52 Ancestors Week 37: In the News

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 37: In the News

The theme for Week 37 is “In the News.” Have you made a family history discovery in a newspaper? What about a reporter, editor, or newsie in the family? 

Still waiting for pictures of Spider-Man! 

    At the time of this blog's posting, it's incredibly difficult to find Haverhill newspapers online. You literally have to jump through hoops in order to find a story about somebody living in Haverhill, Massachusetts. For some reason Haverhill newspapers are not online anywhere at this time. Thankfully, there are ways around this problem. You could do a keyword search on Newspapers.com for "Haverhill" and add someone's name. That's how I was able to find the car story I talked about a few weeks ago. You gotta love loopholes! 

    Using the loophole, I was able to find a ton of neat stories. One of the most bizarre ones was how several newspapers across the country reported on my 2nd great-grandmother's brother Paolo buying a ton of bread to feed his kids. The same story was repeated over and over again word for word. I swear it was a meme of its day. One day I'll talk about it. Just not today. I have something a bit more interesting in mind!

    This short story comes to us from the Holyoke Transcript Telegram on January 16th, 1947. The story talks about how an ambulance couldn't get to a pregnant woman and her husband due to a ton of snow being on the ground. Extraordinary measures had to be taken and so the cops placed the woman and her husband on a toboggan and delivered her to Hale Hospital where she gave birth to a bouncing baby boy.

    The couple in the story were Paul Coppola Jr, son of Paolo and his wife, Marie Thais Leblanc.

    It shouldn't surprise anyone that the Coppolas had car trouble at that time of year. Ask anyone who lives in the Northeast US and they could tell you just how hard it is to get a car started on a winter morning. You might even hear stories about the infamous Blizzard of 1978 around here. Yes, I know it mainly struck the Midwest US. However, we apparently felt the effects here in the Merrimack valley. It was that huge.

Joe and his mom.

    Once in a lifetime blizzards aside, the story was about the birth of Joseph Coppola, my second cousin twice removed. Unfortunately, the only information I gathered about him came from his obituary in 2010 and from various relatives including his great-niece Cynthia.

    Cyndi told me Joe was in the U.S. Navy. I think you all probably guessed that from the picture. Now, now. He could have been in a play or a movie. Yeah, right. He was in the Navy and looked quite spiffy in that uniform. 

    After the Navy, he became a mentor to many people and from the looks of his obituary he really loved animals.  He seemed like a cool guy and animals can sense that about people. If you want to check out his story, check out his page on Find a Grave.

    There's no biography. At least the obituary is there detailing his life. It's not a bad story for a man whose very birth made the news!

    I have to wonder. Did Joe know he made the news that early in his life? Does his family know? I'm going to link this week's blog to Cynthia and maybe she can show it to the family. It's an interesting story and it's a lot more upbeat than the one about the car crashing into the Soterakopoulous house. 

    I really like human interest stories like this one because far too often we have negative stories in the media. Even back then you had stories where someone was hurt or involved in a bizarre case. I have some other strange stories to talk about and one day I'll probably share them here. For now, we have this cool story about a couple trying to get to the hospital after the storm. In New England. I have to feel for the family. The scenario seems like it should be a scene in a movie. I'm glad Joe had a great life. I just wish I could have met him. 

 See ya next time!

P.S. Here's hoping Haverhill's newspapers get digitized soon!

52 Ancestors Week 36: Off to School

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 36:

The theme for Week 36 is “Off to School.” Any teachers, principals, school nurses, school librarians, bus drivers, or lunch ladies in the family tree? What about someone who was really into their school spirit? 

Rocking a "Transformers" lunchbox like it was 1985.

   Fun fact: The picture I used for this week's banner was likely taken exactly forty years ago. I started elementary school in 1985 and it was a wild ride ever since. It's pretty easy to date that photo since the lunchbox I have in my hand gives everything away. I wonder if I still have that "Transformers" lunchbox somewhere. It was the epitome of cool if you had one in those days and were of a certain age like I was. All in all school was pretty cool despite kids being cruel sometimes. I've always liked school in spite of the many difficulties I had and I think I owe a lot of that feeling to the people in my family tree.

    In my family tree, I have many people who were teachers. My father once taught classes to grad school students while he was in school to become a dentist. My sister-in-law Kathleen is a professor at James Madison University in Virginia and even her parents were teachers. My dad's cousin Joe was a music teacher. I could go on and on. If I had the choice to talk about one of them, I think I'll talk about my sister-in-law. Her ears are going to be burning before she reads this week's blog! Yes, I'll be sure to link it to her once I hit that "publish" button.

Jim and Kat's engagement pic!

