52 Ancestors Week 21: Yearbook

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 21

Get ready for fun (or cringe-y) hairstyles, old-time slang, and cryptic autographs -- it's "Yearbook" week!

"The Real Student Handbook"- Salem High School Class of 1997

    I've always found yearbooks to be great to look at because they are quite literally a time capsule. Take my high school yearbook for example. I graduated in June of 1997 and inside those pages I definitely see the hairstyles, the slang, the references to '90s pop culture and more. We even had a video version made and thanks to some ingenuity someone put the whole thing on YouTube. Our theme song was even R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as we Know It" for some odd reason.  All that was missing was some Rob Liefeld art and we'd definitely have a book that encapsulated a decade. Then again, if you know me you'd know that I do not want Liefeld anywhere near my yearbook! The '90s were weird when it came to comics and pop culture in general. At least it was a fun ride. We did see the rise of the Internet, the console wars and three back-to-back Star Trek series on television after all. What do you say we skip all of that and go further back in time to 1939?

    The year proved to be an important one when it comes to popular culture as films such as "The Wizard of Oz" graced the silver screen and a company called "Timely" launched its first comic called "Marvel Comics #1". Hmm...I think they'll turn out just fine. Just give that Stan Lee kid a chance. He's going places! War was on the horizon and my grandmother, Olympia Carrabs, was a student at Haverhill High.

    I've always liked my grandmother's yearbook because it really gave me a sense of what life was like in the 1930s. When I was little, she would bring the book out every once in a while and we'd talk about the contents. The first thing I did was start with her page because that version of grandma Ollie I never got to see. By the time I was born, her black hair had grayed and so she dyed it blond. It was so cool to see pics of her with her natural hair color and rare, too!  I'm not sure when she started going gray. Maybe it was after my father was born. ;) Make of that what you will, Internet!

    What was really cool about her entry was how she was described as:

"A joking, jolly, pleasant girl, Whose hair is in a natural curl . There's always in our heart a place For her laughing eyes and smiling face".

    Let me be the first to say that whoever wrote that passage did not exaggerate at all. My grandmother did have her funny side. She was always kind and had a great sense of humor as I've described many times in the blog. According to the book, she was in the Glee Club and a Philomathean. Not bad, right?

    Thanks to someone donating the yearbook to Ancestry, I can flip through the scanned pages of "The Thinker" online without having to drag out my grandmother's copy. That's pretty handy. Let's see what's inside! (And yes her copy is in a safe place. We treat it like gold! It's with my grandmother Natalie's yearbook. She graduated from the same school.)

New music to avert sleepiness, huh? Hmm....

    One of the cooler things I've found is this class will. A lot of things in it have actually come to pass in the decades since this was printed.

I especially like Article II and how they left yeast cakes to the underclassmen so they would rise earlier. That's funny because my class left...umm....Jolt cola. Hey. It was the '90s. We didn't have time to make yeast cakes. At least we didn't mix "Coke" and "Pop Rocks".

    Article VII is fun. Wait until they hit the Rock and Roll years. I guess those kids aren't ready for it. But, their kids and grandkids are gonna love it.

    The will itself is pretty standard. Lots of funny bits and you know I'd probably would have liked "A Thousand Ways to Dodge Homework". 

    It's nice how in the end they left "an inexhaustible amount of chalk and paper". Way to think ahead! (Wow. See what I did there?)

I really can spot my grandma
in a crowd. Neat.

    Other interesting parts of the yearbook include messages from the staff and other notable people at the school. I bet if I was looking at my grandmother's copy, I'd see messages from her classmates. There was a section in the book where various people were given various titles. There was:

"Mr. Smart" (Every class has their "royal smart person".)

"Miss Attractive". (Oof. I don't think that would fly now. Well, then again....)

"Mr. Singer." (Sadly this was NOT a young Frank Sinatra.)

Oh and before I forget, there IS a "Mr.. Attractive." I guess that balances it out. There were other titles for various students and I couldn't find Ollie in the list. For someone who was carefree and funny she was somehow absent from these. Huh....The mind boggles.

