52 Ancestors Week 8: I Can Identify

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 8

The theme for Week 8 is "I Can Identify." Genealogy research is about identifying the correct people to attach to our family trees. Who have you worked hard to identify? Another way to interpret the theme would be to highlight someone like my grandfather, who could spot (and correctly identify all kinds of mushrooms. (My sisters and I never got the knack of doing that!)

Went the "Terminator" route with this one. Why not? He
became good....after some reprogramming.

    This week's prompt is actually pretty timely because not too long ago I had identified the parents of my 4th great-grandmother, Maria Ciancio. Her parents, Giacomo Ciancio and Laura DeSando help bring my 5th great-grandparent total to a whopping 111 out of 128 ancestors at that level. Not bad, right? I've been working hard to identify relatives and ancestors in the records of the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida and the results speak for themselves. I'm just missing a few people on the Coppola , Tedesco and Gullo lines and I am confident that I'll be able to find them all. It will just take time and I'll likely need help from some friends of mine. I'm not going to lie!

    Speaking of the Coppolas, I haven't just been identifying family members in various records. I've been working hard to identify people in various photographs in my collection and then finding all I can about the person in the picture. Join me as I walk through what it took to identify people in a photo you might have seen me post here many times! And here it is!

Really love this pic! 

       I know what you're going to say. "Chris! You've talked about this picture to death so many times!" "There's a caption that can identify everyone in the photograph!!!" You're right on all counts. However, getting the names down is only a part of the discovery. Without the context and the connection, the picture itself has no meaning. This photograph means a lot to me because all the women in it are connected to me as you'll soon see.

    If you're new to the blog, that photograph comes from the book "Italians in Haverhill" and it's a book where many family members' photos are immortalized. The book came out in 2001 and it's a pictoral history of various Italian immigrants who came to Haverhill, Massachusetts as the title implied. I have even made a study about the book and the people in those pages You can check it out here. 

     As the caption says, the photograph shows the reunion of several women who have roots in San Pietro a Maida. When I first read that line, several alarms in my head went off because that was where my dad's paternal side came from. When I first read the book in 2001, I had no idea who the women were. I just knew that they were somehow connected to my grandpa Marco's ancestral town. I asked myself , "How was this possible? Who were they?!"

Those were questions I needed to answer and my only clue at the time was , of course, the caption. The caption was very helpful and after years of research I was able to figure out what exactly was going on in the photograph. 

    The photograph was taken at the 25th wedding anniversary party for Giovanni "John" Procopio and Angela Coppola. According to Haverhill records, the two were married on March 2nd, 1919. This meant that this photograph was taken some time in 1944. Angela was a daughter of Giovanni Coppola, the brother of Concetta Coppola. You can see Concetta in the photo above. She's the fourth woman in the back row if you go from left to right.

Marco and Caterina!

    My great-aunt helped me to identify Concetta early on. How could she not recognize her own great-aunt? Putting to and two together, I concluded that Concetta was the sister of her grandmother, Caterina Coppola.

    From there things just sort of fell into place and I began identifying everyone relatively easily. Going from left to right on the bottom row, here's what I found.

 First up is  Dena D'Arcangelo, the wife of Giovanni Coppola's son, Bruno. Dena's family links to my dad's cousin Dennis since Dena's aunt, Antonia, married Florindo Villanucci. Florindo was Dennis's grandfather. Everyone's well connected in Haverhill, man. Everyone. Not a day goes by that I don't encounter someone who knew my grandfather or some other member of the family. That's just how it was growing up it persists to this very day.

     Angela Coppola-Procopio is next and again this is a picture from her party. She definitely looked happy to be surrounded by family.  

    Next to her is Mary Rose Giampa and finding her connection to me took some intense genealogical gymnastics. To make a long story short, she was the daughter of Rose Maria Stella who is also in the photo next to Mary.

    Rosa was a daughter of Pasquale Stella and Caterina Coppola. You might be saying to yourself, "Isn't that Caterina your second great-grandmother?" To that, I say "NOPE!" That Caterina was the brother of Paolo Coppola, my 3rd great-grandfather. I found that out after a chance encounter with a distant Hamel cousin over on Ancestry who helped me piece together that puzzle. I even wrote a blog about it! Check it out here. This was later confirmed by Pallaria cousins who are DNA matches who descended from Mary Rose and her husband, Domenico.

