52 Ancestors Week 17: DNA

 Week 17

April 25 is DNA Day, and it's no coincidence that the theme for Week 17 is "DNA." Has DNA testing broken down a brick wall for you? Is there a brick wall that you wish it would break down? Have there been any surprises? (If you're posting anything publicly, remember to not identify living people unless you have their permission.)

Y'know with just one or two modifications, we could
totally have superpowers.

   

     When I had my DNA tested back in 2017, I was told many things. The first being that my father was all Italian all the time. I could've told you that. If you look at his tree, you can clearly see the pasta sauce flowing through his branches. The leaves of his tree are fig! One of the other things I was told that you should always expect surprises. That goes without saying. You never know what a DNA test will reveal once the test results come in. You could end up being an ethnicity you previously had no connection with OR you could find a relative or two you never knew existed. Those are all very good words to live by. However, what if you're on the recieving end of the surprises? What if you are the surprise relative to someone? It's happened to me before and it's more likely than you think. The names in this blog have been changed to protect the innocent!

   For the longest time, my mother and I had this DNA match who was pretty much unknown to us. We didn't know where she fit into the family tree. She matched me at 127 cMs and my mother at 182 cMs. The woman, let's call her Crystal, sat on the backburner of my DNA match list for quite some time before I said "You know what? I'm going to message her!"

    And that's what I did after doing a Leeds chart and finding out that she matches virtually everyone who descended from my 2nd great-grandparents, Antoine Legault and Lucie Cadran. You would think that would narrow things down a bit, but, unfortunately (or fortunately) the family tree is HUGE!

    A little over a year since I sent the message, I got a response from Crystal. After getting over my shock, I saw that she was looking for information on her father's side of the family. That's reasonable. Many people wanted to learn about their family and that's why they send in those DNA tests. In this case, this was Ancestry. I offered some advice and various tools like DNApainter's shared cM project/WATO. I also linked her to Dana Leed's Leeds Method. If you have access to the tools of the trade, why not share the wealth?

    I'm not sure what possessed me to ask my next question. I asked Crystal about various matches we shared in the Legault line. I asked her about a known second cousin, "Joseph", who descended from Antoine and Lucie's son, Oliver. Crystal replied saying that she matched Joseph at 1540 cMs!

    The blood drained from my face and my jaw hit the floor. To quote Strong Bad: "That is not a small number! THAT IS A BIG NUMBER!"

    I tried very hard to compose myself afterward. As a genealogist one must remain calm like the summer breeze and....Oh, who am I kidding? I was floored! You would be too!

    I composed myself and made sure that this was the same 2nd cousin I was talking to her about. She verified that it was indeed the same guy. Running the numbers through the old shared cM project, I found this amazing result.

There is little to no wiggle room!

   According to the shared cM project, Joseph was most likely Crystal's grandfather. I doubled-checked my work and even did a WATO tree to be sure. The evidence was clear and right away Crystal greeted me as a new third cousin. I smiled and I asked her if she talked to anyone else in the family who could help find the connection.

    Crystal said she was talking to another second cousin of mine named "Felicia". Felicia is a DNA match over on MyHeritage and I had messaged her a few times here and there. So, I knew how we were related.  I emailed Felicia to see what she had to say about everything as she was incredibly warm and kind to our "new" cousin. That was a good thing. The last thing I wanted to be caught in the middle of was some drama. If there was drama, I'd have backed away. No one has time for that mess.

    Felicia being warm and caring is a bit of an understatement. When I messaged her before this big reveal, she told me everything I needed to know. She also descended from Oliver and she answered my mother's questions about his children since she hadn't seen them since my parents' wedding! Yeah, it's been quite a while since we last heard from that Legault branch hasn't it? After all fifty years is a long time.

Hello, old Ancestry screenshot...

    My second cousin told me that she had a pretty good idea about the rest of the tree and filled me in on the details. For privacy's sake, I'm not going to elaborate on anything. Let's just celebrate the fact that Crystal has a new grandfather that she never knew about and a family that cares about her. That's all anyone can hope for. Let's just hope they have some relationship because I hadn't had an update in quite some time.

    The only thing is that I felt like I rocked the boat a bit with the big reveal. I was the one who told Crystal about the connection to Joseph and what that meant. Did I stir the pot? All I did was present the facts of the case in a calm manner.

