52 Ancestors Week 21: At the Cemetery

 From Amy Johnson Crow: I'll admit it. I'm addicted to going to cemeteries. (I feel safe admitting that here!) Cemeteries are such special places; I feel drawn even to those where I don't have any ancestors buried. Which cemetery is special in your family's history? Do you have a story about "visiting" a special relative?

Where else can you find LARPers, genealogists and ghosts?

    When you think of cemeteries, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Do you picture a Michael Jackson video? Or do you see a dark, foreboding area of land full of dead trees, tall grass and  ghosts around every corner? The latter is what most people seem to think of when they hear the word "cemetery".  It's a forbidden land where the undead will rise from the grave and do an unexpected dance number or a place where live action roleplays happen because there isn't a park around town. As for me, that's never really been the case. 

St. Patrick's Cemetery

    Haverhill is home to sixteen cemeteries and a few of them date back to the colonial era. Some of them, like Walnut Cemetery, are even said to be haunted by spirits from the Civil War! Hilldale Cemetery is supposedly one of the most haunted cemeteries in all of New England! It is there that the Essex County Ghost Project hosts annual ghost hunts. Please leave your unlicensed nuclear accelerators at home for that one!

    I suppose I'm not bothered by cemeteries because there is a real special one in my family. It's the oddly named Saint Patrick's Cemetery. I say it's oddly named because most of the graves in that cemetery have people of Italian descent buried in them. This isn't hyperbole. There are a LOT of Italians buried there! That isn't to say Italians in Haverhill weren't buried elsewhere. They were. Many of them just seem to be concentrated in St. Patrick's.

    Off the top of my head, I can tell you that four of my great-grandparents have their final resting place in St. Patrick's. Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco share a plot with my grandfather Marco, my grandma Ollie and Vincenzo's second wife, Fortuna. Just down the "street" are Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

The Ferraiolo grave

    Since we're local, my family and I go St. Patrick's every May to clean up the Ferraiolo plot, plant flowers and put down markers before heading to Amesbury where my other grandparents are buried. We even put a wreath around the stone every Christmas. My dad's cousins typically take care of Giuseppe and Clementina's plot and we stop by to check out the upkeep.

    The cemetery is easily the first one I remember going to because of the ritualistic clean-up duty. Every year we would go and I would clean the plaques embedded in the ground. These were your typical World War memorial plaques which briefly stated what unit they served and such. Next to them is another plaque simply saying "Buona Fortuna" in Italian.

    When I was little, I asked my father what that meant and he said it meant "good fortune". Basically, the memorial was wishing our ancestors buried there good fortune in the afterlife. I hope that's the case! I'd hate to think they were going without up there.

    As you can see from the picture, we take great care to make it look nice as we use only the finest plants from Home Depot. The cemetery itself is well maintained and there's nothing remotely scary about it. I will say this. The last time I was with my parents to clean the stone and everything was just about the only scary incident to have ever happened there. Though, it wasn't really scary. It was more gross than anything else.

    We needed water to clean the plaques and there is a faucet near the stones. We turn the valve and the water was a healthy dark brown. I think the reason behind that wasn't anything to do with pollutants. It was just a combination dirty Haverhill water and the fact that the faucet probably hadn't been turned on in some time. That or the pipes weren't in the best shape.

The Carrabs grave

    I wish I knew more about the history of the cemetery. There's not much I can find online about St. Patrick's. Find A Grave has over 2,000 memorials listed in their archives with more added every day. From what I can tell just by searching around is that it's at least older than the 1920s. 

    The name always seemed odd to me because St. Patrick was an Apostle of Ireland. Sure he was born in Roman Britain and is closely associated with Ireland. But, perhaps the cemetery started out as an Irish cemetery and it expanded? Who can say? Perhaps the answers can be found in the Haverhill library.

    Regardless, the cemetery is one that we've always went to. I remember going there to pay my respects to my grandparents buried there. I've even walked around a few times to see if I could find any other relatives. I've found a few people other than my great-aunts and uncles. It's nice to know that many relatives are there and that it's very well maintained.

    Cemeteries aren't anything to be scared of. They're memorials of people you've loved in your life. Sure there are legit scary ones tucked away in the woods. But, those haven't been maintained for a very long time. Aside from St. Patrick's, I've been to Linwood and a few other cemeteries in the city. I would like to go to St. Joseph's as that's where many of the French-Canadians in my tree are buried. Several of them are also in Walnut, too.

