52 Ancestors Week 37: High and Low

 From Amy Johnson Crow:

The theme for Week 37 is "High and Low." Life is rarely a straight line; there are highs and lows. Is there an ancestor who experienced both? You could also take a more literal interpretation of mountains and valleys, or even tall and short.

It's not Mount Everest, but Mount Washington's still cool. (Ouch.)

    Have you ever had one of those DNA matches where you've searched high and low for a possible connection? You've run every test you could think of JUST to find that one link and it drives you crazy because the solution was *JUST* out of reach! One vital piece of a puzzle was missing and for all you knew it was staring you in the face the whole time! Well, as it turns out a little tenacity can go a long way sometimes because searching high and low led me to discover an amazing third cousin and a story where not only did the skeletons come out of the closet, they were dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" as well!

     My father and I both have a DNA match on Ancestry named Wendy and for years I've been trying to figure out how we could connect her with our family. Her half-brother has a tree on Ancestry as well and there were no Italians to be found on there. He also tested and is a high DNA match. I thought that was all odd because she and my dad both share 141 cMs with each other. That was not a small number and it's a very valid match. It didn't make sense. Why were we matching those two? I looked at the shared matches and they both seemed to match virtually everyone who descended from my 2nd great-grandparents, Vincenzo Carrabis and Maria Giovanna Capobianco.   

    This was pretty confusing. Vincenzo had four children who arrived in America in the 1910s. My great-grandfather Giuseppe and his siblings Rocco, Rosina and Pasquale all settled in Massachusetts. Out of the four Gesualdo natives, Rocco had the most children. He had eleven and so everyone I talked to about Wendy and her half-brother thought they descended from him. My family and I assumed this was the likely solution to the puzzle for a long time!

       Things got a just little bit more interesting when I saw Wendy show up as a match on MyHeritage. This was no mere fluke at this point! I had to message her and find out what exactly was going on!

    I messaged her hoping I would get a reply and all I got was a few more questions in response. She was just as confused as I was about about this whole thing. She too wondered what the connection could be and why she had Italian DNA. She told me a story about how her paternal grandmother had many husbands over the course of her life. So, I thought I'd let this simmer on the backburner for a while and get back to the case some other time. This was all back in 2018, by the way!

    As the years went by, I was still curious about the connection because more and more DNA matches showed up and there was still no solution to the puzzle. She was matching all these Carrabis cousins and there was not one clue to be had! Was I annoyed? You bet I was!  I still had my theory that she was related to Rocco somehow. That was about to change!

    Someone pointed me to the "What Are the Odds" tool on DNApainter.com. From there I could potentially see what was going on. I messaged the shared matches my father had with Wendy and asked them if they could tell me how much they matched with her. As you can imagine, the information slowly trickled in.

    Seriously. How do you ask someone "Hey. We match so and so. Could you tell me how you match her, please, so I can find the solution to the puzzle? Why are you looking at me like I'm crazy?" I swear I'm getting better at these awkward messages! REALLY! Yeah. You don't buy it, do you?

    

Rocco, Caterina, Vincenzo, Dolores and Pasquale.

    Eventually, I got the numbers in and one by one the possibilities of Wendy descending from one of the Carrabis siblings increased. I just needed to knock out some possibilities. Once I added my dad and his first cousins, Giuseppe was taken out of the running as a possible candidate. I asked DNA matches who descended from Rocco for help and HE Was taken out of the running, too.

    I sighed. This is why I don't go to Vegas, kids. I'd have put good money on Rocco! That just left Pasquale and Rosina as a possible ancestor. However, as I added more of the matches who descended from Rocco, Rosina was taken out of the picture. Curious. It might have something to do with the birthdates I added.

    That just left Pasquale Carrabis. Pasquale was married to a woman named Raffaela D'Adamo and they had six children together. Three boys and three girls. The game was afoot! Wendy HAD to descend from Pasquale! Call it intuition or call it luck because the other siblings fell out of the picture like a game of "Guess Who?".

  Last week, I had an epiphany. If I really wanted to see what was going on here, I'd have to see Wendy's results for myself and put in the matches that way. This way I wouldn't have to wait for any of the others to message me back. I only needed Wendy's help. After all this was her test and her relationship to everyone. I wanted her to be in the loop with all these crazy theories running around in my head.

    I sent her a message on Facebook to see if we could talk about the tree. We had been talking off and I and I would offer advice and she would tell me what I needed to know. I asked her if she could share the DNA match list with me so we could finally put the whole "How are we connected?" issue to bed.

She did and that's where the real fun began!!

That is NOT a small number!

