52 Ancestors Week 30: Free Space

 

    The irony of this week's blog being called "Free space" isn't lost on me. Anyway, longtime readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of "Star Trek.  I've used the fonts on various banners, made references to various shows and even made a few quotes here and there. I've had a long, long history with the franchise dating back to the 1980s when my father showed me "Star Trek IV: Save the Whales"....er..."The Voyager Home". A year after that movie was released a new show premiered and helped to herald in an era of unbroken and overlapping adventures in the "Star Trek" universe that lasted a whopping eighteen years with a total of four television shows and several more feature films featuring the cast of the original series and an entirely new cast. The name of the first show was "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and in honor of the franchise's sixtieth year we will be looking at the family history of the captain of the fifth and sixth Federation starship to bear the name "Enterprise". I am of course referring to Captain/Admiral Jean-Luc Picard.

    While it's certainly true that genealogy looks at the past. We must also remember that even fictional characters who exist hundreds of years in the future have their own family histories. Some characters, like Captain Worf, lost their parents and were adopted by humans. Some characters, like Ambassador Spock, Counselor Deanna Troi-Riker and Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres-Paris are alien/human hybrids who experienced the richness and diversity of two worlds. Even the aliens of "Star Trek" like Quark, Kira Nerys and Elim Garak have long and sometimes chaotic family histories as well. The "Star Trek" universe has many interesting families and family stories and Picard's family story is definitely one of the most important as it's rooted in the very foundation of the Federation he fought hard to preserve for decades. From the characters' point of view their past would be our future and their family stories become relatable to those of us living in the real world.

Played by the awesome Sir Patrick Stewart

    In the "Star Trek" universe, genealogy would undoubtedly be pretty easy to sort out despite a few errors popping up from time to time. See "Star Trek: Voyager" episode "11:59" for details.  As far as Jean-Luc goes, his story begins in LaBarre, an actual town in the department of Haute-Saône in France. He was born there in July 13th, 2305 to Maurice and Yvette Gessard-Picard. Maurice owned and operated a vineyard and was more than happy when his oldest son Robert took over the business. Jean-Luc on the other hand....

    Maurice was never fond of the idea of having his son be in Starfleet and yet Jean-Luc insisted on enrolling in Starfleet Academy and ended up graduating in 2327. Over the course of his career he represented the United Federation of Planets in first contact with over twenty alien species including the Borg, the Q-Continuum, and the Ferengi. He was the Arbiter of Succession for the Klingon Empire and later attained the rank of Admiral in 2381 when he spearheaded a mission to evacuate Romulus when their sun went supernova.

    Jean-Luc clearly had a long and fruitful career in Starfleet. However, it wasn't all just seeking out strange new worlds. He got into some serious trouble on more than one occasion. He was stabbed though the chest by a Nausicaan right after graduating from the academy.  He was assimilated by the Borg and was forced to destroy almost forty Federation starships at Wolf 359. And I'm sure NO ONE had a grudge over that incident (See Captain Benjamin Sisko and Captain Liam Shaw). Before taking command of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D in 2364 he was the captain of the USS Stargazer. In 2373, he and the rest of the Enterprise-E crew were transported back in time to April, 2063 where he witnessed Zefram Cochrane launch the first warp-capable starship.

     Jean-Luc did find love eventually and had a romantic relationship with his deceased best friend's wife, Beverly Crusher who served as chief medical officer aboard the USS Enterprise D and E. He did, admittedly, feel bad about having a crush on his best friend's wife for many years. But the got over it and the two became a couple. Beverly already had a son named Wesley with Jack Crusher and after a while he became a sort of father figure to the young man.

    In the 2380s, Picard and Beverly had a child together she named after Jack. Sadly, Picard didn't know about his son for twenty years due to Beverly feeling that Jean-Luc was constantly in harm's way and had a very real need to save the galaxy time and time again. Somewhere along the way his human body failed him due to his Irumodic Syndrome. He technically passed away in 2399 from the disease and his consciousness  was placed in an android body called a "golem". However, it turned out to be false positive and was instead DNA manipulation from when he was assimilated by the Borg.  Later, young Jack was instrumental in saving the Federation in the early 2400s when the Borg and their allies from the Gamma Quadrant threatened our heroes once again. Jack became a Counselor to Captain Seven of Nine when she became captain of the newly christened USS Enterprise-G. 

    As I said earlier, genealogy in the 24th century is very simple since records are readily available, digitized and preserved. There was an episode of TNG where a woman from the 20th century was frozen and found herself in the 24th century. In a matter of hours, Counselor Troi found four hundred years worth of her progeny. Ironically, that episode also gave us the first hint of a threat from across the galaxy--The Borg. And if you thought that cliff notes version of Picard's story was wild, you haven't seen anything yet. Computer, display the family history of Admiral Jean-Luc Picard.

Picard Coat of Arms as seen in "Star Trek:
Generations".

    Picard's family history is an ancient tale and the admiral himself once claimed that he could trace his family back to the time of Charlemagne. While he was growing up, he was told about the Picards who commanded a French warship at the Battle of Trafalgar, the Picard who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry and the Picard who settled the first Martian colony.

    As seen in the episode, "Journey's End", we found that he had some blood on his tree. His ancestor Javier Maribona Picard took part in the Pueblo revolt in 1680. Javier, a Spanish soldier, took part in the killing of numerous Pueblos in the area that eventually became New Mexico.

    Genealogists know that we are not our ancestors. The sins of the father are not passed down throughout the generations. Nevertheless, Jean-Luc attempted to make amends for his ancestor's crimes. The Federation and the Cardassian Union had a peace treaty where certain worlds would be given to the other power. One world was colonized by descendants of the Pueblos and they refused to relocate to another planet. Upon realizing history was repeating itself, Picard stood his ground and the people were allowed to stay on that world. Of course tensions would rise under Cardassian rule and we'd eventually get the Maquis as seen on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”,  "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Star Trek: Voyager".