    Doctor Kathleen Grammatico-Ferraiolo actually comes from a long line of teachers since both of her parents were teachers themselves. From an early age, she learned the importance of a good education and her parents were both more than willing to help her with various assignments while she was growing up.

    One assignment she had was to research her family history and her parents helped her  to create what was a huge binder full of reports and family stories. Any genealogist I know would fawn over the details, pictures and an stories in that binder!

    Being a genealogist, I asked to see it when I was told of its existence and I asked Kathleen if it was okay to research her family tree and see if the stories in it were true or not. Like my family own story, it was pretty much true. Her family story mirrored my own as her dad's family came from Sicily and Campania while her mother's side hails from Ireland.

    When you visit New England, you're going to find a lot of people with both Irish and Italian backgrounds. Similar shared experiences tend to bring people together.

   Long before I ever looked at that family history report I met Kathleen in the fall of 1995. My brother had just started his college career at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Their friend Mike introduced them and they've been together ever since. Kathleen was a political science major at the time and was on the fast-track to becoming a teacher. I didn't know it at the time. But, she was going to end up teaching me a valuable lesson.

    When I graduated high school in 1997, I had no idea what my major was going to be at Merrimack College. I was accepted there and I had no idea what I wanted to study. Admittedly, I panicked. I think anyone in my place would have and if you said you didn't I'd say you were a lying liar from Liartown, Liariana.

A few feet away from where history
took flight.

    Kathleen took me aside one day and told me to focus on my strengths and that just so happened to be history. I always did pretty well with history in school and she encouraged me to continue my studies.  In a way, Kathleen was like a big sister to me at that moment. She still is! She was always there to provide me with some excellent advice and once studying history in college got to be a bit too much for me, she suggested political science as it combined history with events that were happening in the present day.

    I ended up switching my major thanks to her and I was better for it. My grades improved and my mood changed. When I was studying history in college, I found that the professors expected me to repeat everything they said word for word in essays. I was always taught to write using my own words. I didn't feel right using someone else's words and that's why I struggled in the history department. Thankfully, Kat said I should change my major as I was in danger of failing!

    I owe Kathleen a lot because I ended up doing very well in political science. The professors appreciated me writing things in my own words and I was honestly a lot more comfortable doing papers in my own style and not using someone else's words. It's still a big no-no to me. If there's a notable on Wikitree  I want to write about like comic legend Stan Lee, I will write the bio with my own words and not rely on Wikipedia.

Mom and Kat

    Kathleen eventually got her doctorate in political science at the University of Virginia a few years after I graduated college. She then became a professor at James Madison University where she teaches students about the finer points of U.S. government. As a political science major, I can only wish her good luck on that front. And that's all I can say about that. 

    The interesting thing is how the field of genealogy employs history and political science together. When I discovered the connection, I told Kathleen about it and she agreed that both fields of study play very well with each other. In genealogy, you have to understand why someone moved to a certain area because of events happening in the world at that time for example. Circumstances in the world bring families together and that's how everyone's family tree gets made. 

    Kathleen really inspired me to work hard in my studies. Whenever I had a question, she would answer it. Whenever I had a paper to work on, she would offer me pointers and suggest other opinions I hadn't considered. One of my favorite papers to write were papers where we'd take on both view points and pretend to be the other side of an argument. That was where the creative juices flowed the most! We'd take sides and present each point of view and that helped me to create some pretty amazing papers. I really wish I saved them! Those were written several computers ago and are now lost to the sands of time.

    My sister-in-law  really helped me a lot in not just my scholastic career. She's just an amazing friend and I'm glad to have her in my life as an older sister. I have two older "sisters" and like Jennifer, Kathleen can always be counted on for a sympathetic ear or someone to talk about school with. I once had the opportunity to watch her teach a class and I saw that she taught the kids the same way she taught me lessons all those years ago. I've got to say with teachers like Kathleen around, the future is in good hands.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 35: Off to Work

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 35:

The theme for Week 35 is “Off to Work.” Who had an unusual occupation? Do you have memories of a parent going off to work every morning? What about someone whose occupation today would be obsolete, like telephone operators?

I'll have that Starbolts comic on your desk by five.

    Jobs that don't exist any more, huh? Well, we don't see many fix-it shops like the one my great-grandfather Alfred Hamel owned around here these days. I think those went out of style along with the Maytag repairman. Thankfully, those jobs sort of evolved into different specialty shops like a computer repair shop. Side note: It was actually pretty fun going to my local computer repair shop. I mean it was named after the villainous leader of the Decepticons, Megatron. How could you not like that shop? I miss Megatron Computers.

