52 Ancestors Week 14: Great

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 14 should be great... because that's the theme! It could be someone many generations back (like a great-great-great-great-great-grandfather), an ancestor who did something "great," or someone who was great in some other way. Have fun with this theme! (And remember -- there is no "wrong" way to interpret a theme. It's whatever the prompt makes you want to write about.)

Would you call this header "great"?

        Great things tend to happen when you put puns in the prompt for this week. =) What shall I talk about? Great-grandparents? Sure. That's a given considering what type of blog this is. Though, I have dabbled in the Starbolts' own genealogy over at my sister site. Shameless plug, Chris. Let's try to be a bit more specific. Which great-grandparents? Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco? Hmmmm.....Getting warmer. How about a great discovery I made involving those two? NOW YOU'RE TALKING!

What's in the box?!

    Last week, my mother was cleaning out the basement and stumbled upon this metal box. This is the same box which had my 2nd great-grandmother Caterina Coppola's birth certificate inside. Well, I decided to take a deeper dive inside the box to see what other great treasures I could find.

    The box (tm) came to us as part of a collection of items from grandma Ollie's house. She saved so many things belonging to her family that this small box is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. What's inside? Well, there are plenty of things! Let's take a look! Keep your arms inside the blog at all times and make sure your seat-belts are secure. The captain has turned on the "No Browsing" sign. Let's-a go!

That's a high belt....

    Our journey begins with a photo album carefully placed near the box. Inside are assorted photographs of my grandfather during his time in the army. There were plenty of photographs of him with his friends and a few of grandma Ollie and her sisters. However, the one on the right caught my attention the most as I never saw a pic of the two together. Never mind how young they looked.

    If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the photo was taken in the mid 1940s before they got married in 1946. It was probably even taken right after the war. This was taken in the backyard of her parents' house on Bartlett Street in Haverhill as evidenced by the fire station in the background. The photo caught my attention because I have rarely seen pictures of my grandmother with black hair. When I knew her, she had reddish-blond hair. Her hair dresser convinced her and her sisters to all go blond. At least it wasn't blue? Between this, her high school picture and another one we have in our collection, these are really the only evidence we have of Ollie's natural hair being black. She had gone grayish before I was born and I suppose she felt like changing her color.  Ah well.

     Moving onto the box itself, we see a collection of birth certificates for Concetta Coppola, grandpa Marco and his grandmother, Caterina. Concetta was Marco's great-aunt.  Why were the documents even in there? Well, it turns out that they were all ordered in the 1960s. After discussing it with a friend, we realized that perhaps they were needed to help secure passports for travel to Italy. Makes sense given that everyone did go back and forth.

    The box also contained a variety of bank statements from Haverhill's Pentucket bank, Marco's service record, a certificate involving his receiving a Purple Heart and a document concerning my grandfather's cancer diagnosis. Yeah. I was not going to look at that too much. He died when I was four. So, it's a little touchy. It's a little hard for me to look at that, you know?

    Both my great-grandfather Vincenzo's will and my grandfather's will were inside. They were pretty fascinating and a little short. Vincenzo made certain his siblings were well taken care of in Rome, Switzerland and in Argentina. That was nice of him. He had left his house and many other things to his second wife, Fortuna and that brings me to my next great discovery!

Not married in Italy? Hmm...

    I always knew Fortuna Grasso was Vincenzo's second wife. What I didn't know was where the two were married and what the circumstances surrounding the event were. I knew it was after Maria passed away. But, how long afterward? A year? Well, it turns out I wasn't far off. They were married on August 5th, 1944 in Lawrence, Mass. I assumed he went back to Italy. I assumed wrong. Never assume anything, guys. You won't know the facts until they're dancing in front of your face! That's my great discovery for Vincenzo covered!

    Other items in the box included a deed to a random property. It wasn't any of the houses Vincenzo and Marco owned. It certainly wasn't the motel on Salisbury Beach. More on that in a bit, by the way. I checked it out on Google Earth and it was a random house. Not much I can say. I will definitely ask my father if he knew anything about it.

