52 Ancestors Week 30: Health

 Week 30's theme is "Health." A person's health has such an impact on everything in his or her life. Do you know of any health related events in an ancestor's life? What about an ancestor who worked in medicine or health care?

Please state the nature of the medical emergency.

In the summer of 2021, health is on everyone's minds as the coronavirus continue to spread worldwide. The pandemic is in its second year and while we have vaccines, a lot more work needs to be done in order to vaccinate everyone in even the most remote corners of our planet. Stakes have never been higher and doctors, nurses and epidemiologists are doing what they can to prevent more loss of life. If you've studied history, you've probably have read about this scenario before. History has a strange way of repeating itself.

Marie on WikiTree

    Let's go back in time to the early 1900s. The airplane was a new invention, telephones were not as widely used as they would be in the coming decades of the twentieth century and vaccines for diseases like Smallpox and Polio were not yet discovered. Life was very different back then. Lifespans were shorter and health was surely on everyone's mind the moment they stepped out that door. 

    This was certainly the case for my 3rd great-grandmother, Marie Eulalie Bibeau. She was born in  St-Francois-du-Lac, Quebec in 1830 and has the distinction for being the only one of her siblings who DIDN'T move to Minnesota. Maybe she was more of a Red Sox fan than a Twins fan? I don't know. What I do know is that she and her husband, Pierre Cadran moved to Haverhill, Mass sometime before the 1880 census. They lived with their son-in-law Antoine Legault and his family. Conditions must have been cramped in their house at 177 Water Street.

CRAMPED!

        As you can see, the house was pretty cramped. To date, I think that's the largest amount of people I've ever seen packed into one house. Thankfully, by the 1900 census the family was more spread out all over the city of Haverhill and surrounding communities. However, there were two tragedies that plagued the Legault and Cadran families around that time.

    Antoine Legault unfortunately passed away in 1901 due to phthisis bulbi AKA tuberculosis. Marie passed away in 1907 due to "La Grippe" or as we call it "The Spanish Flu" with senility being a contributing factor to her death. When I saw her cause of death, it caused me to wonder a few things and I began to ask myself some questions. The most important being: "The Spanish Flu Pandemic was in 1918, a good eleven years after her death. Was there a pandemic in Haverhill around this time? What happened?!

    I haven't been able to find anything about how she got the Spanish flu. I did find out that Haverhill suffered tremendously during the later pandemic. Over 45,000 citizens of the city lost their lives Check out this article for details: https://whav.net/2015/11/29/haverhills-very-own-disease-haverhill-fever/

    Don't lose hope just yet! I do have one theory. The virus was around people long before the 1918 pandemic. What if she just was unlucky and caught it from someone who was infected? Today we'd call that person asymptomatic. Let's also not forget that in 1907 Marie was seventy-seven years old! That was quite old for the time period she lived in! Perhaps we should apply twenty-first century thinking to this case and come to the conclusion that she got the virus from someone and at seventy-seven years old, her immune system was compromised and that led to her death. Senility would be a non-issue if your lungs were filling up with fluid. Sorry, William Comeau.

    Eulalie's untimely death likely sent shockwaves through the community and of course her family. At the time of her death, she had eight children and several grandchildren including my great-grandmother, Henrietta Legault. By all accounts the family stayed close afterward as everybody pretty much stayed in the Merrimack Valley. As for the community, I'm sure they took it hard as evidenced by her obituary from the Haverhill Evening Gazette:

"MRS. MARIE CARDRAN

The death of Mrs. Marie Cardran, wife of Pierre Cardran, occurred yesterday afternoon at her home on Eastern avenue after a short illness. Mrs. Cardran was well known in French circles and was one of the oldest residents of the city. She was aged 78 years. She is survived by her husband and six daughters, Mary Messier, Lucy Legault, Harriet Denault, Mrs. Joseph Bean, Mrs. Josephine Robideau of Lynn, and Mrs. Vina Birt of New York city. She was a member of St. Anne's society. The funeral will be held from her late residence, Sunday noon, at 12:30 o'clock. Services will be held at St. Joseph's church, at 1:30, and the interment will be in St. Joseph's cemetery."--Haverhill Evening Gazette, Saturday, December 21, 1907.