    All kidding and Transformers references aside, there is another person in my family tree who had a job that really, really doesn't exist in today's world. My grandmother Olympia Carrabs worked as a wire winder at Western Electric.

I think hers was black and gold.

 When I was a kid, my grandmother had a phone similar to the telephone in the picture in her living room.  It was pretty neat and she let me play with it all the time. It wasn't like it was connected to anything. She also wasn't an antique phone collector. Unlike my other grandmother, she didn't really collect anything. My great-aunt Nickie on the other hand....

When I was older where she got the phone from and what the story was behind it. My grandmother, if you recall, was always up for a story. If you pointed something in her house out, she will tell you all about it. Even if it was just  a knick-knack from like Pier 1 Imports.

    She told me that the phone was a memento of a very interesting time in her life. A time when she put her housework duties aside and went to work while my father was in grammar school. I'm not going to say she was a trailblazer or anything as plenty of  other women were entering the workforce during that time. What's interesting is that she first entered the workforce in while she was in her forties.

    While it was true that my grandma Ollie was a housewife for a number of years, she joined the workforce in the  early 1960s and became a wire winder. A wire winder was someone who operates machinery to wind wire, such as copper, onto bobbins, coils, or armatures for electrical components like transformers, motors, and generators. In Ollie's case, she worked on transistors for telephones.

    I can only imagine how rough that job was because back in the early 1960s, telephones didn't have
apps where you could play a game or look at the weather. Phones back then were very different. They were even different from the touchtone phones I remember from when I was a kid in the '80s and '90s! They greatly resembled the phone in her living room.

    While wire winding still technically exists as a profession, telephones haven't used transistors and tubes in a very, very long time. 

    The story of how Ollie landed the job was really quite simple. In the post World War II era, many women were going to work after the men returned home from overseas. 

    In Haverhill, Western Electric took over an old shoe factory then eventually, a large manufacturing plant opened in North Andover, Massachusetts in 1956. It became a significant employer as over 12,000 people worked at the plant at its peak. The Merrimack Valley was already known as a major player in textile production thanks in parts to the mills that dotted the valley since the early 20th century. The plant itself served as an attempt to move on from textiles to advanced technology.

    Western Electric focused on telecommunications, innovation developed products like the aforementioned transistors and fiber optics. Everything ran smoothly until 1984 when Bell Systems was dismantled. The plant itself continued working under the AT&T banner and later Lucent Technologies. The plant became an industrial park by 2021 when Bell Systems eventually removed all of their manufacturing capabilities out.

    Ollie worked at Western Electric for a number of years before finally retiring in her sixties and she always said she had a pleasant experience working there. She took great pride in her work and that was no doubt passed down by her father who was a janitor at Pentucket Bank. 

    Any line of work would be a good job for her as far as she was concerned. In her own way she helped to make peoples' lives better by working on telephones. By the time she passed away in 2002, telephones were a lot different as we were seeing more mobile phones in the hands of consumers. 

    In the end, grandma Ollie was more than just a housewife as I said earlier. She worked hard and helped while her husband Marco did his own thing.  Around the time she was working at Western Electric, he and his sister-in-law's husband Arnold Villanucci had that motel in Salisbury. To say that both of my Italian grandparents were busy in the 1960s is a bit of an understatement.

   Anyway, it was very cool that Ollie took part in a growing field that helped to bolster the economy here in the Merrimack Valley. Again, I wouldn't say she was a trailblazer by any means. She still had a great job and she took a lot of pride in her work. In the end, that's what it's all about. If you're good at something, you should show pride in it even if it's something small because you never know what kind of an impact you might have on someone's life.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 34: Play Time

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 34:

The theme for Week 34 is “Play Time.” (This should be fun!) Who in your family tree had a playful demeanor? Anyone play a sport or an instrument? How about someone who was in a school play?

Be careful with that Wii Remote!

   I was initially going to write a blog this week about family game night and how we have a wide variety of board games in our house. Seriously. We have everything from "Monopoly" to "Trivial Pursuit". You name it, we likely have it. There's not really much to write about as my brother and I typically just played with our parents on rainy days like most other kids our age. Even then, our attention on those games didn't last very long.

    Instead of writing about how I trounced my brother in "Monopoly" by buying the orange properties, I'll be diving into the world of Candlepin bowling and how my parents ruled the lanes from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Ironically enough, it was through bowling that I became interested in video games. Shocking, right? I'm such a '90s kid. 

    Before we get started, let me explain what Candlepin bowling is and how it differs from the more widely known sport. In New England and in the Canadian maritime provinces, we have a variation of bowling where we use smaller bowling balls without any holes. The pins are also taller, narrower and you guessed it are shaped like candles. Hence the name.  Apart from that, the rules are pretty much the same. We still have to wear other peoples' clown shoes. Gross.