    Centuries go by in the blink of an eye. During the second world war the Picard family was forced to leave their home in LaBarre when Château Picard was used as a base by Nazi occupiers. The family hid in tunnels underneath the property and after the war they moved to England. The house laid in ruins for the next century until the Picards hired caretakers to maintain the property. Sadly, it took many generations for anyone to take up residence there. This also retroactively explained why Sir Patrick Stewart never used a French accent while portraying Jean-Luc. I think that honestly worked out for the best!

"It's been a long road...."

    Jean-Luc's tree isn't all doom and gloom. Meet Renée Picard, an astronaut and important figure in not just his family tree but for the Federation itself.  Born in the 1990s, she taught herself how to operate a sailboat and eventually became a test pilot. Eventually, NASA recruited her for a mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa despite her battle with depression and anxiety.

      According to her great-cousin she was instrumental in the early manned exploration of the Sol system. She traveled to Io and found a microscopic lifeform she believed to be sentient. She pleaded with her commander to let her bring it back to Earth. The microbe's discovery ended up bring crucial in preventing humanity's extinction due to pollution and climate change. The lifeform was eventually used to heal the ocean and the skies. This was after humanity suffered the post-atomic horror in the years before first contact with the Vulcans.

    By the late 23rd century, the Picards finally returned to LaBarre and Jean-Luc's father Maurice reopened Château Picard. Growing up, Picard saw that his father never embraced technology. He opposed his son's entry into Starfleet and as a result Jean-Luc saw him as a cruel man. Maurice and his wife Yvette often fought over various issues such as getting a food replicator and this led their son Jean-Luc to become something of a stargazer. Unfortunately, Yvette suffered from psychotic breaks and Maurice had to help her the only way he knew how. He would lock her away for her and for their children's  protection. What was seen as cruel by Jean-Luc ended up being a kindness he never expected of his father. 

    Yvette often encouraged Jean-Luc to look up at the stars. She fueled his interest in space exploration  and his interest in joining Starfleet. Unlike his father, Yvette told him about the wonders of the universe. Unfortunately, she suffered from a mental illness that she herself refused to treat. She would eventually commit suicide by the 2310s and our dear captain would blame himself for that tragedy. Mental illness seemed to run on her side of the family as he recalled seeing his maternal grandfather deteriorate from a powerful, intelligent figure to "a frail wisp of a man, who could barely make his way home".

     To make things even worse, Picard and the crew of the Enterprise once took a trip to the edge of the known universe where thought became reality. There, he encountered a vision of his mother as an old woman asking him to sit down for a spot of tea (Earl Grey, hot). Jean-Luc later admitted that when he was young he would  often imagine what his mother would have been like had she grown to be an old woman. In retrospect, that whole scene from that episode is now MUCH harder to watch! 

Robert Picard

    After surviving his encounter with the Borg in late 2366 Picard returned home to La Barre to bury the hatchet with his older brother Robert while the Enterprise underwent repairs. He met Robert's wife and their son René who like his uncle dreamed of being a Starfleet officer. Upon returning home after twenty years he realized that the house he grew up in seemed to be untouched by the passage of time. 

    Picard was at a crossroads at that point. He had a choice of whether to remain in Starfleet after his ordeal or seek another profession. His brother, despite being somewhat of a bully to him in the past, helped him to see that he had two choices since his trauma would not go away on its own.

    The brothers reconciled after rolling around in the mud. I'm serious. Look up "Family".  Some things never change. After reconciliation, he left the vineyard with a bottle of the family's famous wine.

    Reconciliation with Robert didn't last as both he and his son tragically died in a fire in 2371. Our captain can't seem to catch a break can he? The craziness didn't end there. Not long after hearing the news about his brother and nephew, Jean-Luc was pulled into an energy ribbon called "The Nexus" and it was a place where time had no meaning. He could live a life he always wanted. It was, as his El-Aurian friend Guinan put it, like being inside joy.

    Inside the Nexus he encountered his nephew René, a wife and several children. So, that's what? Two times his mind was blown away by a life he could have had? I would say Counselor Troi doesn't get paid enough for dealing with Jean-Luc's trauma but money doesn't exist in the Federation. Maybe Deanna gets paid in chocolate. Picard escaped the Nexus with the aid of another famous Starfleet captain and eventually accepted the fact that he was the last of the Picards.

Jack Crusher

        Things clearly changed by the 2380s when his son Jack was born during his relationship with Dr. Crusher. However, that wasn't the first time he thought he had a son. Jean-Luc had a lot of luck with the ladies over the years. For a short while he thought he had a son with Miranda Vigo, a woman whom he had a relationship with in the 2340s. In the 2360s, he was involved with an archaeologist named Vash. He was even briefly involved with the leader of the Ba'ku and a member of his crew before his feelings for Beverly bubbled back to the surface. Picard eventually learned that while his family may be gone, the friends he made along the way became his family.

    Jack cemented his place in Star Trek history during the events of "Star Trek: Picard" season three. Now, he stands alongside the likes of  his half-brother Wesley Crusher, Alexander Rozhenko, Kestra Troi-Riker,  Alandra and Sidney LaForge, Soji Asha, Molly and Kirayoshi O'Brien, Jake Sisko, Lieutenant Nog, Miral Paris and SAM as children of legacy characters who more than live up to the legacy of their parents. Granted, SAM came around centuries after the others made their mark on the galaxy. The Doctor took his time. What can I tell you?  Perhaps the next generation will have the same potential their parents did. One can never know for sure unless they happen to be an omnipotent being like Q. 

    The family history of Jean-Luc Picard is definitely one of the more developed family stories throughout the franchise. It makes sense since he was very much a main character in two television series and four feature films. Many characters, like I said, have fleshed out stories and family histories that really bring them to life. If a character in any show or movie has a complex family history people can then relate to the character and they become more real to the audience. As a result that character would be able to cement themselves as pop culture icons for generations. That is why Captain Jean-Luc Picard has resonated with Star Trek fans all over the world for decades. He is an explorer with a family history rooted in tragedy and triumph. 

