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.