52 Ancestors Week 48: Overlooked

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 48

This week's theme is "Overlooked." We don't always see something the first time it comes across our path. This week, consider a relative whom you didn't pay much attention to when you first discovered him/her... or someone who was overlooked during their life. You could also explore a discovery you made using a resource or clue you previously overlooked.

Siri, find me the creepiest cartoon eyes you can find.

    I try not to overlook anything while I'm doing research. Call it being obsessive/compulsive all you want. However, when I'm trying to find information on someone, I try to find everything and I mean EVERYTHING about the person I'm researching. It's not being OCD if you're just being thorough. Now, that isn't to say I've never missed something. I have and it's no fault of my own. When you're looking at thousands and thousands of birth records, you might miss something that was hidden in plain sight.

    This week, I received an e-mail from the commune office in San Pietro a Maida and they graciously sent me what amounts to a care package of information concerning my 2nd great-grandfather, Antonio Tedesco. In it was confirmation of his birth date, parents, marriage to Domenica Gullo and his death date. I'll admit it was very cool of them to randomly send me information. I got the feeling they were just catching up before sending the next batch of information my way. Looking forward to finally cracking the brick wall that is Paolo Coppola.

    When I looked at the information, I realized that I hadn't looked at the birth documents in San Pietro a Maida in a very long time. It happens. We get busy with our other projects and life gets in the way. You always want to take a break every now and then when you're knee deep in records and that's what I did.

    Something made me want to look at the records again this week to see if there was something I missed the first time I ran through everything. Like I said, there are thousands and thousands of records for San Pietro a Maida. Going through everything takes time and there are not enough hours in the day.

    I looked at the family tree for my grandfather, Marco and I said to myself, "Pick someone to look up in San Pietro. What could go wrong?"

Little bit of a spoiler here. Heh....

    I decided to look up information on my 4th great-grandmother, Cecilia Cassese because I was on a
Tedesco kick at the time and I wasn't a fan of having the vague birthdate of "1813" on her profile. I initially got that date by examining how old she was on her son Tommaso Tedesco's birth banns in 1850. I took the year 1850 and substracted her age from it. She was about thirty-seven at the time. 

    Tommaso was also one of six known children and when I subtracted their mother's age at the time, the year 1813 kept popping up as a potential birth year. Granted, it could have been an error. However, I wanted to explore the records again to see if I missed anything the first time I looked at that year's birth records.

    I admit when I first ran through the births of that year I was taken aback by the heavy black ink they wrote with. It made things a little hard to read and I decided to put it on the backburner because it strained my eyes a little trying to read the heavy ink from two hundred and nine years ago. I hope they never ran out because there wouldn't be an Office Max in the area until some time in the twentieth century. Eh, they probably made their own ink.

1813, the year ink was in high
demand.

    I was listening to some music while I was surfing though the births and found this gem. I paused the second I saw the baby's name "Cecilia" at the bottom. I looked at the top of the page and saw she was born to Angelo Cassese and a woman whose name I couldn't read at the time. Thanks, heavy ink!! You're a big help!! ;)

At least I was able to make out some of the important details. She was born on June 13th, 1813. Her father's name was Angelo and he was about twenty-two at the time of her birth. This put his birth date some time in 1791. 

That was very helpful. However, I still needed the wife's name. It looked like Domenica to me and I thought the last name looked smudged. I handed the document over to some friends over at the Italy Project who told me that the name looked like "Lijoi" to them. I used Google to see if that was a name in Italy and came up with several hits including an actor with the same name. I smiled because I found a new pair of 5th great-grandparents, Angelo Cassese and Domenica Lijoi. 

    Many celebrations were had because this brought my 5th great-grandparent count up to 109 out of 128. I still had to eliminate a silly little thing called confirmation bias. That's fine, kids. I've come prepared. Your honor, let me present the evidence.

     To the right of this blog post, you will see the 1847 birth record for Angela Tedesco who was born to Tommaso Tedesco and Cecilia Cassese on December 27th of that year. Italians have very strict naming traditions in their family where babies are usually given the names of their grandparents. However, this situation appears to be unique. Cecilia may have named her child after her father. Angelo is the masculine form of Angela in Spanish and in Italian.

    The next bit of evidence is pretty clear. Too date I haven't found a Cecilia Cassese in either 1812 or 1814. So, the chances are good that I have found my 4th great-grandmother and the two mentioned are her parents. The next logical step would be to check to see if I can find an marriage for the two in the old Processetti. That will take some time to go through. However, this is pretty solid evidence don't you think? I wonder why I didn't come across this before. It's not like I haven't tried to find her before. Maybe I just didn't look long enough? Maybe I was intimidated by that heavy black ink? It's hard to say. At least I went back and found the information I needed. It's honestly better late than never, right?

    It's often easy to overlook things on your genealogical adventure because either there are distractions or some documents may appear too hard to read at first glance. You're not going to find everything right away. When you're looking stuff up, instant gratification doesn't always happen. However, it does feel good to go back every once in a while and say to yourself. "Huh. Why didn't I notice that before?" Whatever you do, don't beat yourself up over not noticing a document or a person the first time around. It's still out there waiting to be discovered. So, take a chance and go back to that archive you swore off and see what treasures you might find! You might be pleasantly surprised!

See ya next time!