52 Ancestors Week 40: Harvest

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Week 40: 

"Harvest" is the theme of Week 40. You could interpret this literally and share about farmers in the family tree. You could also be figurative and share a "harvest" of information or a source that was bountiful in your research.

Got basil?

Tricky week is tricky. However, I will not be stumped! We have a bountiful harvest this week. Sadly, that wasn't the case for my parents' garden this year. The pic above is a small sampling of what we got in the old Ferraiolo garden. We did get a ton of potatoes, tomatoes, green beans and peppers at least. We planted cucumbers and zucchini like we always do. We planted eggplant and broccoli as a sort of trial run. But, those veggies never really materialized. Not sure why. The sad thing is we usually do great in the cucumber and zucchini department! Did we plant too early? Too late? Was there not enough rain? Too much rain? Too hot? Farming is tricky in 2019. Think of how our ancestors must have done it! That basil, by the way, made a great pesto sauce.

Basil tends to grow really well in New England in the summer time. Know where else it grows well? ITALY! It's said that the colors of the Italian flag represent basil, cheese and  tomato sauce. Sometimes that's the case. Other times not so much. Most people think of the green as representing plains and hills. The white represents the snow capped mountains and the red represents the sacrifice of the people. You get that a lot in flag descriptions where red is a dominate color.

Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione

Farming on my Italian side has been in my blood as generations of my father's side have lived off of the land in southern Italy for centuries. After all, what is southern Italy known for? Aside from really, really good food that is. =) I alluded to this last week when I talked about walking around my ancestral towns of Gesualdo and San Pietro a Maida. The surrounding countryside has a lot of farms and it's often reflected in the documents I've found for my ancestors.

Take my great-grandparents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione for example. On their birth banns from the town of Gesualdo, it listed their parents and like many Italian birth records, it also lists their occupation. So, if you look up Giuseppe and Clementina on a site like Antenati  you will see something like this on the banns:

"On the 25th of August in the year 1882, Vincenzo Carrabs and his wife, Maria Giovanni Capobianco, farmers, welcomed a son named Giuseppe who was born in this town at (Insert time of day here)".

Marriage banns for Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione

The same thing happens with marriage banns and even death notices. Italian documents are great in that they present so much information. They can tell you so much about a person's life! Were they farmers? If they were from southern Italy then it's usually the case. There are a few exceptions of course. Not everyone farmed. However, many communities in Italy depended on farms to sustain the whole town in those days and a lot of immigrants were farmers.

This was especially true in Haverhill as many, many Italian immigrants went on to farm things such as mushrooms and assorted veggies to sell in stores. Farmers basically brought their craft from Italy to America and added to the farms already in place in the towns they settled in. Not a bad deal.

When I first saw the documents and translated them, I wasn't surprised to learn that they were farmers. My father told me how his grandfather used to have a garden at their house in Haverhill. His other grandfather did too and I suspect that's what got him into gardening in the first place. The tradition continues to this day. It's really cool to think about how generations of a family worked on the land for centuries and even now still work the land in various ways.

However, things have certainly changed with time. Now we buy special nutrient rich dirt, special fertilizer and use chemicals to keep fungus away from growing plants. Back in the 1800s, they didn't  have that technology available to them. I would imagine my farming ancestors from Italy would be quite confused at how we tend a garden in the twenty-first century.

Growing vegetables with my parents actually helped me understand family history a bit more. My mother's side has farmed as well and while planting I've often asked them about their parents or grandparents' garden. It's a great hobby to pick up and there's something satisfying about growing your own produce. I didn't know what it was before I discovered my family's farming past in Italy. Now I do. I come from generations of people with green thumbs and that's definitely something to be proud of!

Want some homemade pesto sauce?

52 Ancestors Week 39: Map it Out

Week 39: Map It Out

From Amy Johnson Crow: 

Week 39 is "Map It Out." (Fun fact: I can fold a highway map. It's a dying art.) Maps are *so* useful in our research. What discoveries have you made using a map? (Maybe you found that two ancestors were living closer to each other than you realized.) What types of maps have you used? Have you used a map to interest the non-genealogists in the family? Feel free to interpret this theme however you'd like!