    Here's hoping genealogy in the future will be just as easy and interesting in the centuries to come. Let's hope the real 24th century is an Utopian paradise as seen in Star Trek. My friends, make it so. Happy 60th anniversary, Star Trek! May you continue to boldly go where no one has gone before.

See ya next time!

“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life.”--Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "Peak Performance". Star Trek: The Next Generation  Season 2, Episode 21. Airdate: July 10th, 1989.

Photos are courtesy of users of Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wikia. "Admiral Jean-Luc Picard" and related characters are property of Paramount Pictures/CBS.

52 Ancestors Week 29: A Source I Want to Understand Better

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 29:

The theme for Week 29 is “A Source I Want to Understand Better.” Some sources that we use are fairly straightforward. Others… not so much. This week, explore a source that you don’t quite understand and the ancestor that it pertains to.

Just some light reading.

    When you're out on your genealogical adventure, you're bound to find a ton of sources and many of them will be easy to understand. A census can tell you where a person lived and who their neighbors were. A birth/death record can tell you all about their parents and give you important dates in their lives. A word of caution. Do not look up certain causes of death on WebMD. Just trust me on this one. I never should have looked up black lung. There's a reason why I never became a doctor.

    Now, those sources are pretty easy to figure out, right? You look at the information, add them to a family tree and walk away. Some sources, though, tend to confuse me a little bit. My friend and fellow genealogist Melanie McComb thought I should write about finding aids and books like the Great Migration Directory. While those are great resources, it got me thinking about other books I could talk about that used to confuse me quite a bit back in the day and frankly still make me give it a second look.

    In the late 19th century there was a bit of a fad in America. And no I'm not just talking about women wearing tight corsets and men wearing monocles and ridiculous top hats. People were looking up their family histories left and right in an attempt to either connect themselves with royalty or someone who came over on the Mayflower. It was a thing and as a result hundreds and hundreds of genealogy books were published showcasing who was related to who based on the records people found. You might be saying "Wow! That's great!" and you'd be right. It does sound great.....on paper.

    Sadly, a lot of those books miss their mark. My friend Erica Howton, a genealogist on Geni.com, used to tell me how people just made stuff up and published a book in the hope that no one would notice. This was in the era of "yellow journalism" so it doesn't surprise me that some of the books were not worth the paper they were printed on. Those poor trees sacrificed their lives for something that amounts to fanfiction. I wish I was kidding. Erica showed me a few of the books and they were just horrible. Lie after lie.

    What does all this have to do with me? Well, I do have ancestors who are in these books that were published in the 1890s to 1900s. My second great-grandparents, Wilfred Felker and Gertrude Stevens were basically my links to colonial New England. Their trees include several soldiers of the American Revolution and several people who were featured in Anderson's "Great Migration Begins". Naturally, I'd have ancestors who were featured in their own family genealogy books. These weren't family Bibles or anything. They were just books with people in them with facts and short biographies. Some even had town histories.  As a result, the books seemed like an early version of Wikipedia.

    Erica first showed me the book "Sargent genealogy : Hugh Sargent, of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire and his descendants in England" when I traced Gertrude Steven's line to my 4th great-grandfather John Sargent Fisher. She suggested I look for books on Archive.org that had the Fishers and the Sargents in them. This was back in 2017 or so and back then I knew Archive.org to be a place where someone could look up very old websites on the Internet. I've done that from time to time considering how long I've been a user of the web. I remember when eBay was not even close to how big it is now. Yeah, I was there when Strong Bad checked his first e-mail. That's how long I've been here.

Hi, 12th, great-grandfather. What up?

    On it's surface, the book seems pretty straightforward. It tells you all the facts you need to know about a person's life and if you're lucky you might even get a profession or two. These were people who lived a very, very long time ago and any information about their lives is priceless to me and every genealogist out there. 

    I'm lucky in that this book and the various other genealogy books I've found on Archive.org have gelled with records in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. There hasn't been anything that gave me real pause and I'm not sure why. Were the people writing these books that meticulous? Were they under the gun by some members of the various families they were reporting on? The world may never know. But it is fun to think about why these books are so accurate whereas others are not that great.

    Okay. So, now that I've introduced the book I bet you're wondering why I want to understand it better. Well, the only thing I am often curious about is why they never bothered to cover the ladies in the book very well. They just covered the men. I mean I know the reason WHY in the general sense. They wanted to focus on the male bloodlines and all of that. It just strikes me as a missed opportunity from the perspective of someone living in the 21st century. Wouldn't it have made sense to include a daughter of Joe Jones and her children?  I'm fortunate that several generations of people are mentioned in the books.  However, the second one of the ladies in my tree are mentioned, there's zero information about her and I'd have to rely on town records.

And there's my 5th great-grandmother, Sarah.

    For the Sargent family I can get to the children of Amos Sargent, my 6th great-grandfather. He was one of my dozen or so soldiers of the American Revolution and was a privateer! Not bad. 

    My 5th great-grandmother was his fourth child, Sarah and as you can see Sarah married a Fisher and as a result there'd be no mention of her descendants. She obviously had children. They just aren't mentioned in this book. You might be wondering "Was there a Fisher genealogy book, Chris?"

        Oh, yes. There definitely was a Fisher genealogy book. I'm glad you asked! That book thankfully picked up where the Sargent book left off. Unfortunately, it was more of the same. Don't get me wrong. Everything gelled with the records in Massachusetts. It just was annoying how the women were all sidelined. I know I should have accepted that reality. But it's just something to think about and it's a sharp contrast to how records were kept in Italy and in Quebec at the same time! The ladies and their families were all documented there! Maybe it was just a culture thing.