    My father, James Ferraiolo, was always interested in hitting the lanes. He had joined various leagues in his hometown of Haverhill and when he and my mom returned to New England in the mid 1970s to raise a family, they joined the league at Park Place Lanes in Windham, New Hampshire.

    There they would bowl in either the Women's League, the Men's League or the Couple's League.  If they were really, really good they would even have a chance to be on WNDS, the local television station that aired bowling tournaments every Sunday at noon. "Candlepin Stars and Strikes" was the name of the show and thankfully you can find the action on YouTube! Check the channel out here! 

    It was fun watching my parents bowl every Monday night while I was growing up and I loved every minute of it. They did exceptionally well and eventually my brother and I were taught how to bowl. I can't say how good or bad I was. However, I could tell you that I had heart. And that would be lying. I did the best I could even though I had the coordination of a wounded gazelle. Chris was out of his element for sure.

    At least Park Place Lanes had something else for the kids to do. While our parents bowled, we had four options for fun activities. We could watch the action on the lanes. We could get laughed at mercilessly by other kids as we attempted to bowl ourselves. We could eat burgers, pizza, grilled cheese and other goodies at the restaurant called "The Alley Cat Diner". And lastly we could spend our parents' hard earned cash at the state-of-the-art arcade. 

My kingdom for a working X-Men cabinet.

    The arcade was the best option for us by far because they had the best games and while we obviously went to other arcades around the Merrimack valley, it was at Park Place Lanes that I was introduced to the likes of "Mario", "Pac-Man", "Donkey Kong" and other gaming icons.

    My brother and I would play the games and just before we went home my parents would come over and see what we were up to. I can safely say I did better at games like "X-Men" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". I preferred games where you could work with someone. Plus beat 'em up games are great for stress relief if you had a really rough day at school.

    As the '80s continued, my brother and I were introduced to home consoles like the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Friends of ours had the NES and it was through that console that I grew to love not the just Mario games but the "Legend of Zelda" series as well. My parents knew that eventually we had to bring the arcade action home from the bowling alley. 

Begun, the "Console Wars" have.

In 1989, my parents bought my brother and I a Sega Genesis and we played that thing nonstop throughout the '90s. Don't worry. We let our parents play, too. Our father enjoyed playing games like "Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf" and a few other launch titles. It was fun and we played with him all the time. We also enjoyed several other titles like "Sonic the Hedgehog", "Toejam and Earl" "Ecco the Dolphin" and many, many NBA, NFL or NHL related games. In our house, the Genesis ruled over Nintendo even though we definitely liked several Nintendo games our friends were playing.

    The funniest thing in the world was showing the games and everything to Grandma Ollie whenever she came over to the house.  For the longest time Ollie was the only grandparent who was within driving distance. I don't remember if we showed the games to my dad's cousins or our great-aunts, Louise and Ellie. We might have. 

    When we got the Genesis, my brother and I were excited to show grandma the ins and outs of the system. My brother talked about the technical aspects, of course. Me? My contribution was "Look at how fast Sonic the Hedgehog goes!" Hey. Not all of us are interested in how things worked. I was just glad it did.....once I blew into the cartridge.

    In all honesty, I think she was more interested in the toys my brother and I were playing with at the time. Like the board games, we had pretty much every major toy line of the '80s and '90s represented in our rooms. We had everything from "Legos" and "Transformers" to "Masters of the Universe". I'm not sure why. I think she liked seeing us play with the toys more as we were very creative. She definitely liked the weird and not quite aerodynamic Lego spaceships I created back in the day!  

    The introduction of video games didn't end our trips to the bowling alley by any means. No, we still went there every once in a while. After a certain point we got older and my brother wanted to stay home. Jim would make dinner we dined on those lovely microwaved dinner kits from Budget Gourmet. It was never anything elaborate. Trust me. 

Wii would like to play.

    Eventually, my parents stopped bowling and by that time my brother and I created our own arcade of Genesis, Nintendo Game Cube, Wii, Game Gear, Game Boy and PC games. Those games became the highlight of every Christmas eve party as my cousins and I would play those games for hours on end. To list every game we ever had would take quite some time.

    Grandma Ollie still never quite figured the games out despite sleeping in our game den whenever she stayed over.  However, she was glad we enjoyed them.  In the end, that was all that mattered to her. She was a kind person and just enjoyed seeing her grandkids happy. Thankfully, we always finished our game before she had to go to bed!

