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History is personal for Dennis Barber. He lives in a Civil War-era house on a farm that has been in his family for a century.In it, he has a trunk that came from Italy with all of the possessions of the Colucciello family when they immigrated from Fontanarosa, Italy in 1929. A decade-and-a-half later, Nicolina Colucciello, one of eight children, was at a square dance at Pat’s Ranch in Altamont where she met the man who would become her husband, Marshall Barber, Dennis’s father.Barber’s family history embraces not just the American immigration experience but the pioneering settlers as well. His great-great-grandfather, Josiah Barber, was born in Berne in 1839 and enlisted in New York’s 61st Infantry at the age of 23 to fight in the Civil War. He was wounded at Gettysburg in 1863.In this week’s podcast, Barber reads a narrative that he wrote with his brothers, detailing the life on their family’s farm. It was not an easy life but the Barbers were resilient. The family’s barn burned twice — in 1958 and the new one in 1984 — only to be built again. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.