    

    Wow. It took a lot to confirm just that one lady didn't it? Brace yourselves we've still got a few more people to talk about! Bear with me. The first row is almost complete!

    The last person on the front row is Angela's sister, Concetta. That isn't a typo. The name "Concetta" is extremely common in that side of the tree. Several children of Paolo, Giovanni, Concetta and Caterina all carried the name of their ancestor, Concetta Nistico. Keeping them all sorted is frankly a full-time job.

    The Concetta I'm talking about here was married to Guido Pitocchelli whose family ran a funeral home in Lawrence, Mass. I learned that bit of information from the funeral pamphlet for my great-grandmother, Maria Tedesco. It's crazy to think that this party took place a year after that event. All of the people in this photo were also at the funeral.

    Moving onto the back row and going from left to right we have Angela Azzarito. She was the last person in the photo that I identified and to date I haven't found a direct relationship to her. That's a bit of a bummer. But, all isn't lost. WikiTree.com has a connection finder and with it found that I have 12 degrees of separation with her! HAH! The Kevin Bacon game strikes again!

Speaking of genealogical gymnastics....

    The Connection Finder shows various marriages connecting Angela with myself. There may still be a blood connection hidden deep within the records of San Pietro a Maida. I say this with confidence because the last name "Azzarito" is a ridiculously common one in that town. One of my ancestors or relatives could have easily married an Azzarito. I don't know. YET! I'll be looking for her and any connection she has to these ladies. Then again she could just be a friend.

    The next woman is Concetta Coppola-Papatola's daughter, Angelina Papatola. Angelina married a man by the name of Arthur Soterakopolous. That's not all. Angelina was actually my parents' wedding in 1971. That woman liked to party didn't she? Maybe she just liked weddings? My mother recalled that everyone called her "Angie Siros" because let's face it "Papatola-Soterakopolous" was way too much of a mouthful. 

   Angelina had a sister named Rose and I wonder why she wasn't in the photo as well. Maybe she was off camera or something when the photo op occured. Angelina had a daughter name Rose and grandpa Marco often visited the two.

    The tall lady standing next to her was Marianna Stella, the sister of  Rosa Maria. The two ladies' trip to America was paid for by their cousin, Giovanni.

    Standing next to her is one of the original "Little old Italian ladies". That woman was Concetta Coppola-Papatola. My great-aunt Nicolina said that she and Marco used to call her "Aunt Zia" all the time. She had a lot of great memories of her and her kids and shared them with my parents and I when we visited her in the early 2000s. I don't remember if we brought the book with us. But, I do remember asking her about it and showing her the picture. There's nothing like a picture triggering someone's memory of days gone by.

Oh, look! DNA confirmed. Nice.

    Our last lady is Mary Coppola, a daughter of Giovanni Coppola. She married a man named John Forte some time in 1933 and I honestly don't know that much about here. You'll notice that I have DNA confirmed her on WikiTree. I have messaged the match in the hopes of learning more about Mary. But, I haven't heard anything from them.

    In fact, I've only heard from a handful of DNA matches who descend from Giovanni. I hope I hear from them sooner or later. 

    In any case. the tour of the photo is now complete. Angelina's two sisters and several first cousins were in the picture. All that remains now is to figure out how Angela Azzarito fits into the picture. I know she married Nicola Selvaggio and that's about it. I'll figure it out. I know I will! 

    Genealogical gymnastics aside, it took a lot to identify people in just one photograph. Forunately, I had the resources of living relatives who could pick people out of a lineup and tell me who was who. In some cases it worked. However, in some cases it took some digging. I'll forever be grateful to those who helped me figure out who was who and how they're all related. There are many other pictures like this in my collection. Others might take a little more poking and prodding. Like this one:

    Oof. That's gonna be a tough nut to crack. I could do a whole blog on trying to identify everyone in that photo. However, I can tell you that I see my great-grandfather, Vincenzo near the center and grandpa Marco and grandma Ollie on the far left. The bride is my cousin who now lives in Switzerland. The rest? I have no clue. But, I'm not about to give up! All it takes is asking the right question at the right time to the right people. That's all you have to do to master the fine art of genealogical gymnastics. You're gonna need to master those skills if you come from a big family where everyone knows everyone and is in everyone's business.