    The Fisher genealogy book is more of the same. I guess all of the authors got together and wanted to have the same format for all of these books. Makes sense if the families were intertwined like this. What's annoying is that if you published one book and your ancestor is in another book, you'd have to buy two of the books! Yay, capitalism!

    At least the books are now digitized and on the Internet for people to look at. The Fisher book also comes with a history of Malden, Massachusetts where the Sargents and Fishers all lived. That is pretty awesome. I still wish the ladies got their due in these books. I know. I know. I need to stop thinking like someone born in the 20th Century. Look. I can't help it. French-Canadian and Italian records spoiled me! They documented everybody!

    I will say this for the Fisher book. The biographies are more fleshed out than the Sargent one. I've seen some interesting stories on here that would more than flesh out any profile on your favorite genealogy program. There's a lot of great information that could be put to good use. Sadly, the problem is still there when it comes to the ladies. At least the history is still there and the information gels with records I have found. I've found several people who lived in Haverhill but they were few and far between. Having more of them would have been the icing on the genealogy cake.

    The really weird thing about this book is that it should have provided a number for readers for certain people in the family. Ideally, my fifth great-grandfather Lewis Fisher should have had an entry in the book. He should be entry number 473 instead of Salem.  I guess if you bought the Fisher book hoping to find the rest of Sarah Sargent's line you'd have been out of luck. It's just really weird how the author never went into details on Lewis's line.

    This is just another thing that really confuses me about the books. While the information is undoubtedly correct, some people are omitted for one reason or another. My guess is that they didn't have the tools we have today. Genealogy in those days meant you had to lug around heavy books and spend hours looking through them hoping to find that juicy nugget of information.

    The weird thing is that I thought I once saw my 4th great-grandfather mentioned in the book. It's like the Mandela effect where you think something was one way when in fact it's another. Maybe he was mentioned in another book? Perhaps. It's just as well. I really shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. These genealogy books are a treasure trove of information and while it does bother me that the ladies aren't covered as well as the men it does go into exhaustive detail on the history of various towns in Massachusetts.

    I've been told that I'm extremely lucky that these books were well researched. I haven't really found anything wrong with them unlike some of the other books out there. Were the Massachusetts ones better? Or were records in Massachusetts just that easier to come by. Even genealogy books documenting New Hampshire were pretty decent. I guess with a little care and some digging some books were better than others. And unfortunately history repeats itself. These books were basically printed Wikipedia articles for your ancestors. Take them with a grain of salt the size of Rhode Island. You might be lucky with them like I was or you might find something that's wrong on so many levels.

See ya next time!

*  "Sargent genealogy : Hugh Sargent, of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire and his descendants in England" by Sargent, Aaron, 1822-1913; Sargent, John S., 1839- is property of Google.

*"The Fisher Genealogy: A Record of the Descendants of Joshua, Anthony, and Cornelius Fisher"

by Philip A Fisher is property of Google.

52 Ancestors Week 28: Leisure Time

 Week 28:

The theme for Week 28 is “Leisure Time.” Sure, our ancestors were hardworking people, but they also would enjoy themselves from time to time. What is a leisure activity that an ancestor did? Have any of those been passed down to you?

Farming or fishing. Let's let fate decide.

    As we all know our ancestors worked hard for their money. So hard for their money. As a result they've had to set aside some time to relax and take their minds off of everything. Here in the Merrimack valley you have a wide variety of options to choose from. You could either fish in the river/open ocean, golf, mess around in a garden or take part in any other activity your heart desired. There is literally nothing you can't do around here! This message has been brought to you by the greater Merrimack Valley Tourism Board. Where's my check?

    In all seriousness, there is one constant among everyone in my family tree who has lived in the Merrimack valley. You know it. I know it. I've written about it loads of times. Virtually everyone at one time or another has either gardened in their time off, went out on the ocean or hit the beach. What else can you do when the sun is blazing overhead? It does get warm here in the summer and the cool sea breeze does wonders to sooth the nerves. Aye, there's noting quite like the siren's call of the open ocean. Or is that just somebody telling someone else to turn down the music? It's honestly hard to say.

    This picture of my 2nd great-grandparents Joseph Laplante and Georgianna Ross is quite possibly one of the earliest pictures I have of an ancestor at the beach. It was taken during the mid 1920s and as you can see they all looked pretty stylish in their '20s era beachwear. Believe it or not this picture is exactly one hundred years old. I wonder if it was taken one hundred years ago this week!  It's very possible! I know the date because my grandfather or my grandmother labeled the picture themselves. I just cut off where they wrote notes. They did that a lot with old photos. Relax. I have a copy of original with the notes. I just cropped it out for easy viewing!

    I wish I knew what beach they were hanging out at on was. The Laplantes lived in Newburyport and there were three beaches you could cool off at during the summer.. Salisbury Beach, Plum Island and Cranes Beach were all a quick drive from the city. The safest bet is that this is Salisbury beach. Back in the day the town center was hopping with activity and people came from all over to have fun at the local arcade. Yes, they had arcades back then. Just no Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Oh, wow. Can you imagine?!

    Many people even had beach houses on Plum Island that are still standing today. In fact, whenever we visited my mother would point out her grandparents' Austin and Henrietta's beach house. My mother visited them there quite frequently and Austin would teach her and her siblings how to fish. The funny thing is that he never told the grandkids about the time their skiff hit a Coast Guard cutter in the mid 1930s The boat capsized and the sailors had to fish three people out of a very polluted river. Obviously they survived. It would have made for a great story. When I found the article in the Newburyport archives, I had to show my aunts and uncles what happened. To say everyone laughed is a bit of an understatement. They never heard the story and I guess they never expected their descendants would find out about their adventure.

    Naturally, the Italians also went to the beaches.  I'm pretty sure there are Carrabs sisters in this picture. My father and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out who was who. I swear the lady in the back in the sort of bikini is my great-aunt Louise. I'm not sure who the rest are, My grandmother cold be sitting on the ground front and center for all I know!