    Judging by the obituary, she left a huge impact on the community. She was well-known amongst the French-Canadian population in Haverhill. The St. Anne's Society was a Catholic church where people would meet, greet and discuss matters for spiritual enrichment. These days many of those centers are all over the Merrimack valley.

    I can safely say that after her death, the family thrived in the only way they could. They pressed on and kept her memory alive. Granted no one was named after her or anything. It didn't matter. But, perhaps her death was a sign of things to come and was a warning to the family?

    As far as I know, none of the other Cadrans passed away due to "La Grippe". Most of her children passed away well after the pandemic ran its course. They were the lucky ones. The jury's still out on whether or not the grandchildren did as well. I would have to look. There are many theories as to why.

Eulalie's stone at St. Joseph's.

    Today, we can learn a very valuable lesson from this story. We have made many great strides in the field of medicine since the early 1900s. Our lives are made better because now we can control or eradicate diseases that once plagued humanity with so much suffering. Why suffer needlessly these days? Science has proven time and again that as it advances the field of medicine, our lives become so much better. The Cadrans knew it and they thrived well into the 20th century. Long after Marie's death.

So, what can we learn from this story? A hundred years ago our world went through a catastrophic pandemic. Doctors worked hard to cure people and it worked. Our lives were improved thanks to science. We no longer have to deal with half of the diseases they dealt with.

    I'm not just saying all of this as a son of a dentist and lab supervisor. Our lives are made better with medicine. Don't think for one moment that our ancestors wouldn't jump at the chance to get a vaccine for something like Polio. They would.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 29 Fashion

  From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 29's theme is "Fashion." It's fun to look at old photos and think, "How did they wear that?!" Corsets, bustles, wool suits, and ridiculously large hats seem so impractical (not to mention heavy!) Any fashion mavens in your family tree? What about an ancestor who had their own sense of style or someone associated with the fashion industry? I can't wait to see the posts and photos this week! Feel free to share them in the free Generations Cafe Facebook group.

Not exactly Tommy Hilfinger

      Fashion has long played an important role in our society. In just two thousand years we went from wearing togas and tunics to wearing bellbottoms and platform shoes! Come to think of it that could have just been in the same year. From what I've been told the 1970s were weird. No stranger than the 1980s and 1990s, mind you! In olden times, what people wore was often a sign of your social status. I have long maintained that the fancier your hat was, the more important person you were. It's that or you really like having exceptionally long feathers in your cap. 

Quite dapper!

   Over the course of your lifetime, fashion can change incredibly quickly depending on style and what's "cool" at the time. This was very much the case when it comes to the life of my 2nd great-grandmother, Georgianna "Little Grammy" Ross. Don't let the name fool you. She was mostly French-Canadian as she was born to Jean Baptiste Ross and Marguerite Metivier in 1876.

    In this picture dated some time in 1891, she is clearly wearing a fancy hat and what appears to be a corset. Being a guy, I have to wince at those because those things look so uncomfortable. I feel so bad for anyone who had to wear them for Renaissance Fairs or even television shows. Jeri Ryan had to wear a corset for her role as the former Borg drone Seven of Nine in "Star Trek: Voyager". Can you imagine her relief in not having to wear them for "Star Trek: Picard"?! She still looks amazing nineteen years after Voyager ended!

    I digress. Geogianna was fifteen years old when this picture was taken. She's in the front row and on the left. Her husband Joseph Laplante is on the far right. His hat is silly. But, it's not nearly as elaborate as Georgianna. For teenage girls in the 1890s, this was the height of Victorian era garments. Long dresses that showed serious ankle. I'm not going to judge. She made that outfit work even if it was clearly uncomfortable. Look at her face. Even back in the 1890s, teenagers gotta be teenagers. What is it about the '90s in every century that bring out the attitude? At least she probably didn't listen to N'Sync. She would totally listen to Nirvana.

Ahh, to go to the beach and not
need sunblock....

