52 Ancestors Week 44: Scary Stuff

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 44's theme is "Scary Stuff." Any ghost stories in your family lore? Any relatives live in a haunted house? Of course, you don't have to go with ghosts for the theme. I look forward to seeing how everyone interprets this theme

Most metal header EVER!

    Halloween 2020 is coming and even though the year has been scary by itself, the day (night) is one of my favorite holidays of the year. It's right up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving. Like many kids, I had a fun time trick or treating and since I was a kid in the '80s I dressed up as one of the best Transformers ever. I dressed up as the one and only....Snarl of the Dinobots. What? Did you think I dressed up as Optimus Prime? If only, dear readers. If only. Everyone and their brother dressed up as Prime that year!

    I digress. Last year, I discussed the possibility of my grandmother's ghost still hanging around and the ghost I happened to run into when I went to a wedding in upstate New Hampshire. Check out the blog here.....if you dare! This year, we're going to do things a bit differently. Recently I discovered something moderately scary in my genealogical adventure and I'd love to share it with everyone. I dunno if it's scary but it could be!

In the mood for a swim?

    I was browsing the Newburyport newspaper archives online and I thought I should search for my great-grandparents, Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault.  I know. They lived in Haverhill. Why would they be in a neighboring city? Hmm. Why indeed? Could it be that West Newbury is the only town that separates the two and they are within driving distance? I figured why not. What could I find? What's the harm in looking?

    Well, I found something I thought was a little scary and maybe a little funny given the history of the river. In June of 1930, my great-grandparents and Austin's half brother, George were thrown from their skiff and into the water after it collided with a Coast Guard picket boat.

According to the article, they struck the boat while it was clearing the channel of all craft. There was a thunderstorm coming and a coal steamer wanted to get up river with its cargo of coal. The coast guard cruiser was hanging around several small boats in the water and in the confusion, the skiff hit the larger boat and capsized! The three victims were tossed overboard and a sailor named Norman O'Brian dove into the water and assisted my great-grandmother, first. Huh. And they say chivalry is dead.  (Wait. It was 1930. Chivalry wasn't dead, yet. It was on life support.)

Gross....

    The reason why this could be a little scary is because my grandmother was three years old at the time. She could have easily had been on that boat with them and most three year olds don't know how to swim. I'm sure Sailor Normie would have saved her first. But, still! It's amazing how one single event can change the course of history. Imagine if she DID go! I'd....rather not think about it to be honest.

    At least everyone was fine. I wish the article was a bit more specific about where in the river they were. As you know, I grew up near the river and my parents have a boat docked in Salisbury. From the sound of things, it looks like the incident may have occurred at the mouth of the river. That's where the Coast Guard station is. That's where big ships like that coal steamer would have to enter the river.

    To this day there are small craft advisory buoys around the mouth to protect small boats from much bigger ones and there are lanes in and out of the river people have to go through in order to get where you're going. The river is also known for being one of the most treacherous rivers in the northeast. It's not a good place for a skiff! Even in the comfort of the cabin of my dad's boat, I was still knocked around quite a bit coming home from a fishing expedition while it was sunny and warm! The mouth gets extremely choppy even on warm sunny days! That's why if you really want to use a small boat, you go up the river. Do not go down stream! The article above is one reason why!

    Another scary thought is that during this time period the Merrimack River was NOT clean at all.  During the 1930s, it was still used to power mills from Concord, NH to Newburyport, Mass. Imagine the pollutants going downstream and into the ocean. Gross. Even when I was a kid, I swam in the river like once or twice and that was after cleaning efforts were made in the 1970s and 1980s. The river is a bit cleaner now thanks to the Clean Water Act. But, there are still guidelines enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. To this day they're still fishing cars from the river. It even gets gross looking when it rains. Time will tell if that river is ever pristine again. Upriver seems to be okay. Downstream still has a ways to go.