    Many clubs have also had their picture taken and sadly the Glee Club was nowhere to be found. All isn't lost! The Philomathians are here to save the day with their love of learning. Good thing I was able to find my grandmother relatively easily. The group was big.

Really big....

     That's definitely quite the group! 

  

    As a writer, I really enjoyed this bit about the history of the class. The chapters outlined what it was like coming into the school in 1935 with their hopes and dreams and how they stuck together for their four years. That was pretty cool and it reminds me of the Class of 1997 in a way.

    The only difference was that in Salem there are five elementary schools and our class came together as one class in the 6th grade before going to Junior High. We were basically together since 1990 with new classmates coming in or moving away.  I wonder if it was the same in Haverhill. It might be! You never know!

    The class president's address after everyone's photographs is definitely interesting in hindsight. In it, he discusses "The World of Tomorrow". No doubt it's a reference to the then recent World's Fair. He mentioned that America always believed in progress and that while the rest of the world was in turmoil,  America was focused on living differently and better in the future. Wow. Right in the feels. It makes me wonder how he felt about these words in the following decades. He then talked about being forward-thinking people in a forward-thinking country and ended his address saying  "Let us hope that someday we may be privileged to say that we have done our part in building a better world." Very optimistic, right? Yeah, I definitely wonder how he felt about those words as the years came and went. It was actually very progressive for 1939!

Haverhill High circa 1939

   In many ways Haverhill High in 1939 mirrored Salem High in 1997. Both classes were cheerfully optimistic about what the future might bring and both generations of teenagers wanted to help make the world a better place. Did the world change in between those dates? Of course it did. You'd be crazy not to notice.

    With change there comes adversity and while my generation can never compare with the threat of war on the horizon, we certainly had our own tragedies. I think what Doc Brown said in Back to the Future III still holds water. "The future is whatever you make of it. So make it a good one." Just make sure history never repeats itself.

    This copy of "The Thinker" is one of three yearbooks from Haverhill High that I have in my collection. The other copies belonged to my grandmother Natalie (Class of 1945) and my father (Class of 1965). It's not a bad collection by any means because you really get a sense of what life was like in the 1940s and 1960s when reading through the book. It's actually kind of jarring reading the cheerful optimism in 1939 and then reading the Class of 1965's book immediately afterward! Imagine how jarring it'd be going from 1939 to 1997 or even today! Times do change and unfortunately the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's fun to look at the stories of the past and it reminds us that we still have time to make the world a better place. Youthful optimism is a good thing no matter how rocky the tides of time become.

See ya next time! And here's to the 25th Anniversary of the  Salem High Blue Devils Class of 1997.

    

52 Ancestors Week 20: Textiles

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 20

Week 20's theme is "Textile." Clothing, quilts, weaving -- there are so many ways to talk about textiles in our family history! Be creative with this week's theme!

Woven into the tapestry of our lives.

    Textiles and the Merrimack valley go together like oil and water. While the rise of textile mills along the Merrimack river in the late 19th century certainly caused a great boom in the economy of the region, you can't deny that they also caused considerable havoc on the environment. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. I mean they did attract thousands of Italian and Quebecois immigrants who were looking for work and a better way of life. Way to look for that silver lining, Chris....

    You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Merrimack valley whose family was not shaped by the mills which were as far north as Concord, New Hampshire and stretched all the way to the mouth of the river in Newburyport, Massachusetts. That is a lot of real estate to cover! The Merrimack is only 117 miles long and yet so many people were influenced by it and the mills around them over the years. Take my maternal grandparents, Robert Hamel and Natalie Felker for example.

Robert and Natalie Hamel

    After my grandfather's honorable discharge from the United States Air Force, he found work as a store manager for the J.M. Fields Department store in Haverhill, Massachusetts and later he worked at the Merrimack Valley Textile museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

    Out of all the cities in the valley, Lowell was the one that benefitted the most from the mills. The city was founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles. You could argue that this was where the growth in the valley began. The mills sprung up here first after all and from there they stretched to cities and towns all around the valley. Amazing and yet kind of scary if you think about it.