    I really want to check both out as my 2nd great-grandfather, Antoine Legault, could be at either one of those cemeteries. More research needs to be done. 

    St. Patrick's is a decent sized cemetery and I wouldn't mind going there again to see if I could find more relatives. Could Caterina Coppola's brothers and sister be buried there? Hard to say. I have found some Coppola stones..... Anything is possible! 

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 20: Cousin Bait

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 20's theme is "Cousin Bait," which is a term used to describe the ways we try to attract the attention of others researching our families. It could be things like blogging, having a public online tree, or leaving comments on a FindAGrave memorial. Have you successfully set cousin bait or got hooked by someone else's? (You could also take a more literal route and talk about fishermen in your family tree.)

Every great decision causes ripples

    Hello. My name is Chris Ferraiolo and I have a confession to make. I am a victim of cousin bait. I can "hear" the audible gasps and fainting through the Internet. I know it's shocking and it may be a little much to take in right now. We've got to be brave. We've got to be strong. We've also got to milk this gag in the opening paragraph for all it's worth. ;) Have you or a loved one been a victim of cousin bait? If so, please contact the law offices of  Nelson, Murdock and Walters. Well, there's not much you can do about it. Unless you register at WikiTree.

So many DNA confirmations.

    That's actually the origin of how I became a user on the site. WikiTree.com is basically the king and queen of cousin bait. I know I've talked about it a lot since I've started the blog and there's a good reason why I sing its praises. It's a free singular world tree which uses Wikimedia's coding as a base. The goal of the site is to have a profile for every human who has ever lived. That's a tall order and it can be done considering over 26 million profiles have been created at the time of this blog post. Not bad for a site that started in 2008 when most of the Internet was making videos on YouTube. Including me.

    Right. So, how did I become a victim of cousin bait? What is it exactly? Cousin bait is simply something on the Internet that attracts someone who may have a connection to you. For example, a third cousin of mine created Find a Grave profiles for my grandparents, Marco and Olympia. Other forms of cousin bait include blogs which might turn up on Google searches, photos and public trees on Ancestry and just having a small corner of a world tree like Geni, Familysearch or WikiTree would be enough to attract cousins. It's happened to me. It could happen to YOU!

I probably should have cropped more of that first pic.

    The Find a Grave profiles were just the beginning of cousin bait finding me. In 2017, I was just starting to get back into genealogy after a considerable hiatus. I was still doing videos on YouTube and I had a webcomic I was producing as well. I still produce it! Check it out!

    While that was going on, I thought I'd give MyHeritage a try. Over on Myheritage, they have hints like they do on Ancestry. The only difference is that they also show where on the Internet a profile for a certain ancestor of yours might be. They could be on Geni. They could be on Familysearch. They could even be on Wikitree!

    That's how I managed to find my 2nd great-grandparents, Vincenzo Carrabs and Maria Giovanna Capobianco. My third cousin, the one who made the Find a Grave profiles for my grandparents, made profiles for the two back in 2014, a good three years before I found them. That wasn't all! another cousin created profiles for Wilfred Felker and his father, Jeremiah in 2013.

    Right away, my spider-sense was buzzing. I didn't mind the profiles being there. I had never heard of WikiTree at that point. I checked it out and I registered on the site in July of 2017. I was surprised to see ancestors on both sides of my tree on the site already and naturally I e-mailed both cousins and asked them what the deal was. I had heard of my third cousin via my grandma Ollie and other relatives So, she wasn't a complete shock to me. She had messaged me on Ancestry and we talked there. The other Wikitreer was new to me. I e-mailed him and he gave me a LOT of information about the Felkers.

Buffed and waxed!

    Once I was all registered, I built the tree up to those profiles and like the Borg from Star Trek, I assimilated the profiles and added their distinctiveness to my own. Resistance was very much futile. After I built it up, I buffed and waxed the profiles with needed categories, sources, photos and eventually DNA confirmation. No fuss. No muss. And importantly no drama. 