    Yeah, I know. I'm a bad grandson for not being able to pick out my grandmother in a lineup. Cut me some slack! I've never known her with dark hair. For as long as I could remember her hair was blond (dyed, of course). I didn't know she and her sisters had black hair until most of them passed away. Do you honestly think five little old Italian ladies would tell me that their hair color wasn't natural?!  No. I rest my case! One day I'll figure out who all those people are. And the guy in the middle with a ton of swagger, too.

    Judging by the two pictures here it's clear that life has always been a beach for ancestors of mine who made their home in the Merrimack valley. People from both Haverhill and Newburyport flocked to the sandy beaches when the weather got hot. Generations later my parents did the same thing. We'd go to Salisbury beach, Cranes and Plum Island many times. We even went to where ye olde arcades used to be and play all kinds of games. The area is still abuzz with activity and every time I visit I get a little nostalgic about days gone by. As for my ancestors? Well, I'm sure they felt the same way. When you live near a beach, the experiences you have there can last a lifetime.

Just don't swim in the Merrimack. Trust me, bro.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 27: A Record I Read Differently Now

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 27:

The theme for Week 27 is “A Record I Read Differently Now.” Genealogy isn’t just reading a record once and being done with it. (At least, it shouldn’t be!) What is a record that you found some time ago that has a different meaning for you now? It could be because you understand that record better or maybe you’ve since learned something about your ancestor that makes that record appear in a new light. 

Nothing like going back and saying "Huh. I didn't see that before."

    Believe it or not I've actually gone back to look at several documents I've collected over the years if I'm bored or there's not much going on. Call me crazy but I do like checking stuff out in case I missed a clue that's been tapdancing in front of my face the whole time. See Jeremiah Felker's death record for details.  His grandfather was listed as his father instead of Elias, his actual father. I still don't know if that was a mistake on the part of the informant (His wife Elizabeth) or if there was some bad blood between father and son. To be honest, I kind of don't want to know. Clearly there was some drama and sometimes you don't want to pull the band-aid off. Check the profiles on WikiTree or read some of my blogs with him in it and you'll see what I mean. 

    Aside from the American records, sometimes I look back at Italian records and see if I missed anything there. For a long time I couldn't really read Italian and now that I can I can read them a lot differently. See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Yeah, I didn't think that joke was funny, either.

    The marriage record for my great-grandparents Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione is probably one of the first Italian records I ever found. Back in 2006, I decided to put a tree up on Ancestry for fun. I put a tree up and added what I knew about my grandparents, my great-grandparents and a few second great grandparents. It was not the best looking tree on the website and really needed polishing. I still don't understand how it automatically added a line that went to 1000 AD on me. When it was proven wrong, I had *SO* much fun deleting all those people. I was honestly happy to get rid of them. Someone was worried that I'd be mad. Why should I be? If it's erroneous, they need to go!

    Anyway, the marriage record was one of the first Italian records I found. I didn't know about Antenati back then. All I got on my Italian side were records scanned by a lady named Gesualdogenie. Gesualdogenie aka Mary scanned the entire town of Gesualdo with some help and her tree is a big help for anyone who has roots in Gesualdo.

    In 2006, I really couldn't read Italian at all. Back then my experience with the Italian language was basically just the words "ciao" and maybe a few curse words. I'm not going to repeat them here! This is quite literally a family blog!  Naturally, I wanted to make sure that these records were accurate before attaching them to my tree. I sent a message to Gesualdogenie and she assured me it was one hundred percent accurate. She told me how she got the records and even translated a few for me. I didn't just get Giuseppe and Clementina's marriage record. I got their birth records and several generations of records in the span of one weekend. Like I said. Mary spent a lot of time working on Gesualdo and this was before Antenati was a thing! Her help was incredibly invaluable. At that time I wish I knew Italian.

    As time went by I eventually learned some Italian thanks to a few friends and figuring stuff out on me own. I decided to go back and read the documents Mary sent me back in the day. It wasn't that I doubted her by any means. No, no. I knew she was correct. She's a pro genealogist and while sometimes even pros make mistakes I just knew Mary was right about the Gesualdo documents. I'm not sure why. Call it a gut feeling. Sometimes those work.

    I looked at the records again and to the surprise of no one she was correct. The record clearly stated that they were married on March 11th, 1905. Both sets of parents were listed along with their jobs and living status at the time. What the record doesn't tell me is how the witnesses were connected to the happy couple.

    I suppose I should pick my battles, right? Right. I'm likely not going to get information on every single person on one marriage record. It would be nice. But it's not necessary. If anything the people listed were probably cousins of the bride and groom. I just wanted to see the information for myself since I was starting to get better at reading Italian and of course that depended on how well the document was scanned and how legible the handwriting is. Let's face it. Some of the clerks out there had pretty bad handwriting. Not gonna lie.

    After twenty years working on my family history, I guess I can say that I can read Italian records differently now. And by that I mean I can actually READ them. All it took was a little time, patience and some help from some very cool people. Does this mean I can carry on a conversation with someone in Italian? No. Of course not! Don't be silly. I can tell you what a record says as long as the scan is decent.  I'm just glad that I can read the records better now than I did before. It was hard in the beginning asking people if they could translate something. I'm sure it was a little annoying. But I got through it and now I help people with their Italian records. The Circle of Life continues.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 26: A Hard Choice

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 26:

The theme for Week 26 is “A Hard Choice.” We usually don’t know exactly what an ancestor thought about a choice they faced, but when you remember that they were human, it isn’t hard to imagine. For instance, imagine how it would feel to contemplate moving to the other side of the country – or the other side of the world.

Where do all these free sign post images come from?!