    I've told my mother and her brothers and sisters about the story and they all laughed....which was oddly unsettling. My family is weird. I've gotten used to it. My uncle said that he and his brothers and sisters probably used the same skiff when they fished for flounder in the mouth. That doesn't surprise me. Wooden ships are built to last. My mother told me about how they dug up clams at the beach and use them as bait.

    Reading the story gives me a sobering thought. A slight change could have altered history forever. Where was my grandmother during this afternoon of excitement on the Merrimack? She was probably being looked after by a family member back in Haverhill. I'd rather not think of her going on the trip with them.

   

    The main takeaway here is to always have a life jacket when you are boating and to not hit a coast guard cruiser. That's true in any time period! That and to not swim in the Merrimack unless you really, really have to! Gross.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 43: Quite the Character

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 43's theme is "Quite the Character." The clown. The eccentric. The one who follows the beat of a different drummer. Who is that person in your family tree?  

I may have played too much Super Smash Bros.

Picking the clown or the eccentric in my family is a bit of a trick. Who's responsible for my sense of humor?! Is it my dad with his jokes? Is it my mom with her sarcasm? I honestly don't know because as a family we've had a lot of laughs. This extends outward to my extended family, too. My cousins are all a little loony in various ways. Maybe we're all just crazy? There's got to be something in the water here in the Merrimack Valley. I won't say I was the class clown in school. I won't deny it, either. =)

I might have to go outside the box on this one and go with various friends of the family who were like family to me. Back in August, I blogged about the chosen family. In it, I talked about how family friends Peter and Mary Matorian watched over my brother and I while my parents were at work. They were a great couple. But, they were also quite the characters! That's not who I am going to talk about.

Hey! It's cold out here!

Meet Alfred Joseph Coppola. He was DEFINITELY quite the character. Trust me. He was born in 1939 in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Joseph Coppola and Virginia Zappala. He was an insurance agent by trade. But, despite the dryness of his occupation, he could tell you some good stories and some great jokes. Jokes, I don't think I should repeat!

My parents met him ages ago in the distant year of 1979! He was always a brother to my father because both were only children. Because of that, my brother and I always called him "Uncle Al" and his wife "Aunt Connie".  Their kids became like my cousins and along with another Italian "uncle" and his kids we became.....The Salami Club!

I'm not sure where "The Salami Club" name came from. I'm 99% sure it was his idea. 

Now the reason why I picked him for the "Quite the character" prompt is simple. Uncle Al loved to troll me. For example, on my 21st birthday he gave me twenty-one one dollar bills. When I saw the wad of cash, I was excited. Who wouldn't be? I had just turned 21. I was legally allowed to partake in adult beverages under American law. Uncle Al said to me "Chris, I have something for you!" He takes out this wad of cash and I was like "AWESOME!" Money is good. Money gets you stuff.

I look at the stuff and see that it was all one dollar bills! His troll level was expert.

The Salami Club circa 1979.

Uncle Al wasn't just a joker. He was a good guy and even though we wasn't related to us, he and my dad had a lot in common. One time I was visiting and he and my father took a long walk around the block. His daughter, Jennifer, and I noticed something odd. Both he and my dad were walking at the same pace, cantor and wobble. They had the same exact walk! It was hilarious!

When they came back in the house, I quickly told my dad and Al that they had the same walk. Al said "Hey, It's an Italian thing. What do ya want?"

Aside from his jokes and everything, he was a great person to talk to about any topic. He was a great fisherman, like my father, and a gracious host whenever we stopped by and that was quite frequently! The family would come over for Christmas eve dinner. We would go over for New Year's Eve. We would have a lot of fun. 

One Christmas eve, I got a present from another one of my parents' friends. It was this bright red plastic periscope from Fisher Price. I was like fifteen at the time. I look at it and looked at my parents in confusion. I didn't want to be rude. Al said "Hey, you can still use it to peak around corners or something."

I said "It's not very conspicuous! I think I'd be spotted easily!"

"Well, it's the thought that counts!"