    The museum closed in 2016 and was dedicated to the history of the mills in the valley. Their primary focus was on wool and each exhibit focused on telling the story of how it went from a sheep to the clothes on your back.

    Luckily, there are other museums in the area which could help satiate your desire to learn more about the textile mills and the effect they had on the valley. These include:

1. Bootts Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell.

2. New England Quilt Museum in Lowell.

    By the time I came around, my grandfather had long since retired from his work at the museum and I don't really remember him talking about it that much. He was more interested in telling stories about his life in the Air Force and of course his family. My grandmother on the other hand? Uhh...yeah this is where it gets interesting.

How much ya wanna bet those two tortured
my uncle Bob?

    I've already talked about how grandma Natalie liked to make sweaters for all ten of her grandchildren. Including me. She was also adept at needlepoint. That's not all! She also made clothes for her children. Wow. Look how adorable my mom, my aunt Susan and my uncle Bob look in this pic. Chances are good their mom made those clothes for them.

    I can't get past the gloves on my mom's hands. Quite stylin' for 1955, right? She may not have cooked much as I explained last week. At least she could put together some clothes. The only problem is that when she made my sweater it was so incredibly hot and itchy. I think it was made from leftover wool from the textile museum. It certainly smelled like it! It wouldn't surprise me.

      I've never been really sure where she got her skills. However, I would think that her mother Henrietta taught her everything she needed to know. Henrietta probably learned from her mother, Lucie. Generations of women in the family may have been proficient in making clothes for people and these days it's my aunt Linda who seems to have the gift of making clothes and even pet beds!

The Hamel clan. Note the matching pjs....

      My aunt has called textile stores her "happy place" in the past. She has been known to spend hours and hours in those shops. As a result of her affinity for textiles she produced many Halloween costumes from a single Superman cape to even a comic accurate Spider-Man costume complete with accurate mask. Not bad at all. The costume even scared my cousin Ryan who was two at the time! I didn't mean to scare him! All I did was open the door and said "Hi.".

    The costume was so good that it even got first prize at the Woodbury Junior High 7th grade Halloween dance. Not bad. Still wish I had functioning webshooters, though.

    She even made my cousin Kristyn and her husband a Poison Ivy and Joker costume once. There's an odd pairing for you. I guess Harley Quinn moved on....Or Ivy was going to get her revenge. I'm going with the latter! Watch Harley's show on HBO Max and you'll see what I mean.

      These days my aunt has gone from making clothes to producing beds for dogs. My aunt is a life-long dog breeder and was responsible for giving my brother and I two canine friends growing up. In time she began her own "Distinctive Bedding by Creature Comforts" pet supply shop on Facebook. She once asked if we needed a doggie bed even though we have a cat now instead of a dog.  My parents agreed and I think the results speak for themselves!

Draw me like your French cats.

    Imagine that. Cats really like beds made for dogs! Well, they would sleep on just about anything. It took Cara a while to warm up to the idea of sleeping in a bed like this. But, she did and like I said. The results speak for themselves.

    The bed must have taken a while to make and clearly a lot of thought and love was put into it. It may have been made for dogs that weigh in at about forty pounds. But, it's good for a fifteen pound Maine Coon, right?

    Now let's be quiet. The kitten is sleeping.

    As you can see textiles has influenced my family pretty well. You could say it's woven into the fabric of our lives. Heh....Heh.... Wow, that joke was bad. I'd better end the blog post on a less cringey note. Dad jokes have no place in a genealogy blog! Actually, I take that back. They might....

  Like I said before, these days the mills are closed and have been converted into apartment buildings, offices and other facilities. However, the legacy of the mills remain and you can't really deny that they played some part of peoples' lives here in the valley. Did they inspire the women in my family to create such awesome (and itchy) products? I'm not sure. 

