52 Ancestors Week 3: Favorite Photo

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 2's theme is "Favorite Photo." If you've done the 52 Ancestors challenge before, you might recognize this theme. Yes, it's a repeat -- but it's too good not to do it again! Tell the story of a favorite photo: who is in it, where and when it was taken, and why it was taken. What was the event?

This is a sequel I can get behind!

    I said it last week and I'll say it again. I love photographs. They can bring a person to life and put a face to the information you're putting into your favorite family tree creation software. While biographies are good and recommended on places like WikiTree, photos tend to add something to the profiles on the website or in the program you're using. I'm not going to lie. Photos can bring someone long dead back to life in interesting ways and you can even animate them on MyHeritage. Though, I HIGHLY advise you don't animate people you personally knew. The results can be....unpleasant. See "The Uncanny Valley" for details. Remind me never to animate my grandma Ollie's pic again. Ever.

    Pictures can also represent a single moment in time. In my own collection, I have several Christmas photos, birthdays, get-togethers, weddings and other random photos I've shared here in the blog. However, there's one photo that was taken on August 28th, 1971 that represents what I'd like to call a nexus event. Not just because it was the marriage of my parents. It's more because it was a single day where the ancestors of several of my DNA matches were all in one spot to celebrate a momentous occasion. One single moment in time brought together people from various backgrounds like any other wedding. However, it was special to me for obvious reasons as two different worlds became one.

A single moment in time.

    This photo was taken on that day and it's probably one of my favorite pictures from the wedding. My parents, Dr. James Ferraiolo and Diane Hamel met in college in a chemistry lab. You could say they had....chemistry. I hear the "boos"! Your "boos" give me strength! 

    My parents have always told me about their wedding. They had chicken, pasta, soup and everything else you could think of. My mother recalls that she ate very little of it because she was greeting everyone at each table and making sure they all were having a good time. 

    And who was invited to the wedding exactly? Obviously their parents were there. I highly doubt they'd have missed that day for anything! My mother's five siblings and others were also there. My father's first cousins and their spouses were there,  too.

    Okay. So, close family members were there. That's usually the norm for every wedding, right? This is true. It was definitely the case when I was at my brother's wedding and my cousin's. How does this involve the DNA matches?

Rocco Carrabis on the far left. Pasquale on the far right.

    Well, to understand that you'd have to understand my grandparents. Grandpa Marco and Grandma Ollie had a list of people they wanted to have at the wedding. Italians tend to have big get-togethers and my family is no exception. Everyone had to be at a family event regardless of how far away they were. By 1971 Vincenzo had passed away and so Marco was in charge of basically keeping the family together. To do this he invited family from Melrose, Mass like the family of Rocco and Pasquale Carrabis. Rocco and Pasquale were my great-grandfather Giuseppe's brothers, by the way.

    Other Italian family members were invited such as the descendants of Pasquale Forgione. Pasquale was the brother of my great-grandmother, Clementina.

    This list of Italian relatives is quite extensive and these were just people on Grandma Ollie's side of the family!!  People on Marco's side were there such as his mother's cousins from Woburn, Massachusetts. There were quite a few Tedescos there along with several descendants of Marco's great-aunt Concetta Coppola. So many Italians were in one spot! Who knows what was going to happen!

The '60s is strong with this picture. Oh, my. My
grandfather was hanging out with my grandma 
Felker and her sisters.

        Enter my maternal grandparents. Robert Hamel and Natalie Felker had their OWN list of people they wanted to invite. My great-grandparents Austin, Henrietta and Clara were all there along with my mother's aunts and uncles. 

    Other relatives like the Senters were also present. If you recall, they descended from my 2nd great-grandmother Gertrude Stevens and her second husband, Walter Howard Senter. Oliver Legault's daughter was also invited but was unable to attend. Hamel cousins were also present. The guest list was pretty extensive. It's amazing they all fit in that church and dining hall. Keep in mind that my parents had their OWN friends to invite to the wedding. I pity the wait staff who had to keep the wine flowing for the guests!

    I highly doubt anyone at the wedding knew what the future would bring. It was just another day to celebrate the wedding of two people who were very much in love and who last year celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was just a celebration and yet that one picture up at the top of the blog became so very important. Why?

    Well, it was the start of a great adventure two college students had. In the picture, I can also see how much hope for the future the two crazy kids had. That's why I like the photo so much. It was a symbol of hope and a new beginning two people from different backgrounds, Italian and French-Canadian/English, would take together. The picture symbolizes two worlds effectively becoming one and in just five years after the photo was taken my brother Jim was born. I was born two years later.

    Decades later at-home DNA testing became very popular thanks to various commercials, television shows etc. In 2017, I took a test on Ancestry at the suggestions of both my great-aunt Nicolina and my cousin, genealogist Mary Tedesco. Mary's grandparents, great-grandmother, great-aunts and others in her family were AT or were invited to my parent's wedding. I knew this for quite some time. What I didn't know was that this was the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

    I went down my list of DNA matches with my parents looking over my shoulder and they said things like "Oh! That's Dante Gagliardi's daughter!" "That's Lawrence Senter's son!" I turned to both of them and I was perplexed. I said quite frankly "How do you know that?!" They said their parents were at the wedding and they proceeded to show me a list of who all was invited. I had known of a few people beforehand like the Tedescos and a few others. But, this was an extensive list of who's who. It was pretty amazing. 

    When I tell people about the picture, I don't just say it was my parents' wedding picture. That's probably oversimplifying it a wee bit. I tell them the story. It was a wedding where two different families met and broke bread. It was where stories were made that could be told for generations to come. A simple wedding in Haverhill, Massachusetts was the start of an incredible journey and I'm certainly glad it started. I wouldn't be here otherwise!

  See ya next time!