    Crystal and Felicia have both informed me that while the boat was rocked a little bit, all parties involved in the situation have been made aware of everything. There were some waves made. But, at this point I think things calmed down. Do they have a relationship with one another? I have no clue. All I can say is that I hope there's some relationship. You never know. Having that close of a DNA match doesn't mean you HAVE to have that close of a relationship with someone. You aren't owed anything. But, you should always be aware that surprises can happen when you take a DNA test.

    I also learned an important lesson in all of this. If you're the person who has to explain things to the surprised DNA match, it's a good idea to explain things in laymen's terms and present the facts of the case so that they will understand what you're saying. Too much information could startle them and they'll feel overwhelmed. So, treat it with kid gloves, be their friend and whatever you do, try to avoid dropping the truth bomb. Save those for incredibly difficult DNA matches.

Did I just equate a truth bomb with a nuclear weapon? Yes. Yes, I did.

See ya next time!

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 16: Should Be a Movie

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 16 is "Should Be a Movie." What is family history without the stories? (It's a bunch of cold, lonely facts, that's what!) What story in your family should be up on the silver screen? Write about it this week!

Reusing a classic banner? Talk about fan service!

    If there's one 52 Ancestors prompt I really like to write about, it's the occassional one titled "Should Be a Movie". The last blog where I talked about a person whose life should be a major motion picture was in a blog post I made in September of 2020 focusing primarily on the life and times of my 3rd great-grandfather, Jeremiah Smart Felker. If you read the blog, you'll see why his life really should have been a summer blockbuster. The drama alone would be enough to net an Oscar. This time around, I think I'll go in a different direction. However, the setting would ultimately be the same. Where else am I going to go? Oh, right. Newburyport. Next time.

    Set at the backdrop of the height of the Italian immigration to Haverhill, Massachusetts, the next movie I could create would focus primarily on the Italian immigrants who came to the city in order to escape poverty in their homeland. The movie would be called "Italians in Haverhill" and I do hope that I could use the title because I honestly can't think of a better one off the top of my head.  I don't think Scorsese would appreciate me calling it "Gangs of Haverhill" since it sounds a lot like his  "Gangs of New York" epic.

  Speaking of gangs,  I also want to make that movie less of a Mafia movie because when Hollywood makes a film based on an Italian family we get a TON of Mafia references. There are some exceptions like "My Cousin Vinny", though.  Don't get me wrong. Mafia movies are cool and all. But, let's be honest. It's a cliché considering how many of them there are out there these days. We've got "Goodfellas", "My Blue Heaven" and of course the "Godfather" saga to name a few. All three are classic movies. However, they kind of focus on one aspect of the whole Italian-American experience. You get a window into what life is like and you rarely get the whole picture.

     Now, granted sometimes those things have happened. People fall in with the wrong crowd and the next thing you know you're storing rope for this guy who knew your grandfather's dog in your basement. No, that didn't happen to me! Do you honestly think I'd admit to any Mafia ties on the Internet?! Besides....it wouldn't be the dog. It'd be my second cousin "Fredo". (I don't even have a second cousin named "Fredo".)

    Basing a movie on the book might be a bit of a challenge. Hundreds and hundreds of families are discussed within those pages and any one of those tales could make for a good movie. To remedy the problem of who to pick for such a tale, I suggest an "Italians in Haverhill" movie be based on some of the people who lived in Haverhill, had Italian roots and yet were not featured in the book.

I just really love this picture of
Marco and Ollie.
Dunno why

    Enter my grandparents: Marco Ferraiolo and Olympia Carrabs. I may be a bit biased, I admit. There's really no better couple to be the audience's eyes and ears to the goings on in Haverhill during this time of mass immigration. They were very young in the 1920s and yet they witnessed first hand what their parents had to deal with to get by in a strange land. From Marco's perspective, we'd get the old tried and true "stranger in a strange land trying to make it work" trope. From Olympia, we'd get to see the daughter of two immigrants caught between two cultures because even though she was born in Haverhill, she still had deep Italian roots and likely had to deal with her own problems.

    I will admit that this method is a little biased like I said. You have to understand a few things about my family. I'm connected to over fifty people IN those pages and possibly even more! My grandparents knew everyone in the Italian community in Haverhill. Everyone knew everyone and everyone was in each other's business. My father explained it like this.  He couldn't go five feet without someone saying to his parents that someone saw him walking with his cousins on Washington street one hot summer day to the drug store and that they were clearly up to something. The parents knew and they had their ways of finding out everything! There was no escaping it!

