52 Ancestors Week 5: So Far Away

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 5's theme is "So Far Away." What ancestor migrated a long distance in his or her lifetime? Maybe you found an ancestor far from where you expected? How about a discovery in a distant library or archive?

'Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles....

Last week, I wrote about how almost all of my ancestors were close to the city of Haverhill, Massachusetts at some point in their lives. Both sides of my family converged on the town as if it were a focal point in the space-time continuum. Don't laugh. The jury's still out on that. For all I know it could converge on Benedetti's deli. We still go there for subs. I recommend the Mark Anthony. Stay away from the Caligula. You'll regret it.

This week, it seems we're going in the opposite direction. Given this topic, you'd think it would be impossible for me to discuss it. I could easily talk about going from Italy to Haverhill again. Nope. Saving that for a later prompt this year. This week I am going to go further into detail on Eulalie Bibeau, a daughter of Jean Baptiste Bibeau and Therese Laroche.

Yamaska, where the wild gazebos roam.

Eulalie was born on February 28th, 1830 in St. Francois du Lac, Yamasaka, Canada and was one of nine children born into the Bibeau family. She married Pierre Cadran in January of 1854 and at some point or another moved to Haverhill, Massachusetts with him with three small children including my 2x great-grandmother, Lucie. You'd think that would have been the end of the story. However, things get a little more complicated and more like a series of interconnected rabbit holes in the land of a thousand lakes.

Remember those brothers and sisters she had? Well, it turned out that a large number of them settled in Anouka county, Minnesota. Charles, Zoe, Henriette and a few others went on to have large families there and as it happens I have quite a few DNA matches from those three siblings. As of this blog, I've managed to identify maybe a half of the 58 or so descendants of Jean Baptiste Bibeau and Therese Laroche. It's still a work in progress! My mother has way more than I do for obvious reasons!

They all had large families in Minnesota and I've tracked down a decent amount of them. A few descendants have actually helped me out on the issues. There's even a Facebook group surrounding this family if you can believe it! I joined and though I don't talk much, I have listened to their stories.

Eulalie in the house of Antoine Legault in the 1880 US census

The reason why this fits the prompt of "So Far Away" is because Massachusetts and Minnesota aren't exactly bordering states. There's a good 1,444 miles in between the cities the siblings ended up.in. And since e-mails, phones and other modern inventions weren't around in those days, you can bet that communication was done via letters. I honestly would love to see if those letters existed or if it's just a romantic idea I have cooked up in my head. Please let there be letters. PLEASE! I would love it if they were.

It's honestly hard to say if she maintained contact with the family. Perhaps she did. I've talked to various descendants of the other siblings and they've done considerable research on Eulalie and therefore my line for some time. Did the siblings talk about her? Perhaps. But, you know it's not as if she was an island alone in Haverhill. She made quite a name for herself as I've found via her obituary.

She passed away on December 19th, 1907 due to complications from "La grippe" or "The Spanish Flu" with senility being a contributing factor. Her obituary in the Haverhill Evening Gazette a few days later had this to say about my 3x great-grandmother:

"The death of Mrs. Marie Cardran, wife of Pierre Cardran, occurred yesterday afternoon at her home on Eastern avenue after a short illness. Mrs. Cardran was well known in French circles and was one of the oldest residents of the city. She was aged 78 years. She is survived by her husband and six daughters, Mary Messier, Lucy Legault, Harriet Denault, Mrs. Joseph Bean, Mrs. Josephine Robideau of Lynn, and Mrs. Vina Birt of New York city. She was a member of St. Anne's society. The funeral will be held from her late residence, Sunday noon, at 12:30 o'clock. Services will be held at St. Joseph's church, at 1:30, and the interment will be in St. Joseph's cemetery."

My great-grandmother was only fifteen when her grandmother died and from the looks of things, she had quite the impact on the French population of Haverhill. She had a large family just like her parents in Canada did. Jean Baptiste and Therese passed away in the 1850s. But, their children and grandchildren thrived in both Minnesota and in Massachusetts. Still, one has to wonder if she communicated with her family in that state often. Sure it was hundreds of miles. But, letter writing in those days were a thing. So were train rides.

I hope some day I find a letter or something. Did the family talk despite being so far away? Perhaps they did. There is one way to find out. Ask DNA matches! Couldn't hurt. Here's hoping I find something. Maybe even a picture?