    By the roaring 1920s, Georgianna was living the high life on Plum Island! The beach was a stone's throw away from where the Laplantes lived in the city of Newburyport. Here she is wearing what I presume is a bathing suit. She's once again on the left with her sister Clara on the right. Joseph's in the middle looking pleased with himself. Apparently, he was quite a character from what my grandfather told me.

    Swimsuits of the 1920s were a lot more liberal for Georgianna than the outfits she wore when she was a teenager living in Manchester, New Hampshire. So much skin was showing and I think she's even wearing a swimming cap, too. Her sister has one as well. I've never seen anyone wear those things outside of the Olympics. It's cool and very aerodynamic! I bet she cut through the water like a torpedo! =D 

    Again this isn't a bad look for the time period. Georgianna seemed to keep with the times and kept up with what was fashionable and what wasn't. The bathing suits are actually in line with what I used to see in cartoons from 1930s and 1940s. Fashion trends were changing for people and especially women in those days. I often wonder what she'd think of swimwear one hundred years after this photo was taken. Can you imagine the culture shock?! Yikes!

That's my mom getting hugged by Joseph!

    In the 1950s, Georgianna was in her seventies. The days of wearing corsets and swimsuits were long gone as she settled for what can only be described as "The grandma" look. This was the look my mother remembers the most. The fancy hat. The glasses and most importantly the long hair kept in a single braid. You can't see it in this picture. I assure you. It's there.

    You can also see why the family called her "Little Grammy". She was like 4 feet tall and my grandfather is towering over both him AND his mother. I would say "There's something in the water in Newburyport". But, given the history of the Merrimack River it may be a little bit of a sensitive topic. Keep the Merrimack clean, guys! The EPA has rules, ya know!

  I really like this post-war picture of my grandfather, his mother and his grandparents. There's just something really nice about seeing the family together like this. My mother told me that the picture was probably taken at the Laplantes' house in Newburyport. That would make sense. I also figure that this picture was taken sometime after May of 1951 because the baby my great-grandmother Clara is holding is one of my aunts.

Georgianna!

    As the 1950s marched on, things clearly changed for my 2nd great-grandmother. She was now a great-grandmother to four children and her fashion sense changed with the times. She's seen here wearing a polka dot shirt. I should colorize the photo and the rest of these photos to see what colors they were. Then again accuracy would vary. Someone with blue eyes could get brown eyes for some reason.

    Time was still good to her and by this point she had to have seen the drastic changes taken place in the world of fashion. Leather jackets. Greasy hair and caddies ruled America by this point. Hey, man. That was the style. The hipsters and beatniks were just a preview of what was to come!

    Georgianna lived through the turbulent 1960s and though I don't have many pictures of her from those days, I can assume she still kept on changing with the times. She ended up passing away in 1973 at the age of 97. That's a pretty good run! Given how long she lived, she has seen the world change from corsets to bellbottoms.

Clara, Georgianna and Doris 

       This last picture is dated March 10th, 1964 and has three generations of women in it with Georgianna, her daughter Clara and Georgianna's granddaughter, Doris. At this point, horn-rimmed glasses were all the rage for older women, I guess. I do like that vintage television in the background. It's a far cry from what we're used to in the 21st century. Though, I do remember the dials on the old television we had in the 1980s and who could forget the rabbit ears?

    I'm trying to decide if she's wearing the same polka dot shirt she was wearing in the 1950s photo. It wouldn't surprise me. People are sentimental about the clothes they own even if they go out of style. Some people latch onto their wardrobe of choice and never throw out that polyester jacket they haven't worn since the Carter administration. Some clothes you donate. Some you keep. It's just how life is, you know.

 Through Georgianna you can definitely see how much the world changed from 1891 to the decades before her death in the 1970s. Women began having more clothing options and yes ladies the lack of decent pockets on pants baffle me too. Seriously. What's up with that? A changing world clearly affected her clothing choices. We're likely going to see more change in fashion as time goes on.   In just ninety-seven years a lot can change and one of those things is definitely the world of fashion. We could be wearing completely different things in ninety-seven years! It's interesting to think of what the world would look like in 2121. Will we be living on Mars? Who can say? The sky's the limit.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 28: Transportation

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 28 is all about "Transportation." As the daughter of a service station owner, I grew up around cars and developed an appreciation for them. Whether it's planes, trains, or automobiles (or canal boats, or steamships, or... ), think about transportation and how it affected an ancestor. Did canals open up markets for crops? Did railways offer job opportunities? Explore the transportation theme this week!

