GALLERY: A new lineage for Jari Sinnwell

By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com

Jari Sinnwell of Charles City thought she knew who her ancestors were. She had lines of genealogy traced — over 131,000 names — on both her mother’s and father’s sides of the family.

In the case of her father, Tom Quick, Sinnwell was certain of a solid Dutch heritage that had a hand in the foundation of New York City — until an Ancestry.com DNA test several years ago reported Italian roots.

It was a mistake, Sinnwell told Ancestry support staff. She wasn’t one-third Italian as the genealogy website reported.

“Then we visited my mother, and I complained about the results and how they were wrong,” Sinnwell recalled. “And she said, ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.'”

That was the first time Sinnwell learned what Tom Quick apparently never confirmed in his lifetime — Tom’s birth father, the story goes, was not the man who helped raise him. Sinnwell’s grandmother had an affair with an Italian immigrant neighbor.

“My grandmother had hidden her pregnancy and had the baby alone on the living room floor. My grandpa left her for a while and eventually came back,” Sinnwell said. “That wiped out one-fourth of my whole family line. It was devastating … my grandfather is some nameless, faceless Italian. Where do you go with that?”

Four years later, Sinnwell and her husband went to Italy.

The house in Little Italy

Soon after her surprising visit with her mother, Sinnwell read the book “Finding Family” by Richard Hill. Hill had been adopted, and discovered his birth parents through DNA testing and detective work.

Sinnwell already had a well-documented interest in genealogy.

“I thought, ‘what have I got to lose?'” she said.

Sinnwell started documenting all the Italian surnames in the Little Italy neighborhood of Des Moines, where her grandparents had raised Tom Quick without any apparent Italian heritage. With the help of DNA matching from Ancestry, Sinnwell narrowed down the likely families to the top five surnames.

Sinnwell started contacting the families and hearing back. “Sorry, can’t help,” she heard, “Sorry, can’t help —”

“The third one said yes, I had relatives in Des Moines,” Sinnwell recalls. “That turned out to be the answer.”

Ned Chiodo and Monsignor Frank Chiodo started comparing notes with Sinnwell. Ned gave Sinnwell a copy of an old wedding photo. Standing next to the groom is Tommaso Chiodo, whom Sinnwell would confirm to be her grandfather. Although Tommaso never raised his son, the baby would be named after him.

“When my Grandpa Quick came back, he said ‘I want to name the baby Richard,’ and Granny said, ‘I want to name the baby Thomas,'” Sinnwell said. “So he was Richard Thomas Quick, but he was Tom Quick his whole life.”

Sinnwell started offering to pay for DNA tests with around a dozen members of the Chiodo family. She matched them all. On two occasions, she hired a researcher in Italy to find out more about Tommaso. Then she felt the pull to visit Italy herself.

The village in the south

It took a year and a half of planning before Sinnwell and her husband DJ left Charles City for two weeks in April 2017, visiting Soveria Manelli, Tommaso’s home village. The couple hired a “heritage” tour guide and a translator. The tiny village is located in one of the southernmost regions of Italy.

“Before we found this woman to plan our tour for us, we had contacted some other ones and they said, ‘you don’t want to go there, there’s nothing there,'” Sinnwell said.

Tommaso Chiodo had no living relatives remaining in Soveria Manelli — a big disappointment to Sinnwell. Both of Tommaso’s brothers and all of their children had died young. But Sinnwell and her husband were able to connect with Monsignor Chiodo’s relatives, the Cerra family, in the same village that Tommaso grew up in.

“It’s amazing how you can communicate without knowing the language, and I love these people,” Sinnwell said. “I would say it was the trip of a lifetime, but we’re already planning on going back.”

In the few days they were there, Sinnwell got to know matriarch Rosarina Cerra and the close-knit Cerra family, who took the Sinnwells through Soveria Manelli. Delia Cerra and her brother Sergio also accompanied Sinnwell to the village’s City Hall, where employees and translators helped Sinnwell find documentation on Tommaso’s life in the village. Sinnwell also visited the street where her grandfather grew up.