If you'd like to learn more about how textile mills shaped the Merrimack valley, please check out these sites:

* https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/the-merrimack-river.htm

* https://www.nps.gov/articles/building-america-s-industrial-revolution-the-boott-cotton-mills-of-lowell-massachusetts-teaching-with-historic-places.htm

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lowell,_Massachusetts

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawsheen_Village_Historic_District

Enjoy that light reading! See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 19: Food and Drink

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 19's theme is "Food and Drink." Few things bring back memories like food does. This week, write about an event that prompted a special meal, an ancestor who was a really good (or really bad!) cook, or a food that always makes you think of someone in your family. (Or whatever else you want to write about 😊)

It's that time of year. Let's make people hungry!

    When you grow up in an Italian-American household, you learn a few things. Here are the top three rules which could help you out the next time you're at an Italian-American house. These three facts could even save your life!

1. No one is yelling! They're just talking really loudly! Yes, I know the person they're trying to talk to is clear across the house. It doesn't matter! They're just loud and passionate! That and they really want the other person involved in the story that they're telling!

2. Always take the wine when it's given to you. It doesn't matter if you don't like drinking or have other issues with wine. You take the wine because you don't know where it came from. It could be from Nonna's family vineyard in the old country for all you know. They could have even made it themselves! Either way you take it and you enjoy. It's very offensive if you don't take the wine.

3. Nonna's awesome cooking is probably due to her mother teaching her everything she knows! When you have someone else's cooking, you end up comparing it to hers through no fault of your own. Sometimes those awesome recipes are even taught to other people in the family like in-laws. There are no secrets to certain recipes. If they want to learn, nonna will be happy to teach you everything you need to know! And she'll tell you great stories while doing so!

Grandma Ollie, master chef.

    As I've mentioned many times in this blog, my grandma Ollie and her sisters were amazing cooks. They made everything from pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans) to cookies. You name an Italian dish and chances are they made it with style and it was so good!

    Naturally, I've had many Italian dishes. Ancestry even once posed a question in a poll. "How often do you have the food of your ancestors?" I plead the fifth on that one. Just last week I had prosciutto and fig pizza from Tuscan Market. They uhh....know my family by name there. Seriously. The wine guy is one of mine dad's patients.

.    Whenever I have an Italian dish, I often think of my grandmother's cooking because she took such care and time into making the most delectable goodies you have ever had in your life. There really is nothing like homemade cooking! Both she and her sisters were just that good. She was always more than willing to cook for her two grandsons whenever she looked after us or  we visited her.

    It goes without saying that I loved my grandmother's cooking. Things change a bit if I have someone else's lasagna, though, because my mother is the undisputed "Queen of Lasagna".  And I haven't found any lasagna that quite matches her style. Wow. I sound like Garfield....

Don't look directly at it!

    Yes, my very French-Canadian mother makes very good lasagna. Is that possible? Of course it is! You don't have to be of a certain nationality to make food from a certain culture. Some people make a living doing that on Food Network or Youtube! Results of course will vary. And no. Cooking pasta on a island counter does not make you a chef. It makes you messy and gross. 

    So, how did my mother get started making lasagna? Well, my mother married an Italian. I think you can see where this is going. She wanted to learn how to make certain dishes for everyone and helping her along the way were my father, grandmother, Ollie's sisters and basically everyone else related to us within a ten mile radius.

    My father, of course, was a food tester and critic. He would explain to my mother how certain food was prepared thanks to his grandmother teaching him everything there was to know about how certain food is prepared. She could have gone directly to the source and ask my grandmother about how to make the dish perfectly. However, there was a slight problem with that plan. Grandma Ollie never made lasagna. Her specialty was baked ziti. So, what could she do? Well, I can tell you there was a lot of trial and error and eventually she made her own recipe! And we LOVED it!

Cousin Carol and Clementina!

    Most lasagna recipes calls for a variety of meat to be put in between the layers of pasta. My mother traditionally put in mozzarella cheese, parmesan and ricotta in between the layers. The sauce was always homemade and it's so good. There really is nothing like it! It's hard to explain why it's so good. It just is!

    Because of the filling nature of the dish, we had lasagna on holidays like Thanksgiving. It's a traditional dish, right? Miles Standish asked his friend Giuseppe Pavorati to make it and everyone loved it!! ;) They were totally paisans!