He had an excellent point of course. He always did. He passed away in 2017 and I still keep in touch with his family. The things I remember the most about Uncle Al was that he always had a joke, a funny story or a gag to pull on me.  He was a nice guy and always happy to be a surrogate uncle to my brother and I since we didn't have any Italian aunts or uncles. He was the best and I still miss him. 

That twenty-one one dollar bills gag. That was hilarious! 

The grumpy old Italian men. Sam, Carl, Al and my dad.

52 Ancestors Week 42: Proud

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 42's theme is "Proud." Who is an ancestor that you are proud of? What about an ancestor who did something they should have been proud of? Maybe a discovery that you're proud you made because it was so hard to find?

Pride gets you a participation trophy! KUDOS!

Pride is a very interesting emotion. Too much of it and it counts as one of the seven deadly sins. Not enough and people wonder if you're ever happy about anything. The trick, like most things in life, is to find a healthy balance between one extreme or the other. In genealogy, though, I've been proud of many things I've found and even prouder of certain ancestors of mine. I'm actually proud of all of them. But, there are two special ones who I am definitely proud of!

Who is that adorable baby? ;)

 My paternal grandparents, Marco Ferraiolo and Olympia Carrabs are the ones I'm really, truly proud of. I'm not saying I'm not proud of the others. I am. But, let me explain why those two stand out among the rest. 

We start with my grandpa Marco. I've already talked about how he was born in San Pietro a Maida, Italy in 1925 to Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco. In 1929, his father sent for his wife and two children who were living there to come live with him in Haverhill, Massachusetts. 

At four years old, Marco traveled across the Atlantic with his mother and six year old sister and once he came to America the family made a life for themselves in the city.

It couldn't have been easy. As a child, he had to learn English quickly and adapt to the American way of life. He likely had to face discrimination because there were a lot of anti-Italian sentiment in the first half of the twentieth century.  I'm not sure how prevalent it was in Haverhill at the time. It still had to have been rough for him and his parents. Upon further research, I've found that overall Italians were not considered white until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Italians and immigrants in general had a very hard time dealing with discrimination and prejudice.

In the end, Marco ended up doing very well. He grew up and enlisted as a paratrooper in the second world war. In the letters he wrote back to his sister, he explained what being a paratrooper was like. I mentioned this before several times. He was scared. But, he didn't let the fear control him and I'm proud of him for that. He even earned a Purple Heart. He left the service as a private and that's still something to be proud of. He served in Italy. So, you could say he was attempting to free his birth country from the clutches of Benito Mussolini! HAH! I found a loophole! You can't take that away from me! 

Marco also made it possible for his son, my father, to go to college. Since that was something he never did. He got to see his son become a dentist, get married and have two grandsons. Pretty sweet deal.  My father ended up being a first generation Italian-American as his father was born in Italy and his mother was born in Massachusetts as the daughter of two Italian immigrants. 

Grandma Ollie, glass ceiling smasher

Olympia Carrabs, like her husband Marco, was the offspring of Italian immigrants who lived in Haverhill. However, there were several key differences. Her parents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were born in Gesualdo, Italy. That town is far from San Pietro as it's in Campania with 344 kilometers between the towns!

I'm proud of my grandmother because she was a working mother at a time when most women were expected to be stay-at-home housewives. She and her husband worked very hard to make a great life for their son.

Grandma Ollie worked for AT & T as a supervisor and was a member of the Pioneers of AT & T and graduated high school in the late 1930s. 

During that time period, it was unusual for women to be away from home and learning about various things in school. But, like my other grandmother, she stuck with school and graduated. Not bad, huh?

After my grandfather's death in 1983, she still managed to be both grandmother AND grandfather to my brother and I. She lived by herself in her own house until the day she died. But, she never seemed to let loneliness get to her. She always had a smile and was always happy to see us and tell us stories. We lived not to far from her so we frequently visited her and her sisters also stopped by very frequently. She was never alone and had great stories to tell. Not to mention great cooking. 

My grandparents make me proud of my Italian heritage. I've learned about their struggles and while it definitely wasn't easy growing up in a New England town, you can bet that they made the best of any situation because they had family with them. It isn't just a saying that "family is everything". It's actually very true. 