    Life is all about hard choices and our ancestors are no stranger to making difficult ones over the course of their lives. Earlier this year I wrote a blog about how hard it must have been for my great-grandmother Maria Tedesco to leave San Pietro a Maida for Haverhill knowing she might not ever see that Calabrian town ever again. Sadly, she never did. It's a risk you had to take when traveling across the ocean. However, immigrants didn't always travel by sea. They traveled by land as well. I know I don't talk about it a lot but can you imagine the hard choices a French-Canadian immigrant had to make when they went south to the United States? I'm not talking about just their toppings for French fries. Poutine does sound good, by the way.

     Like the Italians, they had to contend with a language barrier because they spoke a different language than most of the people in America.  French was not spoken in New England like it is in Canada. There's no doubt about it. French-Canadians had to make hard choices like the ones their Italian friends had to make.

    Now picture another hard choice. Imagine being a French-Canadian woman living in Haverhill in 1901. Your husband unexpectedly passed away at the age of forty-nine leaving you with several small children including an infant. You two had been through a lot together. You and your husband lived with your parents in a very crowded house and moved out when it was financially possible. Do you attempt to raise the kids by yourself or do you try and find a husband who could help you raise your many children?

    Enter my 2nd great-grandmother Lucie Cadran. She was just forty-six years old when her husband Antoine Legault fell ill and unexpectedly passed away. When he died their oldest child Lucy was in her mid twenties and their youngest Oliver was an infant. In between those two she had young adults, teens or young children to look after and keep in mind there were a lot of them! People say Italians have large families....

    When he passed away, Lucie had to make some pretty hard choices and at the turn of the century there weren't a lot of options available for her.

    The most logical choice we in the twenty-first century would say would be "Lucie should get a job!" Uhh...that would be pretty difficult. I would imagine it'd be pretty hard for her to find a job in 1901. Women like Lucie didn't even have the right to vote until the 1920s. The right to work was still in its infancy. She still needed someone to help with the children.

    In the 1910 census in Haverhill, she was living with her children Blanche, my great-grandmother Henrietta, Clara and Oliver. This was the first census without Antoine being present and from the looks of things they were living a decent life. The children's' ages at that point ranged from eight to 17 and I'd like to think that seventeen year old Henrietta was helping her dear mother with the rest of the motley crew.

Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault

    Eventually, Henrietta moved out since she married Austin Felker just three years after the census was enumerated. She and Austin still lived in Haverhill and chances are she still helped her mother with the kids whenever she could. 

    After Henrietta and Austin got married, Lucie was still likely feeling pressure. She was raising quite a few children by herself and most of her children were married by the 1910s.They were living their lives and grandchildren were being born at the time so time with the family and with their mother became a bit of a balancing act.  She still needed help with her children after spending more than a decade as a single mother.

    In those days, being a single mother was a bit of a taboo topic. Though, I think a widowed mother might have been less of a hot topic. Regardless of age, single motherhood was probably looked upon with pity and maybe a little scorn. Once Henrietta was out of the house and living her own life, she had a choice to make. Should she stay a single/widowed mother and raise Blanche, Clara and Oliver by herself? Or should she find herself a husband. 

    From a 21st century perspective she seemed to be doing alright for herself. I didn't see a job listed but she did have plenty of help. Though, I understand the need to find someone. She might have been lonely and wanted someone to help with the children. And that's where Paul LaHaye came in. I don't really know how he met Lucie. Chances are they met in church or something. However, I do know that they were married in 1917. That was four years after Austin and Henrietta got married.

Blanche and family (Not her grandkids.)

  How the children reacted to the new man in their mother's life is anyone's guess. Was he a good stepfather? I honestly have no idea. I assume he was but then again it's hard to say. By the 1920 census, the only child living with them was Blanche and her first husband Frank Paradis.

    Blanche had changed her last name to "Lahaye" and everyone else was scattered by that point. Some of the Legault siblings obviously still lived in Haverhill. Matilda was living in Connecticut and I'm not sure where Oliver was living. I suspect he was living in Falmouth, Mass. since he married a woman there. I'm not entirely sure about that. 

    I do know that in the end Lucie may have made the best decision for her. Sadly, Paul passed away sometime in 1932. This meant that he and Lucie had a good twenty years together before he passed away. At least we can say she wasn't lonely.

    Lucie passed away in 1937 and for some reason she's not buried with her second husband. I'm not sure why. She's buried with her daughter Mary , her husband Oliver Gariepy and her family in Saint Joseph's cemetery in Haverhill. To date I have not been able to find Paul's final resting place. He may be buried with them. I'm not sure and I'm not in any real rush to try and find him. Finding him is not as important as finding Antoine's final resting place to me. As of this blog I still haven't been able to find his grave! It's so annoying!

    Anyway, Lucie clearly had to make a hard choice. She chose to be a single mother for over a decade before marrying Paul. In those days, being a single mother was extremely hard, and possibly looked at as a less-than-desirable situation. One has to wonder if she felt pressure to find a husband after Antoine passed away. Some widows do not waste any time and get remarried right away. Some remained single and in the end it was really her decision to get married again. I don't like putting words in peoples' mouths. But I do know she likely made the right decision for her family. She had over a dozen children and while they likely helped when they could. Of course they had lives of their own and she more than likely respected her children's lives. Though, she probably would have accepted help. It takes a village and she had that for a good while before Paul came along.

    In the end, it was a tough call getting married after so many years being a single mother. In those days it was not an easy thing to do and one has to respect her hard choices. I like to think that the kids all turned out okay despite their mother's choices. Were they happy with Paul? Who knows? All I know is that it happened and Lucie had to do what she could. She likely didn't want to be alone and they seemed to have a nice life together. What more could anyone ask for after losing your first husband at a relatively young age?

See ya next time.

52 Ancestors Week 25: The Ancestor Who Stays With Me

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 25:

The theme for Week 25 is “The Ancestor Who Stays With Me.” Sometimes you find something about an ancestor, and their story lingers with you. They end up in a special place in your heart, even if you never met them. This week, share that person and why you feel so connected to them. (You could also take this prompt more literally and write about an ancestor who has lived with you.) Remember, there’s no wrong way to interpret the prompts!