Time will tell, readers. Time will tell.

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 4: Close to Home

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 4's theme is "Close to Home." Is there an ancestor who didn't move far from where he or she was born? Perhaps an unmarried aunt or uncle who always lived with their parents? Maybe you have an ancestor who lived not far from where you live now or you've made a discovery close to home.

Never too far from home

All roads may lead to Haverhill. However, I don't live there. I live in nearby Salem, New Hampshire and have been here for as long as I can remember. That hasn't always been the case. As I said in the introduction blog last year, I have a lot of connections with that city on both sides of my family. That's why the blog has its name. Everyone eventually came here from either the St. Lawrence river valley of Canada or the sun drenched towns of southern Italy. Everyone at one point or another ended up Haverhill, Mass. or in nearby Newburyport.

My grandmothers and great-aunts: All residents of Haverhill!

I was originally going to call the blog "Life in the Valley". It just didn't seem to roll off the tongue. That's okay because in the end everyone in the family at one point or another was a Haverhill resident.

Case in point: My grandmother, Olympia and all of her sisters except for Jennie were born in Haverhill. They lived their lives in the city as they grew up, got married and had families of their own. After the children moved away, the Carrabs sisters stayed in the city. Even then, they weren't too far away from them or each other. I think the furthest away was Josie's kids who lived in Nashua, New Hampshire.

Despite everyone being moderately spread out over the Merrimack valley, the Carrabs sisters still stayed together in the same town. In fact, three of my great-aunts lived in one apartment building together. One sister would live in one apartment and another would live above her. This was the case until 2010 when my great-aunt, Louise passed away.

The Carrabs family in the 1930 US census

The building they lived in was actually the home of their parents, Giuseppe and Clementina. It had been their home since the family came to America. There was a lot of history in that apartment building and I got a real sense of it every time I visited the place on Bartlett Street.

My grandmother ended up living not too far away in a house that my great-grandfather Vincenzo bought. When I would go to each of their houses, I would often be told a story about the family and the house. This would always, always, ALWAYS be accompanied by cookies of some kind. Being a kid, I did not care. =) Sometimes I even felt like something was watching me. Could it have been Giuseppe and Clementina's spirits? I have no idea. Still, actually staying in town had its advantages. It was so easy finding them in the census later on. My grandfather and his family, however, was a little tricky. Finding their names in the census was tricky. However, my dad always made it a point to point out their homes in Haverhill whenever we drove by on the way to grandma's house. That's how I was able to find them!

The Felker clan circa 1949

On my mother's side, my great-grandparents Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault were both born in or lived in Haverhill. Henrietta was actually born in nearby Lynn. I never really had the chance to actually visit the places the Felkers called home because my grandmother lived with my grandfather in Newburyport and they moved around quite a bit.

However, my mother did often point out where the Felkers lived. In fact, my great-aunt, the last of the Felker kids, lives next door to the house she grew up in. Back in the day, everyone lived within walking distance of each other's house. Two of Aunt Elaine's siblings lived either up a hill from her house or down the hill. Some of Henrietta's sisters even lived nearby.

Direct relations are the only ties I have to the city because like I've said many times before. Ancillary relatives lived in or around Haverhill, too, on both sides of the family. To list them all would take forever and a day!

In the end, I guess you could say that I have many strong ties to Haverhill and because of it, it has made my genealogical adventure worlds easier. I've been there many times and genealogy has allowed me to further explore the places my ancestors called home even if it was right next door! My father was born there. I live only a few miles away in Salem and yet the city where everything came together is very close to home. 

52 Ancestors Week 3: Long Line

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 3's theme is "Long Line." Is there a trait or an occupation that seems to have been in your family tree for generations? Is there a line in your genealogy that's been in a particular place for a long, long time? Maybe you have Long as a surname. Be creative! Remember, there is no right or wrong way to interpret the prompt.

The noble and ancient house of Black...Er...I mean...Hamel

Having a family line in one place for centuries can be a blessing for researchers. If everyone is in the same general area, it makes it SO much easier to track everyone down, record their stories and make some serious dents in their research. This is definitely the case with my mother's paternal line. I've talked at length about my grandfather, Robert Eugene Hamel before. However, thanks to both my uncle Bob and my grandmother, Natalie I have traced the Hamel family from Newburyport, Mass to Quebec and finally to Avremesnil, France. That, my friends, was a monumental feat. Here's how it was done.