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 41: Newest

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 41's theme is "Newest." Who is the "newest" ancestor you've found? Most recent immigrant? Newest discovery you've made?

Open the treasure chest and see what's inside!

Last week, we discussed how I got the oldest picture of my grandfather. Now, we're moving onto something new. I actually made a couple new discoveries recently. Let's not waste any time and get right to it! 

First up, readers might remember me talking about how I received a couple really heavy boxes over the summer. Seriously, they must have weighed at least forty pounds each. Inside were various pictures and documents. I've mentioned a few here and there in the blog. I never really DOVE into its contents with everyone. Let's take a little trip shall we?

Alfred Hamel in his "Wut" pose.

 The picture to the left is one of the many, many photos I've found. It's very cool and I swear my great-grandfather Alfred Hamel is presenting some sort of attitude in that photo. Hand on his hip. Impatient look. Yeah. Sounds like someone inherited that attitude. Won't say who. ;) 

Of course, he might just be mildly annoyed at the photographer. It was the early 1900s. Taking a photo back then took a very long time. You couldn't exactly get them developed at the local photo mart. Wow, that dated myself. To the kids at home, that's what we used before iPhones.

My mother and I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out which conflict he was in. She thought it was the Spanish-American War at first. One tiny problem with that. The Spanish-American War occurred from April 1898 to that August. During that time, Alfred was two years old. I doubt a two-year old would be involved in THAT kind of war. No, it'd be a war over naptime. 

Okay. So, what war was he involved in? America has been involved in many wars. Alfred was clearly in an uniform. After finding several more pictures of him and his comrades in arms, my mother and I found a very interesting document which shed some light on the subject.

Now what could this be?

This document was found all rolled up and required at least two people and a toolbox to hold straight while I took a picture of it. This, my friends, is a special commendation presented to Alfred Hamel for his service at the Mexican border in 1918. Now, was there a conflict going on then? Aside from World War I? Yes. 

The Mexican Border War from 1910 to 1919 could be the conflict discussed in the document. The dates match up. The conflict itself was over Mexican rebels attacking towns in New Mexico. The certificate was given to Alfred on June 11th, 1919 in the city of Boston.

That was impressive to me. Not nearly as impressive as the next thing we found! Check out all of these medals!

Those are some quality medals and awards he had. It's no wonder my grandfather saved them. He actually saved everything. And I DO mean everything. He even saved the electric bills from his father's fix-it shop in Newburyport! That was too funny! Yes, those were actually in the box with this stuff.

Along with the certificate, there was his enlistment record from World War I and a few other mementos. We have a 100 yr old manual for how to repair an engine! Like I said. My grandfather saved everything. Nothing was ever thrown away. 

To say that this is only the tip of the iceberg is a bit of an understatement. I still have more things to dig through in the other box. That box, we think, is more my grandmother's things than anything. I've already showcased a few of the photos here. We shall see what else is in there.

Speaking of my grandmother, for a while it seemed that I couldn't find her parents' grave. I asked the hive mind on Find a Grave to help me find the tombstone for Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault. A user on the site went to Walnut cemetery in Haverhill and took a picture of the stones. 

The Felker grave in Walnut cemetery.

I thanked them so much for their hard work. With the human malware, it's hard for anyone to get out and do genealogy. This wasn't the only stone users found, though. Another user went to St. Mary's cemetery in Newburyport and took a picture of my 2x great-grandfather Joseph Laplante's stone! 

I'm eternally grateful that the users found the graves. Now, I just need to get Antoine's and I'll be all set! Though, I admit the graves of my ancestors in Italy would be just as cool/interesting, too.

It's honestly amazing to me how nice some people can be on the Internet. I wonder if being around the YouTube crowd jaded me. Nah.... ;) Some people can be jerks. Some people can be completely amazing. It just depends on the person!

So, those were the newest discoveries I've made on my genealogical adventure. I'm sure that in the coming months I'll be finding more things. When I do, I'll be sure to share them with everyone here. Until next time!