“It was like a dream come true,” Sinnwell said. “It was so meaningful.”

The Sinnwells also visited the oldest wool mill in the Calabria region — where, on the census records, Sinnwell’s great-grandmother was listed as a spinner. The Sinnwells received a private tour from the company, which still spins by hand and ships products around the world.

The couple also had time to see culturally significant places in the region, including Italian castles and the Riace bronzes, built about 460-450 BC and rediscovered in 1972.

Sinnwell had never traveled internationally before. Even as she traced her lineage four years ago, she had never intended to visit her family’s country of origin. Now, she has a simple email correspondence going with Delia, which both writers translate through separate apps.

Sinnwell sent a thank-you email to Delia immediately after returning.

“She said, ‘Family is very important. We were happy to have you,'” Sinnwell said.

The Italians in Iowa

Through all of this, Sinnwell discovered that Tommaso Chiodo’s life had been very difficult.

“My grandfather had a marriage that lasted a very short length of time,” she said. “They got married because she was pregnant, and got divorced when the baby was two weeks old. That child moved to California with her mother.”

“My dad, [Tommaso] couldn’t claim. He had no children,” Sinnwell said. “He had kind of a short, sad life.”

Tommaso Chiodo had immigrated to the U.S. in January 1937, and died eight years later at age 45 in Des Moines. Tommaso lived right across the street in Des Moines from where Tom Quick grew up.

Sinnwell has been in contact with both of Tommaso’s grandsons living in California, and is waiting for the DNA test results to return from their kits.

“They kind of knew his name — ‘well, I heard he was a tailor,'” Sinnwell said. “I kind of feel like it’s up to me to remember him, to honor him in a way. He doesn’t have anybody else.”

Grandpa Quick has not lost his place in Sinnwell’s mind, she said.

“It doesn’t diminish one or the other. In a way, maybe I feel more sympathy for my Grandpa Quick, because it must have been hard for him,” she said.

Tom Quick died of cancer in 1991, in Eldora, Iowa. His mother never told Tom or his wife, Sinnwell’s mother, about Tommaso Chiodo.

“[My mother] had just kind of heard the stories, and when I pursued that — she was surprised that it was true. I guess she thought people just talked and it wasn’t true,” Sinnwell said.

Returning home

Sinnwell’s mother now lives in a nursing home in Iowa Falls. She has since been diagnosed with dementia — leaving Sinnwell thankful that the family history was disclosed before it was lost. Sinnwell has considered writing a book, “but I didn’t document it well enough when I started, because it didn’t know how it was going to turn out,” she said.

Tommaso remained an Italian citizen his whole life, meaning there was potential for Tom Quick, and now for Sinnwell, to claim duel citizenship with the U.S. and Italy. Sinnwell is searching for the family documentation that could grant her an Italian passport and citizenship. She is also planning to change her middle name to Chiodo, just to keep the name alive in her family.

Sinnwell and her husband started planning a return trip to Soveria Manelli during the plane ride back to Iowa. DJ enjoyed the trip just as much as she did, Sinnwell said — and she’s already helped him dig into his German and English background.

“He is an awfully good sport,” Sinnwell said. “He’ll call me and say, ‘have you done any genealogy, did you find anything new?’ He’s perfect.”

For those who are curious about their own background, there will always be a surprise or a mystery, she added.

“I’ve never talked to anyone who had their DNA tested that didn’t have some surprises in there, one way or another,” Sinnwell said.

In fact, before she planned her trip to Italy, Sinnwell had been back in contact with another DNA match.

“I told him how upset I was by all of this, and he said, ‘I was pretty upset when I found out too,'” Sinnwell recalled.

‘But once you get used to the idea, being Italian is pretty cool.'”