    For as long as I can remember, we've had the dish every Thanksgiving without fail. It was requested and required. 'Nuff said! Sure we'd have the traditional turkey and all the fixings. Along for the ride was a big pan of lasagna.  I'd have a little bit of turkey first and the lasagna as the main course. My brother took the crispy corners and I had a side or middle/side piece. Sufficed it to say everyone was in a food coma afterward!

        You would think that my grandmother would have also critiqued my mother's cooking. That was never the case. She loved the dishes my mother prepared and when it came to lasagna on Thanksgiving she loved it. She always went for the crispy side pieces. I was never a fan! Anyway, Ollie loved the lasagna and never had a bad word to say about the meal. She did, however, go for the lasagna first before getting to the turkey. I honestly can't blame her!

Yes, my nephew dabbed. What?

   These days my mother still makes lasagna and my brother's in-laws, the Grammaticos, love the dish as well. Of course they would. Who wouldn't? I remember one Thanksgiving my father and my sister-in-law's father would compare notes about the types of dishes they would have at Thanksgiving. It was always interesting to hear Mr. Grammatico talk about his experiences since his family was from Sicily whereas my dad's was from Campania and Calabria. There are subtle differences of course. But, you have to understand Italy is a large country and many different regions have different ways of preparing certain food. I still need to try Calabrese lasagna. Look at this pic and tell me it doesn't make you hungry! Mr. Grammatico also loves my mom's cooking because it reminds him of his mother and her cooking.

    In order to preserve the recipe and/or help my sister-in-law, my brother has went so far as to record my mother prepare the dish. Whatever works, right? I'm thinking that video was enshrined on a zip drive somewhere. I should get a copy or better yet film it myself!

    Italian food always makes me think of my Italian heritage and I think you can probably tell I am pretty proud of my ethnic background.  I wish I could say I had some French-Canadian cuisine growing up. But, I never really had any French-Canadian dishes and my other grandmother did not cook nearly as much as Grandma Ollie did. I mean no disrespect of course. It is what it is. My mom learning how to cook a variety of dishes proves that anyone can be a great cook. You don't have to be Italian to make great Italian dishes. It just takes time, effort and love. 

See ya next time! Ciao!

52 Ancestors Week 18: Social

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 18's theme is "Social." Maybe you have a story or photo of an ancestor at an ice cream social. Maybe your ancestor was part of a society, like the Masons or Odd Fellows. Maybe you've made a connection with a cousin or made a great discovery thanks to social media. Whatever it is, write it down!

Was so tempted to use the Facebook logo.

BREAKING NEWS!   I've just found my mother and her parents, Robert and Natalie in the 1950 census after a month of searching the space between spaces!  I'm glad that problem was solved thanks to the diligent work of people over on Ancestry. I still need to fix a few names on Familysearch, though. We might have to wait a little longer for Skynet to take over. It never ends! Onto this week's blog!

    These days social media is everywhere. As the 11th Doctor once said, "We are living in a WIFI soup.". Everywhere you go there's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and all sorts of platforms for every desire you could possibly imagine. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it isn't. When it comes to genealogy, though, I've found that social media comes in handy when you're researching that long lost connection and you just so happen to be talking to a cousin researching the same family line.

Paolo Coppola and his first
wife, Lena.

        I've made it a point to talk to cousins long after I made that important connection on the family tree. Why not? We're family, right? It doesn't matter to me where you are on the family tree. You could be as close as a first cousin or as far away as a fourth and you'd still be family. Social media has helped to cement those connections as I've added a number of cousins to my Facebook page and I've found their input very valuable on this genealogical adventure I've been on and in turn I've been helping them on their adventure.

   

    Take my 3rd cousin, Jeannine, for example. Jeannine lives in Haverhill and her great-grandfather was Paolo Coppola. Paolo, if you recall, was my second great-grandmother Caterina's brother. Ever since I contacted her we've been trying to root out the truth of Paolo's origins since various documents said he was born in either Naples or Sicily. I've shown her all of information I've collected and she went out of her way to e-mail me a very, very long .pdf file which outlined the family history of Paolo's second wife, Antonia Iellamo (Yellum).