Robert Eugene Hamel, my grandfather.

When I was younger, I always asked questions about the family. My grandfather told me that I was descended from two of the first two hundred colonists of Quebec. His name was Charles Hamel and he was the son of Francois Hamel and a women whose identity is a cause for some debate. See, some people believe his wife was a woman named Marie Ayotte. Others believe his wife was Catherine Carpentier. It's honestly hard to say because Francois was born on October 1st, 1599 and records in Avremesnil are a bit tricky to come by. This is part of the reason why pre-1600 genealogy is a bit difficult. You have to be sure when it comes to that information. My grandmother erroneously had Francois's death in Quebec. However, there was no proof that he died there.

Charles's wife was a woman by the name of Judith Auvray. It can be said that every Hamel in the United States and Canada can trace their ancestry to Charles and Judith or his brother Jean and his wife, Marie Auvray.

The wife issue was really the only glitch in my grandmother's research. She spent years and years researching the Hamel side for my grandfather and put it all down in a small notebook. The only way to find out for sure is if I were to go to France and check things out for myself. Fortunately, everything else in the book gelled with what I found online in the Quebec Drouin and Tanguay records, Fischier and in data repositories like Nos Origines. I had to have help translating the French. One of these days I have to learn French!

A word of caution. The data in Nos Origines should only be taken with a considerable grain of salt. It's a good starting point. However, what you really, really want to do is back it up with data and scans from the Drouin and Tanguay records or Fischier. Familysearch also tends to have good records from Quebec. Use all of those sources and make sure it meshes with the data on that website!

Data repositories and small errors aside, everything I found in the notebook matched everything found online. At least on the Hamel side of things. Knowing my grandmother, she did NOT use the Internet to compile the information into a notebook. She did a lot of research or had someone help her out. I'm not 100% sure on that part. I think she had help from someone in the Church of Latter Day Saints and finding the information there was relatively easy. All I really did was double-check to make sure things were accurate. Again. I am a bit conservative when it comes to facts. I like things to be accurate! Call it OCD. I don't care. =D

The relationship finder on WikiTree is so helpful!

Since the Hamel line can be traced back for centuries, it's best to just use WikiTree's relationship finder to show how everything ends up connecting rather than have me list and link every single Hamel I am connected to. As you can see we have my grandfather, my great-grandfather, 2x-great grandfather and so on in America.

Once you get past Eugene, you start noticing that everyone stays put in the St. Albans area of Quebec. That's where they were for centuries before my 2x great-grandfather came to America. The location was apparently great for agriculture as it's right along the banks of the St. Lawrence river. Plus its proximity to Montreal helped to make the town a bustling community for centuries. After all, it wasn't just the Hamels who settled there. The Legaults, Gourgons, Cadrans, Bibeaus and countless other French-Canadian families all settled along the St. Lawrence river.

Paper trails can tell you so much about your family line and can help verify notes your grandmother hastily scribbled in a book. What does DNA testing say about the connections? Quite a bit, actually. Once my mother and I tested, we saw a DNA circle form surrounding my 4th great-grandparents, Jean-Louis Hamel and his wife Francoise Morin. My mother and I had so many DNA matches who came from this one couple. It was quite amazing and also went on to further cement my grandmother's research. I haven't even finished adding them all to the tree! Once the DNA circles gave way to the current Thrulines, I was actually able to see the connections a lot easier. It verified some info. And yes, I know they are only as good as peoples' trees. However, things seemed to make sense with many of the connections. The trick, of course, is to use a paper trail to back up the DNA evidence. And that's exactly what I've done.

The Hamel branch yielded a lot of DNA matches. Not so much as the Bibeau one, though. Out of all of my French-Canadian lines, I picked this one to talk about because it's been unbroken since the 1500s and perhaps even earlier! My mother is one of six and my uncle Bob has a son and my cousin has a son. So, you could say that the Hamel line is really ancient and has endured the test of time. The Hamel line is old and I'm glad to be part of it. I just hope one day we can figure out WHO Francois Hamel was married to and settle that once and for all!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 2: Favorite Photo

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 2's theme is "Favorite Photo." This should be a fun week! What is a favorite family photo of yours? If you're thinking, "Oh, but I don't have any old family photos," remember that you are a part of your family history! It doesn't have to be a photo of a great-great-great-grandfather. What about a favorite photo of someone in a more recent generation, like your parents, siblings, or even yourself. Why is it a favorite photo? What is the story behind it?