    As for bowling? Well, even though "Wii Sports" had a bowling minigame, my father never really played it. We did play the then newest edition of "Punch Out". I just don't think the Wii was ever his thing and those motion control games really give someone a workout. Don't get me wrong. Both of my parents have tried using the Wii and everything. I think they were content to do other things. It's not like I never asked them if they wanted to play!

    Once my nephews were old enough, we went back to where the gaming adventure began. We went back to Park Place Lanes and sure enough the arcade was still there even though the roster of games changed many times. It's a lot of work maintaining thirty to forty year old arcade cabinets.

     It was amazing to me because by the 2010s arcades became a rare commodity through no fault of their own. Home video game consoles just took over the market. At least they banked on nostalgia and that kept them afloat for quite some time. We even took the kids to an actual arcade that was still operating. It was nostalgic for us and a blast for the kids! We introduced the kids to the classics and they loved every minute of it. Some things never change!

    Park Place Lanes eventually closed for good a few years ago and the memories are still fresh in my mind. My parents weren't the only ones in the family to bowl, by the way! My Aunt Linda joined in on the fun on more than a few occasions when she wasn't busy showing dogs. The alley may be gone. However, I have to give it credit for getting me excited for the gaming hobby I now enjoy and watching my parents bowl was always fun. And we did bowl together every once in a while, too. Those were good times and good memories!

See ya next time!

P.S. It's also interesting to note that after the so-called "Console Wars", Nintendo ended up publishing Sega games in various collections. Mario and Sonic have crossed paths many times. Many classic video games are also now available on various consoles and Steam. You can now have an arcade in the palms of your hand.

The image of Park Place Lanes is property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 33: Legal Troubles

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 33:

The theme for Week 33 is "Legal Troubles."There’s at least one in every family – that relative who seems to be in trouble more often than not. (Hey, at least they usually leave good records!) Who in your family tree had brushes with the legal system?

The law offices of Murdock and Walters are here to help.

    If only the law offices of Murdock and Walters were real. If only. We could see some heads bonked in and out of court. See the Disney + shows "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" and "Daredevil: Born Again" for details. Good shows in my not so humble opinion. Who needs "Ally McBeal" when you've got superhero lawyers representing you? 

    Anyway, I'm pretty sure several people in my family tree have needed a very good lawyer at one point in their lives. There have been custody battles and messy divorces all around my family tree.  It's honestly hard to keep track of all the chaos. I've even had one guy who was sent back to San Pietro a Maida because of a still unrevealed reason. It's 2025 and I'm still wondering why Francesco Papatolo was sent back to Italy! Here's hoping I have the answer to that question some day. For those of you keeping score, Francesco was the son of Vincenzo Papatolo and Concetta Coppola. Concetta was the sister of my 2nd great-grandmother, Caterina.

    Francesco wasn't the only Papatolo who had legal troubles, of course. A while back I found that Francesco's sister Angelina had her very own day in court. Angelina's life was very different from her older brother's. She was born in Haverhill, Mass on November 4th, 1911. She married a Greek man named Arthur Soterakopoulos some time before 1928 when their son Dino was born. 

    Arthur and Angelina lived in Haverhill in a house that wasn't too far away from her mother's house. To say that the family was close was a bit of an understatement. Her father Vincenzo passed away in 1933 and so the family stayed relatively close by. 

    Everything was going well for the Soterakopoulos family until a car crashed through their house injuring Angie on October 20th, 1936. Thankfully, she survived and honestly things could have been a lot worse for her.

    According to an article I found, a man named Francis J. Foley drove his car into her house on Hilldale Avenue while she and her family slept. After the accident, Angie filed what the article called "an unusual civil suit". It must have been unusual for the time because these days people STILL drive cars into buildings.

Boston Globe, 4 Feb 1937
pg. 7.

    On February 4th, 1937 a civil suit was filed by Angelina. In the lawsuit, she explained the situation and was suing Foley for three thousand dollars. There's no doubt she needed the money to repair the house. A shadier lawyer might have gotten three times that out of Foley. I digress.

    Angelina was suing him over the injuries she received in the crash. She was frightened, jumped out of bed and fell to the floor. In the suit, she explained how she received serious injuries from that fall. 

    To make matters worse, Foley had another suit filed against him by Angie's husband Arthur! Arthur wanted another thousand dollars as he "temporarily lost her comfort and assistance as a result of the accident".

    I'm not sure what that meant. I'm guessing it had to do with psychological trauma and PTSD. That's probably the most logical way to explain it. She was rightfully scared and injured thanks to the incident. The thousand dollars was likely going to go for Angelina's medical bills. In total, Foley had to pay the Soterakopoulos family (The family was also called Siros. Long story.) four thousand dollars. Yikes. And keep in mind that this was at the height of the Great Depression! Double Yikes! Someone was seriously going to be living in a van down by the river after this case and it wasn't going to be Angie.