        I logged onto Ancestry after accepting the invitation. Topping the list of matches after her half-brother, half-sister and a half aunt was a known second cousin to my dad who was the son of Vincenzo Carrabis. She shares a mighty 833 cMs with the man! I sat back in my chair and I messaged Wendy. I explained to her that 833 was not a small number! As you can see on the screencap from DNApainter, there are not many options here for a connection! The guy is not a great-grandparent or a great-grandchild. At this point it was clear that she definitely, positively, 100% descended from Pasquale Carrabis. There's no denying it. The evidence is clear, your honor. 

    However, there was another slight issue. Pasquale had six children. Three boys and three girls. Who did Wendy descend from? Well, at this point I did a little bit of a process of elimination.

    Wendy was born in Ohio and most of Pasquale's children lived in Massachusetts. I removed the women from the running since they had children who would have been way too young to be Wendy's father. One daughter, Theresa, was born in 1934 and died in 2020 and never married. This left the boys, Vincenzo, Enrico and Carmine. Wendy has a 651 cM DNA match who descends from Carmine. If she descended from him, the match would have been a LOT closer. Enrico suspiciously went out of the running when I added the birth dates of his children! That was odd. But, I don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I should also note that Enrico would have been thirteen years old when Wendy's father was born.

    That just left Vincenzo "James" Carrabis as Wendy's potential grandfather. All signs seem to point to him. However, there's a bit of a snag. James was born in 1918 in Gesualdo. At the time I only knew that he lived in Nevada with one of his wives, a woman named Dolores Washburn. They were married in 1967 and at the time he had several children with a woman he married in the 1930s when he was a young man.

    I was a little confused. So, I thought I should message the 651 cM match. She already knew who I was and the family in general. In fact, she told me to tell my father she said "hi". It turns out she was a little curious about this lady, too. And check this out. SHE said Wendy was probably from Rocco's side of the tree. I explained that wasn't the case and shared the WATO tree.

    So, she told me to send a message on Facebook to one of Vincenzo's daughters since she had no idea what was going on.

    I also sent a message to one of Wendy's other matches and he told me a very interesting story and it's one that really sheds some light on this whole situation. I like long stories. So, I told him to send me an e-mail with whatever information he could tell me.

    It turns out that the man is Wendy's half-uncle and that her father, Donald Dearth, may not have been a Dearth at all! After Donald passed away in 2018, members of the family thought they would take a DNA test. They were all surprised to learn that Wendy, her half-brother and half-sister all had Italian DNA and Italian DNA matches! At this point I was like "Oh, boy...."

    To make things even more interesting, Donald's mother was seven months pregnant with him when she married Harold Eugene Dearth, the patriarch of the Dearth family. Harold was the man who raised him as his own son and I wonder if he even knew Donald was his or not. This was in 1946. Edna likely kept it a secret and took it to her grave in 1997.

Harold and co living in Richland, OH in the 1950
census.

    My brain started to hurt. This was turning into a soap opera of epic proportions. I had so many questions! How could Vincenzo be the father if he lived in Mass and Nevada? Was he stationed in Ohio during the war? His draft card would help with clearing that up. Then again Donald was born in August of 1946. The coupling had to have occurred in November of 1945. That was two months AFTER the end of the second world war!

    Now, he could have been stationed there during the war. We don't know and I'd love to find out. I've been searching high and low for any information which could prove or disprove the hypothesis. There's a GOOD chance Vincenzo was Donald Dearth's father, though. I've searched for the other possibilities and the wells ran dry pretty quickly. I would say that this has a 98% chance of being accurate. I could be wrong about this. However, DNA does not lie. Especially at 833 centimorgans! You can't fake that. You really can't!

    Obviously the next step would be to find his birth certificate. However, I've been told that Donald was born at his aunt's home in 1946. He still would have been registered at some point! I would love to take a look at the document if I could. The problem is that the document itself may list her husband and not the father. That would certainly put a wrench into the works, huh?

    Nevertheless, I searched high and low for this connection and I at least confirmed that Wendy is indeed a descendant of Pasquale Carrabis. She is a third cousin and is pretty cool to talk to. There might be some confirmation bias there. I don't know. I might have to recheck my facts. She said I was like "Dick Tracy". I'm not sure about that. I'd rather be "Batman" but without the breathtaking mommy and daddy issues. One thing I am sure of is that superhero landings are murder on the knees.

    I do hope that both families, Wendy's and the Carrabises, understand what's been going on. I explained the situation as best I could. There's nothing saying a relationship has to be made. But, now the skeletons are out. Where they go from here is all on them. I searched high and low for every clue I could find and presented the evidence. What comes next is their call.

See ya next time!