Our small blue planet. Mostly harmless.

Maps? I've had some experience with maps. When I was little I used to draw maps of the continental United States just for fun. I did it all from memory, too. Though, some states were not to scale in the very beginning. Citizens of Colorado, you will be happy to know that I sometimes drew your state bigger than California. The same thing happened to Texas and Ohio for some reason. The only states I never drew that big was my home state of New Hampshire and the other New England states. Though, Cape Cod tended to just jut way out into the Atlantic.

I also drew maps for various school projects. One time my father and I drew a map of Italy on one of those poster boards you buy at a craft store. I forget what the context was. I think I was clearly doing a project on Italy for Social Studies or something. It was such a cool map, too. I wish we saved it. It's mainly because I had a great time drawing Mount Vesuvius, the Colosseum and several other Italian landmarks. Plus, drawing all those upside-down consummate "V"s for the mountains was kind of cool.

San Pietro a Maida, Italy

When it comes to genealogy, I've been revisiting my past interest in cartography and with the advent of Google Maps and Google Earth, it's been a great way to explore my ancestral towns in Italy without paying thousands of dollars for a plane ticket! And that's exactly what I did the first time I ever used Google Maps!

I didn't hesitate to check out San Pietro a Maida. When I started doing genealogy, I knew very little about the town. I knew my grandfather, my great-aunt and their parents were born there and visited from time to time. I also knew it was hot there for most of the year. The only snow they get would be in the mountains and higher elevations.

I used Google street view to walk around the town as if I was really there. San Pietro a Maida is bordered by the towns of Maida, Jacurso, Curinga and Lamezia Tierne. Like most of Calabria, it's flat with a few hills here and there.

Surrounding the towns are many olive tree orchards. I had a friend named Gattone who worked in the town commune office. He sent me many pictures of his orchard and the olive oil he produced. He once told me that the whole town goes out and harvests the olives. That is a pretty cool activity and it really brought to life what the people did in town. You can only learn so much from pictures!

Recently, my great-aunt heard that I was virtually walking around the town and she wanted to know who was living in the house she was born in. I wish I knew. My cousins in town didn't know as she didn't provide me with an address. I did find a house with "Tedesco" written on the mailbox in my travels. That provided me with some clue. Her mother was a Tedesco. It got me wondering. Were any of the Tedescos in the area? Well, I knew that part was true. But, I wondered if it was actually their house. It wouldn't have surprised me if it was.

Sadly, I didn't find any Ferraiolos. It was the strangest thing. Did they get run out of town? My father thinks that the family moved to Rome. That is possible. I hope I find out what happened to them and connect with a cousin on that side of the tree as the cousins there now come in on the Tedesco side. Time will tell.

Gesualdo, Italy

My next stop in my tour of Italy was Gesualdo where my great-grandparents, Giuseppe and Clementina were born. Surrounding that town are the towns of Fontanarosa, Frigento, Grottaminarda, Paternopoli and Villamaina. It's a town very, very far from San Pietro a Maida as it's in the region of Campania and is fifty-six miles from Naples and 180 miles from Rome.

Growing up, I knew a bit more about Gesualdo than San Pietro. My grandmother  taught me many things about the town. Unlike San Pietro a Maida, there weren't many olive trees in the area. Instead, there is an abundance of farms. This made logical sense because of what I found in my great-grandparents' birth banns. They were the children of farmers and it's clear that the town is a farming community. I like it when geography links up with the actual documents you find. If someone is listed as a farmer in those banns, chances are they are definitely a farmer. What she DIDN'T tell me was this:

Castle Gesualdo

In the center of town there is a castle named "Castle Gesualdo" and it has a bit of a history. When I first saw it I was like "Oh. This is a cool medieval castle in the middle of town. I wonder what the story is."