    I'm not sure what the outcome of the case was as I found this article a few months ago. I sent it to my cousin Karen and she never heard of the incident. In fact, her father James was around three years old when the accident happened.  I think I will have to e-mail the Essex county courthouse and see what records they have on the case. They helped me out with Felker v. Stevens case when I asked for their divorce records. I see no harm in asking them for help once again and I'm sure Karen would love to see the records.

    I'm pretty sure I can figure out the outcome of the case just by looking at the facts. Angelina likely won because Foley lost control of his car and struck the house, causing injury to the people inside. And it wasn't a light tap, either. He drove through the house!

    The circumstances of the accident weren't clear in the article. Was Foley drunk? What time was the accident? Were there streetlights? There are so many questions. I suppose it doesn't matter. Foley was clearly at fault as it was his car that struck Angie's home and he was behind the wheel.

    It's hard to say what the outcome of the case is as I don't have the actual documents with me. I can say that it seems very likely that Foley is at fault here. This isn't me trying to side with anyone. The guy drove into a house and there are still questions that need to be answered. Was he drunk? Did he have malicious intent? What was going on here?

    Until I email the courthouse, I won't have any conclusion to what is obviously a cliffhanger. Obviously Angie went on to have a great life and I'm sure she talked about the incident until her dying day. Then again her own granddaughter Karen had no idea this incident happened! She might have blocked it from her mind because it was so traumatic for her. Who can say? None of us were there. So, at best I can say I'm sorry the incident happened and that Foley likely went bankrupt at the worst possible time.

    In any event, the scales of justice once again appeared in my family tree. The winner of the case remains unknown until I fill out a form. I might do that after I publish this blog post. I really want to know what happened and I haven't been able to find a follow-up in the Boston Globe archive. Time to start digging!

See ya next time!

Update on August 25th, 2025: I just received documents from the Essex County Superior Court. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, Arthur and Angelina Siros. Mr. Foley was then ordered to pay the Plaintiffs the money.

52 Ancestors Week 32: Wide Open Spaces

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 32:

The theme for Week 32 is "Wide Open Spaces." Who in your family tree makes you think of the great outdoors? Who took advantage of homesteading? Who kept moving when the neighbors felt a little too close?

So, how far are we from the nearest Target?

    Since the Merrimack Valley doesn't have much in the way of wide open spaces (unless you count the Atlantic ocean and the mountains up in the north country), there's not much for me to talk about in that regard. No one ever went west in order to take advantage of the Homestead act or anything.  Everyone tended to stay in either Haverhill or Newburyport. Sure some people left New England in search of other opportunities. However, I don't really know their full story about why they left and all of that stuff. So, that just leaves me with one option to talk about. There is one man in my family tree who kept moving at least every ten years. In every census in Haverhill from 1930 to 1950 (so far) he has been in a different house in the Queen Slipper city. I am of course talking about my great-grandfather, Vincenzo Ferraiolo. 

    Vincenzo was never a man who'd like to stay put, it seems. I say this because my other Italian great-grandparents moved into a house on Bartlett Street in Haverhill and it remained in the family for almost a century! Vincenzo on the other hand kept moving and to this day no one knows why. I do, however, have some theories. Join me as I track Vincenzo's movements through Haverhill like a certain dark knight.

La famiglia di Ferraiolo

    The first census Vincenzo appears in is the 1930 census and he's seen living with his wife Maria Tedesco and their two children Nicolina and Marco in a house on Pilling Street.  Today, the house is right around the corner from Benedetti's Deli and it was one of the many houses my father pointed out to me whenever we'd go pick up sandwiches there. He also rented the home.

    Sadly, the house is blurred out on Google Earth. So, I don't have a clear picture of it. I'm not sure why that is since you can clearly see the other houses on the street. There must be a privacy issue or something.

    Anyway, it's a nice house and it's right around the corner from a deli that's been in operation for ages. You can't really beat that. The neighborhood even looks nice. I wonder why the Ferraiolos would move. Vincenzo was working as a laborer at the time. Perhaps he made enough money to get another place to live? That's the only thing I can think of! 

    

     Haverhill in 1930 must have been a very different place. At the time of this blog's posting, it's been almost a century since my grandfather and his family lived there. It wasn't long before they moved to their next house and I swear the contrast with this next house is like night and day. It was also two miles away from their previous house.

    This house you won't find on any census. In fact, I almost missed it! I went through the city directory and found that the Ferraiolos were living on Marshall Street in 1936. How long were they living there? Not long, apparently. 

