52 Ancestors Week 22: Conflict

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 22

Conflict seems to be part of human nature, and it can be an unpleasant thing to examine in our family history. (On the positive side, it can create records for us to use.) What ancestor was involved in a conflict, whether it was a war, a feud, or a legal matter?

A banner so good I used it twice.

        It goes without saying that conflicts happens a lot online. You can be a fan of something like "Star Trek" and there'd be a fight over whether or not Captain Janeway should have let Tuvix die in the classic "Star Trek: Voyager" episode, "Tuvix".  The episode aired over twenty years ago and people STILL debate over that one season two episode thanks to streaming services like Paramount +.

    Even in the genealogy community conflicts tend to happen from time to time. If you're a member of a site like WikiTree, you might find yourself at odds with a user who says that Jane Foster married Scott Summers. However, you're Jane's great-grandson and she really married a guy named Donald Blake. Scott married Jean Grey in another city! When that happens, you can take the issue to the Genealogist to Genealogist forum. If you post there, users can help sort out the problem you might be having. That's cool and everything. But, what happens when there's a conflict with someone who isn't on WikiTree? That's a good question and it's happened to me more than once. In two instances, the conflicts resulted in amazing friendships and led to some great discoveries! Let's talk about one of them!

    Not only am I a user at WikiTree, Geni and Ancestry. I also use Find a Grave as a resource. At the time of this blog's posting, I've added forty-eight memorials and manage eighty-four profiles. It's not a lot compared to some other users' work on the site. Then again I really just prefer to take care of the profiles connected to me in some way and whose final resting place is within driving distance. 

    In 2019, I came across a Find a Grave entry for Mariarosa Stella and submitted some corrections to her profile based on her appearance in the book, "Italians in Haverhill". The user who created the profile accepted the changes and all was well with the world. I went about my business and I later got a message on Ancestry from user named Rhonda who saw the changes to Mariarosa's profile on Find a Grave and was confused by my edits since I had her as a daughter of Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato on my OWN tree on WikiTree and on Find a Grave. I later found out that the information was completely incorrect! Whoops!!

The source of the problem was the dreaded
semicolon! =O

        Rhonda was never really THAT upset with me and I thought that was nice. You often get a lot of attitude online when someone makes a mistake or does something someone else doesn't like.  It's happened to me many, many times. Take it from a recovering YouTuber. It's not pleasant confronting someone over some minor issue in a video. You really need to pick your battles in those instances. If worse comes to worse, the "block" button becomes your best friend.

    Rhonda began her first message to me with the following statement: She wished she could have contacted me sooner. I sat back in my chair. Had she been watching my genealogical adventure from afar like some sort of genealogical ninja?! No. As it turned out, she found my tree and had been checking to see if I had correct information. She had intended to contact me and just never found the time. No genealogical ninjas. Sigh.... (I still think they exist. Prove me wrong!)

    She then asked where I got the information from. I mentioned the Italians in Haverhill book and that I was a DNA match to people who descended from Concetta Coppola, my 2nd great-grandmother's sister. Rhonda then explained that I shouldn't accept information from an online tree without first looking at the facts. That goes without saying! I then showed her the picture above as the book can be seen on Google Books. Thanks to some bad editing, I assumed Mariarosa was a Coppola because I thought there was a comma by her last name under the picture instead of a semicolon. I even looked at my physical copy and saw the same mark. The book didn't make things clear at all. I saw my mistake and winced. All of my problems were brought on by an error in the punctuation. 

    I asked Rhonda if we could move our discussion to e-mail because I felt more comfortable there than messaging on Ancestry. She complied and we exchanged e-mails. It was also easier to share images that way!

La famigilia di Coppola

    It turned out that she knew Mariarosa Stella and was thankful that I had made a profile for her on Wikitree. She just needed to let me know that there were some things that needed to be changed. I asked "What kinds of changes?" I said that my great-aunt had to be connected to the family because Mariarosa's daughter Mary Rose married man named Domenic Pallaria and their son is a DNA match with her at like 96 centimorgans. DNA doesn't lie. Especially at that range!

    She agreed with me that DNA does not lie. I just needed to rearrange the tree a little bit. But, not too much. I was confused. What did she mean? If she agreed that DNA didn't lie, then she probably accepted the match as it was. The truth was that apparently Rosamaria and her sister Marianna were in fact first cousins of Giovanni, Paolo, Concetta and Caterina Coppola. I had their first cousin as a sibling! I laugh at it now. But, I was floored when she told me! This conflict was turning into a comedy.

Caterina was named after
her aunt?!

    Rhonda explained how she had been researching the Giampa line for some time and found that Marianna and Mariarosa's parents were Pasquale Stella and Caterina Coppola. My spider-sense began to buzz. That was my second great-grandmother's name! What was going on here?!

    As it turns out, the elder Caterina and my 3rd great-grandfather, Paolo, were in fact brother and sister. Their parents would be the common ancestors for the Pallaria DNA matches I have on the match list. Rhonda pointed me toward the evidence of this--Marianna's marriage to Antonio DeFazio in 1906 listed all four parents.

    That was great and all. But, I still missed one connection. Where did the connection with the Haverhill Coppolas come in? She mentioned Giovanni quite a bit in the e-mails. As it turns out, Giovanni paid for the sisters' passage to America and on the manifest, they listed the man as a cousin. A....first cousin. That sealed the deal right there and I apologized for being skeptical and everything. Rhonda said it was okay and we became pretty close after that incident.

    Ever since that week in 2019, I made an effort to e-mail her with discoveries I've made here and there concerning the family. She's a genealogist herself and as everyone knows; many genealogists have next to no time researching their own trees. Some of the things I've found for her include:

1. Mariarosa's birth certificate in San Pietro a Maida. (I asked for it as I was a little curious.)

2. Giovanni Coppola's grave in Saint Patrick's Cemetery in Haverhill. (I still can't believe it was only two stones down from my grandparents' after all this time and I never thought to LOOK!)

3. An article concerning the final fate of Giuseppe Giampa.  (That was a hard one for her to find.)

4. Marianna Stella's Naturalization Papers

    With all the work I've done. she thanked me for all the hard work and said that I was pretty good at genealogy. That was a great compliment coming from her! I just wish things didn't start out rocky. But, it is what it is and it turned out well in the end.

Been there for years and I never thought
to look two "doors" down?!

    I also took pictures of other Giampa graves and put them on Find a Grave for her since she had long since moved away from New England. If she ever needed my help finding something in the cemeteries in Haverhill, all she has to do is ask and I'd get right on it.

    Oddly enough, it turns out we are probably distantly related via the Hamel line as she has a line that goes to Quebec like I do. We're not DNA matches but we likely have a paper trail that connects as both. I'll have to dig into that next!

    So, I guess you could say this conflict had a happy ending. I made a great new friend who has helped me clean up a pretty big mistake. Hopefully, the mistake hasn't spread to other trees like a virus. That would be awful! Rhonda also helped me by filling in some blanks on an unexplored branch of the tree and told me some interesting stories about the Coppola line. In turn, I helped her find some much needed information. We still e-mail each other with news and if we just wanted to talk. If only all conflicts ended this peacefully. If it did, the world would be a MUCH better place.

See ya next time! 

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