52 Ancestors Week 18: Where there's a Will

Week 18's theme is "Where There's a Will." This can be a fun theme! Maybe the will you're thinking of is a legal document. (There are certainly some intriguing finds in wills, such as my ancestor who left money to provide for the education of his daughters.) Another way to approach it would be an ancestor who was strong-willed or tenacious. Could there be an ancestor named Will?

In brightest day.....

In brightest day. In blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power--Green Lantern's light! 

In DC comics' lore, the Green Lantern Corps uses the color green to symbolize willpower. Other colors symbolize other parts of the emotional spectrum including anger, avarice, fear and hope. Being a Marvel fan, I've always respected DC's characters and the writers' expansion of the mythos. You still can't beat "with great power, there must  also come great responsibility", though. Need to give Stan "The Man" Lee some credit! What does any of this have to do with genealogy? Plenty if you REALLY think about it.

Came to America eleven years before GL debuted.

Our ancestors had to have had a certain amount of willpower to get them from point A to point B. Did they have a Green Lantern ring? No. However, you can't deny that you needed to have some sort of drive to cross vast oceans or move clear across the continent. Take my great-grandparents on my dad's side for example.

Vincenzo Ferraiolo, Maria Tedesco, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were all born in southern Italy. They all came to the United States and settled in Haverhill, Massachusetts without knowing the language. Why did they do it? What made them leave Italy?

Well, for starters Vincenzo had family living in Haverhill at the time of his arrival. His aunt and uncle lived there and most likely helped pay the way for their nephew to visit. He ended up going back to Italy to get married and returned a few years later with his wife and family.

You hear this story all over genealogical circles or even in casual conversations all the time. Someone has a friend or family member in another part of the world and they invite them from "the old country" to stay for a while. Sometimes even permanently. Sometimes it was only for a job. In Vincenzo's case, it seemed like he was visiting family and if you're Italian you know that "la famiglia" means everything to us. So, the Ferraiolos' willpower was based solely on familial connections from what I've learned. There could be more to the story. It probably doesn't involve cosmic powered trinkets.

The Carrabs clan!

In Giuseppe and Clementina's case, I'm not 100% sure why they left Italy and what drove them and literally their entire family to settle in Massachusetts. Giuseppe didn't travel alone. He left with his wife and young child. His brothers and sister left for Massachusetts, too, leaving his parents and the rest of his family behind. Clementina's brothers and sisters even came to America! What prompted such a mass exodus? Well, let's take a look.

According to various ship manifests, Giuseppe made several trips with his family from Italy to America. His last one was in 1913. The first world war started on July 28th, 1914. However, there were rumblings of war throughout Europe before the first shot was fired. Did the Carrabs family see the writing on the wall and decided to leave because of trouble in Europe? I'm not sure.

We do know that both he and Vincenzo served the United States during the war.  Did he want to leave and help liberate Italy from a threat? It is something to think about and probably something I should look into.

In any case, plenty of our ancestors have the same story. Willpower drives us to do certain things. Do we take the bus or drive to work? Do we do this or that? The drive is there in all of us. In the end, I definitely have the willpower to seek the answers I am looking for in my research. I've even got a Green Lantern ring. =) So, I got that going for me!!

So much nerd cred this week. See ya next time!

52Ancestors Week 17: Land

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17's theme is "Land." Farming ancestors, homesteaders, and military bounty land claimants are all on deck this week. Who does "land" make you think of?

With your powers combined....

We're finally here! The last of the elemental blogs! If you want to read them, check them out here: Water was about Rings Island Marina and my adventures there. Fire  was about the fire needed to travel across vast distances. Air was about something interesting I found about my grandfather who was a paratrooper during the second world war. What should I write about this week for "Land"? Well...

Vegetable prison

I hinted about my parents' garden before in the harvest blog from September of 2019. That was written at the tail end of the gardening season. Here we are in late April and that, my friends, is usually when the fun starts. It's around this time that we start thinking about planting various things in the garden. In late April, we usually start tilling the soil and plant stuff like potatoes. By May, we toss everything in there we can think of. These would be plants such as basil and thyme and veggies like tomatoes, peppers and green beans.

Right. So, how did all of this get started? What prompted my parents to make gardening such a major hobby of theirs? It's hard to say. My parents always had a garden of some sorts. I want to say it started really taking off in the early 1990s. That was when I was involved with cross country and running in general. My mother always told me that we grew vegetables because we would know where our food came from and let's face it fresh basil makes the BEST pesto sauce. I may be biased here. =) She may have a point, though. Fresh vegetables always tended to make everything better and nothing and I mean NOTHING beats the smell of fresh tomato sauce cooking for like seven hours inside your house. So good! There's something to be said for fresh tomatoes because my teammates on the cross country team asked for it all the time! 

