsMagic to upload the results to my Public RootsMagic Online Tree. I'd like to say that one tool is enough, but I have found each tool has it's exclusive benefits, whether data input, reporting or providing a free online source for others doing research.

As I enter individuals in my ancestry tree, I have been cleaning the data in the Sassano Project spreadsheets as translations errors have occurred simply due to the difficulty transcribing the tens of thousands of images. Additionally, Peter and I have come across errors in the documents where a life event occurred and the individual writing simply entered the wrong name. I am also randomly going back over the Sassano Project spreadsheets and adding the image and document page numbers to where you will find the referenced material.

Peter once told me that there is more work here than one can do in a life time, I tend to strongly agree with that statement. My goals will most likely never be completed 100% by me. Every day to work toward that goal is satisfactory and hopefully the work will spark other research of its kind in other Italian towns or even other towns around the world.