After the war, Nazzareno returned to his hometown.
Valerie knew that he would eventually immigrate to America and marry her grandmother, a woman named Angelina Crosa.
But the archives in Italy told us that Nazzareno did something else first.
"Appeared, Nazzareno Bertinelli, bachelor, age 24, and Domenica."
Mm-hmm.
Cellerani.
- Cellerani.
- Mm-hmm.
"I have pronounced in the name of the law that they are united in matrimony."
That is, yes.
Domenica.
Uh-huh.
That was...Whoa, wait!
Yes.
That's not Angelina.
Mm-mm.
- No.
- Domenica.
This is a record of your grandfather marrying a woman named Domenica Cellerani on September 14, 1922.
- '22.
about two years after he left the military.
This is your first time of hearing of Domenica.
Yeah.
We don't know how Nazzareno met his first wife or how they felt about each other, but the relationship would not last long.
The next record we found for Valerie's grandfather was the passenger list of a ship bound for New York City.
"Nazzareno Bertinelli, 24.
Married or single?
Single.
Final destination, Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Length of time alien intends to reside in the United States, always."
- Always.
He was fleeing Italy.
Just one week after his marriage to Domenica.
Wait!
Just one week after... What's it, 1922?
What?
What the heck?
Yeah, that's right.
Look at that date.
What is he doing?
Just one week after he married Domenica, Nazzareno left to immigrate to the United States.
Without taking her.
On his own.
But that was common.
Often people would go to the United States to make enough money and then send for you.
And send them.
Okay.
Okay.
Right.
I'm gonna give him that benefit of the doubt.
Yes, but I want you to read that statement again, and I'll tell you... - Oh, he says single.
- Single.
So that's the first thing Dude... we noticed.
Nazzareno seems to have immigrated in order to start a completely new life.
And he was leaving more than a wife behind.
In the archives of his hometown, we discovered that roughly seven months after Nazzareno arrived in America, his father, Andrea, took his place at the birth of a child, named Ernesto Bertinelli.
"Appeared Andrea Bertinelli, age 55, resident in this municipality, who presents a baby boy.
He declares that the baby boy was born to Domenica," Mm-hmm.
"wife of Nazzareno."
That's right.
"The Declarer has reported that the birth of the baby boy, because he was present at the moment of the childbirth of Domenica instead of her husband who was away from home due to his job."
Due to his job.
So that's what he told her.
"I'm gonna go get some work."
That's right.
And he's in America.
He's in Scranton.
And she, in May, has a baby.
Remember, he comes in October, so she's obviously pregnant.
She has a baby.
- So seven months later.
Right.
And this is the birth record for your grandfather, Nazzareno's son, Ernesto.
Ernesto.
Wow.
Ernesto is your half uncle, your father's half-brother.
Oh, I wish I would've met him.
Ernesto died in Italy in 2004 when he was 81 years old.
Though he repeatedly tried to connect to his American family by writing the letters that Valerie found after her father passed away, there's no evidence that he ever even met his father, leaving Valerie to grapple with Nazzareno's actions.
I wonder if that ate at him and really bothered him.
And... - It would've bothered me.
- Yeah.
- It would've bothered you.
- Yeah.
I mean, your wife is pregnant.
Yeah.
I'm sad for the pain that they went through, the sadness, the feeling of not being lovable enough to keep your father there, which isn't true, but yet that's what a child goes to when a child is abandoned.
After arriving in America, Valerie's grandfather found work in a Pennsylvania coal mine.
As we'd seen with Brendan Fraser's ancestor, this was a grueling way to make a living, but for Nazzareno, it offered a higher standard of living than he'd had in Italy.
And on December 20, 1930, he cemented his transformation, turning his back on his past, one last time.
"Application for marriage license.
Nazzareno Bertinelli, 32.
Occupation, miner.
Previous marriage or marriages?
No."
No.
"Angelina Crosa, 22.
Occupation, homemaker."
Your grandparents married eight years after your grandfather married his first wife, Domenica.
We didn't find any divorce records for your grandfather.
No.
They weren't divorced.
So do you think your grandmother knew that he had been married previously and had a child?
No, I don't think she knew.
I don't think this would've made him the most desirable bachelor floating around Scranton, Pennsylvania.
- No.
- In 1930, you know.
They can't speak.
But there's so many questions.
Nazzareno and Angelina were married for 37 years, right up until Nazzareno's death in 1968.
They had three children together, including Valerie's father, and they raised them in a stable home.
Even so, Valerie found herself struggling to reconcile her grandfather's life in America with all that he left behind in Italy.
I think what I really am doing in earnest right now is to have no judgment, 'cause I don't know what was going on, - No, we don't know.
- with Nazzareno.
I know that his life was incredibly difficult.
I don't know if Domenica brought him joy.
I don't know if Nazzareno brought Domenica joy.
Yeah.
But they had a beautiful little boy, Ernesto, who seems to me, wanted to reach out and spread some of his love.
Mm-hmm.
- So, um, - Yeah, that all can't be bad.
No, that all can't be bad.
It's a good way to put it.
Yeah.
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