   

     While the file went into exhaustive detail into the Iellamo family line, it did mention Paolo a bit and started to cement his origins in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida. Another clue to his origins came in the form of the 1920 census where he was living with his sister, Concetta, and her family. Concetta was definitely born in San Pietro a Maida as evidenced by her naturalization papers, birth certificate and you know....talking to my great-aunt kind of confirmed it. She was her "Aunt Zia" after all.

    Jeannine and I felt this all was enough to cement the connection and we built our trees down to each other on Ancestry. We had that information AND the overwhelming DNA evidence to fall back on. I remember asking her if it was okay to look for more information and report back on what I've found. She said it was fine. Over time, I presented her with more facts such as our cousin in Switzerland remembering how her grandmother Caterina used to talk about her brothers and sister in Haverhill. I was taken aback by that find. But, nothing could have prepared me for what came next.

Big livin' on High Street!

    On April 1st, 2022, the 1950 census was released to the public and right away I searched for various people like my parents, grandparents and everyone else I could think of. It wasn't until recently that the entire census became available on Ancestry to browse through as an index was created by thousands of volunteers. When it did, I thought it'd be cool to look for Paolo and see what he was up to in 1950. I thought it'd be a fun little find and I could share it with Jeannine. That fun find turned out to be something extraordinary!

    As expected, Jeannine's grandmother Beatrice was living with her parents and several siblings on High Street in Haverhill. She was twenty-one years old and was working as a weaver in a shoe factory. In addition to that, she was on the "Sample line" on the census page. This meant that on the bottom of the page, there would be more information about her and her family history. Grandpa Marco, Georgianna Ross and Vincenzo Ferraiolo were just a few of my direct ancestors who were on this line.

    On Beatrice's sample line, it asked the following questions:

1. Where were your parents born?

2. What was the extent of their education?

3. How much did they earn?

    Usually people put down a generic location such as "Italy" or "USA" as their parents' birthplace in the sample lines. Beatrice, for unknown reasons, did not. Instead of going with the generic answer, the enumerator put down "San Pietro, Italy" for her parents, Paolo and Antonia. I sat back in my chair and laughed. We definitely cemented the connection and encased it in solid titanium this time!

    After collecting my thoughts, I sent a message to Jeannine on Facebook with this information. I had hoped she was was online and sure enough she was. I told her I had news for her and explained what I found. As always, she congratulated me on a job well done. She's always been supportive of the work I've been doing and that actually kept me going as I dug through the line.

    While it was certainly possible that she could have meant another "San Pietro, Italy", there's really no doubt that it's San Pietro a Maida as most people from that town refer to the place as "San Pietro". The evidence at this point is overwhelming. Paolo was definitely born in San Pietro a Maida to Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato.

    After the discovery, Jeannine and I talked as we normally do. I told her to share the information with the family. She said that she wished she could find more information about her grandfather's family. I've done what I could on that front for her and I offered to go to Haverhill City Hall to see if we could find information. It couldn't hurt and hey we could go to Benedetti's Deli for lunch! 

    One question still burns in my mind, though. Why did Beatrice put down "San Pietro, Italy." instead of just plain Italy as seen on the other sample lines?

    You know what? I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. There are times when you need to scale back the questions and just be thankful for the surprises that await you. Curiosity is one thing. Too many questions turn you into "The Riddler".

    This story is exactly why social media has been so beneficial for genealogy. With it, you can talk to cousins as nearby as Haverhill or a world away in San Pietro a Maida instantly. People can help, encourage and even make the genealogical adventure not seem so lonely while you're working late on the computer. If anything, social media has been a tremendous boon to the field (Especially during the pandemic.). It allows sites like WikiTree to grow and prosper. Vast distances even become a thing of the past.

    With that said, I suggest you go out there and make the connections with relatives if you can. You never know what stories you can confirm or how much fun you'll have talking on social media.

See ya next time!

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