    The people in the know would ultimately be the people who were in the book like Marco's great-aunt, Concetta Coppola and Olympia's great-uncle Giovanni Antonio Penta. I can see Marco and Ollie going to them for advice and possibly an anecdote or two. The two would have their own storyline. The way I see it this movie could also be a romanticized version of how my grandparents actually met since I have no idea how it happened!

    The more I think about it, the more that plot would make sense because I'd need to have both families meet somehow! I can't just have two families milling about and not have them meet during a two a half hour tour de force. It'd make for a very disjointed movie with no plot. I'd absolutely have to have Marco and Ollie meet in the movie and have it end with their wedding in 1946!

    Where would I start the movie, though? Why not have it start when Marco arrived in 1929 and then spend parts of the movie in the 1930s. It was the height of the Great Depression and I could cover major familial events such as Marco's mother's funeral and even the wedding anniversary party where this picture to the right was taken.

    For an Italians in Haverhill movie to work and keep up the pace, we'd have to adapt some aspects of the stories in the book and use some of the stories in my family in order for things to make sense. We'd explore the trials and tribulations of what it was like in those days and ultimately end with a wedding. Would there be drama? Oh, you bet! You need to keep people invested in a period piece!

   

Vincenzo and Fortuna

    I think I can manage to have a lot of drama in the movie without there being any Mafia references. Marco's father, Vincenzo married his second wife Fortuna a little over a year after his mother died. The second world war would have to be mentioned near the end as well. There's a lot to focus on and a lot of material to work with.

    Of course I always could just set the movie from 1943 to 1946 when Marco and Ollie were in their twenties and had to deal with everything life threw at them. Ollie would have been out of high school and she'd trying to find her place in the world. Marco would have been drafted and a lot of what I talked about earlier would still have occured.

    The initial immigrants to Haverhill may have been older at this point. However, their arrival would still be fresh in their minds and they were still very much alive. So, if I cover everything from 1943 to 1946, I would still get the drama my grandparents were caught up in along with events discussed in the book and still have a glimpse into the Italian immigrant experience. 

   This week's blog reads like a brainstorming session, doesn't it? Well, it does help to talk out a story every now and then. I think if I focus on those three years, I would have a great movie if I touch on these points:

1. Immigration and the two interacting with family members who immigrated. Toss in some of the drama that went on as well. Maybe discuss a case Paolo Coppola worked on.

2. My grandparents meeting

3. The funerals/weddings

4. The anniversary party

5. My grandparents' own wedding.

    The icing on the cake would be referencing the Carrabs family in Melrose and Everett and the Tedescos from Woburn. They'd probably show up at the wedding!

    I think it would make for a decent movie. I'm not entirely sure who I'd cast for what role. But, they'd have to be people who could pull off a convincing Italian accent. I think a movie like this could work. Hey, Hollywood! I've got an idea for you! An Italian movie without Mafia connections! It'll work! Contact me! Have your people call my people!

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.

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 15: Solitude

From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 15 is "Solitude." Is there someone in your family tree who lived by themselves or would seek out time to be alone? Celebrate them this week by writing part of their story.

Did you really think I'd pass up using Superman's crystal
fortress as a banner this week?!

    We humans are social creatures. Even though many of us crave solitude in order to collect our thoughts in an attempt to appear mysterious and brooding we are in fact very social creatures. We've been that way since the earliest days of human history. Like-minded families formed clans and that eventually gave way to nations over a period of thousands of years. 

    Now, picture yourself as a traveler from that land. Circumstances have led you to want to venture far from everything you ever knew and everyone you've ever loved. You travel for thousands of miles and find yourself to be the first of your countrymen in a strange land with customs that are unfamiliar to your own. You feel isolated, alone and you seek the companionship of those who share your language, customs and history. The solitude you feel leads you to want to seek out family who live far away. It's the only way you know how to survive in a strange land.

It's a boot kicking two rocks!

    If you have an immigrant ancestor like I do, then that story should sound very familiar to you. Everyone has someone in their family tree who came from somewhere. It doesn't matter if your family arrived at a specific nation five hundred years ago or last week. We all have an immigrant story in our family history. Mine is no different and I find myself wondering just how isolated and alone the first Italians who arrived in Haverhill felt back in the day and how they handled solitude in a strange and at times unfriendly environment.