    Still, it's cool to try and identify everyone in a group photo. It adds context, depth and meaning to a photograph. Once you figure out who everyone is, it becomes more real if you have a personal connection like I do. Pictures may be worth a thousand words. But, identifying everyone is priceless and all it takes is a little bit of digging. If you have nothing to go on, it could be difficult. However, chances are someone somewhere may be able to help you figure out just what was going on in that moment forever frozen in time.

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.

52 Ancestors Week 7: Outcast

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 7 is "Outcast." Sadly, it isn't uncommon to find someone who was set apart from their family or who was rejected by society. This week, you could give them back at least part of their story. You could also take a different angle and write about an object that was cast out, or maybe getting a cast off. Feel free to be creative!

That fancy font couldn't save him.....

    When it comes to outcasts in the family tree, I honestly can't think of anyone in my first thirty ancestors who would be considered an "outcast".  Collateral relatives? Yeah. Definitely. I also don't want to say my family tree is boring because NO ONE'S FAMILY TREE IS BORING! Seriously. If your family tree is boring, let me know because I will find something exciting in there. It might not be as awesome as potentially being a rum runner in the 1920s or some other amazing story. But, it's there somewhere. You just need to look hard enough for those juicy stories. It's like the 11th Doctor said in the 2010 "Doctor Who" Christmas special, "Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important.". Everyone has a story. Everyone has a past worth writing about.

    Unfortunately for me we're going to have to go back a way to find an outcast or two. How far back? Oh....How does three hundred and thirty-one years sound? That's right. If you do the math, we're going back to a time where rampant paranoia spread like wildfire in a small New England town called Salem, Massachusetts. People of all walks of life were accused of witchcraft and many were hung for their supposed crimes. Ironically, the gallows is now behind a 7-11 these days. Check Google Earth. It's true!

Spending most our lives livin' in a
Puritan paradise.

        I happen to descend from many who lived in Salem and who accused their neighbors of being witches. I have a prominent judge, a doctor , an aristocrat and others who stoked the fires of paranoia and did little to alleviate the growing fear that persisted in ye olde Salem. 

    Sadly, the paranoia wasn't confined to just that town as people other towns and cities in the Merrimack valley were accused of being witches. Salem is the one town everyone talks about because it got the most press at the time and when people think of the Salem Witch Trials, they immediately thought of that town

      My tenth great-grandfather, a Chelsea man named Captain John Floyd, was one of the accused and was probably at the wrong place at the wrong time. His story is rather typical for New Englanders at this time. He was born around 1637 and was part of Governor Andros's expedition against the Indigenous people to the east. By 1689, he was made captain and was in command of a military post on the Saco river in what is now the state of Maine. Floyd even saw action during King Philip's War.

    You would think that being a decorated soldier would automatically recuse from any accusation, right? Well, it turned out that under his command of the Saco outpost, many men lost their lives and several girls living in Salem were effectively orphaned by his actions as commanding officer. Later, they would see Floyd routinely talking to and trading with the nearby Indigenous peoples of Massachusetts Bay. To them, it was scandalous and an affront to the sacrifice their parents died for. Yeah. Let's be real. They were looking for revenge. Who are we kidding? There's no way to sugarcoat this!

    We may never know the real reason why they accused Floyd in the first place. It should be noted that he was one of the few men actually accused of witchcraft. Wouldn't that be "wizard"? In every mystical lore I know of a man who practices magic is called a wizard or a warlock. Whatever. They weren't playing Dungeons and Dragons.

      In any case, if you were accused of witchcraft (or wizardry), you were basically the subject of scorn and ridicule. At the time of his accusation, he was married to Sarah Doolittle and they had eleven children together. Chances are good that while he was accused, his family was also the subject of gossip. Was his wife a witch? What about their children? The accusers honestly could have pointed a finger at one of them and they'd have been sent to the gallows. Paranoia was that bad back then!

