52 Ancestors Week 23: Mistake

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 23

Mistakes. We all make them — and that includes us and our ancestors. What's a mistake that an ancestor made? What's a mistake that you've made in your research?

Oh, that'll just come right out.....

    It's time to once again talk about one of my greatest hits! Who doesn't love a blog that doesn't involve self-deprecation in some form? That is why you're all here, right? Hey. If you're on the Internet, you'll find a lot of self-deprecation out there. In fact, some people on YouTube make good money poking fun at themselves. (Shout-out to my friends, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug of "Atop the Fourth Wall", Brian "The Last Angry Geek" Heinz of "Comic Book Issues" and Mathew "Film Brain" Buck of "Bad Movie Beatdown/Projector". If you like comics and movies, check their stuff out!) And those are just some of the YouTubers I'm friends with. 

    If you're a genealogist, you make tons of mistakes. Fess up. We've all been there. We've all put in a Peter Parker when he should have been Pietro Perrelli. Mistakes happen and thankfully people in the genealogy community are generally okay with them for the most part. Just don't make a habit of it or else they'll spam your inbox! Nah. I'm kidding. Maybe. 

Paolo and Lena.

    I actually had a pretty big mistake cleared up yesterday thanks to the help of my 4th cousin, Cynthia. Cynthia descends from my 2nd great-grandmother's brother, Paolo and she is a user on Familysearch. We ran into each other on the site when she saw that I was working on the Coppolas. She was very grateful for all the information I put in about Paolo, his parents, the many children and all of the cousins. We exchanged e-mails and I sent her the file our cousin Jeannine had sent me so that she and I would be on the same page. Makes sense, right? I like sharing information and helping people. Why would I hoard it all to myself? That's just ridiculous! Information like this needs to be free!

    I had every intention to write this week's blog about some lame mistake I made concerning the Tedesco line. But, I think this one follows the same vein. You need to be very, very careful when dealing with a common last name--Especially ones as common as Tedesco and Coppola. Those are probably the two most common last names in all of Italy. Check Cognomix if you don't believe me!

    I was about to write my epic blog when suddenly I got a private message alert. I checked Familysearch and saw a message from Cynthia. I hadn't talked to her in a while and wanted to see what was going on. She said she was working on a few odds and ends on the tree and has been trying to make the tree as accurate as possible. She'd be great at WikiTree. I really should invite her to join us. We don't bite. 

Mmmm. Chewed up paper. Yummy.

    Cynthia messaged me to tell me that she had to disconnect Paolo and Lena's supposed daughter May from the tree because of a mistake on the birth document. She asked me if that was okay. I said it was fine. I appreciate the honesty. I had added her as a daughter back in 2020. I have no problem with any edits. I just needed to know one thing. "Why?" I don't get mad if someone edits something I've worked on. I work with an editor for my comics and I've had help with my videos from time to time. So, working with someone on a problem is not anything new for me. I just wanted to know why the change had to be made.

    As it turns out, I didn't pay too close attention to the ACTUAL document when I attached the source back in 2020. Look at the corner! It's ripped, mangled, chewed and just messed up. Why didn't I see that before? Well, Cynthia believed it was a mistake on Familysearch's part and no one else's. There's a surprise. They're usually pretty good about errors.

Good thing I can edit these....

    If you look at the initial hint, you will see that Paul Coppola and Lena King were listed as May's parents. In 2020, I had thought that was enough to justify adding her as a child for Paolo and Lena. I created the profile on Familysearch and on WikiTree. After that, I just went about my business. I saw the document. Don't get me wrong. But, I didn't see how badly mangled it was until yesterday.

    My cousin planned on messaging Familysearch about the error in the transcription since it looks like there were several births conflated into one person. She believes that the birth was supposed to be intended for Rosie May Coppola. Rosie unfortunately died young in 1911. I accepted the facts and then asked her how she came to these conclusions as I set out to edit my trees on Ancestry and WikiTree.

    She said that the information did not line up with everything I had gathered. Paolo and Lena were living in Beverly, Mass at the time and the town has sixteen miles between it and Andover. This had to have been some other child or a combination of children born in the same area. While courting distance is a thing, so are places where you could deliver a baby. In 1905, home births were still pretty common and I HIGHLY doubt a woman in labor would go sixteen miles to give birth in another town in 1906! That isn't done! Not unless you have Seabiscuit working for you or something.