    The jury's still out on who was the first Italian in my family to arrive in Haverhill many decades ago. Was it Giuseppe and Clementina? They arrived in the 1910s along with my great-grandfather Vincenzo. If we really want to get picky about it, we'd go by the dates on the ship manifests and in that case the title would ultimatly go to Giuseppe Carrabs who first arrived in 1902, eleven years before Vincenzo set foot on American soil.

   This seemed like an open and shut case.  However, Giuseppe went back to Gesualdo as his daughter Jennie was born there in 1907. We're looking for someone who didn't go back and forth like many Italians did back then. That takes Vincenzo out of the equation, too since he also was a "bird of passage". Okay. So, who WAS the first Italian to go to Haverhill and just STAYED there?! This also rules out his brother Rocco since he went to America in 1904 and returned to Gesualdo.

La famiglia di Coppola

  Italians have been in Haverhill since the latter half of the 19th century. They trickled in from time to time, took up residence in town and found jobs in the new mills along the Merrimack. It wasn't until the massive migration in the early 20th century that we saw tons of families arriving in the Queen Slipper city.

    One of those families was the family of Giovanni Coppola. Giovanni was the younger brother of my 2nd great-grandmother, Caterina and he was probably one of the first people who came from San Pietro a Maida to Haverhill in 1905. I'm willing to bet that even amongst his fellow Italians, his family had to deal with a fair bit of solitude and isolation because when he arrived in Haverhill, many of the Italian immigrants living there were from the northern part of Italy and San Pietro is in the south.

    That distinction really shouldn't have mattered since they were all Italians. However, many in the north viewed the south as poor and there was a strong divide in Italy at the time between the northern and southern regions. Unfortunately, this led to a great deal of solitude and isolation even among their own countrymen. What was a San Pietro native to do? He was far from home and his fellow Italian neighbors probably whispered rumors about him behind his back once they learned where he came from. Well, he did what anyone in his shoes would have done. He sent for his family and anyone else willing to leave San Pietro for Haverhill.

Not the first. But, certainly not
the last!

       In hindsight, it seemed like the most logical thing to do. If your family is alone and none of the other Italians in the area wanted to play nice in the sandbox, there's really not much else you can do but call for people from your home town. Granted, there was the fact that conditions were pretty poor back home and that gave people more of an incentive to leave.

    In 1902, his brother Paolo left San Pietro. However, he didn't join Giovanni in Haverhill right away as he lived in Beverly for a brief period. He did eventually join him in the city after he married his first wife Lena in 1909.

  Another person in the family to leave San Pietro behind was his sister, Concetta who arrived with her family in 1911. I really think her arrival probably aleviated some of the solitude Giovanni must have felt. Who better to help someone feel more at ease in a strange land than a sister, his brother-in-law and their children?

    Not long after their arrival, my great-grandfather Vincenzo paid the family a visit and headed back home. Part of me wonders if he spread the word about just how great a place Haverhill was because shortly thereafter many San Pietro natives found themselves boarding ships bound for New England. Vincenzo would return again and again before settling down in the 1920s and sending for his wife and two children.

    It's an interesting idea and there may be little bit of truth to the story. I can definitely see Vincenzo telling people about the opportunities in America and Giovanni inviting every family member he could over to America. Did it really happen? It's fun to think about because so many families were invited by him and actually stopped by his house in Haverhill according to various ship manifests. To list them all would take a while.

    Giovanni must have felt happier once his fellow San Pietro natives were around and he took up a job as a grocer to likely help feed his family and help support the growing population of Italians in the city. He was no longer alone as his people from his home town were there to help aleviate the struggles he had to endure. After all there's strength in numbers.

    I should probably note that Giovanni also traveled back and forth from San Pietro to Haverhill many times. He did it on: November 10th 1898 aboard the Alsatia and on September 17th, 1929 aboard the Augustus.

The wedding of Domenico
Pallaria and Maria Giampa

    Giovanni's situation probably isn't all that unique if you think about it. Many other immigrants likely felt alone in a strange land and called for family members to come over as well. These days we call it "chain migration" where a family member desires the companionship of their kin. 

    However, what sets Giovanni apart from most other immigrants was that not only did he send for cousins, siblings and other relatives, he sent for friends as well. The more I think about it, the more I begin to realize that he wanted to recreate San Pietro a Maida in Haverhill.

   I know that sounds like a plan a supervillain would cook up. But, it makes sense doesn't it? For a time he was one of the few from San Pietro IN the city. His fellow Italians and others probably contributed to him feeling isolated so he felt the need to contact people from his home town and asked them to join him. With conditions being the way they were back home, they likely jumped at the chance to leave and boarded the ships when they could.