    Thankfully, most of his children lived well past the days of the witch trials. But, what about John? Why was he targeted? Well, like I said the townspeople didn't like him talking to people who didn't look like them. So, they assumed he was up to no good.

    On May 28th, 1692 a complaint was filed against him and ten other people while John was in his mid fifties. The evidence would not hold water today. Apparently, Floyd touched a cloth on a table and when another woman grabbed the same cloth, she fell into fits. Today, we would probably call that a seizure. The woman then assumed he caused her fits. I can actually hear the eyes rolling through the Internet. You're thinking the same thing, right? Where's that "Sure, Jan." gif when I need it?

Benjamin Abbott house, Andover Mass

    The judge ended up putting him and several of the accused away to await execution. A few days later, fate lent Floyd a hand when the governor of Massachusetts Bay, Sir William Phipps, returned to Boston after having been in England during the whole crisis. Oh, to have a record of his reaction to the hysteria....

    While Phipps believed in witchcraft and all that, he decided to put an end to the executions since his own wife was accused at one point. I guess when the news hits home, your views tend to change. It's a good thing, too, because he ended up freeing Floyd and 167 other people who were in Salem's "Witch Dungeon" waiting for death at the gallows. How much you want to bet he returned to Boston and sent a letter back to England saying "You won't believe what happened while I was gone...."

    The Salem witch trials were a disturbing time in our planet's history as it wasn't the first time we humans let rampant paranoia control our lives. If someone is told the same thing again and again about someone somebody doesn't like, then would tend to believe it and not listen to the facts. Sadly, this happens far too often in the present. 

    As for Floyd? Well, he passed away in 1702 at the age of 65 and was buried in his home town of Lynn. Chances are good he never set foot in Salem again after that fiasco. Nice place and all but I'm sure he didn't want to die there. Even though the trial ended, you can imagine the stigma of being put on trial for witchcraft stayed with the Floyds for the rest of his days. 

    His story was one of many since accused people were often treated with ridicule. Today, those charges would not hold any water. Seriously, how lame was the handkerchief  accusation? Lady, get thyself some help. Unfortunately, that's how it was back then since paranoia was so widespread. If you were accused, you were condemned and put to death no matter how innocent you may have acted. Floyd was lucky. He got out. Others weren't so lucky and their lives are etched in the memory of Salem today.

See ya next time!

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 6: Social Media

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 6 

The theme for Week 6 is "Social Media." Social media can connect us to people we otherwise wouldn't have encountered. Have you made a family history discovery via social media? (What about in the social column of their newspaper -- that was basically their Facebook!) Have you ever imagined how an ancestor would have used social media? Write about it this week.

Thanks go out to Mindy and Azure for this banner.

     We are definitely living in a golden age of genealogy. For all the good and bad social media has done for society at large, you can't deny that platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Mastodon have brought many genealogists together from all corners of the globe and helped to create a fantastic online community. Websites like WikiTree have even taken large steps to embrace the social side of the Internet with their own YouTube channel and Discord server. Social media and genealogy seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly and with it, I've made some pretty awesome breakthroughs on my family tree.

    To list every single discovery I've ever made using social media would honestly take forever and a day because I basically live on the Internet and so does everyone reading this blog. Don't lie. We're all living in a social media soup. It's everywhere and you cannot escape it no matter how hard you try! In the past, I've written a blog about how I came into contact with a cousin in San Pietro a Maida and that led to me finding information about my great-grandmother, Maria Tedesco and ultimately finding cousins across the pond in Europe.  All it took was one small step when I joined the commune's Facebook group in 2017 and the rest is history. 

    Speaking of Maria, I was thinking about her as I watched a video on Youtube and that eventually led to me feeling more connected to my cousins in Calabria AND Maria herself. Let me elaborate.

 

     I was watching a series on YouTube called "Carlo and Sarah". It's a show about an Italian man and his Italian-American wife and how he deals with everything America throws at him. They go to places like Olive Garden (Eww.) and try all kinds of dishes there. They've even gone to Italian-American festivals in Massachusetts and every once in a while there's a prank or two. Overall, it's a great channel and the hosts are pretty funny and insightful.