When I first saw it on Google street view, I had many stories running through my head. Did a vampire live there? Eh, probably not. Vampires wouldn't last too long in a country that prides itself on the use of garlic. It remained a mystery for quite a few years until I talked to a third cousin on the Carrabs side of my tree.

She and her son took a trip to Gesualdo and they told me ALL about it. Castle Gesualdo was the home of musician Carlo Gesualdo. Carlo lived from 1566-1613 and was known for his writing and pieces of sacred music. He was also a murderer. I am not joking. My cousin told me to look him up on Wikipedia and when I did I found that he killed a few people and suffered depression due to his actions. It's unknown if it was brought on by guilt. What was known is that he spent the last few years of his life in isolation in the castle. Some even say that his wife killed him. It's hard to say at this point.

San Pietro a Maida and the countryside

Walking around your grandparents' ancestral towns on Google Maps' street view is good. However, nothing can beat actually GOING to the place where they lived. You can only learn so much from pictures and stories about the town. Actually going there can be an eye opening experience for you. I've heard that it could even change you and change how you perceive your ancestors. This is where they were born, grew up and died. This is where they began their journey to other parts of the world.

 I definitely got that sense of gravitas when I "walked" around these two towns. You never know what you'll find. We live in an age where we can use technology to better understand our ancestors in the "old country". We can learn how they lived and it can help us better appreciate the people living there now and change how we look at the world. That's a great thing about Google Maps. It can be used to measure distances between towns when you're wondering if it's possible a person was born in one town dated someone else from another. Or it could be used to explore towns halfway around the planet. The technology is there and I encourage people to use it. You'll be amazed at what you'll find. And hopefully some day I'll see these places in person. Some day. I have showed them to my nephews and they have shown some interest in the towns.

When you look at these towns, you get a new appreciation for where the family came from and I hope to go there. Until then, I'll be using Google Maps to explore more of the world. I suggest you do the same! Like Calvin in the last Calvin and Hobbes comic strip said:

"It's a big world Hobbes old buddy. Let's go exploring."

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 38: Cousins

Week 38: Cousins

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Cousins can make our family history more interesting. Whether it's the family stories you share with your close cousins at holiday gatherings or the research you share with the more distant cousins, you shouldn't overlook the impact that cousins make. This week, write something about one of these important people. Maybe it's a favorite memory with a cousin or a research breakthrough you made thanks to one.

Just hangin' out with Nana in the '90s.

Cousins are great and Amy's right. They definitely make family history very interesting and entertaining. I grew up with eight cousins on my mother's side and my dad's first cousins and their kids on his side. The stories I have in my head would probably take ages to tell because I saw them all quite frequently. There was this meme on Facebook a while back which summed up cousins nicely. They're your first friends and no one else can help you understand your crazy family but them.

The same thing could be said for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and even 5th cousins! Cousins are great and helping them out is even better. I've mentioned that before I began my genealogical adventure, two cousins on my father's side sought me out. We talked off and on and I got a great deal of insight about the family from both of them. I'll be forever grateful to them for that. Years later, it was my turn to return the favor.

In March of 2018, I received a private message on Ancestry from a lady named "Jenna". (The names have changed to protect the innocent!!) Jenna told me that she and her biological mother were DNA matches with me. I had just gotten my results that week and honestly I was taken aback! She was the first person outside of Mary Tedesco and my third cousin to contact me. Naturally, I played it cool. I've been talking to people online for years and years. This was no different than talking to someone in a chatroom or a message board at that point.

Jenna explained to me that she was adopted and that her mother was adopted as well. She needed my help in figuring out her connection to me. We share 22 centimorgans and according to Ancestry and Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project this put her right in the 4th cousin bracket. She was also in contact with one of my mom's first cousins as she had her DNA tested as well.

In her travels, Jenna found a sister and several matches on both of her biological parents' side. She desperately wanted to know where she came from as she was born in New York and her biological mother was born in Massachusetts. I agreed and said that to really help her out, we needed to talk on Skype. I helped set her up and the adventure REALLY began.

