52 Ancestors Week 52: Resolution

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 52's theme is "Resolution." Are you thinking about research goals for next year? Who or what are you wanting to find?

Don't you just love fan charts?

   Looking back, I'm going to think of 2020 as the year where everything came to a halt. That's probably the best way to describe one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. Politely, anyway. Our lives were put on hold because of the pandemic and while we couldn't do many of the things we wanted to do, there were still some amazing discoveries to be had. Even though I was stuck at home for the most part here's a short list of some of the discoveries I made.

Alfred Francis Hamel

    Last summer, my aunt delivered a couple boxes from my grandfather Robert's house and inside was a veritable treasure trove of photos, medals and all kinds of great things. Not to be outdone, there were plenty of things from my grandmother Natalie's side of the family too mixed in the boxed up goodness. There were so many pictures and documents in those two boxes that I've only just begun to scratch the surface of what was inside.

    Of course that wasn't thing I discovered. Some time later someone on FamilySearch uploaded a family photo and in center of the picture was my 2x great-grandmother, Gertrude Frances Stevens! That was amazing as I never saw her picture before. Sufficed it to say I was quite excited when I saw her. I was also a bit amazed at how much she looked like my mother. Genetics, man. It's always a giveaway. Most of the time.

    

    Discoveries weren't confined to just my mother's side of the tree. I found and recorded new ancestors for Antonio Tedesco, my 2x great-grandfather after I forced a Thruline change on AncestryDNA. I talked to potential DNA matches, who are going to take a DNA test. I found and edited a better version of the Ferraiolo family photo from 1929. I even found ancestors for my 4x great-grandfather, Giuseppe Suverato who was born in Maida, Italy.

All new, All edited!

    Photographs seemed to be the theme for the last year because I found a lot of them. There are some more that I wish to find. I know it sounds greedy and I should be thankful for what I have found. But, I like putting faces to the names. It brings people who have been gone for so long back to life! So, for this next year one of my resolutions will be finding photos of my 2x great-grandparents, Antoine Legault and Lucie Cadran.

    I'll be the first one to admit that finding Antoine's picture is going to be a little difficult for a few reasons. He died in 1901 and photography was considered very expensive back in those days. It's possible. Don't get me wrong. It may end up being a tin-type photo and that's fine. I just would like to know what the man looked like. My great-aunt might have a picture of him and a second cousin did get a box of photos from her. So, my resolution would be to meet up with the second cousin (As planned last year) and see if there is a picture of him. I hope there is one!

   

                                                 Another one of my resolutions has to do with finding the time to get to the Haverhill library. This one is a no-brainer. We've all been missing libraries haven't we? I know I have. Once things get back to normal, you can bet everything that I will be one of the first to open the doors and park it at the nearest computer. One thing I'll need is a list of all the things I'll want to look up. I'll have to make multiple trips of course. There's no way I can discover everything in the space of an hour or two. I'd need more time and there just isn't enough hours in the day!

            My biggest resolution is and will be for a long time is trying to find out the identity of my 2x great-grandmother, Domenica Gullo's parents. I have yet to discover their identities and I am hopeful I will find some information. I was able to find some Tedesco info. Now I need to find more. The game plan is to ask for Antonio and Domenica's marriage document or ask cousins. Now that I have a plan I can probably, FINALLY, get this resolution taken care of. I hope! Keep those fingers crossed!

       I'm not sure what other resolutions I have at the moment. For right now, though, I just want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. I'm hopeful that next year will be light years better than this one was. Even though I made some discoveries, there's still more I wish I was able to do. My resolutions are on the relatively simple side because I want to make them more attainable. I hope I discover more and I am sure I will! See you next year!

52 Ancestors Week 51: Winter

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 51's theme is "Winter." Here in the northern hemisphere, we will be welcoming winter on December 21. Yay! (I say "Yay" not because I love winter -- I don't!! -- but because it's the shortest day of the year... meaning we get more daylight after that! Yay!) How would winter have affected your ancestors? Any Snow, Winters, or Frosts in the family tree?

