52 Ancestors Week 39: Should Be a Movie

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 39's theme is "Should Be a Movie." Good movies have good stories at their heart. What ancestor has a story that you think should be a movie?

"All Roads Lead to Haver Hill. I think I said it right...."

This week's prompt is a bit of a no-brainer for me. I have a ton of ancestors whose lives could potentially be a Lifetime original movie or even one made by a director of several blockbusters. I wonder if the Russo brothers will accept a script if I give it to them. I'd even take James Gunn! No way would I take Frances Ford Coppola. Dude doesn't even pronounce "Coppola" the right way! That's way too pretentious for me. 

Coming soon....

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The life of my 3x great-grandfather REALLY should be a movie. Mostly because movies about Italian immigrants moving from Italy to America has been done to death at this point. And while we're on the subject. No. Your last name didn't get changed at Ellis Island as seen in "The Godfather Part II". (Thanks, Jennifer!)

My French-Canadian side has some interesting stories that could be made into movies as well. Perhaps this story could be part one of the "All Roads Lead to Haverhill" trilogy. Directed by the Russo brothers, of course. They know how to handle long arcs!

If you're new to the blog, you'll soon find that I have mentioned Jeremiah Felker on countless occasions. I may even mention him more as time goes by and there's a very good reason for that. Let's begin.

Our story opens on January 7th, 1838 in the town of Raymond, New Hampshire. Martha Smart nurses her newborn son, Jeremiah, as her father watches on. Jeremiah Smart grumbles a bit. He knows that his grandson was born out of wedlock and plans to sue the father, Elias, for custody of the child. Martha reluctantly accepts the plan and names the child after her father.

The movie follows Jeremiah as his mother marries twice in his lifetime. During her marriage to Jonathan West, the south started shooting cannons and America gets plunged into a civil war! Jeremiah's older half-brother, George, answered the call to duty and served the Union army until he is killed in action in 1862. Two years later and after his marriage to Elizabeth Fellows, Jeremiah enlists in the service and serves with the 1st New Hampshire Heavy Artillery. 

After the war, life settled down and he raised his family in Haverhill, Massachusetts. His son, Wilfred, married a young woman named Gertrude Stevens on September 12th, 1891. The marriage was not all sunshine and rainbows, though. Wilfred had an affair with a woman named Anna Pierce WHILE his wife was pregnant with my great-grandfather! The union produced a child named George on February 2nd, 1893. My great-grandfather, Austin, was born just a few months earlier in September of 1892.

Austin and Henrietta in November of 1963.

Austin's life soon became complicated. His parents engaged in a brutal custody battle in 1899. Neither parent won and young Austin was sent to spend his formative years living with his aging grandparents. He spent several years with them before marrying Henrietta Legault, a daughter of two French-Canadian immigrants on November 29th, 1913 at the age of twenty-one. At the age of seventy-five, he probably felt fortunate to witness the happy occasion. 

On January 14th, 1918, he passed away at the age of eighty due to arteriosclerosis. His wife was the informant and she told him to put Joseph Felker in as her husband's father. Joseph was his grandfather on his paternal side. Why she did that is unknown. Perhaps Jeremiah didn't know his father as he died in the 1840s. Perhaps he heard stories and none of them were particularly good. I'm not sure and the only people who could know are long gone.

This is where part one of the "All Roads Lead to Haverhill" trilogy would end.  Part two picks up with Henrietta and she relates the tales of her parents to her daughter, Natalie before she marries Robert Hamel of Newburyport. Part three is where the Italy stuff would be and I would definitely avoid the Godfather references....no matter how tempting it would be. That movie would likely end with my parents getting married.

I think starting the trilogy with Jeremiah makes the most sense to me because his story is sort of the linchpin that got my story going. Think about it. Without him, Austin wouldn't have been living with him in Haverhill. He wouldn't have met Henrietta and there would be a chain of events that cause me to fade from existence like Marty McFly! Great Scott! This is heavy.

Of course like any movie, there should be source material to draw inspiration from. This would be why several movies based on comics and novels do so well. Perhaps one day I'll do just that and write three books about how "All Roads Lead to Haverhill". A guy can dream, right?

See ya next time!

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