52 Ancestors Week 44: Shadows

 From Amy Johnson Crow: This week's theme is "Shadows." There are some ancestors who seem to hide in darkness, whose stories are hard to tease out. There are also people who "live in the shadow" of someone else. This week, shine some light on one of those ancestors.

This is a contender for best header of the year.

    The people of Haverhill have many stories to tell and as I've been working on my "Italians in Haverhill" tree over on Ancestry, people who have relatives in the tree have taken notice of my work. Everyone from DNA matches to random people checking things out have seen the tree and have even sent me private messages. This is a classic case of cousin bait and it has also pulled some long forgotten stories out of the shadows and back into the light. Here is one of those stories!

    A while back I was contacted by a genealogist named Ashley Gallant who also had deep connections to the "Queen Slipper City". She was born there and had long since moved away from New England. Like me she has Italian and Quebecois roots. However, I didn't realize at first just how well connected we probably were to each other and to the Italian population in Haverhill!

    She initially came across several photos from the "Italians in Haverhill" book that I had uploaded to the site and naturally had many questions for me. Ashley was initially curious about the Coppola family in the book and our possible connection there. I told her everything I knew from Giovanni Coppola bringing everyone over from San Pietro a Maida to Haverhill to Concetta Coppola and her family. As you can imagine there was a lot of ground to cover and at times I felt like I was overwhelming her. It's all good, though. I gave the information in spurts and linked her to WikiTree on multiple occasions. I've even linked her to the blog a few times. It's not a shameless plug when you're doing genealogy! It's probably a good idea to give people information slowly, though. Don't overwhelm people!

   Ash was very determined to find our connection and this week the shadowy clues about our connection came flying into the light at warp speed!

    Over on Familysearch I saw that she added the 1950 census to Concetta Coppola. I thanked her for her work because when I tried to attach the document myself the site wouldn't let me. Thankfully, the glitch was fixed and now I can add the 1950 census to my family! The hints, it seems, seem to go in waves because I hadn't gotten a 1950 census hint for my grandfather Marco yet. Keyword: YET!

    I digress. I asked her what she had been up to and she was still trying to find our connection. She was looking for a record for Angelina Politano who was supposedly the sister of her 2nd great-grandmother, Maria Politano. After I told her to contact the commune office in San Pietro for details, I thought for a second. Where did I see the last name "Politano" before?

    It seemed oddly familiar! You ever come across something that sort of triggers a tickling sensation in your head? Just me? Huh. I guess I really do have a spider-sense.

    The last time I saw the last name "Politano" was in the funeral booklet for my great-grandmother, Maria Tedesco. The gears started turning in my head and I started to ask her questions for a change. She provided me with some names like "Giuseppe Barberio" and "Nazarene Benedetti" my way and my eyes widened. THOSE NAMES WERE IN THE BOOKLET, TOO!  I told her about the booklet and asked her if any names stood out for her and they sure did.

    Giuseppe was Angelina Politano's husband and Nazarene Benedetti was Angelina's daughter ,Angelina's husband. As you could imagine my head was spinning at this point. I asked her if she was connected to Benedetti's Deli and she said that they were cousins of hers. Nazarene's brother, Marcellus, had a son named Joseph who opened the deli in 1961 on Washington Street and as it happens my great-aunt Louise once worked there!

    By sheer coincidence, Marcellus Benedetti was married to Mollie D'Agosto who was connected to the Santa Amelia Gullo I talked about in my first blog in 2021! Don't say it. I can already hear "It's a Small World" playing in my head. It really was a small world when everyone was living within five miles of each other and was in everyone else's business. They probably even knew what size shoe everyone wore. I mean some of them DID work in shoe factories.

    It really shouldn't surprise me that I have these connections. But, when this information comes out of the shadows like this it really makes me wonder just how deep those ties were. Were they friends of Maria? Distant cousins? Well-wishers? What was going on in early March 1943?! I'll probably never know the full answer to that question and while finding the connections was awesome and everything, we still needed to prove that Angelina and Maria were sisters.

Aboard the S.S. Italia.... in April of 1912?! Uhh....

  A man named Fortunato Politano was living with Ash's second great-grandmother and her family at the time of the 1920 and 1930 census. That was clearly her father and thus Ash's third great-grandfather. There was no mistaking that. He was listed as a widower and they arrived in 1912. Sadly, there is not much about his wife, Concetta Sabsanito out there at the moment. Even her last name is a bit of a mystery oddly enough.

Turns out you really CAN fight city hall!

    All isn't completely lost of course. To truly find the answers we seek, one must simply go to Haverhill City Hall and ask for Angelina's death certificate. It would be a bit so much easier going to city hall than asking San Pietro. I sense a field trip coming in the not too distant future as I have her exact date of death.

    Ash's 2nd grandmother passed away in 1954. So, theoretically I could go there and find out once and for all who the ladies' parents were. Seems easy, right? It is.  But, Ash remains convinced that the two were siblings based on a few notes she has taken and the information she has found.

    To get the full scoop, someone is going to have to go to city hall....again!

    I guess you could say this story coaxed most of the connection we have out of the shadows. Let's review the facts. She has Benedetti, Montisanti, Politano and Barberio in her tree and those families were present at Maria's funeral. So, regardless if there's a connection to Angelina or not, there's still a pretty solid basis for a connection to my family. I still wonder if they were friends or related. That's something we'd have to figure out another time.

    Once again I'm going to have to praise the "Italians in Haverhill" book for helping me with these connections. It's an incredibly invaluable resource for anyone interested in genealogy as well. It's not just a niche book for those who have links to Haverhill or are just interested in Italians. The book highlights what life was like decades ago and brings connections that were long since forgotten out of the shadows.

See ya next time! And don't forget to check "Italians in Haverhill" on Amazon! Or Google Books!    

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.

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