We talked on voice/webcam and she showed me a tree her adoption angel had made for her. It was.....How do I put this nicely? It was a giant mess. For some reason, the adoption angel put Jenna as a descendant of Austin Charles Felker. Austin was my grandmother's brother and he lived quite largely. He had many wives and lovers. While it could've been possible that she descended from Austin, the logistics made it a downright impossibility for these reasons:

1. He spent most of his life in Florida and never went to New York.
2. He would have been too old to have had a fling with Jenna's birth mother. Plus Jenna was born in the '80s. The time scale didn't make any sense.
3. The centimorgan count would have been much, much, MUCH higher than 22 cMs had she been a product of Austin's philandering. And she would have shared so much more cMs with my mom's cousin.

The following conversation took place:

Me: So, this tree is wrong. So very wrong.
Jenna: What do you think I should do?
Me: Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Jenna: Aliens reference?
Me: Yup.

She deleted the tree the adoption angel made for her. All wasn't completely lost. She had duplicate trees which linked to her DNA test and her research. This was just one adoption angel tree and it was a giant mess. As luck would have it, my mother's DNA results came in about a month or so after my results did. Naturally, she shared more DNA with her, her mother and her sister. There was still the matter of finding out where she fit into the family.

Figuring that out was a bit of a trick. Fortunately, Jenna received a few documents which were keys to solving our puzzle. These were, of course, a letter from her adoption agency and a copy of her birth mother's birth certificate.

On it, she found that her maternal grandmother was a woman named Marilyn Ella Lewis. She had me look her up on Familysearch to see what information I could find about her. According to the 1930 census, she was the daughter of a woman named Josephine Robidoux.

From there, things just fell like a row of dominoes because there was a LOT of information about Josephine Robidoux. She married twice. First to a man named Leslie Angus Lewis and then to a man named Frederick Russell Longway. She was born in Massachusetts to Noah Robidoux and Josephine Cadran.

Noah Robidoux and Josephine Cadran, Jenna's
2x great-grandparents.

That last name was very familiar to me because my 2x great-grandmother was a Cadran as well. Her name was Lucie and she was the daughter of Pierre Cadran and Eulalie Bibeau. I already had Josephine in my tree because I tend to add everyone's brothers and sisters. It's great cousin bait! I smiled. I finally figured out how she was connected! All I needed to do now was confirm everything. So, I dug a bit deeper and found Josephine's marriage to Noah in 1882. It listed Pierre and Eulalie as her parents. I found Eulalie's obit in Haverhill, which again listed a "Mrs. Josephine Robidoux" in it. Everything fell into place.

Back on Familysearch, I looked for Noah and Josephine again and found a picture of the couple living in what I assume to be Haverhill in the early 1900s. They look quite young in that picture. I sent a private message to the person who uploaded the picture and explained Jenna's story to her. She said I could take it and give it to her with her blessing. I was so happy!

I quickly messaged my newly confirmed 4th cousin and told her everything I found. I presented the picture and I wish I had the camera on because it sounded like she had tears of joy. She was happy that she found our connection. I was happy that I helped her out. I just wish I had Lucie's picture. But, that's a battle for another day.

In the end, I'm glad that I helped out my cousin because she really needed someone to guide her through the bumpy road that is the genealogical adventure. We did find she was still connected to my mom, my mom's cousin and myself. Just had to kick it a generation or two back in time before we had something that made sense.

Helping people is great and it's what I like most about genealogy. You meet all kinds of people and hear all kinds of stories. Some good. Some heartbreaking. I'd like to think that this adventure went a long way to helping her find the answers she was looking for.

She went from having no clue about her French-Canadian roots to having a face to go with the names of her 2x great-grandparents. That's just amazing and makes me feel pretty good as well.

See you next time!

A lot can happen in ten years....