    Is this all true? I'm not sure. However, it'd make for a good movie. See next week's 52 Ancestors for details! In any case, it's likely the logical reason for why so many from San Pietro immigrated to Haverhill. One man's solitude in a strange new world eventually led to droves of people from that one Calabrian town to come to America. The rest as they say is history. And a movie....

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 14: Begins with a Vowel

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 14

The theme for Week 14 is "Begins with a Vowel." Chances are there is someone in your family tree whose name begins with a vowel... or lived in a place that begins with a vowel...  or had an occupation that begins with a vowel....  You get the idea ;-) Have fun with this week's prompt!

I love the Internet sometimes. Create your own version here!

 

   When you look at the first thirty people in my family tree, you'll find that only a few of my ancestors have names that begin with a vowel. My grandmother Olympia, my great-grandfathers Alfred and Austin and my 2nd great-grandfathers, Antonio, Eugene and Antoine all have names that start with vowels. Six out of thirty ancestors isn't bad, right? Trust me I've got more of them further back in the tree! Hang on a second. Do my eyes deceive me? Do I see "Anthony" written in two different languages on my family tree? Yes, yes I do! Isn't that an interesting coincidence? It's amazing how that worked out. They have the same name and yet they are clearly very two different people from very different backgrounds.

    For starters Antonio was born in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida in the 1870s to laborers Tommaso Tedesco and Angela Gatto. Since they were born in the 1850s like Antoine was, you would think he'd have more in common with them than Antonio. I mean Antonio was a good twenty-five years younger than Antoine was. That's a whole generation!! If there wasn't a language barrier, I wonder what they'd even talk about. Wine, Chris. They'd talk about wine. What else would they talk about? Pre-unification Italy? The establishment of Canada as a country? Both events did occur within their lifetimes!

    When Antonio was born, Antoine was already married to Lucie Cadran and their daughter Lucy Legault was about a year old. In a few short years, the family would end up in a town where the Industrial Revolution was about to transform a town on the banks of the Merrimack river into a shoe producing powerhouse.

    Sadly, Antione didn't live to see many of the changes that took place in Haverhill since he passed away in 1901. In that same year, Antonio's daughter Maria had celebrated her first birthday. While she ulimately ended up in Haverhill, the two Antonys would never meet.

    The more I think about it, it seems interesting how both men had a city vs country vibe going on because Antonio lived in a farming community whereas Antoine came from a town sixy-seven kilmoters outside of Montréal to Haverhill. Since both men come from completely different backgrounds, do you think they have any similarities at all? Yes, they do! And I'm not just talking about their names.

    One similiarity both men have is that they were both very hard working. Even though one man worked in a factory to support his wife and children and the other worked as a farmer, you can't tell me that they didn't value hard work. Skilled labor was in high demand during the time in which they lived and I'm sure they could have ranted for hours about how much money they made and of course their bosses. Who doesn't like ranting about their boss from time to time, right? They probably had a thing or two to say about child labor practices, too.

 Another similarity that both men have is that their home towns were both known for their agritculture. Rigaud, as Antoine's hometown is now called, was well-known for its dairy production. Obviously, they weren't growing olive trees.

    Still, both men were likely no stranger to the hard work farmers had to endure. I bet they'd have a lot to talk about in regards to when to grow crops and everything. Canadian winters can be brutal. Just imagine how it was during their lifetimes! Wow.

Regards from Rigaud!

    Both San Pietro a Maida and Rigaud are fairly close to large bodies of water. So, I imagine both men were quite familiar with fishing even though the climates are incredibly different from one another.

    Another way Antoine and Antonio are similar to each other is that they had many children and they themselves came from two very large families. 

    The church also likely played a huge role in their lives and that faith carried Antoine from his hometown to Haverhill where he would spend the rest of his life. Antonio on the other hand seemed to have spent his days in San Pietro as he passed away in 1969.

    If I looked hard enough, I bet I could find even more similarities between Antonio and Antoine. I still think it's a remarkable coincidence that I have two second great-grandfathers who have the same name but in different languages. I think you could probably chalk this up to how my family tree is set up. One half is all Italian and the other half is mostly French-Canadian. I was bound to have similar names at one point, right? It's still cool to think about and I do wonder what kind of conversation they would have had once the language barrier was lifted.

See ya next time!

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.