Louis Alfred Gonnella - The Library of Virginia

History has a strange habit of creating coincidences. While it is not uncommon for someone to return to where they started, sometimes the return happens in unexpected ways. When one American soldier was filling out his war questionnaire on the other side of the world, he probably never imagined that his home back in Virginia would someday become the archive where that very same piece of paper would be stored - the Library of Virginia.

Louis Alfred Gonnella was born in 1893 in the village of Barga, not far from the major cities of Florence and Lucca in the famous Tuscany region of Italy. Like many other Italians around the turn of the century, Louis Gonnella emigrated to the United States, though as evidenced by his questionnaire mentioning that his parents were still in Barga, the rest of his immediate family was not with him. However, that does not mean Louis was entirely on his own.

Louis listed his employer while living in Richmond, Virginia as Peter Gonnella, and said he was a clerk. What kind of business Peter Gonnella ran is unknown, but it seems likely that Louis was a blood relative - the family itself seems rather tightly knit, so much so that Louis listed his mother's maiden name as 'Gonnella'.

When Louis entered the armed services in World War I, he joined up with the Naval Reserve as a Seaman, 2nd Class. He did not set sail for Europe until October of 1918 - only one month before the war ended on November 11. Since his ship that set sail from Newport News made stops in both Cuba and New York, by the time he had arrived, there was no action for even a reserve seaman. Louis was discharged in Hoboken, NY, on the 2nd of September, 1919.

This was far from the end of Louis' journey, though - his war history questionnaire was filled out on the Via Santo Pietro in Campo, a scenic road in his hometown of Barga, Italy. Unlike most other soldiers, when writing for the questionnaire, he did not list an occupation after the war - instead, he simply wrote in May of 1921, almost two years after his discharge, that he had "returned home to visit parents." That he did not mention any career at all, despite after so long out of the service, and there is little documentation of him in the United States after this, including no obituary or headstone to be found, it seems possible that this was more than just a 'visit' to his parents, and Gonnella may, like many, have been a transmigrant, returning to stay in Europe after the war. He may have spent the rest of his days back home in Barga.

The questionnaire still found its way back to Virginia, becoming a part of the Library of Virginia's collection. Decades later, though, his former home at 825 East Broad Street in Richmond underwent a transformation. in 1997, it became the new home of the state's Library. In a strange coincidence, Louis' document ended up at the same place where Louie's brief journey in World War I began.

Gonnella, Louis Alfred. War History Commission State of Virginia Military Service Record. Library of Virginia, Virginia War History Commission.