Look at this photograph....

Oh, no. We are NOT opening with one of the most overplayed songs in the history of music! Sorry. No mp3 of Nickelback's "Photograph" here. That's right up there with "All Star" by Smash Mouth. I know some people may like the song. It's an okay song. It's just been played over, and over and over again. This was made worse by my generation since we tend to use it for high school reunions and stuff. Wouldn't it have been much easier to just go with something like "Graduation" or something by Taylor Swift? At least then we'd know what to expect with her songs.

Anyway, the topic this week is favorite photos. At the time I am writing this blog, I am currently listening to the "Coco" soundtrack and there's a reason for that. One of my favorite pictures reminds me of the main song of the 2017 movie. It's simply called "Remember Me". I am convinced that this song is basically the theme song for all of genealogy regardless of where you or your family came from in the world. This song speaks to all who study the past and those who came before. Give it a listen. I'll wait.

For even if I'm far away, I hold you in my heart...

One of my favorite family pictures of all time is this one. This is a picture of Vincenzo Ferraiolo, his wife Maria Tedesco and their children (from left to right)  Marco and his sister, Nicole. Looking at it now, reminds me of the photo of Miguel Rivera's 2x great-grandparents. You can sort of see why if you've seen the movie.

If not: A picture of Miguel's family is a huge, huge plot point as pictures of deceased relatives on an ofrenda during la Dia de los Muetros or Day of the Dead allows the spirit to cross over. Miguel takes the pic and finds himself in the Land of the dead and has to mend a few broken hearts before he joins his family there in a race against time. It's a really good movie. No wonder it won an Oscar!

According to my great-aunt, this picture was taken shortly after the Ferraiolos arrived in New York in the spring of 1929. They had left their home town of San Pietro a Maida, traveled to Naples and went across the ocean from Italy to a new life in America on board a ship called the Roma.

Vincenzo had made the trip many times. This, however, was a first for my grandfather who was probably three or four, my great-aunt and of course my great-grandmother. As you can see the family is well dressed and posed really well despite enduring a really, really long trip. Can you imagine crossing an ocean with two small children? It couldn't have been easy as the trip took a long time.

How I got the picture in the first place is interesting. I told my great-aunt that I was collecting photos of the family to put on the tree and I wondered if she had any she'd like to share with me. So, over Thanksgiving in 2018, she had her daughter take pictures of the family pictures and e-mailed them to me. This one caught my eye immediately. Everyone looked great and sharply dressed. It was an amazing photo!

I had thought about editing it as I have a history of editing photos and other things. I thought about it because I wasn't a fan of the lines on the photo. But, I figured I'd leave it. I think it adds character and you can still see who's who. You can tell the picture was taken in the late 1920s judging by everybody's outfits. I did try some experiments. But, I was told to just let it be. It's a great copy of a really great photo. Plus my great-aunt gave me such a great gift! How could I edit it? So, what I will most likely do is print it out on super glossy paper. That way it will look like an original photo brought to the 21st century through time and space.

I remember when I got the picture, I showed my brother and he looked at our grandfather and was like "That....That's Jeremy!" Jeremy is my youngest nephew and he does look a lot like Grandpa Marco. It's really cool.

The picture is my favorite out of all the pictures I have because it showed my ancestors arriving in America and it's the only one I have of the entire family. I have two pics of Vincenzo and Maria together. I have pics of Vincenzo with one of his children. Getting pics of all four together is really rare because Maria died in 1943. It's really sad because it was a few years before my father was born. She didn't live long enough to see her grandson. But, her spirit lives on in my great-aunt, my dad, brother and of course myself. It was still nice to see all four together and I hope that there are other pictures like that. My great-aunt still has a ton of pictures I haven't seen and I hope I get to see them soon! Does she have more of Maria? I don't know. But, I'm off to watch "Coco" on Disney +!