O Rly?

    Next week, winter 2020 will finally arrive and here in New Hampshire we're already feeling the icy grip of old man winter. Sufficed it to say winters in New England can be pretty cold and unforgiving. I remember shoveling snow and my face hurting while moving heavy loads of white stuff. Ever shovel and feel like you get an ice cream headache at the same time? That's winter in New England in a nutshell! It's no wonder my grandparents went to Florida for the winter. And that my friends is how you do a segue!

    I'm not going to deny it. My paternal grandparents were snowbirds before being a snowbird was cool. They were hipster snowbirds! For those who don't know, snowbirds are people who live in Florida for three months out of the year before moving back up north. Grandpa Marco and Grandma Ollie fit the description to a t. We even visited her and her sisters while they stayed in the Sunshine state and it was from their house my family and I went to Disneyworld, Epcot and Sea World. My adventures in the happiest place on Earth are going to be put aside for another time. Let's just say getting stuck on Space Mountain was probably one of the highlights of that trip!

Who is that ADORABLE baby? ;)

    Grandpa Marco built a house in Stuart, Florida and my grandparents called it their winter home up until he passed away in 1983. That didn't stop Grandma from enjoying it, though! Despite her husband passing away relatively young, she still went to the house with her sisters. That showed a LOT of strength. Can you imagine the memories of that place? 

    I have vague memories of visiting that house since I was little the last time I set foot in there. I remember the house in Haverhill a bit more than that house in Florida. I do remember my grandmother and her sisters all standing around the kitchen island eating and talking much like the did in her house back in Haverhill. Some things never change. Little old Italian ladies are always gonna find a way to have a conversation!

    Another way to beat the cold was to admit you had enough just move to Florida. That's exactly what my other grandparents did! Grandpa Robert and Grandma Natalie lived in Holiday and it was there that they spent the rest of their lives. Don't get me wrong, they still visited family up north from time to time. Just when the grass was green and there was no snow.

    They enjoyed growing orchids, golfing and going to flea markets. My grandfather was also a regular at the local Red Lobster. Personally, I'd rather have the lobster straight from Maine. But, I guess if you want a taste of home, you go for the next best thing! And once my grandmother passed away, several of my cousins would visit our grandfather and I think that made him feel better about being in Florida.

     I can see the appeal in going south for the winter even if the sun is like three inches from your face down there. A person would just want to get away from the cold temperatures of the north. It's no wonder many older people decide to visit or stay in warm states like Florida or Arizona. Living in New England in winter, I can't really blame them for wanting to go away for three months or even permanently. The important thing to remember, though, is that even though my grandparents went to Florida, they still maintained ties up here and would visit family. That's always going to be the big thing to me. 

     I suppose it could be said that growing up in New England was a great incentive for my grandparents to go to Florida. They've dealt with it growing up and who can blame them for wanting to get away from it all. Besides, the beaches are AMAZING!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 50: Witness to History

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 50's theme is "Witness to History." It's important to put our ancestors in context with their time and surroundings. What would your ancestor have witnessed? I encourage you to think beyond the "big events." I think about my farming ancestors and the changes they would have seen in equipment and getting their crops to market.

We didn't start the fire....

    You're going to have that Billy Joel song stuck in your head for a week now and I'm not sorry! Of course I am a bit partial to the Marvel version from last year. Wow. 2019. That seems like ages ago, doesn't it? It's safe to say that we're all witnesses to history--even now as a pandemic ravages most of our planet leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. I'd rather not talk about that as I try to keep my blog light. But, these are the times that try everyone's soul. 