    Some people may not be that lucky. To that I say, just try to present the sources as best you can when you connect. You'll find most WikiTreers to be okay with connections as long as they are sourced up before you connect the dots. And if there is an issue, people are encouraged to take it to the genealogist to genealogist forum. Though, chances are many of your ancestors will be on the site already if they were born in the 1600s-1700s.

    Setting up shop on WikiTree eventually proved to be one of the greatest ideas I ever had because since the tree is free and everyone can see the profiles you made, distant cousins will find them  and in time contact you. It's that simple. It's happened to me a few times as I've had cousins on the Forgione and Legault sides contact me saying that they found the profiles I made of their ancestors. Everyone was more than cool about this and eventually they too turned up as DNA matches.

    It wasn't always fun, though. There has been at least one person who took issue with my profile for "their ancestor" on the site. I've done my best to explain the situation and showed them them sources I found which mesh with what I have found and declared. The ball then is very much in their court. That's little else I can do. 

    So, that's my WikiTree origin story. Cousin bait can be a very good thing and WikiTree itself is basically cousin bait personified. Blogs also work as cousin bait and if a cousin sees this, I'll just say hi and that I hope to see you on WikiTree some day! Come on in! We don't bite!

    Cousin bait is good in that it let's you see what others have found about "your" ancestors. You can join a world tree like WikiTree and build up on what they found and combine it with stuff you found. Include some pics and info, stories and boom the profile will shine with its new chrome rims. It's really that easy and isn't something to be concerned about. So, don't be afraid to be a victim of cousin bait AND be ready to fish for cousins yourself as you work on a world tree. 

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 19: Mother's Day

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Sunday was Mother's Day in the US. This week, let's take a look at the mothers you're researching. (They do make up half of your family tree, after all!)

All tied up in a neat little free to use bow.

   

     Mister T put it best. Without mothers you wouldn't be here and then he proceeded to sing a song about mothers. Seriously. Check it out here. Bless the Internet. There is nothing you can't find. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I guess it depends on what you're looking for.

    For me Mother's Day was always a chance to get genealogical information, a picture or two and of course a really good meal. When I was little, my brother and I would give our mom her usual presents and cards in the morning and by midday we would pick up grandma Ollie and head out to dinner with her sisters and the cousins along with their significant others. We would all meet up at a nearby restaurant and have a great time catching up on what's been going on in the family and various other bits of news.

The Carrabs sisters!

    The quality of the food didn't really matter to me because we were spending time with family and for us that usually meant finding out what aunt Louise was doing that week or some other random thing. It was really just a chance to get together and have a good time. 

    However, if you ever go to a place in Kingston, New Hampshire called "The Pond View", turn around and GO HOME! That was probably the worst dining experience of my life because the food was HORRIBLE! It was just about the only time the food actually did matter. I forget what I had. I can only remember how disgusting it was. It's currently got two stars on Yelp. Gee. I wonder why. My mother says I put the curse on the joint. If only Gordon Ramsay visited. And I hear it's even closed down. Oh, well. Yeah, I wasn't a fan of "The Pond View". The 1686 House I liked.

    Regardless of the venue, one of the cousins would bring up their grandparents, Giuseppe and Clementina, and I would instantly perk up and listen. They would tell stories and I'd hear about Rocco or Pasquale's grandchildren or great-grandchildren from my grandmother and her sisters. I would just listen and ask questions at appropriate times. 

   I remember one dinner at my dad's cousin Carol's house some time after all the sisters had passed away very vividly. She mentioned that she had found some old home movies. At that point "Mother's Day" had become "Cousins Day" because we still wanted to get together and have a good time like we used to when the sisters were around. Naturally, the prospect of there being home movies piqued my interest and those of everyone at the table. 

   We all got comfortable in the basement and warmed up the old film projector. In no time at all, I saw my dad as a kid playing with the cousins at their house in Haverhill in the 1950s to 1960s and yes the Wonder Years theme popped up in my head while I was watching. How could it not? Yeah, pop culture ruined me. If you've been reading the blog for a long time, I think you probably figured that out by now!

Giuseppe and Clementina

    What was great about the films was that every now and then Giuseppe and Clementina would appear. It was fantastic seeing them in not just picture form. They were moving around and they seemed so real to me. It was so magical and not nearly as creepy as MyHeritage's "Deep Nostalgia" gimmick.  I liked seeing them in action and I could easily have spent hours looking at the reels. My only hope is that the films will be converted to DVDs at some point. I think my dad's cousin Joe is on that task. They need to be preserved and burnt onto DVD/BluRay/4K and digitally remastered. 

