Casa Emigranti Italiani 

I have been working on a mystery!

A friend in Italy who knows about my activity with the Casa Emigranti Italiani,  this friend contacted me with an interesting request. Her great grandfather is buried in a Hartford cemetery and she knows the general details: could I go there and take a picture of the grave!

Simple, right? Well not quite!

I had never heard of  Zion Hill Cemetery before and the  burial in question goes back to 1914! I mentioned the place to a friend of mine who owns an auto body shop and is familiar with Hartford. We go to the cemetery and the sight is not pretty! Grass overgrown, tombstones down, some tombstones have disappeared into the ground and some are not legible!

Left a little disappointed and decided to contact the City of Hartford.

You know all the bad things you hear about Government employees? Well apologize, right now!

We began talking to Brenda who took the info and e-mailed us a map of the cemetery and copy of the burial document ( copies below) ! Like in a matter of minutes!

Next day we go back to the cemetery full of hope but after almost two hours of walking all around and even with the new info we were unable to locate the grave!

So we called Brenda again to see if she could give us some more details!  She did better: she volunteered to meet us at the cemetery next week to help us locate the grave! She explained that this particular cemetery is very complex and the map not as helpful!

Today June 17 we met Brenda and a co-worker at the cemetery but could not locate the grave marker! We did find the grave next to the one we were looking for and so we provided that picture to our friend in Italy!

A nice ending anyway!

Alessandro E Lucia Mangiafico

1914 burial record from Hartford City Hall.

Map of the Zion Hill cemetery and the asterisk indicates where the tomb is located!

A picture of the area where the tomb should be. Gaetano Amenta at left and at right a city worker who helped us find the location!

These two barely visible markers are next to the grave of Mr. Mangiafico! The location is identified by the tomb number! These are number 606 and mr Mangiafico is 605!

Several pictures of Zion Hill Cemetery