While looking up some information I gathered at Ellis Island I ran into some difficulty. I was trying to find information about one of my great grandparents. This was my mother’s, father’s mother. We knew her first name to be Maria and that she had been from Cento as had my great-grandfather. My mother believed that her maiden name had been Albanetti, but was not certain and we knew approximately when she came to the United States. With a little internet research using the name Govoni as the key search word, I came across your site. I found the information that the Benotti and Govoni families were related by marriage. Going back into the Ellis Island archives I quickly found that my great-grandmother had been Maria Benotti. Although she may have known my great-grandfather in Cento, they were married here. My great-grandfather’s name was Liserio Govoni, but that became Sterio when he came through Ellis Island. I believe there is certainly a relationship here because my great-grandparents lived in Wareham and New Bedford Massachusetts and my grandfather’s first job was at a nail factory in Wareham that still exists. My great-grandparents had four children that survived to adulthood (and one that died as a child in an accident). They were my maternal grandfather William (Bill) Govoni, two brothers; Mario and Chesro (Chet) and a sister Edith. Edith had two sons Michael and John who carried on the Govoni name and my grandfather had two daughters. My mother Marilyn Murphy (Govoni) is the older of the two. I am thinking that your grandmother Delmina was likely related to my great-grandmother Maria. Maria lived to be 98 and died in 1976.
Let me know if you have any other information that might connect the families. My mother would find any of the family history interesting since she knew much less about her father’s family than her mother’s family, the Fasano Family.
John W. Murphy
2727 Belle Court
Yorktown Heights, New York 10598
914-882-5321
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