52 Ancestors Week 24: Last One Standing

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 24

The theme for Week 24 is "Last One Standing." My thought with this theme was there are some ancestors that we research, and we feel like we are the only one researching them. (Or maybe I'm the only one who has felt that way!) Of course, feel free to interpret the theme however you'd like!

Greetings from scenic San Pietro a Maida!

    Researching your ancestors is a great way to spend your time and you get to meet all kinds of people on your genealogical adventure. That's why I like sites like WikiTree. It's a collaborative community of genealogists from all over the world working together to build a single tree for every human who has ever lived on our small blue planet. With a little luck and ingenuity, you may find yourself on the world tree and end up connecting with distant cousins you never knew you had. That's definitely the case for my mother's side of the tree!

    My dad's side is a little complicated and it often feels like I'm the only person who is researching his paternal ancestors. His mother's side of the tree was researched by the incredibly awesome and talented genealogist, Mary Sytko aka GesualdoGenie. If you look at her tree on Ancestry, you will find a well-sourced tree that covers everyone who had ever lived in Gesualdo, Italy from the 1700s to the early 1900s. It represents twenty plus years of hard work and I am thankful for her work, time and dedication. It helped me so much in the past and little by little I'm importing her work onto WikiTree as part of the Gesualdo One Place Study. With her permission, of course. The information on that tree is too good NOT to share! She has told me that she doesn't have the time to upload the 60,000 people from her tree by herself. Who does?!

     That just leaves the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida where my grandfather Marco was born. There are days where I feel like I'm the only one researching the town, I'm not going to lie. To keep this blog from becoming a pity party, I'll just say right now that I have had help on the San Pietro side of things and it's not like I'm completely alone. I just might be the only one actively researching the town at the moment.

Astorino? Where have I seen that name
before?

    I don't know if I actually AM the only one researching San Pietro a Maida as I've seen trees such as this one over on Ancestry.com which has people from that Calabrian town on them. Naturally, I've done my best to try and contact the owners of the tree to see if they could help me out since we both have ancestors from the same place. Makes sense, right?

   The problem is those messages don't always get recieved by these people and I still end up feeling like I'm on an island researching a town no one else seems to be working on. As you can imagine, I get a frustrated!

    At this point, you might be thinking I've been feeling a little antsy, too. No communication between potential paisanos can do a number on a guy's ego, right. Fear not, my friends. I've decided a long time ago that if I was going to be the only one actively researching San Pietro a Maida, I'm going to make a hell of a research project with guns blazing. If I'm going to do this alone, I might as well do something about it!

    In late 2021, I launched the San Pietro a Maida One Place Study with the hope that my work researching the town would get the notice of everyone else who was working on San Pietro. I put my study in the Directory of One Place Studies page along with the Gesualdo, Newburyport and Haverhill studies and that has helped to garner some attention for my work.

    Has it helped? I'm not really sure. I like to think it does because every once in a while I get a message on WikiTree from someone who has ancestors from San Pietro. So, you tell me if it works or not!

    Creating a One Place Study for San Pietro a Maida isn't the only thing I've done to try to get notice. Well, aside from this blog I mean. Over on Ancestry I decided to create a tree dedicated to people whose ancestors came from San Pietro and settled in Haverhill, Mass. I call it "From San Pietro to Haverhill". 

Caterina Butruce, huh? Hmmmm.....

    At first glance it looks a lot like my great-aunt Nicolina's tree and you're right. It is. I figured that if I was going to make a tree all about the connections between an Italian town and a city in Massachusetts, I might as well start with her and use her tree as a basis for all the connections I find.

    To date, that tree has 1060 people and it totally got the attention of various people here and there. Not as much as my main tree, though. Maybe I need to add more sources to it? I wonder if that helps a tree get noticed on Ancestry. Does more sources=more hits? Someone should look into that!

    I have gotten a few messages from people who have looked at that tree. So, you never know. They've asked me why "Person X" is on the tree and if I'm connected to them somehow. I've explained why I created the tree and they've used the research for their own work. That's great and everything. However, I would really like to be working with someone at the same time on a project!

Keep a close eye on that Caterina Butruce.
We may be seeing her again. She could be
the same one in Nickie's tree....

         There's something to be said for working in a group. So, I created a spreadsheet on Google where I've been documenting everyone who was born in San Pietro from the early 1800s to 1861.  I was initiallly working on it by myself and then I decided to invite people to work on it with me. 

    I've gotten some help from various other Wikitreers and some non Wikitreers like my friend, Ashley. I have to give them props for helping me start this project and providing me some avenues to explore as I research the town where my ancestors were born.

    In the end, I suppose I'm not really alone as I work on figuring out who's who in San Pietro a Maida and how they're connected to me. I've had people translate various records in the past, go to the family history library for me and even coach me on what to do next. Still, I do have to fight how lonely it makes me feel that I'm the only one actively researching San Pietro. As long as I have help, though, am I truly alone? I may be a man alone looking for roots there. But, I have friends who are more than willing to lend a hand or an ear when needed. I just hope someone has the same drive I do to dig into this essentially unknown territory and bring to light the history of San Pietro a Maida. I hope they contact me and we can work together on this project because genealogy doesn't have to be a solo adventure.

See ya next time!

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