An oral history
Pezzotti emigration narrative
Status: hypothesis-seed Treat narration as evidence to test, not fact.
As told by Ana Luisa Pezzotti Lithgow · granddaughter of Evaristo Dante (Annie is Miguel's mother) · 2025-09-15
As told by Annie (Ana Luisa Pezzotti Lithgow) in conversation with Miguel,
September 2025:
Evaristo Dante left Scalea in his early twenties, travelled to Naples, and boarded a ship for the New World, eventually landing in the Dominican Republic where he married Irene Dolores Tejada Guzmán in Salcedo. Exact dates and ship records are not documented in family memory.
Family tradition holds that he kept a small Italian-language Bible and a photograph of his mother — both lost to a Santo Domingo flood in the 1960s. Annie remembers her grandmother Irene speaking Italian-inflected Spanish and using the food vocabulary of Calabrian cuisine (the family's frittelle di zucca recipe survives).
Status: lore — hypothesis-seed only. The Naples-departure framing is unverified; the Italian-to-DR route may have passed through Colombia (Evaristo's father Biase Antonio died in Ciénaga, Magdalena in 1903, per S-004 GEDCOM) — this complicates the "direct from Naples" narrative. Primary documentary research ongoing (2026-05-24-pezzotti-cosenza-attack).