Sila roots
Spezzano della Sila, old registers and the earliest traces of the names Bevacqua, Vivacqua and Bivacqua.
Family book
Sons of the Sila
The story of the Bevacqua family between Spezzano della Sila and America (1600-1974)
A historical and genealogical reconstruction for English-speaking descendants, guests and roots travelers who want to follow the Bevacqua family from the Sila mountains to the United States and back through memory.
Roots and returns
A family archive crossing villages, oceans and generations.
Sons of the Sila began as a family research project and became a map of places, names and choices that many Southern Italian families may recognize. The story starts in Spezzano della Sila and follows the surname variants Bevacqua, Vivacqua and Bivacqua through records and remembered voices.
Civil records, parish sources, Ellis Island manifests, U.S. federal censuses, archives and oral memories are read together to rebuild a long family line: the 1888 tragedy, the strength of Chiara Falcone as a matriarch, the departures from 1902 onward, Niagara Falls, Mount Vernon and the rediscovery of the American branch in 1997.
The house, the village and the Sila are not just a background. They are the place of departure and return, where scattered fragments of family history can become a shared inheritance.
The path of the story
From Sila roots to a thread found again.
The 1888 tragedy
A family wound that marked later generations and changed the path of the descendants.
The great departure
The departures from 1902 onward, between hope, work and passenger records toward the United States.
Niagara Falls and Mount Vernon
The American cities where the family built new lives without fully breaking the bond with Calabria.
The thread found again in 1997
The meeting with Peter Bevacqua reopened the dialogue with the American branch and gave names back to empty spaces.
Casa Nonna Rosaria
The family home becomes a threshold where hospitality, territory and family memory meet.
Themes of the book
Genealogy as a concrete way to preserve what remains.
The past not as nostalgia, but as a responsibility toward those who come next.
Acts, censuses, archives and cross-checks turn clues into a verifiable family story.
The journeys to America speak of loss, possibility and new belonging.
Surname variants show how names can change while traces still survive.
Mothers, children, distant branches and returns create a choral story.
The mountain remains a physical and symbolic root, even when life crosses the ocean.
Covers and editions
Two drafts for two audiences, the same family story.
Casa Nonna Rosaria
A house where hospitality and memory speak of the same territory.
Casa Nonna Rosaria welcomes travelers in the center of Spezzano della Sila, but it also carries a family history made of rooms, departures, returns and preserved names. This is why the book belongs on the house website: not as a sales page, but as part of its identity.
Guests who arrive here meet a real place in the Sila. Readers who follow the Bevacqua story meet the same landscape in another form: documents, photographs, oral memories and family links that continue to create belonging.
Continue from the place
Discover the house and the village where this story begins.
Family memory lives better when it stays connected to real places. From here you can return to the house, see the location and request a stay in Spezzano della Sila.