On the boats and on the planes....

    This is actually the second blog I've written about this prompt. The first transportation-related blog I wrote was back in 2019 and in it I wrote about grandpa Hamel and his plane. What shall I write about this week? How about a boat? That's good, Chris. How about something a bit more specific? What if I wrote about the boat that brought my great-grandmother Maria Tedesco and her children Marco and Nicolina to America? Sound good? GREAT!

All aboard!

      

     On October 30th, 1929, a passenger ship called the S.S. Roma set off from the Italian port of Naples and would arrive at her final destination in New York City on November 8th. The Roma, according to Wikipedia, was an ocean liner built for the Italian shipping company Navigazione Generale Italiana and was constructed at the Ansaldo shipyard in the Genoese suburb of Sestri Ponente. The vessel has the distinction of being one of the first built by the company when she was constructed in 1926.

    She was capable of carrying 1,700 passengers and crew and was powered by eight turbines connected in couples to four shafts. She was steam powered like many ships of the era. She had a steel hull and had a rather interesting story once her days of being a passenger liner were behind her.

Famiglia di Ferraiolo

    I'll save the story about her final fate for later in the blog. Right now let's focus on Maria and her two small children. Why did they go to America by themselves? Where was the children's father? Well, Vincenzo had already become a US citizen by the 1920s and as far as I can tell Maria travelled alone with her children. It was customary for Italian men in those days to go to America and send for their wives once he could afford passage for them. They also often sent for the rest of their family once they became established.

    Vincenzo and Maria were married on January 15th, 1921 and in fact he left America in 1920 so he could get married in his home town of San Pietro a Maida. Nicolina was born in 1923 and my grandfather was born in 1925. Between 1925 and 1929, Vincenzo went back to America. I haven't been able to find any proof of this. However, the manifest I posted above seemed to indicate that Maria did indeed travel alone with the children.

    With those questions answered, Maria and the children arrived in New York on November 8th, 1929 and would take a train from New York to Haverhill, Massachusetts. I can't imagine traveling across an ocean and by rail two hundred and forty miles with a six year old and a four year old. Maria must have had a firm grip on those kids! They must have had something to occupy their time since iPads and various Nintendo handhelds wouldn't be invented for several decades!

SS Roma

    Over the course of her lifetime, the Roma most likely carried many people to and from Italy. The story above was one of many the ship had seen during her active duty. Unfortunately, by the 1930s things took a rather dark turn for the vessel. In January of 1932, the ship unfortunately collided with the American ocean liner S.S. President Roosevelt, causing severe damage to her hull.

    The hits continued to come when the second world war erupted in Europe and the Roma was converted into an Italian aircraft carrier under the name "Aquila" and served the regime of Benito Mussolini. Under her new name, she was considered to be Italy's first aircraft carrier project. As she was clearly not built for that kind of duty, the project was never completed. She was converted into an aircraft carrier in a futile attempt to compete with the French and British navy of the era. 

     By 1943, she was seized by German forces shortly after Italy surrendered to the Allied forces on September 8th, 1943, seven months after Maria passed away. 

    On June 16th, 1944 the former Roma was attacked in her home port of Genoa during an Allied raid. The Italian "co-belligerent" government feared the once proud ocean liner would be used against the Allies as a blockship in the harbor. Divers were sent to scuttle the craft in a harmless location and sank the ship. She was raised from the sea floor in 1946 and towed to La Spezia in 1949. In between 1951 and 1952 the ship was scrapped.

    The story of the Roma's end was hardly the most fitting for a ship that once carried people from Italy to places all around the world. It's unfortunate that a vessel designed for peaceful operation was converted into a tool of war by the regime of Benito Mussolini and when I found out about its fate I sighed. In hindsight, I probably should have expected it because Mussolini was not quite all there. There's a reason many Italians today curse his name!