    Over Christmas and New Year's, the couple went to Italy and documented their trip in a series of videos. The last one they made, so far, had the two eat an amazing dinner with Carlo's family and I got to see some dishes I've never seen before and honestly they made me feel pretty hungry. It was probably a bad idea to watch the video before dinner. If you want to see it, check it out here. Don't forget to mash that like button, ring that bell and subscribe for more content!

    To make things even more interesting, Carlo's family lives in the same region of Italy where my father's paternal side came from. When I saw that he arrived in Calabria, a light turned on in my head and an idea was born!

    Growing up, the only Italian dishes I've ever had came from Campania or other parts of Italy. That makes sense because grandpa Marco died when I was four and grandma Ollie only knew how to make dishes from Campania. My father never knew his paternal grandmother and his step-grandmother Fortuna never cooked. I'm not sure if my great-grandfather Vincenzo cooked. But, on the whole the Calabrian dishes were noticably missing from the table whenever we'd have a big family dinner.

    The only time I ever had anything remotely Calabrian was usually some soppressata (cured meat) from a restaurant, sausage or some other treat. It's a shame, I know.  I had to think of a way to rectify this gross miscarriage of justice. For a long time I felt like there was a hole in that part of my Calbrian heritage and I needed to fill that hole with one or two options. Option 1: Go to Food Network and see what they had for Calabrian dishes. Option 2: Ask famiglia in San Pietro for help. 

    If you're thinking I went with option 2, then you're right. Why would I go with Food Network when I have famiglia a few keystrokes away? So, my idea was to ask them for any Calabrian recipe. It didn't have to be ones from the video. However, that would certainly help matters! Not to mention my appetite.

Vincenzo and Maria.

    After I finished the video, I went to Facebook and started messaging my cousin's wife, Rosa. Rosa had already shown me some very tasty dishes she had made and I figured she would be the one to ask about the dishes in the video.

    I took some screenshots, sent a link and asked her if she could tell me the names of the dishes Carlo and Sarah were eating since they didn't go into the details.  I also explained a little bit about the two YouTubers and what they were all about. Pretty straight forward ,right? I was not prepared for what happened next!

    

    Since it was late in Italy when I messaged her, I didn't expect a reply right away. So, I went to bed and the next morning I saw that I had a voice message. She explained what the dishes were and I thanked her. Rosa was online and said that I was quite welcome and that she had something to else share with me. I smiled and I typed "Oh?" 

Proscuitto + melon= awesome.

   Rosa sent me a few links to various Italian websites with Calabrian recipes. I thanked her and I sensed that she  that wasn't done sending me goodies. A few seconds later she sent me a book of recipes in English that her students made in the form of a .pdf file. 

    Rosa is an English teacher in Lamezia Terme, a town close to San Pietro, and she had her class create a book using their own family recipes a while back. She shared them with me and inside were the various dishes Carlo and Sarah were eating in the video.

    I was immediately blown away by her generosity. Then again, I've come to expect it from her because she is an awesome and very positive person.

    I looked through the cookbook and saw a few things I knew I could make. I would just have to convert the measurements and that would be it. The more I looked at the recipes, the more I wondered if the meals were the type of things Maria would have made. Chances are she probably did. I then got another idea. I had to show my dad the recipes. This may or may not end well. We end up having eggplant parmesan for DAYS!

    The more I thought about it, the more I realized Rosa gave me a great way to connect with the Calabrian side of my family tree. I already talk to her, her brother and sister-in-law. This was a great way to connect with an ancestor who sadly didn't live long enough to meet her grandchildren and share her recipes with them. So, this would be a great way to fill that part me that was missing.

    A couple days later, I emailed my cousin in Switzerland and told her about the Calabrian recipes I got from Rosa. I told her I was a bit nervous making the dishes since it'd be venturing into the unknown. She told me that the ingredients and everything didn't matter as long as you have passion. Passion is what really drives cooking.

    Caterina definitely made a good point. I told her and Rosa that I will do my best to bring these recipes to life.  Perhaps Maria's spirit will be watching me as I make them. I don't know. But, it's a good thought and it's definitely a good idea to try. What's the worse that could happen?