    Major events have occurred throughout our lifetime. There's no avoiding it! In my case, I remember the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986. I was in first grade and a teacher from my state was supposed to see the stars. Fate had other plans. I remember going to classes at Merrimack College the day two planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11th, 2001. Events like these are etched into our minds and into our collective consciousness. We always remember where we were, who we were with and even what we had for breakfast that morning. These are all major events of course. What about the small ones? 

 

Witness to many changes in Haverhill!

    Haverhill, Massachusetts has certainly seen small changes over the years that transformed it from a small town along the Merrimack river to an industrial powerhouse earning it the nickname "The Queen Slipper City". You can see the change when you look at the city in the census. I recently started a Haverhill One Place Study on WikiTree. Check it out here. If you look at the census portion, you'll see that the town had a very dramatic growth in population in the early 20th century. It dipped a couple times. But, it always managed to bounce back!

    Witnessing all of the changes from 1920 onward was my grandmother, Olympia. She was born a little over a century ago in Haverhill in April of that year. While she was growing up, she had a front row seat at some of the technological advancements that we definitely take for granted today and even natural disasters that earned their place in local history books.

    Decades before the infamous blizzard of 1978, there was the Haverhill flood of 1936 that killed more than 100 people and left more than 400,000 around the northeast homeless. Witnessing this was my grandmother, who at this point had just graduated Haverhill High a year earlier. What happened was that the Merrimack River overflowed during a storm and whole swaths of the town was inundated with rain. This caused the river to flood whole portions of cities and towns in and around the Merrimack valley.

191 Merrimack St. Flooded.

    The year 1936 was also the height of the Great Depression. So, you can imagine that the flood did not make things easy for the citizens of Haverhill.  My grandmother wasn't the only eyewitness to this event in my family. My other grandmother, my great-grandparents and their relatives saw what was happening firsthand. Can you imagine what was going through their minds? A majority of them were working low income jobs at factories and whatnot since they were immigrants. They probably feared for their livelihood and honestly? Who could blame them?

    Looking at the pictures on the Haverhill Facebook page and watching videos like this and others on YouTube really paints a picture of what happened during those days. The weird thing is that no one in my family ever really talked about the event. When it comes to natural disasters around here, everyone more or less talked about the "Blizzard of 1978". It comes up every single time a snowflake touches the ground!

    It's not like people wanted to forget about the disaster. It's been discussed as recently as ten years ago. Check it out in the Haverhill Gazette or the Lawrence Eagle Tribune.  I suppose bigger events tend to take precedence over a flood that happened in the 1930s. The flood itself was historic and because of it more safeguards were put in place to prevent future flooding of the Merrimack. Did they work? Yes and no. The river has flooded since that time and probably will flood again. The Merrimack Valley is in a bowl and sometimes that bowl overflows and there's not much that can be done to prevent a flood. However, all isn't completely lost. Safeguards and barriers have been put in place along the river to prevent disasters as bad as the Haverhill flood from happening again and they only work if they're properly maintained.

The Felker clan from Haverhill!

    Still, I can't help but wonder what my grandmother and others in my family went through during that terrible time. They obviously survived. There's no question about that. Ironically, things changed for the better. These days the Merrimack floods rarely. The last time it flooded this bad was in May of 2006. Many homes were flooded. But, the loss of life was not as devastating to the community.

    If you find yourself researching Haverhill and the surrounding areas, you may want to keep natural disasters like this in mind. They may yield clues as to what happened to various family members. History often intersects with the lives of everyday people. There's no avoiding it. Lives can change in an instant.

    As for Haverhill, the technology has definitely improved since the 1930s and I hope that nothing this bad happens again. Meanwhile, we are sure to be witnessing more historic events because like the song goes the fire will just go on and on and on.

52 Ancestors Week 49: Oops

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 49's theme is "Oops." Everyone has made mistakes -- including our ancestors. This week, think about a mistake an ancestor made or perhaps a mistake that you've made in your research.

You can almost hear the glass shatter!