    I will say this. I am grateful that my family came to America well before the Roma became an engine of destruction. Her story should be a testament to how evil people can sometimes take the most innocent of things and turn them into machines of war. I wish the story had a happy ending and it's unfortunately one of the many sad stories that came out of one of the darkest periods in our planet's sad history. The only thing we can do is learn from the past and make a better future.

    I'm also glad that I researched the ship. Learning about it helped me understand the context of the time period Maria and all the passengers of the Roma lived in and it makes me want to learn about the ship Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione sailed on called the Adriatic. Let's hope that ship has a better backstory!

See ya next time!

Press Release: WikiTree Challenge Breaks 500th Brick Wall for Guest Stars

Hail!

Before I post my 52Ancestors blog for the week, here's an important news bulletin from WikiTree regarding the WikiTree Challenge! 

In case you missed my blog about the subject last week, WikiTree launched the biggest community event ever in January of 2021: The WikiTree Challenge. 

Here's the direct press release from the brass themselves:

Press Release July 8, 2021: In January of this year, WikiTree launched its biggest community event ever: The WikiTree Challenge. Each week, a team of volunteers attempts to expand and improve the family tree of a special guest star. Our guests have been leaders in the genealogy industry and top professional genealogists.

Can amateur genealogy collaboration improve on a leading genealogist’s own genealogy? The answer is a resounding “Yes”! We have now broken through over 500 “brick walls” for our guest stars!

The 500th brick wall was broken this week during our challenge for Sephardic Jewish specialist Jarrett Ross. Our volunteers made new discoveries for him on five separate family lines.

The brick wall count only includes the first person in a line that is new to our guest. Two thousand ancestors beyond the brick walls have also been discovered, and 5,500 nuclear relatives of ancestors. Each relative now has a carefully-sourced profile on WikiTree.

Our teams have made discoveries for best-selling author AJ Jacobs (seven brick walls broken), leading genetic genealogist CeCe Moore (23 brick walls), and the host of PBS TV’s “Finding Your Roots,” Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (nine new ancestors!).

“Establishing where you are in the uncertainty of being, the uncertainty of life, somehow gives you a foundation. I am very moved by what you’ve done.” --Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The most successful week so far has been for genealogy novelist Nathan Goodwin: 61 brick walls broken. For “Genealogy TV’ host Connie Knox and software entrepreneur Dallan Quass there were 43 and 42 respectively. Close behind were the weeks for Melissa Barker (34), Ellen Thompson-Jennings (34), Katherine Willson (34), Scott Fisher (32), Gena Philbert-Ortega (31) and Rob Warthen (27).

We broke 20 brick walls for Pat “Dear Myrtle” Richley-Erickson (“Wow! It’s just astonishing!”), 18 for Jen Baldwin, 16 for Thomas MacEntee, 14 for Devon Noel Lee, 12 for Tim Janzen, eight for Jonny Perl, five for Cheri Passey and four for Yvette Hoitink.  We were even able to surprise “Legal Genealogist” Judy Russell by breaking one of her brick walls.

That's not a bad way to end the first half of the year, right? We still have over twenty weeks left of the challenge and I hope that by Christmas we break 1,000 brick walls! Dare to dream, Wikitreers! Will we succeed? Stay tuned!

See ya next time! Oh and be sure to check out the press release on WikiTree: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1266716/press-release-wikitree-challenge-breaks-500th-brick-guest

52 Ancestors Week 27: Free

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 27's theme is "Free." You could focus on an ancestor seeking freedom, a free-for-all, your favorite free resource, or take it "free form" and write about whatever you want to write about! (Of course, that's true any week!)

Just as good as Free Comic Book Day!

  Some of the best things in life are free and who doesn't like free things? You can get free comics the first weekend of May at your local comic shop for example. There are even free genealogy sites that you could check out like FamilySearch. Yes, there are veritable gold mines of free genealogy websites out there. But, did you know that one of my favorite free genealogy sites is about halfway through a massive year-long event?

I still say that looks like a Pepsi logo....

This year, Wikitree has been working on our biggest community event ever. Usually we have various "thons" covering everything from connecting people to trees, sourcing profiles and scanning images. For 2021 we've also been working on our YEAR OF ACCURACY!