52 Ancestors Week 37: Mistakes

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Week 37:

Mistakes. We all make them. (We are human, after all.) What's a mistake that an ancestor made? What's a mistake that you've had to correct in your research? What was something that you were sure was a mistake in the records, but turned out to be right?

We're all human? Speak for yourself, Amy. tlhIngan jIH! (I am a Klingon!) Eh, maybe not a Klingon. If I could pick any race from Star Trek, I'd pick one that wasn't one derived from ancient samurai honor codes. It would be cool. But, then every time your family's honor was threatened you'd have to drop everything and go on a crusade to kill those who have dishonored your family. It's a mess and frankly a bit of a hassle even though the House of Duras really has it coming.....

She is right, though. We have all made mistakes and in the thirteen years I've been doing genealogy (off and on) I've made quite a few of them. I'd go through the laundry list of my greatest hits, but, I have a feeling that I should probably stick with one mistake which thankfully has a bit of a happy ending. At least I'd like to think it does. 

You can't tell. But, there's a tiny bit of an error in the caption.

This mistake happened when I was adding the children of my 3x great-grandparents, Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato to my tree. The book, "Italians in Haverhill" provided me with a wealth of information on my 2x great-grandmother, Caterina's, family. Her sister Concetta and her brother Giovanni were in the the book. I also had proof that they were related. It was an open and shut case!

Everything was looking good. I had confirmed the relationships via AncestryDNA and I had a ton of great sources backing me up. What's that? Didn't I talk about this family before? Yeah, I did and it turns out that I made a mistake regarding one of the siblings and it's all because of the picture above and me misreading it.

The picture's caption threw me off because of how things were worded. It made it seem like Rosa Stella was a sister of Concetta when she wasn't. See "Rose Giampa's sister; Concetta Coppola-Papatola" in the caption? That bit caused the error. I don't know if it was me or the editing of the book. But, it did cause me to have that mistake in the tree for a while. 

How I found out about the error is a bit of an interesting story. I came across profiles on Find a Grave for two women who were connected to the Giampa family. I figured I'd spruce things up a bit because the profiles were untidy. They weren't connected to anyone. So, I started to suggest connections to people. To my surprise, I found Rosa's grave profile and thought "Wow. I can help this profile and fix things!" I suggested an edit or two. I  also wanted to change the last name from "Stella" to Coppola. THAT was my mistake!!

A few days later, a professional genealogist messaged me on Ancestry and asked me about editing the page on Find A Grave. I was kind of sweating a bit. I don't like stepping on peoples' toes. I know I edit on WikiTree. But, I tend to make sure things are correct before doing any editing! Thankfully, she was understanding and wanted to work with me on the issue. She wanted to know how I came to the conclusion that Rosa Stella was a Coppola and not a Stella like she had said and posted on Find a Grave.

I told her everything that happened. I told her about the book and a few other things. The main thing was that my great-aunt and my father had DNA matches who seemed to come from Rosa's side of the family. She said she'd e-mail me with new information for me. I was a little tense. I didn't know what to expect because I get a little nervous when I make mistakes.Thankfully, it wasn't that bad and she was willing to work with me.

The pro genealogist said that while DNA does not lie, like I told her, there were a few other things I needed to consider. The first thing she talked to me about was the grammatical error in the book. I apologized and she said not to worry about it. I then asked her about the DNA connections and how that all worked. My great-aunt and my father were still DNA matches to people connected to Rosa and they were connected to other members of the Coppola family. She then explained everything as she grew up in close proximity to the lady.

My third great-uncle, Giovanni Coppola, paid the way for MariRosa Stella and her sister, Marianna Stella to come to America. On the manifest it said that Marianna and Rosa were Giovanni's first cousins. My heart skipped a beat. "First cousins?!" I asked.

There was more. (There always is.) Their parents were Pasquale Stella and Caterina Coppola. Bells were ringing in my head at this point. I e-mailed her and told her that my 2x great-grandmother was Caterina Coppola. Obviously she was too young to be Rosa's mother. Rosa was born in 1883. Caterina was born ten years earlier. 