And here comes the "Full House" theme

      Growing up it wasn't always just my parents, brother and I living under one roof. During the 1980s my aunt Linda and her dogs also lived in our house. If that sounds like the plot of a sitcom from that time period, I don't know what does. I know she wasn't an ancestor but a relative living with us is nothing new. However, one ancestor of mine did sort of live with us from time to time. She would stay with us over Christmas, Easter and basically any time. She was always welcome at our house any time of the year and though she lived in nearby Haverhill it definitely felt like she lived in our house. I am of course talking about my grandmother Olympia.

    Grandma Ollie started staying with us over Christmas after grandpa Marco passed away in 1983. Before his death they would visit us and take part in the festivities. Once he passed away, my parents invited Ollie to stay for Christmas and she would leave a few days after New Years. This was great for me because my birthday was in between those two holidays! I never really saw my other grandparents during my birthday except on special occasions and so having Ollie around was very special to me. Don't get me wrong. They still showed up for a few Christmas Eve parties! They just weren't around for my birthday. I still got a card from them. And twenty bucks.

    We'd pick Ollie up a few days before Christmas and she would sleep in the den at the top of the stairs. Unfortunately, that den was designated the toy and video game area when my brother and I were growing up. Many of our toys were in that room and since grandma was the most relaxed lady ever she never really minded being in that room. Of course she wanted to know about the toys. That's where things got interesting.

    During the 1980s, my brother and I played with a ton of the era's greatest toys. Almost every toyline was represented in the den. We had "Transformers", "Star Wars", "Go-Bots", "Thundercats", "Voltron", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", some "G.I. Joe", "M.A.S.K.",  "Centurions" and "Masters of the Universe" to name a few. I may have skipped a couple lines. Give me a break. I haven't had time to catalog every toy we've had. Needless to say we were no stranger to the toys of the '80s and '90s. Being a kid, I did my best to explain the toys to my grandmother. She just listened and smiled. I think she just liked the fact that my brother and I were so creative with the toys. Our parents liked giving us toys that had some creative aspect. Hence why most of that list involved sentient transforming robots and aliens from far, far away. Our parents didn't like toys that glorified war. They liked the fantasy elements more.

 

The cause of many jump scares.

   One Christmas morning she wanted me to play with a toy called "Snake Mountain". I had gone into her room just as she was waking up and we were talking about what I wanted for Christmas. I always wondered if she asked because she knew something my brother and I didn't know.  She was also looking at the toys and was a little curious about this playset in the corner of the room.  My brother was fast asleep in the room adjacent to the den and my parents were making breakfast downstairs. We had a rule. Breakfast first and then presents. Believe me the urge to just dive into the presents was great many Christmas mornings! 

    Anyway, "Snake Mountain" was a companion piece to "Castle Grayskull" from the Masters of the Universe line. It was a purple mountain that the bad guys all lived in. The playset had a number of features. Trap doors, weapons racks and more. Snake Mountain had a bonus feature. There was a microphone with a snake head attached to the "mountain" and you could use it to your heart's content.....as long as you had batteries. Those were sold separately! Gotta love the 1980s and mass consumerism.

    I knew full well that there were a set of fresh batteries in "Snake Mountain" and so I said into the microphone "WAKE UP, JIMMY!" A second later my mother called my name and about five seconds after that my brother comes into the den wondering what happened. Our grandmother at that moment was laughing her head off. I think she enjoyed the toy more than we did. We definitely got a lot of use out of it.  We didn't fight or anything. But we did torture each other with "Snake Mountain". Fair is fair. I do wonder if it still works. It's been forty years so the wiring may be a little shot.

I may have thought that was my
present.....

    My brother wasn't the only one woken up by my shenanigans that Christmas morning. My aunt Linda came out of her room wondering what was going on. My grandmother explained everything and we had a good laugh. Finally, we were called downstairs for breakfast.

    If it hasn't been made clear by now, I think I got my sense of humor from my grandma Ollie. She loved to laugh and she enjoyed playing with us. Grandpa Bob would often talk about a toy's alt mode if it transformed into a plane or a jet but it was Ollie who actually played with us and my brother and I always thought that was cool.

    I don't really remember what I got that Christmas. Knowing our parents it was more Masters of the Universe figures and that gave us more of a reason to use "Snake Mountain"'s microphone. My mother shook her head and my father just laughed. Hey. It was a playset and we were going to use all of its features no matter what! I think Ollie just liked the fact that we were enjoying ourselves more than anything. She DID ask about the toys and once we got a Sega Genesis in the den in the late 1980s, she asked about that, too! I don't think she ever quite followed "Sonic the Hedgehog". 

    Christmas wasn't the only time my grandmother came over and spent the week with us. She often came over when my parents had to go to a conference and watched us. My brother and I, naturally, were on our best behavior. I can see you rolling your eyes back there....especially in light of the "Snake Mountain" incident. I think we can all agree that it was Ollie's fault and not mine!

    Kidding. I'm not gonna throw Ollie under the bus. It was funny though and we talked about the incident for many years. 

    Grandma watched over us whenever she could and since she didn't live that far away it often felt like she stayed with us. We saw her and her sisters so often that I would tell her everything that happened and she gave me some good advice here and there. It was great having her around and she really was a lot of fun. I mean what other grandmother would actually play action figures with you or watch you play "Sonic the Hedgehog" and then cook some pasta and tell you stories?  I'm sure some grandmothers were like that too but she was special. She really was a great person and I was fortunate that we got to see her as often as we did.  Gotta admit, though. The "Snake Mountain" incident was GOLD. 

See ya next time!