    Before I go into details on that, I'll quickly go over the website for those of you who may be unfamiliar with WikiTree. WikiTree was founded in 2008 by Chris Whitten and from humble beginnings the website grew to include over 27 million profiles at the time of this blog. On WikiTree, we try to create a profile for every human who has ever lived and connect them to the world tree. If you really want to explore the ins and outs of the website, I suggest you watch this interview with my friend, Mindy Silva on Genealogy TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD5WjwS8zy4

    I'm not going to lie. WikiTree has a lot to offer and I've been a member of the website since July of 2017. It's hard to cover EVERYTHING about the website in just one little blog entry. Let's focus on the challenge itself! 

Jarrett Ross aka the Geneavlogger.

    For this year's challenge, we take a genealogy guest star, work on their tree and make it more accurate than it is anywhere else. Over on WikiTree, we are very particular about sources and so we want everything to be as precise as possible. At the same time, we attempt to break brick walls and discover what we can for our guest. It's a free service we provide since we're all volunteers. We just offer our time and do not expect payment!

    Each week, we present our guest with what we find over at our YouTube channel. So far our guests have been surprised by what the community has found and we've had a veritable who's who of genealogical giants grace the channel from Youtubers like Jarrett Ross and Devon Noel Lee to even Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr and CeCe Moore! We've even brought a few people to tears! I'm not sure if that's a good thing. If they were happy tears, it's good!

    With a roster like that, it's no wonder the challenge has become pretty darn popular amongst the genealogy community! I'm glad I've been a part of it because I've made some pretty amazing friends and as an Ambassador for the site it gives me a chance to help show the world just what we have to offer. A friend of mine said that WikiTree is a great example of crowdsourcing and she's right. We all talk in the genealogist to genealogist forum. We talk on the Discord channel about what we need be it a translation or another pair of eyes on something.

    Personally, I've had a lot of fun with this project because it's gotten me a little outside of my comfort zone and that's good. You don't want to get too comfortable looking up Italian or Quebec records no matter how tempting they might be. It's a big genealogical world out there full of all kinds of records online and offline. Granted, I'm not the best when it comes to something like Dutch records and that's fine. That's why we have the chats. People are always around to help and that's a very good thing.

    When I was looking up information in South Carolina for one of our past guests, I found it a bit difficult because certain records were not online. So, I talked things over with the chat and we managed to work around some of the problems I had with the area. This is what makes the challenge so great. Not only do we help our genealogy guest star in what is basically a Youtube version of "Finding Your Roots" or "Who Do You Think You Are?". We help each other grow as researchers. I learned that each state handles records very differently than my native Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It's a challenge and like I said people can help if you ask them nicely.

Ahh, YouTube....

       As of this writing, Wikitree.com has broken 500 brick walls for our guests and this hype train isn't about to stop any time soon! I can't spoil who else is going to be a guest star. I will say this. If the latter half of 2021 is just as exciting as the first half, we're going to be in for some serious fireworks. Who will we have? What will we discover? No spoilers, my friends. Go to the YouTube channel, subscribe and wait and see! And if you'd like to participate, please contact Eowyn Walker!

    This year, the site has proven to be able to do what no other free genealogy site has yet to do. We've taken a group of people on the Internet and got them to work on a common goal. Believe me when I say that that is a very rare occurrence. Yes, some groups of people can do really great things. However, this is much more massive than anything I've ever seen on the Internet. 

    Wikitree is a free genealogy site and will remain as such for the foreseeable future. Before the challenge, it was already a great place to store information for your tree, connect with cousins and have accurate information be displayed for all to see. With the challenge, we've hit the big time. Where do we go from here? Only Whitten knows for sure. In the mean time, I'll do what I can to help various genealogy guest stars, make new friends and have fun. We got a good thing going and the sky's the limit!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 26: Conflict

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Conflict seems to be part of the human experience. How did it affect your ancestors? It could be through war, legal conflicts, or bad relationships. You could also think about having to resolve conflicting evidence in your research.

I would love to have a Starbolts fighting game. Art by Faeore.

    Whether you want it to happen or not, conflicts happen every day. It is indeed part of the human experience. But, conflicts can occur in your research, too. How do you find it? How do you fix it? What can you do about it? So many questions, so little time. Let's break 'em down one by one shall we? 

