52 Ancestors Week 42: Adventure

From Amy Johnson Crow:

Week 42: Adventure: Week 42 brings "Adventure." Do you know of an ancestral adventure, be it great or small? How about an adventure that you've had while researching?

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Genealogy is a remarkable book. Perhaps the most remarkable and certainly the most successful book to ever come out of the International Genealogical Publication Corporation of Earth. More popular than Dr. Blaine Bettinger's "Fun Things to do with your Genes". Better fitting than WikiTree's "Get that Banana out of my Family Tree" and certainly more controversial than "We're all NOT Related to King Henry VIII. Deal with it". It has also supplanted the Encyclopedia Genealogica by being a wellspring of knowledge of how to best research your family tree and have fun while doing so. First: It's slightly cheaper and second it has the words "Don't Panic" printed in large friendly letters on its back cover.

I love Douglas Adams as much as I love Stan Lee. Both writers were awesome and will forever be legends in their respective fields. Making a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference was too good an opportunity to pass up considering the theme this week was "Adventure". I have had several adventures while researching my family tree and definitely could have used "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Genealogy" on more than one occasion. Though, videos on YouTube, talking to people and podcasts count, right? Yeah, I'm sure they do.

As far as adventures go, I've had my fair share. I've already talked about a few of them here in the blog. This week, we'll go with something that happened just last week after I posted #52Ancestors Week 41: Context. There's always an adventure to be had when you're climbing the tree and sometimes you need to know just where to look to find a gem or two. Sometimes things even show up when you least expect it.

After I posted the blog, I went to work on my webcomic like I usually do. I was in the middle of writing when my mother told me she was going to clean some stuff out in the basement. We regularly donate to the Salvation Army around Thanksgiving. I thought nothing of it because it was something we did every year.

I was half way into writing the next installment of my comic when my mother called me downstairs. She said she had something very interesting to show me. I wasn't sure what it was. She was in the basement. It could have been anything. We have a couple of arcade cabinets from the 1980s down there as well as a pool table, stuff from our old boat and outdated computers. Sufficed it to say, we have a ton of stuff including the belongings of my grandparents and great-grandparents. That's when we made the discovery of a lifetime.

My mother presented me with a small metal box and inside was the following:

1. Old bank notes
2. The last will and testament for both my grandfather, Marco and his father Vincenzo.
3. Vincenzo's original Naturalization papers.
4. A birth record for Vincenzo's mother, Caterina Coppola.

Out of everything in the box, THAT slip of paper with the birth on it surprised me the most. Before we made that discovery, I had an estimated date of birth for Caterina based on Vincenzo's birth banns and whatever my great-aunt Nickie told me. I put in "About 1872" ages ago figuring that it was a nice round number.

This document, however, was a lot more concrete! It wasn't the actual birth banns, though. That record is safely archived back in my grandfather's ancestral town of San Pietro a Maida. This document was clearly a copy given to my great-grandfather some time in 1963. Apparently, he sent for the record and the following was written on it translated from Italian for your reading pleasure. Use your babelfish. =)

"Caterina Coppola was born in the Municipality of San Pietro a Maida on the twenty-eighth day of August of the year eighteen hundred seventy.

Thus appears from the register of birth records of this commune of the year 1870 part 1. series 11. N 78 is issued for the US administered by the municipal residence on 9 Sep 1963."

From that record I was able to safely deduce that Caterina was born on August 28th, 1870. This bit of information allowed many things concerning the Coppola family to fall into place.

1. She was two years younger than her husband, Marco.
2. She was probably the oldest of Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato's children considering they were born in the 1840s. Logic dictates that they probably got married in the 1860s.

What's interesting is that she was so much older than her brothers and sisters that I know of. There may be more of them. I only know of three: Giovanni (1875) Concetta (1882) and Paolo (1886). She had to have passed away some time after 1920 because she was mentioned as being alive on Vincenzo's passport.

Vincenzo and Aunt Nickie

That was amazing to find and I went to work editing all of the family trees I have. Vincenzo's original Naturalization paperwork had some interesting facts, too. It stated that his height was a little over five feet, what color his eyes were. They were hazel. I had only ever seen black and white pictures of the man. So, this painted a better picture of him. Not a bad discovery.

Still, one question hasn't really been answered. Why did he send for the birth record in the first place? He sent for it in the 1960s. He was already in America for QUITE some time. So, why did he need it? Was he doing family research? Did he look into a crystal ball and see that his great-grandson was working on the family tree. If that's the case, "Hi!!"

I probably won't know the answer to that question. It's still fun to think about. I'm thinking it had something to do with his Naturalization work. I'm not sure. Why else would he send for his own mother's birth certificate? There are so many questions. Questions, I think, would be answered in another adventure that starts with a plane ride to Italy!

This was just the most recent adventure I had. Like I said before, I've had a load of them. Some good. Some bad. In general, genealogy is bound to have adventures. You're looking into the past of family members you may only have heard about in passing while growing up or never knew about. It can change you for better or worse. Life's funny like that. When you're going out there, don't be afraid to ask for help. And it's always a good idea to dig through stuff in the basement. You'll never know what you'll find. And above all.....

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.