"Know that I'm with you the only way that I can be. Until you're in my arms again. Remember me!"

52 Ancestors Week 1: Fresh Start

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 1's theme is "Fresh Start." The themes are meant to be open to interpretation :-) Perhaps you have an ancestor who had to make a fresh start after a loss or setback. Maybe you had to make a fresh start on researching a particular ancestor. (We all have that one person who we thought was an ancestor... and then we discovered we were wrong. Back to square 1!)

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state....

Welcome to the first #52Ancestors blog of 2020! This year's prompts look especially amazing and I've listed them all in the archive for easy access. I'm looking forward to doing quite a few entries. I've got the gears in my head going and I am going to roll out some really cool blogs. Keep your eyes open! It is going to be a great ride!

What shall I talk about this week? Well, the topic is "Fresh Start". I think I should talk about what got me back into genealogy. I think that qualifies as a fresh start. I started on Ancestry back in 2006 and my tree looked like this:

Not the tree of a mighty warrior. Never was a fan of the brown background.

This tree had so many errors and it sat like that for a decade until it finally looked like this:

Above is "old and busted". This is the "new hotness".

That doesn't mean I didn't poke in every once in a while to spruce up the tree. I did. Every time there was a family birth or death, I would add it to the tree and keep it updated. I did some research when I started. I added a source here or there. It wasn't much to write home about. Everyone has some harsh criticisms about their own work and my tree, like my first videos, needed work.

It went on and on like this until the summer of 2017. My uncle Bob randomly asked me if I considered going to geni.com to see if I could find some random bit of information that he needed because he was working on the Hamel side of the tree. I said "Sure". I went there and made a tree. Then I got another great idea. What if I were to expand my work to all the major genealogy sites? I mean it would make sense to go fish in other ponds, right?

So, I thought about and I registered on MyHeritage, FamilySearch and WikiTree. Once I hit up the major sites, things began to unravel on my main tree over on Ancestry. Certain errors were coming to light and I knew I had to fix them.  

Maria Tedesco's REAL parents!!

One of the biggest mistakes I had was having the wrong Tedescos on the tree from the beginning. A user on FamilySearch pointed it out to me and she ended up helping me figure out the Ferraiolo side of the tree. I don't know why I had Francesco Tedesco and Maria Spano for years and years. My great-aunt told me her grandparents were Antonio Tedesco and Domenica Gullo. Why did I have that for so long?! That was so embarrassing!

Well, we're all human and we all make mistakes. It wasn't the biggest mistake on the tree. Or the last. After fixing up the tree in September of 2017, I said to myself that I needed a fresh start. I wasn't going to delete the tree or nuke it from orbit. I needed to do something else. 

1. Get rid of the errors. That was the important thing. Is it OCD? You betcha! But, it's worth it in the long run.

2. Listen to the sage advice others give me.

3. Don't be afraid to ask for help this time!

Truth be told, I was nervous about asking for help back in the day. I didn't know where to go. In 2006, there was very little in the way of videos telling you how to do things. YouTube was brand new and was relegated to being about kitten videos and cute babies. Oof. Man, how times changed. It's 2020 and some babies are ranting about their favorite media not being what they should be. 

With all this in mind, I needed to start over and really do some research. I needed to fix the tree I made in 2006 and put my best foot forward. I haven't really looked back since. As you can tell a lot of things changed from when I did the tree. Now there's less errors because I really, really put in work into it.

The sad part is that since my tree had errors for so long, other users on Ancestry picked up on some of the mistakes in my tree and used them as fact. I changed them and I tried every way I could to tell people I was wrong. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. One of the weirdest, though, was people having my grandfather as being born in Sicily when that wasn't the case. Many trees had that until I informed people it wasn't the case.

All in all, it wasn't as bad a fresh start as I would have thought. I got some advice on what to do to spruce it up. I changed quite a bit. I even looked into things instead of taking them at face value. That's how you do good work and great genealogy. Every now and then, it's a good idea to step back and look at your work and see what can be fixed or done better. I learned that doing videos on YouTube. You really can be your own worst critic. I'm glad that rather than destroying a decade's worth of work, I simply revised it. It just goes to show that any tree with errors can be saved with just a little time and a little effort.

"Math. Science. History. Unraveling the mystery. It all restarted with a big bang."