        These Calabrian recipes mean a great deal to me and you know I'll be treating them like gold. There are even PICTURES with the recipes. Rosa's students went all out and I thank her every day for a chance to connect with that part of my family tree. It means a lot to me and I know it'll mean a lot more to my dad. So, you can bet I'll be trying these recipes out. Perhaps I'll even let the old man pick one to try. Then again this may be a bad idea. Hahaha! Stay tuned! Thing could get interesting!

     Other examples like this one prove that these days the distances between point a and point b have become incredibly short and that the world has become smaller. Communication across vast distances are now instantanous and now every corner of the world is connected in a world wide network. We're living in a world that our ancestors could only dream of because if they left their home for good, there was a good chance that they'd never see their families again unless they wrote letters, called or visit from time to time. 

    It's now so much easier to stay in touch with family using social media. People around the world could share things with you that you can't find on Antenati or any other database. Talking to a relative halfway around the planet can help you better understand your family and allow you to make the discoveries you wouldn't normally make anywhere else. In essense, that is what social media has done for genealogy. Without it, I definitely would still be having a hard time with various things and I wouldn't have met some awesome people!

See ya next time!

P.S.: Because Mindy demanded it, here's the fake Facebook screenshot starring some ancestors of mine that she made ages ago. Enjoy!

52 Ancestors Week 5: Oops

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 5

The theme for Week 5 is "Oops." We all make mistakes. This week, consider writing about a mistake that an ancestor made or that you've made in your research. One of mine would be looking for my ancestor Matilda Debolt Skinner Crossen Brown McFillin in the wrong county (for a long time!) because I misread something written in the family Bible. (I read "DeKalb" as "Decatur." In my defense, I was working from a rather poor photocopy!)

Oops! I used this banner again!

    Everyone makes mistakes. It happens. You deal with it and you move on. Anyone who says their family tree is one hundred percent fool-proof is probably covering up the fact that Billie Jean was not your great-grandfather's lover. She was just a girl who said he was the one. Oops. I may have gotten that song into all of your heads! Sorry!

    This year, I plan on revisiting some things I might consider small mistakes. I don't know if I'd call them mistakes. They're just a few things that haven't really sat well with me for a long time. Something set off my "spider-sense" and the more I looked at it, the more it rang in my head like church bells. Let me explain.

   This is the birth record for my third great-grandmother, Rosa Suverato. If you read the document, you will see that she was born on May 31st, 1843 in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida to Giuseppe Suverato and Concetta Nistico. Naturally, I added the parents and went about my business when a friend of mine found it. The ages of both Giuseppe and Concetta were given so I was able to extrapolate a potential birth date for both parents as being in the 1810s. Seemed logical, right?

    Well, when Thrulines became a thing over on Ancestry.com, I got a potential ancestor for my 4th great-grandfather, Giuseppe. I thought that was cool and added them. I can already hear the audible gasps from the crowd already. Relax. There's no need to get the torches and pitchforks. I corrected this mistake, I swear! Of course it also proliferated through many trees around Ancestry. But, that's beside the point. Let's get back to my story! I have a very good reason  for why I did what I did!

    The reason why I added the people wasn't because I just thought "Oh! These HAVE to be my ancestors!" There was more to it than that. I was initially hesitant because I didn't see any cousins stemming from that branch. That's fair. Not everyone has tested or built a tree up. However, I checked out where the hint came from and checked out the other person's tree. 

    According to the tree, Giuseppe Suverato aka Giuseppe Francesco Soverati was born in Jacurso, Italy in May of 1814. Believe it or not, this was well within the realm of possibility. Jacurso is only eleven kilometers (6.8 miles) from San Pietro. This meant that there was a very real possibility that this person from Jacurso was my ancestor.

    The next thing I did was I contacted the owner of the tree and we discussed things at length. He agreed that it was definitely a possibility and saw no harm in me adding this information to the tree and thus allow it to proliferate all over the Internet like a virus.

Then, I started to take a deep dive into the records in San Pietro by myself and made a startling discovery.  

Giuseppe, you are probably
the father.

