That’s a question I would really like to find the answer to. Her birth name was Anna Maria Italiano. She changed it when she became an actress. The story in my family was always that there was some family feud and the two branches of the family no longer spoke to one another. Rumor had it that Hugo Vespignani’s partially missing finger had been bitten off in an argument, but I think the more likely explanation is that he lost it in a machine accident. Anyway, when his mother Teresa DiPaolo and two of his younger brothers came to the US in 1911 from Palazzo San Gervasio, Italy (and yes she traveled under her maiden name as women did back in those days) they were traveling with Francesco Italiano. Teresa’s nearest living relative back in Italy was listed as her mother Rosaria Belsante. Francesco’s nearest living relative back in Italy was his wife Angela Belsante. So was Angela Teresa’s cousin, perhaps the daughter of one of Rosaria’s brothers? They were all listed as going to stay with Teresa’s husband, Arturo Vespignani, who was already in the US. Arturo is listed as Francesco’s cousin, although that term is often used loosely. It is more likely that their wives were cousins. So there definitely was a connection to an Italiano family. The story goes that there were sisters who married brothers and that the sisters were cousins to Teresa. Still with me? So there is a possibility that Francesco had a brother who married Angela’s sister and that Anna Maria Italiano, aka Anne Bancroft, was descended from that couple. I haven’t been able to figure out yet if this could be true. I’d really like to know even if it’s not true. I wish her son Max Brooks would go on one of those genealogy TV shows and trace his ancestors. He’s an author, so I tried contacting his publicist and agent, but I never heard back. Like I said, even if the story isn’t true I’d still like to know that for sure.
On a side note, through Ancestry DNA testing’s cousin matching, and finding people with online trees, I have been able to take Teresa’s family back further. I found someone who had done a great deal of research into Italian records. I never just copy stuff from other people’s trees without concrete verifiable proof like actual birth records. Even though I don’t know Italian it is still easier to locate Italian records online to trace my family’s roots than it is to trace my Irish ancestors, but I’ll save that for another blog post. The guy who did the research is related to my cousin’s wife and was doing research for my cousin’s son, so I am not related to him, but very grateful for the information he provided. Then working with other researchers whose DNA I matched I was able to connect the two trees together and figure out how I was related to the DNA matches. I kept having matches with people with the surname Tritto in their families. That was not a name I knew. But it turns out going back further that both the Tritto family and the Belsanti family are descended from the Marchetti family. (Some records have it spelled Belsante and some Belsanti. I think the spelling with the “i” is correct.) The descendant chart is here https://myfamgen.com/marchetti-family/. I still need to figure out where exactly Angela fits into the tree, so I haven’t added her and Francesco yet.