    One of the strangest things in the box, though, would have to be this blank Naturalization form. It was with my grandfather's war record. Why would he have that? Did people question his Naturalization? So weird.

Survivor of fires, hurricanes and nor'easters!

    Next up we have the motel that my grandfather and my great-uncle Arnold Villanucci both owned. The building still stands on Salisbury beach despite having suffered a small fire in the 1960s. Don't worry. No one was harmed. Having seen it in person, it is a decent place. But, by the time I got around to seeing it, Arnold was much older and my grandfather was long gone. It's nice to know both it and my grandparents' houses in Haverhill still stand, though. 

  

    
    The next item I found may not seem great given the context. But, it is great from a genealogical point of view. This is the automobile list for the funeral of Maria Tedesco. The funeral was held on March 6th, 1943 and based on that date I can assume that she passed away a few days prior. It's the only logical assumption I can make.

    The automobile list shows who gave flowers and who offered presents. Right away I noticed several people whose names seemed familiar to me. Many of Vincenzo's relatives were in attendance from the Coppola family. His aunt Concetta was there with her children. Giovanni and Paolo were there as well with their children, too. The Tedescos from Woburn were even there from her side of the family.

    As far as blood relatives go, everyone seemed to be there save for the family still in Italy. And since it was 1943 I....don't think communication with famiglia back home was easy. The second world war was in full swing. That might explain why some people were there and others weren't.

    The list itself provided me with enough information to create a FAN club for my great-grandparents. A FAN club stands for "friends and neighbors". I started putting together a list of names and I found some interesting things. Check it out:

1. Virtually everyone on the list had an Italian last name. Some I recognized from the "Italians in Haverhill" book like "Sgro" and "Azzarito". You can bet I looked them all up. Many of them lived on the same street in Haverhill in the 1940 census. That is pretty cool!

2. One name really stuck out to me. The family of Nazarene Benedetti was present. Benedetti is an interesting and famous last name in Haverhill because of the sandwich shop that was opened by his family a few years later. My great-aunt Louise used to work for the family, too! They make great subs and it.....really is a small world after all. 

3. Many of the names repeated themselves and it's interesting to see who all was able to fit in one of those tank-like cars of the 1940s. Perhaps that was the inspiration for the SUV.

4. Pitocchelli handled the funeral and attended the funeral. It makes me wonder who they were and what connection they had with the family.

    Wow. This blog is getting pretty long. There were so many other great documents and photos I didn't cover. I'm glad I made such great discoveries because it meant closure on a few questions I had about my great-grandparents. When did Vincenzo marry Fortuna? When did Maria pass away? Those questions were answered by digging into a metal box now stored in a dry spot with the rest of my grandparents' things from Haverhill. There's still another box of items from my grandmother's house. I hope I get a chance to look at the contents some day. Who knows? I might make even greater discoveries.

It would be great if I could find my grandparents' wedding album. Just saying....

    Oh! And before I go, I have one last thing to report. My dive into the box yielded a great surprise for my cousin Caterina in Switzerland. Inside was a photo of people at a wedding. I wasn't sure who they were. So, I scanned the photo and sent it to Caterina in the hope that she would know. She said that the guys in the photo were her brothers, Pasquale and Marco. Caterina had never seen the photo before and it made her smile. In fact, it made her Easter. I was happy to do that for her. It was indeed a great surprise. She wondered how we got the photo. Grandpa Marco must have taken it and brought it with him to America where it stayed with us since the '70s. It's a great discovery and I'm glad I made Easter special for her. =)

See ya next time!

Now that is a GREAT surprise!

Editor's note: In April of 2023, I found that Giovanni Coppola was not the brother of Paolo, Caterina and Concetta Coppola. He is likely a first cousin of the three. Look for details in a future blog post.