She then gave me a simple solution. Paolo, my 3x great-grandfather, and this other Caterina were in fact brother and sister. I sat back in my chair like "Oh, wow." That explained a bit of the things I was seeing with my father and great-aunt's DNA matches with Rosa and her descendants. 

With the information she gave me regarding Marianna, I then did a search for her on Familysearch and found her Naturalization papers. It confirmed that she was born in San Pietro a Maida with the other Coppolas. A marriage record also confirmed that her parents were Pasquale Stella and Caterina Coppola.

I laughed and sent what I found to the pro genealogist. She seemed pleased that I found the information. She was never angry about the mistake. That was a good thing. I don't like making mistakes. We all make them. No one's perfect in this world. No one can be. It's just lucky that someone contacted me about this mistake and wasn't a jerk. It's too easy to be a jerk online to people. It doesn't matter if you do genealogy or not. The screen gives someone a sense of anonymity and sometimes that separates us from who we are as people. That's a different topic!

Now that I have Marianna Stella's information, the next logical step is to contact the commune office in San Pietro a Maida and see if they can tell me about Marianna's parents and her grandparents. I really want help on that front because Paolo senior has been a decent brick wall up to this point.

Hopefully, I get some answers soon.

Qa'pla!

P.S. It turned out that the genealogist is also a distant cousin via the Hamel line! Now that is cool!

Editor's note: In April of 2023, I found that Giovanni Coppola was not the brother of Paolo, Caterina and Concetta Coppola. He is likely a first cousin of the three. Look for details in a future blog post.

52 Ancestors Week 36: Back to School

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Week 36
It's back to school time here in the U.S. Many school districts in my area have been back for 2 or 3 weeks already! This week's theme is "School Days." Have you used school records or yearbooks to find out more about your ancestors? Do you have photos or memorabilia from their time in school? How about any teachers or school staff in the family tree. Write about it this week!

June 13th, 1997. A day that will live in infamy....

Oh, man. Don't I look so happy in that picture? Like every picture, there's a story behind it. I graduated high school on June 13th, 1997. It was a Friday. It was also pouring rain. We're talking buckets! People were driving home in boats it was so bad! My parents took me home after a very quick ceremony and naturally we had a party with cake and all my relatives were there. My grandfather insisted that we take pictures of me in my cap and gown while it was soaked. I was ,of course, hesitant to do so. I wanted to change. I wanted to be dry! And I wanted food! That wasn't going to happen. At least not yet.

My grandfather took several pictures and took his time because photography was a hobby of his and he liked things to be perfect. There was another picture where my parents were making these "Can ya hurry up?" looks. Being a teenager, I was rolling my eyes. It didn't help that my brother and my cousins were laughing off camera. That one hasn't been scanned. I don't know if it WILL! So, now I have this drenched pic as my graduation picture. My actual yearbook photo is tucked away somewhere. On closer inspection of this pic, I swear those glasses are Harry Potter glasses. The first book came out that year, if I remember correctly.

Week 36 comes at a very interesting time. I don't know if Amy planned it like this or not. At the time of this blog's posting, it's the last day we can freely access yearbook photos on Ancestry.com. I've been making good use of the archive and I've managed to find a few photos that I will talk about. A bunch of my friends in the genealogy community have even found some pics of themselves in the yearbook. Me? Not so much. I think Ancestry may have thankfully skipped my class of 1997. I've seen other classes of 1997 in there. Those poor people! HAHA! They just haven't gotten to mine, yet. It's probably for the best because, like comics and movies at the time, we were "EXTREME!" The book basically encapsulated everything from 1990-1997.

I could talk at length about how odd the '90s were. Instead, let's instead go back in time to the 1930s with my grandmothers, Olympia Carrabs and Natalie Felker.

One of the first people I looked up during Ancestry's free weekend of yearbook goodness was my paternal grandmother, Olympia and her sisters. This picture on the left is from her 1939 yearbook and I learned many things about her that I never knew before.