Alfred Hamel, not a Rough Rider

    First, you'll need to know how to spot them! When I was growing up, I was told that my great-grandfather, Alfred Hamel was a rough rider working with none other than President Theodore Roosevelt himself. He helped Teddy charge up San Juan Hill and fought valiantly by his side during the Spanish-American War! We had the pictures to prove it and everything! No issues here, right? RIGHT?!

    There's just one TINY little problem. The Rough Riders was a Calvary regiment founded in 1898. Alfred here was born in February of 1896, long before he ever fought anyone. I know two year olds can be a handful, but I don't think Alfred's terrible twos involved the ancestor of machine guns.

    The first step to identifying a potential conflict like this in your tree is to do some research. Look up when a conflict took place or various other events and compare it with how your your ancestor was at the time.

   

    As it turns out, Alfred WAS at the Mexican border. It just wasn't for the Spanish-American War. He was there for the Mexican Border War from 1910 to 1919 before being drafted to fight in the first World War. That part is accurate. I doubt he ever met Teddy Roosevelt. (As played by Robin Williams.)

It's the "Not so" Rough Riders!

    Now that we've found an obvious glitch in the family history, what do we do about it? After you've finished cursing at the screen and sighing incredulously, pick yourself up and just fix the data in your tree of choice. You can make a note about it on WikiTree as you are encouraged to make biographies there! You could even add a link to the Wikipedia article of the conflict if you so desire. Over on Ancestry, you can add a custom event if you'd like. Spread the word and make sure that juicy bit of information is never lost again.  Shout it from the rooftops and even tell your family the truth. Here's hoping they actually listen and aren't too upset with the face of the truth. At least this appeared to be an easy conflict to fix with just a little research.

    This is just a small example of the kind of data conflicts you can find in your tree. Alfred Hamel being a Rough Rider never really made sense to me because I knew he was born in 1896 and I remembered my history from school. When data conflicts like this, you need to think logically and ask yourself several questions. Is it possible? If it seems a little impossible, then you simply owe it to yourself to do the work.

    Conflicts are bound to turn up every once in a while in your research. It's your job as a researcher to figure out of something makes sense or not. This doesn't only apply to genealogy of course. You can apply this to practically anything and use your own brain to sort out the truth of an issue.

    Now, what if you find a data conflict in someone else's tree? What do you do?  I'm not going to lie. Part of me always wants to reach through the Internet and help whoever made the mistake on the tree and hope for the best. For example, I've been doing a deep dive into the friends and family of my great-grandmother, Maria Tedesco. I've been researching who all attended her funeral in 1943 and I found that someone put one of the attendees' death in the 1920s. That struck me as odd because the same person appeared in the list of people who attended the funeral. It wasn't a case of a name being similar. I did some research and found that he was the only person in the Haverhill area with that name. So, it had to be him! I decided to be a nice guy and had a friend message the owner of the tree as I can only message DNA matches. To date, there has been no response. So, the moral here is that if you try to fix someone else's tree, do so carefully and hope for the best. Don't drop a truth train on them. Yet. Wait for them to become belligerent. ;)

 

   Since Alfred didn't turn out to be a Rough Rider after all of that research, my family was pretty cool with it once I presented them with the factual evidence. He even has dated discharge papers from Mexican border conflict as proof. I still wonder a few things. How did the error of him being a Rough Rider even get started? Why? Was he hitting the terrible twos so hard that he might as well have been in the Calvary? Only his parents, Eugene and Celanise know for sure. Give a toddler enough sugar and they'd be rough alright. I'm just saying!

    Data conflicts like the ones I described are minimal at best. Big ones can have you tear down a tree branch considerably. You just have to be mindful of errors in dates because sometimes you could inadvertently cause a temporal paradox which could wipe out life in the universe. Granted that's the worst case scenario. It could just be merely located in our galaxy. Great Scott! Anyway, do yourself a favor and research if something seems a little fishy to you. You owe it to yourself and the health of the tree! And don't worry about other peoples' trees as long as you show your work!

See ya next time!