Want some tomatoes?

I ran cross country all throughout high school from 1993 to 1997 and my mother would make tomato salad for the team to have during parties or something to snack on before meets. She would cut the tomatoes, sprinkle basil and garlic on it and have it soak in a pan of olive oil. They were so good that this conversation usually took place before the home meets:

Coach: Litchfield runs a good game. But, it's important that we keep energized. I think we have a good chance at beating them since we're on our home turf. The course is nice and neat. We definitely can win.

Everyone: YEAH! 

Coach: Chris?

Me: Yeah, Rhoades?

Coach: Did your mom bring any of those tomatoes? We probably could use some.

Me: *laugh* Yeah, she did. Don't worry about it.

Rhoades loved the tomatoes and so did the rest of the team. There really is something to be said for homemade tomato salad. It wasn't exactly hard to make. That's probably not the point. The point is that we had fresh veggies to help us with our game. The coach really didn't like having us have pizza before a meet. Makes sense. Your body would be digesting that as you're trying to run in the woods. That's a discussion for health blogs. 

Years later my mother and I ran into Coach Robert Rhoades shortly before he passed away and he jokingly asked if she still made those delicious tomato salads. She said she did and he laughed. I was amazed that he actually remembered since it had been over ten years since he last had them. It just goes to show just how good homegrown vegetables are. That's definitely a lesson you can learn from this story. If you have something homegrown, it's going to be in your memories for a long time to come. 

My grandparents more than likely passed down the value of homegrown food to my parents as they even had gardens of their own. Learning how to grow food is something that's been passed down throughout the centuries and is probably one of the most important things you can teach someone aside from fishing. Now, what will happen with the Ferraiolo garden in 2020? It's hard to say as we haven't planted anything. Everything's in the planning stages and I'd honestly really would like Mother Nature to cooperate! I will keep everyone posted and if I could I would definitely send you all some of that delicious tomato salad.

See you next time!

P.S. The tomato salad was technically Caprese salad without the mozzarella slices. So good. =D

52 Ancestors Week 16: Air

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 16's theme is "Air." This theme might be a bit tricky, as most of us don't have pilots or hot air balloonists in our family tree. Be creative. Think of place names, such as Mt. Airy or the "Big Sky" area of Montana. Or "toss it all up in the air" and pick someone at random!

Blue skies.....Smiling at me.....

I think Amy missed an opportunity to talk about an ancestor who was full of hot air. But, that wouldn't be polite and we do like to be polite here at All Roads Lead to Haverhill. Sometimes. Still, we probably all have a relative who is late that. That's beside the point. Let's talk about air! Well, it's partially nitrogen and oxygen. It's odorless, colorless and plants generate...Oh. Right. This isn't a scientific blog. In that case....

Private Marco Ferraiolo and dog.

I've already talked about how my grandfather, Marco Ferraiolo was a paratrooper in World War II. He saw combat in the European theater (Italy) and in North Africa. As a paratrooper, he flew in many missions with the 101st Airborne. He wrote my great-aunt (His sister) detailed letters about his exploits with the 101st. Sufficed it to say, they got pretty graphic.

In one letter, he talked about what it was like to jump from an airplane and how you have to count before you open your parachute.  He talked about how he lost a friend in a jump. It was pretty surreal reading the letter and actually looking at his handwriting--something I never saw before.

A few weeks ago, I found something else from my grandfather's stint in the army that I never saw before. Ancestry recently updated their World War II database with colored images of various draft cards. Naturally, my grandfathers' profiles both received new hints. I checked out my grandpa Robert first and saw nothing new or out of the ordinary. I then saw my grandpa Marco's profile and saw this. His US WWII Hospital Admission card.

When I found it, I checked with my parents to see if this was accurate. We knew he was injured in the war. We just wasn't sure how. The Admission card had a lot of great information in it which explained a lot about his time in the service to the United States army.

If you look closely, you can see a great deal of information. His rank. His age. When he was admitted. Apparently, he got shrapnel to the knee and needed to be operated on immediately. He was discharged in June of 1944 married my grandma Ollie in June of 1946.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Finding more about my paternal grandfather's past means a lot to me than anything else to be honest. He died when I was four and I guess that really effected me. Like I said before, I had people tell me about him all of my life. My entire family told me stories about him and it helped to fill that void. And that's a good thing since I lost him at such a young age.

Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered! See you next time!

52 Ancestors Week 15: Fire

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 15's theme is "Fire." Fire played a crucial role in our ancestors's lives, whether it was providing heat for homes and cooking or providing power for forges and engines. Of course, fire can also be destructive, both on a personal level or in our research (such a record loss in a courthouse fire). Think, too, about place names that make you think of fire. (One of the best names I've seen for a cemetery is Hell's Half Acre Cemetery in Whitley County, Indiana.)

We didn't start the fire. It was always burning as the world's been turning!

"Hell's Half Acre Cemetery" certainly sounds like a badass name for a cemetery doesn't it? Of course there are a ton of places named after Hell. Hell's Kitchen in New York City is notable for comic fans as that's the home of Marvel's man without fear, Daredevil. Hell's Kitchen is also the name of a  cooking show by chef Gordon Ramsay. There's no doubt about it. Fire and Hell by extension has been ingrained in our media and our lives in general. However, there's another type of fire we should talk about. The fire which drives an ancestor to go from one place to another. That, my friends, is a different type of fire!

You're probably sick of seeing this image showing
up as a hint on Ancestry.

When we talk about that ancestor crossing the Atlantic, most people conjure up imagery of a wooden sailing ship on a perilous journey across the sea. What drove people to make that journey in the first place? What put the fire in their belly and had them decide that "France/England is no longer the place I want to be. I want to get away from here!"

For many people religious persecution forced people to set sail. This mass migration would later be known as the Great Puritan Migration and it lasted between the 1620s and 1640s. One person who made the trip from England during that time period was my 11th great-grandfather, Tristram Coffin Sr even though he wasn't a Puritan himself.

Out of all of my ancestors who took part in one of humanity's largest migrations, Tristram was probably one of the more notable ones. He has a page on Wikipedia! That's got to count for something! Yeah, right. I have a page on IMdb and I'm a Z-grade Internet personality. Still, we shouldn't discount his life because he WAS a big deal.

Ponce de Leon's got nothing on me!

Tristram was born to Peter Coffin and Joanna Kember  on March 11th, 1608 in ye olde England. His reasoning for leaving his homeland after marrying his wife Dionis Stephens is somewhat up for debate. While he wasn't a Puritan, he likely crossed the ocean at age thirty-seven because of the crisis brewing between King Charles I and Parliament. He was one of the landed gentry and wanted no part of the drama unfolding in London.

After arriving in the New World, he wasn't done making a name for himself. He helped to settle the city of Haverhill, Massachusetts in the 1640s after finding nearby Salisbury and Newbury. By 1643 he had a tavern and eventually left to help settle the island of Nantucket where he'd spend the remainder of his life.

Tristram was notable for helping to settle many great colonies which would give rise to the cities my French-Canadian and Italian ancestors called home. The obvious one being Haverhill. Whatever his real reason for leaving England was, you can believe he and his family definitely had an impact on New England. Check out some of his notable descendants:

1. Levi Coffin, the president of the Underground Railroad.

2. Elizabeth Coffin, daughter of a wealthy merchant from Nantucket, was mother of the prominent Massachusetts industrialists Henry Coffin Nevins and David Nevins, Jr

3. Elizabeth Coffin (1850-1930), an artist, educator and Quaker philanthropist, was known for her paintings of Nantucket and for helping revive Sir Isaac Coffin's school with a new emphasis on craft.

Not bad, huh? There's more to Tristram's story than I've covered here. His wife supposedly brewed the best beer in town. He made many deals over the course of his life and certainly ingrained himself in local history.

Growing up I only heard about the Hamels who helped settle Quebec in the early 1600s. I had no idea who Tristram was until much, much later. After reading up on him and his family's exploits in New England, I get a better understanding of what it must have been like sailing across the ocean and dealing with the colonial hardships of early New England. Sure I read about it in history class. But, now you get a very real sense of it because the actions somehow become more real when you have a personal stake in what was going on in the world.

It took a lot of guts and certainly fire in your belly to make the trip to the New World. You have to appreciate it even though sometimes some ancestors may not have been altruistic. Reading up on Tristram gives me a sense that he was. It's certainly an interesting story and like I said his founding of Haverhill and other Merrimack Valley towns paved the way for my Quebecois and Italian ancestors to settle in the area by the 20th century.

As the song goes, we really didn't start the fire. It was always burning as the world was turning.