   Some background: Carol was the oldest of the cousins as her parents were Ugo and Josephine Messa. Josie wasn't the oldest Carrabs sister, though. That was Jennie. Jennie and her husband, Joseph, did not have children. So, as the oldest she would have hosting duties and we'd have "Cousins Day" at her house in the place of the "Mother's Day" festivities.

 

    During one of the last "Cousins Day" celebrations, Carol let me look through a bunch of old photographs and the one on the left literally fell on my lap. It's a picture of Giuseppe, Clementina and their daughters. Sadly, a part of my grandmother's head was out of the shot. It's okay. At least we got a great pic of Jennie, Giuseppe, Clementina and Louise on the couch. 

    I didn't expect to find such a fantastic photo. We took a picture of it along with a few others I found and of course I thanked Carol for letting me see the photo and others. She said it was a thank you for getting a tree for her on WikiTree. I had made trees for her and the other cousins. It was a lot of fun to do!

    Little did I know, that  visit was going to be one of the last "Cousins Day" feasts. COVID happened and naturally we couldn't see each other unless it was on a Zoom call. Carol had spent years fighting cancer and in the summer of 2020 it came back with a vengeance. There was nothing anyone could do for her other than make her comfortable. She passed away in June of last year and we have not had a "Cousins Day" visit since.

    Hopefully, we get together soon. Mother's Day to me will always be a time where we all celebrated not just the mothers (and grandmothers) in our lives. It was a time to be with family and learn something about the family's history. I'm lucky that I learned so much during the Mother's Day/Cousins Day feasts. I said it before and I'll say it again. You learn so much by just listening to your family members just sitting around the table. Facts and stories will present themselves with time and patience. I just hope Joe has put those film strips to DVD. That's a gold mine right there. GOLD!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 18: Crime and Punishment

 From Amy Johnson Crow: This week's theme is "Crime and Punishment." Our ancestors were human, so it tends to reason that someone in the family tree found themselves on the wrong side of the law. The up-side for us is that they often created more records than the law-abiding ancestors!

From the producers of "Law and Order".

    

    This week's prompt almost had me stumped. What was I going to write about? I couldn't find anyone in my direct line who committed a crime. Everyone was pretty much squeaky clean. The only person who came really close was a cousin named Francesco Papatola and I'm still not one hundred percent sure on what he did or if a crime really did take place given how relatives in Italy regard him today. He went to Haverhill with his parents and by the early l940s he went back to San Pietro a Maida and had a family over there. There doesn't seem to be any bad blood between the family he made in America and the family he made in Italy. So, it's hard to say what he did and I'm not up to poking the dragon to find out. That and I'm not sure if they even know!

The Salem Witch Trials

    So, what can I write about? This week, we're going to have to go back in time to the 1690s when New England was a colony of the British crown and paranoia was about to take root in what is now the Bay state. Yes, I am referring to the one and only Salem Witch Trials which took place between February 1692 and May of 1693 in the town of Salem, Massachusetts.

    A total of eight ancestors of mine were involved in the event where many people were accused of being witches. Many were executed and today they have a 7-11 near where they were hanged. I'm serious. Look it up.

    Don't worry. The accused and accusers have definitely left their mark on modern Salem as there are museums and monuments dedicated to the accused women (and some men). There are even several plays about the trials such as  Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", movies and all kinds of media surrounding the event. I don't think it'll be forgotten any time soon. It was one of those dark events in human history that left its mark on the world. 

    Since I have eight ancestors who were involved in one way or the other, let's talk about one of each as I have both an accuser AND an accused in my tree.

The Accuser

Yeah That's pretty concrete....

    You can imagine my surprise when I found out that Thomas Putnam Jr was my 9th great-grandfather. I grew up in nearby Salem, New Hampshire and we all had history classes devoted to the Salem Witch trials. In every class, Tommy here was presented in a very rough manner. Was it justified? Well, that's a matter of interpretation. It's important to remember that we are not our ancestors and Thomas here has thousands of descendants around today. I'm just a drop of water in the ocean. One of thousands who are connected to this man.