P.S. My brother and I saw the new "Masters of the Universe" movie last week while he and his family were visiting and a lot of these memories came back to the surface. We did wonder if the old playsets still worked. You never know. ;)

52 Ancestors Week 24: Possibilities

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 24:

The theme for Week 24 is “Possibilities.” “There are so many possibilities.” That statement could point to limitless potential, or it could reflect a person mired in uncertainty. This week, you could write about an ancestor who had many possibilities to choose from. You could also write about the possible answers to a genealogy problem you’re trying to solve. 

This week's banner has no right going this hard. Wow.

    Let's face it. When you're out on your genealogy adventure you're going to hit some bumps in the road. Not everything will be laid out for you and chances are things you find are not going to be pretty. Life gets pretty messy and even back in the day things were pretty messy. And that's putting it mildly, Let's not kid ourselves. You have to have an open mind when dealing with a few problems that may pop up. Your ancestor may not be the person you thought they were either literally or figuratively. The possibilities are endless. You are going to find surprises around every corner and you absolutely need to have an open mind because you might end up thinking Lord Geoffrey von Hemsworth Esq is your ancestor when your ancestor was really a concubine living in the imperial stable next door.

    On the DNA side of things, there's more possibilities than you can shake a stick at because DNA does not lie. DNA will prove connections just as well as actual documents. Just keep in mind sometimes it can be the only thing linking you to a person. "Oopsies" happen and those sorts of things are not going to be documented! Granted, very low matches may or may not be accurate. However, if the cM range is in the double digits or higher you may get lucky and find a connection to a cousin. It just depends on what the paper trail tells you and everything. 

Maria Rosa Astorino e Giovandomenico Davoli

    The reason why I brought this up is because back in January I posted a blog about a theory of mine that was a work in progress. I was trying to figure out my connection with a bunch of DNA matches who connect with a woman named Maria Rosa Astorino. It is possible my father, great-aunt and I connect somewhere on her mother's side. The mother pretty much has to be a Coppola. Of course it is possible that the connection is a little further back. But I'm gonna bet on it being her mom. Call it an instinct. Call it a gut feeling.  I feel pretty good about that possibility because my cousin Flavia did say her mother was a Coppola. More details are coming soon. Stay tuned!

    If only things were always that easy to figure out. This is why genealogy should never be a solitary gig. You almost always need someone to help you out or bounce ideas off of. You should never work on a tree by yourself. If you do, you're bound to make more mistakes and that might sadly explain the minefield of bad family trees over on Ancestry.com. I know some trees over there are decent. But wow there are so many that just need to be either deleted or worked on. If it hasn't been clear already, I like working with people on puzzles like this. While I am confident enough to do things solo, I like hearing the opinions of other people. That's why sites like Wikitree work so well.

    Working with a group of people would definitely help me with another batch of DNA matches I have. My father, great-aunt and I have a bunch of matches who do not appear to match any other DNA matches except for themselves. I've messaged most of them in the hopes of figuring out what's going on and so far I haven't heard so much as a peep from them. It's very annoying. Mimes are more vocal than these people.

It just goes on and on....

    It all started some years ago with this guy. Let's call him Joey. As you can see from the chart from DNApainter.com's "What are the odds?" app, my father, great-aunt, my dad's cousin and I all match Joey. We all also match several of Joey's other relatives in one way or another. My great-aunt Nicolina obviously has the largest number of matches and from what I can tell they should connect somewhere in her maternal side.

    This is possible because of a few factors. Joey and his family do not match anyone on Nicolina's paternal side. So, that takes out any Ferraiolo or Coppola connection and leaves us with the Tedescos and the Gullos. Joey and his family do not match any Tedesco matches and so that just leaves the Gullos. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck....it's a goose. Er...duck. Wanted to see if you were paying attention. =)

    Okay. So, it's possible that this family matches somewhere in the Gullo side. Cool. Where do we go from here? Luckily, several people in the family have made decent or semi-decent trees on Ancestry and filled it up a little bit. I have no idea how accurate they are. I just know that all of their trees point to a family with the last name of "Mazza". Mazza is a fairly common last name in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida and sadly their trees do not mention the town at all. So frustrating. The trees claim their Mzza was born in San Pietro Apostolo, a town thirty-seven kilometers from San Pietro a Maida. The jury's still out on that. Some people seem to confuse San Pietro a Maida with San Pietro Apostolo.

Oh, hi random unconnected tree. 
What's up?

    Eventually, I decided to make a floating tree on Ancestry in the hopes of one day connecting the family to the main tree. Thankfully, we have MyTreetags now because I would not have been able to find it without it.

    After doing a little bit of work, I found that maybe the connection might be through Joey's ancestor, Maria Casale. The trees have next to no information about her. I'm not even sure if she was from San Pietro and Casale isn't a name I've seen in San Pietro records.

    I guess the Casale connection would be possible. Isn't genealogy great?! So many possibilities are out there! The only thing is I wish Joey and his family talked to me a bit more about these possibilities because I have so many questions to ask. Are they sure Giuseppe Mazza was from San Pietro Apostolo? Mazza is a very common last name in San Pietro a Maida like I said. What information about Maria Cassale do they have?  I haven't been able to find much aside from censuses, a marriage in New Jersey, a Find a Grave link and a few other odds and ends. No naturalization paper or even a ship manifest.

    I have a few other DNA matches that have floating trees like the Mazzas here. But none of those trees vex me as much as this one. It wouldn't bother me if it was just one or two people who matched people in my tree. But we seem to match quite a few of them and I really would like to talk to someone in Joey's family so I could figure out what's going on. At least other floating trees I have have some kind of possible link. That's why I didn't write about one of them. Some are pretty obvious Gullo or Coppola connections. This Mazza mess needs some work and I'm open to any possibility. I'm fairly sure these are legit DNA matches and I am open to all possibilities.

      Like I said. I'm pretty sure these people all fit in the Gullo side because they don't match anyone else. It's just a question of where, when and if it's a half-relationship. That's always a possibility too. You never know. The world is a strange place and you have to open your mind to a world of endless possibilities. I hope I get this mess solved someday!

See ya next time!