1. I never knew her with dark hair. When I was growing up she had short, blond hair. Ollie's sisters were like that, too. If I was shown a picture of them with dark hair, I always had to be told who was who. When they were younger, they all looked very similar. Except Aunt Josie. She had HUGE glasses.

2. I didn't know Grandma Ollie was in the Glee Club or a Philomathean. I had to Google what that was because that was mentioned on more than a few students in the book. The even had a section dedicated to them. Philomatheans are people who love to learn.

That actually made sense because she ended up teaching my brother and I a lot of things about Italy, cooking and all sorts of things. After I read that bit, it dawned on me that this was why Grandma Ollie always wanted us to learn about everything. She was very happy to hear about whatever grade I got in school and wanted to hear about what I learned. She was a very hands-on grandmother when it comes to education. Sadly, she never became a teacher. She worked for the phone company. Looking back, I think she would have been an amazing teacher because we learned so much from her.

That bit about the "laughing eye" and "smiling face"? Yeah. That was Grandma Ollie alright. She would make jokes and have fun while she told her stories. No surprises there. Still, I don't know why anyone would have called her "Limp" when "Ollie" would have been FINE. "Limp" doesn't seem like a good nickname and I highly doubt she'd have tolerated being called "Limp". That's just me, her grandson, talking.


My maternal grandmother, Natalie Felker's yearbook photo comes from 1945. Like Grandma Ollie, graduated Haverhill High. Getting the picture cropped for this week's blog took a little bit of concentration as the layout was a little wonky. I guess they wanted to go a different direction that year. Whatever!

I learned a few things from her entry as well. Next to her name on the far left was the word "nurse". What did that mean exactly? Did she go into nursing school? Did she eventually become a nurse? I'm not sure. I asked my mother to explain and she wasn't sure what it meant, either.

However, I should note that my mother DID go into the medical field and became a lab technician. Perhaps her mother encouraged her to get into the medical field? I'm not entirely sure. It does open up a few possibilities!

One of the last things I noticed while I was digging through the yearbooks was that my grandfathers were nowhere to be found. That, to me, was interesting. Then again there were probably good reasons for it.  When you're digging through yearbooks there are a couple things you need to keep in mind.

1. The time period in which they lived in could be rife with economic turmoil. My grandparents grew up in the 1920s and 1930s. The Great Depression didn't offer much in the way of education. As a result, many people had to work (assuming there WAS work) or stay home and take care of younger siblings. You also have to take into account that not many families had the money to pay for pictures. Things were tough in those days.

2. If you want to look for someone, be sure to cross-reference the person you're looking for with the US Census. In the 1940 census, my grandfather Robert was sixteen and living with his mother Clara and his sister, Doris in Newburyport. Clara worked as a seamstress while the kids went to school. There could be a number of reasons why I haven'd been able to find his picture in the yearbook. Money may have been an issue or the yearbook hasn't been put online.

Grandpa Marco was fifteen in the 1940 census. His highest education at that point was 8th grade or so. There was no indication that he was at school. He did, however, enlist in the army in 1942. Perhaps that was why he doesn't have a yearbook entry.

There are many reasons why someone may not be in a yearbook. You never know and chances are you'll discover many things about your ancestors. Just be sure to cross-reference them with everything else you've learned. Information we collect is but a piece of a puzzle. Once it's complete, we can get a better understanding of who our ancestors were and the time in which they lived.

As far as memorabilia goes, my parents' yearbooks are in the attic. I'm not sure where Grandma Ollie's is. I'm thinking it's in the attic, too. One of my aunts or uncles may have my other grandmother's yearbook somewhere. The scans are nice and everything. But, I like physical copies of things. That includes comics and DVD/Blu-Rays!

I will say this before I close. I look through the yearbooks and compare them with my own and see that while time has changed, one thing remains the same. High school was an awkward period for a lot of people. Some think back fondly. Some may not. In the end, they show the kind of people we were and hopefully show the kind of people we eventually became.