    That said, you can't deny what he did. His own daughter, Ann, pressured him to continue the trials as she accused several people including the Reverend George Burroughs of being a witch (Technically he'd be a wizard or a warlock. Going by Dungeons & Dragons rules, here.) and that he was the ringleader of every witch the area. Instead of sitting his daughter down and telling her to relax, he went along with all the crazy accusations she made and the rest is history.

    Thomas's motivations in proceeding with the trials were put into question in Miller's "The Crucible" where he was presented as a God-fearing man who worried that several of his children were killed by witchcraft. In reality, the Putnams had only one child who died young. Ann had accused a man named John Willard of killing the baby through witchcraft a few years before the trial ACTUALLY began. It can therefore be theorized that the apprehension he felt over the loss of his daughter and witchcraft being to blame for her premature death could be the reason why Putnam showed so much zeal during the proceedings.

    Now, I am in no way playing devil's advocate. He still sentenced a lot of innocent people to death. It  does seem like a reasonable explanation for what he did. Think about it. In 1690s Massachusetts, Puritanical beliefs were in full swing and there were a LOT of God-fearing people around. People today wonder if he was also influenced by the girls who accused people of being witches. It's hard to say because the Witch Trials themselves weren't the only time where he had shown a vindictive streak. Before the trials even began, he was known to be quite ruthless as he was the son of a wealthy landowner and the family caused much grief in the town.

    Thomas Putnam had many children and I descend from his youngest daughter, Experience. The actions of a man who died two hundred and seventy-nine years before I was born do not reflect who I am today. Did he do horrible things? Yes. There's no denying it. The best you can do is learn from the past in order to avoid mistakes. Just note the link and move on because even though you might be embarrassed by the connection, the person lived so very long ago. At some point you need to let it go.

The Accused

Another solid connection. Huh.

Time to bring out the accused! Her name was Ann Foster and her origin is a bit clouded in mystery. Some say she was the daughter of George Alcock and Anne Hooker. However, no evidence was ever presented and she was always known by her married name.

    Unlike many of the people accused of witchcraft, she wasn't actually in Salem since she made her home in nearby Andover. That didn't seem to matter to the local authorities at the time.

    Ann is noted for dying in prison even though she had a stay of execution. The story goes that she was in town and was arrested on July 15th, 1692. She confessed to her alleged crime and was sentenced to death on September 17th. To make matters worse, her children and a few grandchildren were even accused of witchcraft! At the time she was a widow and she refused to confess even in light of her family's fate being in the balance. Ultimately, she decided to confess in order to save herself and her family from certain death.

    While the family went free, she ended up dying in prison on December 3rd, 1692 at around seventy-five years of age, twenty-one weeks after the trials were discredited and ended. Her son, Abrahan petitioned authorities to clear her name and by 1711 the family received compensation for their loss in the form of six pounds and ten shillings. I wonder how much that'd be worth today if we take inflation into account.

    Ann's story is a tragic one to be sure. The main takeaway I get from her story is that she was a woman who risked everything to protect her family and that's something to be admired. She was in her seventies, which was quite old for that time period, and did not hesitate to do the right thing even if it meant the cost of her own life. In my mind, that's a pretty heroic thing to do. She faced incredible odds and though she died in prison, she would be regarded as a hero.

    The Salem Witch Trials were a period of history where paranoia ran rampant. Paranoia makes people do things they wouldn't dream of doing even on their best day. The cause for the paranoia is up for debate. Was it jealousy on the part of the girls involved? Was it grain that was tainted by fungi containing the active ingredient found in LSD? Scholars are still struggling to find the answer all these centuries later and there hasn't been one definite answer to why a whole town went crazy and started a movement that sparked paranoia. The best we can do is learn from the mistakes of the past to make sure things like this never happen again. 

    As far as Thomas and Ann go, it's interesting to have both an accuser and an accused in the same tree and almost the same branch. It makes a tree that's relatively uneventful come to life in a way I never thought possible. Having both an accuser and an accused in a tree means you get to see both sides of the story. There were no heroes or villains here. Just people going by what they think was right. It all happened centuries ago and yet we can still learn to not make the same mistakes they did. It's good that the families were compensated and memorials are all over Salem. But, it's the moral lessons that we should take from the tragedy of the Salem Witch trials along with the tangible items.

See ya next time.