    December seems to be the time of year where we reflect on mistakes we've made over the course of a year. My friend and fellow Youtuber, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug has made it a point to address the mistakes he made on his webshow called "Atop the Fourth Wall". At the end of a year, he'd create an episode listing the top fifteen mistakes he made that year and his show has been running nonstop since 2008! I've never gotten the chance to do that for my show even though I've produced over fifty episodes from 2011 to 2019. That isn't to say I've never made mistakes. I have and I've owned up to them.

    Then we come to the genealogy front where, yes, I have made mistakes from marking myself as dead on WikiTree to even putting information on my tree that was totally and completely WRONG! Look, we're all human. We've made mistakes. It's cool. Back in September of last year, I wrote a blog about one of the many mistakes I've made over the course of my genealogical adventure. Today, let's talk about another one of my "greatest hits".

    

Yeah. No Magna Carta for you, Chris!

     This time around we're going to back to about two months ago. In June 2019, I posted a blog where I talked about my so-called Magna Carta ancestors. The blog's topic was about your oldest ancestor. At the time, I believed them to be surety barons who signed the Magna Carta in 1215 AD. Others see that as a feather in their cap. I've always been a bit ambivalent about my link to them because in reality millions of people are descended from those guys.

    A couple of months ago WikiTree had a stream on YouTube where they discussed the Magna Carta project. Every week or so they discuss projects. If you want to see the videos, please check out the YouTube channel here. They had a fun discussion and the host thought it would be a cool idea to check to see if I had Magna Carta links.

    I was expecting some discussion and there were some talk about the barons and gateway ancestors. However, it turned out that my connection to the surety barons was disconnected! OH, NO! Naturally, I took it in stride. I didn't overreact. I was a little concerned because I thought I had a solid connection proved by various documents. They all said that Anne Derehaugh was a gateway ancestor. And she was. The error as it turned out was a bit more current than her.  

    My friend and fellow WikiTreer, Traci, offered to help me figure things out. I followed the path down to where the link was severed and it happened on the profile of John Low, my tenth great-grandfather. It turned out that the New England Genealogical Historical Society released an article by a man named Edward Steele and in it he discussed the genealogy of Thomas Low of Ipswich. While a Low WAS married to Anne's daughter, it was a different John Low. In fact, it was his nephew with the same name.

Johnny, you got the right 'rents now. (I hope.)

    I was annoyed. But, I wasn't about to argue with the pros. Other people were concerned about the connection being lost and again I don't really care. It happens. You dust yourself off and you deal with it. It is not the end of the world. 

    I did end up asking the fine folks at geni to correct the error as they had that mistake, too. It was fixed over at FamilySearch already. People seem to work fast on the Internet. There was still the small matter of cleaning up my tree on Ancestry. That didn't take as long as I thought it would.

    In the end, I understand the mistake. Was it mine? Probably not. John Low is a common name and anyone could have conflated him for his uncle. Families back then kept names in the family. I can't tell you how many "Silas Sargents" I've found in my travels. That's just how genealogy is. No one is to blame. It's just a very old conflation that stuck around for years until someone did some research and found proof about a family.

     I've found that when you work with genealogy in the 1600s, you're going to need solid evidence for births, marriages, deaths and other documents. You never know when it's going to change. If something has to be changed on a world tree like WikiTree, then it should be fine as long as there is a body of proof backing up the claim. Luckily, there was. The NEGHS is pretty tough when it comes to sources. Are they wrong? I don't know. But, I am sure they have gone over everything with a fine tooth comb, crossed all the ts and dotted all the is.

    As for me? I still might have a Magna Carta ancestor. I just don't know at this point. It seems unlikely. I've combed through my English side and found some brick walls in the 1600s. Perhaps the connection is lost to time? Who knows? I'm not in any real rush to find out if I have a connection to them. This isn't me playing it safe. No, no. This is just being smart and examining the proof as it comes in. 

Pre-1600 genealogy will still give me trust issues, though!

See ya next time!