Hi Anthony,
I met your family about 15 years ago. They invited me to one of their family Gatherings at a hall in, I believe, Chester, PA. I was about 25 at the time and visited with my parents. Your family was VERY friendly and very hospitable.
The reason I was invited, was because I had just started to do family research, and I had made contact with your relations around Cherry Hill, NJ, whom I believe had changed their names to Clement (I forget exactly now), since I knew my own last name was originally spelled Ieradi in Calabria. My grandfather, who was born 1888 as Antonio Salvatore Ieradi, was born in the city of Borgia, which is right near Maida.
However, just beforehand, I had received information from relatives still in Borgia that my grandfather's father Giovanni Antonio Ieradi was born in the nearby small village of Cortale. At least 15 years ago, there were still some Ieradis listed in the Cortale phone directory, but when contacted, they simply replied that they did know of any connection. But of course they woulndn't know, because we're talking about connections AT LEAST 150 years ago!
Back at your family gathering, I received the same information you just provided. But when I wasn't busy stuffing my face with pizzelle, I happened to mention that my great, grandfather actually came from the small village of Cortale. Then one of your female relatives (I think around 40ish, thin with Strawberry-blondish hair if my memory serves right - possibly named Marie or Marina) whipped around and said "THAT'S RIGHT!!! Our family is actually for Cortale. So all the other relatives looked at her and said 'Huh," and started saying they had never heard that, etc. But she was insistant, and said that She it had been passed on down to her that a Bruno Ieradi from Cortale, your family's progeniture, had MOVED to Maida (I guess the father of your Antonio.) I wrote that down, but not the source unfortunately.
Cortale is tiny - especially when we're talking around the 1850s and 1860s. You just KNOW our families have to be closely related. You and I could very well be only, say, fourth or fifth cousins. Of course the only way (until now) to verify our connection would have been for someone to have spent a great deal of time in Calabria doing original research. That is still the only way we will ever know EXACTLY how we are related (if in fact we are.) I left that gathering not knowing for sure if we are related, or how, and I still don't know for sure today (although I strongly suspect we are.)
However, thanks to modern science, you and I CAN 100 PERCENT verify IF we are cousins (and therefore all our family members are actually related too) if you, Anthony Ieradi, take a simple y-chromosome DNA scan. I have explained ad nauseum on this board how this can be done, where to get it done, and how to get it done for only 100 bucks. And trust me...no one's going to find a plan ticket to Italy for 100 bucks. Or put on a really good antipasto spread for that price either.
The reason why this is important, despite the fact that it will not tells EXACTLY how many generations, etc,. is because at some point when someone DOES go to Calabria (or those records finally become available on the internet), and that researcher hits a dead end researching your line, they can use the fact that my line is your line's cousins to go around or over that roadblock. You never know, maybe I'LL go to Calabria one day and do the research on MY ancestors, and if we actually had genetic PROOF that you and I were cousins, MY ancestors would be YOUR ancestors too (and the research for your own Italian ancestors would have been all done by someone else for free. Get it?
So please have yourself or one of your male Ieradi relatives (i.e. with the Ieradi surname) take that test.
Sincerely,
Dominic Michael Iradi
d.m.iradi@wanadoo.fr