    Marshall Street isn't far from the Ferraiolos' first house. I get the feeling it was only a temporary home for them. It was close to the shops and everything.  This house was likely where grandpa Marco had his communion picture taken as some of the scenery looks the same.

    I could be wrong, though. It was this house or the one on Pilling Street. Only Aunt Nickie would know for sure.

    From the directories, I found that they were living on Marshall Street throughout the mid 1930s and at this point the Great Depression was in full swing. It wasn't long before the Ferraiolos had to move again. This time it could have been for economic reasons or perhaps Vincenzo got a better deal because by 1939 they had moved again!

Hmm. Quaint.

    At the time of the 1940 census, the Ferraiolos now lived on Irving Avenue in Haverhill. This house is clearly in the suburban area of the city and is about two miles from their first home. The neighborhood looks peaceful enough. Then again looks can always be deceiving.  Who knows if the neighbors were jerks or not.  He owned this home.

    According to Zillow, the house is pretty small. It has two bedrooms and one bathroom. It was also built around 1900. So, that house has a lot of history behind it.

    My father never pointed this house out to me in our travels through Haverhill and that was mostly because we never ventured to this part of town. We usually stayed on Washington Street where my grandma Ollie lived and in that general area. More on that in a bit.

    In the March of 1943, tragedy struck. My great-grandmother passed away and the Ferraiolos went their separate ways due to the war and other reasons. Nicolina moved to Tennessee and Marco was in the service. Vincenzo met and married a woman named Fortuna Grasso in the August of 1944 and remained with her until his passing in 1970. He didn't stay in that house long after Maria's passing as he moved once again. I'm not sure if he wanted to move because of memories of Maria in that house or not. I'd like to think that perhaps there was too much associated with that house. So, he had to move. 

    By the time of the 1950 census, Vincenzo and his wife Fortuna were living in a multi-family house on Shepherd Street. According to the city directory, he was living there as early as late 1944. Once again I can't get a good picture of it as Google Street view won't allow me to get a good look at the joint. 

    That's okay. We can at least talk about the area, right? Right. In 1950, Vincenzo was once again living around the corner from Benedetti's Deli. At this point you might be wondering if he really liked their subs. Well, the truth is that he knew the family. Their patriarch, Nazareno Benedetti, was actually at Maria's funeral in 1943. They were friends and I guess a house opened up and Vincenzo took it over with his new bride.

    I'm pretty sure the house was one of the other houses my father pointed out to me in our travels. It's relatively close to Vincenzo's first house and very close to Ollie's house. Alas, Vincenzo and Fortuna were not content to simply stay on Shepherd Street for the rest of their days. They soon moved to a place I would later know as "grandma's house".

    Keeping track of all these houses in Haverhill is no easy task. How did he afford to move to all these places around town? Well, the world was a different place back then. He worked as a laborer and he had some friends who more than likely helped him out. That's my theory and I'm sticking with it!  Throughout the 1950s, they lived on Shepherd Street until 1959.

Over the river and through the woods....

    Built by Vincenzo himself in 1959, this small house on Washington Street eventually became my grandma Ollie's house. Before that, it was the home of Vincenzo and Fortuna. My grandparents lived just down the street from them if I recall.

    Thankfully, Vincenzo stayed in that house until his passing.  I say "thankfully" because this trip around Haverhill has been a bit of a whirlwind. The funny thing is he didn't really live far away from his previous house. When he died in 1970, he left the house to my grandparents and the rest is history. Family history. =D

    Of all the places in this list of houses, I remember Ollie's the most for obvious reasons. I remember being in that house very frequently. After all, Salem isn't that far from Haverhill and we would visit her every chance we had. To this day I have many great memories of being in that house. It was where I first learned about the Italian side of my family tree. 

    Ollie lived there until she passed away in 2002. The house was sold and all of Vincenzo's possessions there ended up being stored at our house. Vincenzo's story of moving from house to house may have ended in 1970. At least his last house had a lasting impact on me. It was a great place full of love and great memories.

    I might never know the real reason why he moved around so much. I can only think that he might have had offers from various friends or saw an opportunity. He might have moved in the 1940s because of memories of Maria. I have no clue. At least his last house was a good one!

See ya next time!

You know I could probably jog this route. It's only five miles.

All maps and house pictures are courtesy of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 31: Earliest Ancestor

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 31:

The theme for Week 31 is “Earliest Ancestor.” Who is the earliest ancestor you have identified? Of course, you don’t have to interpret the prompt that way. How about: the first “new” ancestor you discovered, the earliest one to arrive in a certain location, or even one with a surname like Earl(e)y.

I don't think I  can trace that far back. Anybody got a toga?

