Cintano, Italy is a small village perched in the foothills of the Alps. It is located in the Piedmont region in northwest Italy, about 35 miles north of Turin. It is a beautiful little village, that I had the great fortune to visit in March of 2019.
My great-grandfather, Dominick Rolando was born in Cintano, and immigrated to the United States in the early 1890’s, settling in Butte, Montana. Several members of his family also came to Butte to work, some moving on to South Dakota, and others returning to Italy. His siblings that came to Butte, John, Joseph, and Teresa Chiuminatto (husband Antonio) all returned to Cintano at the beginning of World War 1. His cousin, Dominick Rolando, also spent several years in Butte before moving to Lead, South Dakota to raise his family. I have also recently found branches of the Rolando family that emigrated to Chile and the Dominican Republic.
I have traced my great-grandfathers family in Cintano back to the late 1600’s through the records of the Catholic Church. The patron saint of Cintano is John the Baptist, or San Giovanni Battista. The parish church is small and beautiful that reputedly was built in the 1300’s. Baptism and marriage records date back to 1588, and death records to 1664.
In Italy the family name was originally Zucco, about 1730 the family took on the double surname of Zucco-Rolando, and when the family came to the United States, they shortened the name to Rolando. It was common in the Piedmont region for families to have double surnames to differentiate the branches of the family.
Many families from Cintano came to the United States looking for work. The village is so small that probably a good percentage of the population worked in Butte! These are a few of the surnames from Cintano that I have found in my research on Butte, Montana. Bertoglio, Butnatto, Chiono, Chiuminatto, Carlevato, Giachetti, Giachetto, Massa, Rolando, Tamietti, Volenzano, and Zucco.
