We have a winner for our personal story contest !

The winner of our immigrant story contest is from Australia. It involves a stone mason from northern Italy, who went to Australia in the 1880s to teach convicts to make tombstones. The actual story will be published later on, as part of a larger project.

The winner is a man who was adopted when two years old, and spent a lifetime with an overwhelming desire to know about his birth family.  The story is full of many different twists and turns and unexpected surprises. It’s a compelling story of one man’s emotional journey. Ultimately, he found himself in pursuit of his Italian immigrant’s place of origin–though he never knew he was Italian!  His lineage has now been traced back several centuries–to an ancestor who first arrived in northern Italy from Sardinia !

A man who once knew pretty much nothing at all, now knows even the exact house where his immigrant to Australia was born in 1850. He was surprised to learn the month and day of birth, because his granddaughter shares the same birthday !  The family hopes to visit their ancestral town in Italy in the near future.  It was over 130 years ago when his ancestor, Giovanni made the decision to respond to an ad by the Australian government and move to a far away land.

The contest prize is 100 euros in cash !

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