    A child named Giuseppe Suverato was born on April 10th, 1810 in San Pietro to Giuseppe Suverato and Catarina Giampa. I sat back in my chair and I was like "I think I have a problem".  Both men could definitely have been Rosa's father. If he was born in 1810, he'd be 33 years old. If he was born in 1814, he'd have been 29 years old. Both men could have definitely without a shadow of a doubt be Rosa's father based on their age, distance of the towns and a few other factors.

    I let everything simmer for a good long while until I went back and checked my friend's tree because I wanted to see if he made any discoveries. He knew I was looking for Giuseppe and Concetta's marriage since that would cement the claims we both had on our tree. I checked things and and he made some big changes! He changed the name to Giuseppe Antonio Soverati and had him married to a woman named Vittoria Dattilo in 1851. That was one strike against me. However, Rosa was born in 1843. So, I thought I had nothing to worry about. The guy could still be the father, right?

   Well,  I was adorably optimistic until math reared its ugly head.

    A child named Giuseppe Suverato was born to Giuseppe and Concetta on January 25th, 1833 and was likely their first child as he was twenty-two and she was twenty-five. This was about ten years before Rosa was born. In 1833, the other Giuseppe in Jacurso was about ninteen years old and while he could still be Rosa's father there was still a slight problem.

    The last names were clearly wrong and meant for different families. Unlike "Ferraiolo", which was spelled "Ferriolo" in the 1810s,  the last names "Suverato" and "Soverati" were similar but yet completely different names. In San Pietro's records, the last names were clearly "Suverato". I've seen that all across the board as I looked for more relatives of Rosa.

    To date I have found three of her siblings in San Pietro and their last names are all "Suverato". I haven't found more. But, I know they are out there. There's a huge gap of time between when her sister Angiola was born in 1834 and Rosa's birth date in 1843.

    With all this confusion, I decided to bite the bullet and change Rosa's parents to Giuseppe and Catarina because of the name spelling and how certain dates weren't adding up the way they should. Yes, I know that the Jacurso Giuseppe could still be her father. However, my "spider-sense" was buzzing and I don't like to ignore it. Something always seemed a bit off with the Jacurso connection and I was never able to figure out what it was. 

    I have looked up Giuseppe in the Jacurso records and they did gel with what my friend found himself. So, that wasn't the issue. Maybe I sensed something was off? The feeling oddly went away when I added the San Pietro Giuseppe to the tree. 

    Though, I suppose my first clue should have been the first and middle names as well as the last name. The records in San Pietro would have shown the father's other names if he had them. In Jacurso, the first and middle names were present. So, it's possible that they are different men entirely.

    The only way I can really put this issue to bed is if I can somehow get the marriage document of Giuseppe Suverato and Concetta Nistico. That would seal the deal once and for all. Unfortunately, that record is not online and the processetti does not have the document. I would have to ask the commune office in San Pietro for that bit of information.

    Now that I've fixed everything, I still have a bit of a problem. Many, many trees on Ancestry have Giuseppe Suverato and what are possibly the wrong parents attached to them. What do I do? Do I just let them continue to have their errors? I've already corrected the mistake on Ancestry, FamilySearch, Geni and WikiTree. I'd hate to have to message people about the changes. What do I tell them? 

    I think the best thing to do is probably wait and see if they come to me, first. With luck, they'd be understanding of the issues. With even greater luck, I'll be really clear as to why I changed things around. With even the BEST luck, maybe I'll be able to back it all up with a marriage document. Oh, that'd be the cherry on top of that sundae, wouldn't it? On the whole, I try not to worry about every else's trees. They can have all the mistakes they want. It's the world trees that need the tender loving care. So, that's why I quickly changed things on Geni, FS and WikiTree. We can't have inaccuracies over there now can we?

    Mistakes are bound to happen in genealogy. We're all human and I've got to be honest. I probably have a ton more mistakes on my tree that I don't even know about. But, I did learn some great lessons. Potential ancestors CAN lead you down the wrong path even if everything seems plausible. You need to examine all the details before jumping in and saying "Oh. This person's my ancestor. Cool!" There's always a hidden detail somewhere that you need to find, first. It's a good idea to look before you leap, my friends. And as far as everyone else's trees go, I'm not going to stress over it. People are going to post what they want. Let them come to me with questions.

    Now, will I make more mistakes? Probably. We're only human.

See ya next time! Live long and prosper!