Umm...You're not May.

    Curiosity got the better of me and whilst I was talking to my cousin, I decided to check out the births in Andover that weren't indexed. Someone HAD to have been born on March 27th, 1905 in Andover, right? Right?! Well, someone WAS born on that date. Someone who was definitely not Italian. 

    Her name was Louise Doherty and she was born on that date to Edward and Margaret Doherty. They were of Irish descent and worked in mills. Oh and she was a twin, too! All of that just made me go "HUH!" 

    At that point I just shrugged my shoulders. This slight mistake was no skin off my nose. If you come across a mistake like this, it's best to just take it all in stride and edit it. There's literally nothing else you can do to change the facts to fit your narrative. And just to be sure I checked to see if there were any other girls born on that day. Nope. Louise was the only one. "Huh.", indeed.

    With nothing else to do, I just decided to edit everything. What else could I do? This was a pretty big mistake. I had given someone a kid who probably wasn't theirs and since Paolo and Lena couldn't tell me without the aid of a Ouija board I had to take matters into my own hands.

Before

    Over at WikiTree, we pride ourselves on trying to be more accurate than any other world tree on the Internet. If there's a problem and there is a source backing it up, we spring into action and correct the problem as quickly as possible. With that said, I ended up disconnecting "May" from her parents and deleted her on Ancestry. I know it sounds cold. But, I have my reasons.

    The reasons why I so readily accepted the deletion of the profile is pretty simple. Aside from that one source on her page, I was never able to find any other source for a "May Coppola" in Haverhill or anywhere else in the Merrimack valley for that matter. She never appeared in the censuses. I assumed she just died young or in between census years. However, there would have been a death certificate or a hint in the death index in that case. Nope. There was never any hint which indicated a date of death. So, I did the only sensible thing. She had to go.

And After

    I edited "May"'s profile since we can't really delete profiles on WikiTree. Instead of using a proper name, I gave her the unfortunate name of "Unknown". I hate doing that. Unfortunately, in the genealogy business you need to do that from time to time. It happens. You deal with it and move on until you happen to find the actual name. 

     Even though the source was ripped, it still counts as a source and so I left that in place. There was a Coppola born in 1905. We just don't know who.

    If I look closer at the ripped section of the page, I can see that the "Coppola" was on one page and "May" was on another with Paolo Coppola and Lena King. This lends credence to the belief that this was intended to be Rosie May Coppola and not May. Oddly enough the preceding and following pages did not show the contents of the page. They may have been lost to time. As a result, "May's" page on WikiTree now has her as an unknown Coppola. She was a child born in 1905. There's no question there. We just don't know who.

    You might be wondering why I didn't just convert her profile into one for Louise Doherty. That required a lot of work and I really didn't want to leave her profile floating in the ether of Wikitree, unconnected and just sitting there collecting dust. I know the same will happen to the May Coppola page. But, I might merge it into Rosie May's profile. We'll see. I'm not entirely sure what I am going to do with the profile, yet. However, you might be interested in learning that Louise did live a nice, long life as far as I can tell as I've found her in the 1950 census in Peabody. That's pretty cool! I just hope it's the same one.

    Situations like this illustrate why you have to be careful with certain last names. Common names can cause some errors in your tree. Not just the Italian ones. If you come across a "Smith" or "Jones", may whatever deity you believe in have mercy on your soul. Common names are tricky to research. What I've learned from this is that you need to focus on the "Smith" or "Jones" in your general area. That's how I managed to research all of the Haverhill Coppolas. In all of Haverhill, there was only one Coppola family who wasn't connected to Paolo, Giovanni or Concetta.  That was pretty amazing and a stroke of luck because that last name is incredibly common.

    It's a good thing Cynthia pointed out the mistake when she did and I thank her for helping me out. Mistakes happen all the time in genealogy. If you say you've never made a mistake, you're only kidding yourself. Own up to the mistakes, correct them and some day you'll be laughing about it with your friends and coworkers.

See ya next time!

P.S. Go check out Brian, Lewis and Mathew's stuff. They're good people! 

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.