    Right off the bat I can tell you that this blog about the earliest ancestor in my tree is wrong. So very wrong. It didn't take too long to disprove the Magna Carta connections and to this day I still have trust issues with genealogy before 1600. So, if someone finds a connection, I'll just smile, nod and back away slowly knowing that there's a chance some line can be disproven. It's a chance we genealogists take. I'm just not gonna run around saying I'm the 23rd great-grandson of some king in England when millions of people are as well. That's great and everything. So, I think I'm gonna have to take a new approach to this week's blog.

    This week we're going to talk about the first of my ancestors to live in Haverhill, Mass. In order to figure out who that is, we're going to have to narrow things down quite a bit. The Italians in the tree didn't live in the Queen Slipper city until the 1910s. My great-grandfather Vincenzo Ferraiolo lived with his aunt and uncle for a little while before returning to Italy. His wife Maria didn't arrive with my grandfather and his sister until 1929. My great-grandparents Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione didn't arrive until the 1910s, too. So, they're out of the running.

    My mother's side of the tree has been on North American soil since the 1600s and several of her ancestors ended up in Haverhill starting with my grandmother Natalie. However, she wasn't the earliest to live there. Not by a long shot. For this we're gonna have to go back. Way back. Back before the 1880 US census where you'd find my third great-grandparents. We'd have to go to the founding of the city itself with my 11th great-grandparents, Tristram Coffin and Dionis Stevens.

    I think I might have talked about Tristram and his wife before. While they are wildly recognized as settling the Nantucket colony in the 1600s, they had a hand in settling what would become Haverhill in 1640. Settlers from nearby West  Newbury planted roots in the area and the Merrimack valley would never be the same again! Especially after the Industrial Revolution.

    Now that I think about it if we were to take Tristram away from his 1600s life and put him in the middle of Haverhill NOW, he wouldn't recognize much. Many of the old buildings have been replaced with newer models. Then again the Peaslee Garrison House and other structures still stand. Shout-out to my friend Azure Robinson and her epic Peaslee Garrison House one place study

    Though, I think it was built after he and Dionis left for Nantucket, Mass.

    He would also see the Coffin House was still standing in nearby Newbury. 

    As far as Haverhill itself goes? Yeah, he wouldn't see anything recognizable for a while even though the Haverhill Historical Society has taken great pains to preserve much of the city's past even if some modern roads took the place of older roads.

    Haverhill in the 1600s must have been a completely different place. For some reason I'm picturing something like "Back to the Future Part III" when Marty McFly went to Hill Valley in 1885. The only difference is that there'd be less desert there. There would be more wooded areas and even the Merrimack river itself would look different. And cleaner. Let's address the elephant in the room. We all know the effects all that industrial waste had on the Merrimack. The river would be VERY clean. I still wouldn't swim in it.

    I would also see a culture that's very different to what I'm used to in the 21st century. Our world was very different in the 1600s. Some things changed over time and some things stayed the same.

Ye olde Haverhill

    In the centuries since Tristram lived in Haverhill, the town became a city thanks to the Industrial Revolution like I said. Other things changed as well. Immigrants from all over the world flocked to the city once the factories needed cheap labor.

   The Coffins might actually be impressed by Haverhill these days to be honest. I mean people live much longer lives now and homes are much more comfortable. Everything a person needs would be at their finger tips.

    Then again, they might say certain things are like witchcraft. For example, I'm typing this blog on a machine that's able to transmit messages on a vast worldwide network instantaneously. For a person living in the 1600s, the technology in 2025 would be indistinguishable from magic.

    At least he would see hope for the future. I don't know about telling him about a certain revolution that takes place one hundred years after his death.... Sorry, sweetie. Spoilers. 

    If I were to go back that far, I'd probably have to keep quiet with what I know. Every bit of fiction has strict rules for time travel and not messing with the timeline would be a good thing to do. I'd probably just be content to watch the events from inside the Tardis just to be on the safe side, you know. 

    In any case, there would definitely be a culture shock for me and the Stevenses. The world was very different in the 1600s and our world today would be very different for them. Still, I'd like to think that they'd be amazed at their lasting legacy. They helped to build a town that became a city in the 1800s and then a haven for immigrants from every nation on the planet. That's pretty amazing and it makes me wonder what kind of a legacy we'd leave behind for people in say the 24th century. 

    Who knows?  

    So, those are the earliest Haverhill residents I have in my tree. Whether they knew it or not, they set the stage for what was to come. Eventually all roads led to the city and it made me and countless other people possible. It's amazing isn't it? You dig a hole to make a foundation one day and centuries later a city was formed on that foundation. That's pretty fantastic.

See ya next time!