52 Ancestors Week 37: Prosperity

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 37

The theme for Week 36 is "Prosperity." Prosperity is the condition of being successful or thriving. Of course, how one defines "successful" or "thriving" can be personal! Feel free to interpret the prompt however you'd like.

Or you could avoid the shoals of bankruptcy and seek the
strong winds of prosperity if you're a Ferengi.

         Prosperity can mean a lot of things to different people as evidenced by the header I created for this week's blog. In Star Trek, you have prosperity meaning both a long life and profit for two very different alien races. I like to think of prosperity as having a rich, full life with plenty of friends and family around to share everything with. After all what's the sense of having a ton of money if no one's around to enjoy it with you?  Wow, I would be the worst Ferengi ever. It's okay. Those huge ears are an acquired taste just like the ones Vulcans have. They are logical race though and there are several people in my family tree who have definitely lived long and prospered!

   Take my great-aunt Nicolina Ferraiolo for example. She was born in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida in 1923 to Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco. She lived to be ninety-nine years old! That is an incredibly long lifetime if you think about it. Can you imagine all the things she had seen and done over the course of her life? It's crazy to think about it!

    In just ninety-nine years, she witnessed humanity taking flight and eventually landing on the Moon. Diseases that once plagued her peers while growing up were eradicated. Distances between her home town and her home in Tennessee were made incredibly shorter thanks to the complex system of tubes you're reading this blog on. ;) 

    That's just the tip of the iceberg. A century is a long time and in that time so much of your world can change. A lot of people probably have asked her what her secret was to a long life. She would have probably said "Easy living and just taking it slow". Then again genetics probably had something to do with it!!

    The key to long life has always been something we as humans have always sought. Is it "clean living"? Is it "laying low" and just let world events occur? The answer to that is a bit beyond my paygrade as I am not a philosopher. But, I can tell you that longevity does seem to run on the Ferraiolo side of the family tree.

Ciao!

    Nicolina's aunt Concetta Ferraiolo was born on October 9th 1912 in San Pietro and passed away on March 5th, 2005 in Switzerland. She has the honor of being the longest lived child of my 2nd great-grandparents, Marco Ferraiolo and Caterina Coppola. At this point I'm beginning to wonder if there's something in the water in San Pietro which promotes long life. In that case, I should book a flight!!

    However, prosperty is more than just living a long life, right? Right! There's more to it than that. The Ferraiolo families all had many children and made their homes all around the world in places like Haverhill, Rome, Switzerland and in Argentina. Some stayed behind in Italy and had their own prosperous life. In the end, it's up to a person to decide if their live is prosperous as it's a subjective term. What's prosperous for one person can mean many things to somebody else.

    With that said, I think Nicolina was prosperous in both aspects. She had her own antique business which kept her living quite well and she had a large family scattered around the world. Once I came into contact with the family in Europe, she often asked me to ask them how things were going and I would report back on any family news or any other events. I was basically the go-between between Europe and her house! And I was happy to do it since her eyesight had been failing by the time I came into contact with my European family.

    What surprised me the most about the prosperity in the Ferraiolo line was this picture. The little girl in the photo is still alive and we talk on Facebook quite often. The people behind her are my 2nd great-grandparents, Marco Ferraiolo and Caterina Coppola! This photograph was taken some time in the early 1950s according to my cousin Adriana, who by the way is the girl in the photograph! I think she said she was like two or three at the time. Marco was born in 1868 and Caterina was born in 1870.

      You can definitely say that Marco and Caterina were very prosperous. I wish I could say why they were prosperous. Maybe I don't need to. Maybe I can just let the evidence speak for itself! They had a huge family who were spread out all over the world. Whether or not they stayed in touch is unknown. However, I do know that Concetta and Adriana's mother, Rosa made it a point to try and keep in contact with their sister Caterina's family in Argentina. Plus, I remember my cousin Caterina telling me that her grandmother often talked about her brother and sister in a little city called Haverhill. You might have heard of it. ;) I wonder if they kept in touch.

    Keeping in touch in those days were tricky, I admit. Can you imagine a trans-Atlantic phone bill in like the 1990s before the Internet became a thing?! Thankfully, the Internet is here to save the day and our wallets. I haven't been able to locate the family in Argentina. But, I'm sure I will some day. It'll just take time and probably a little bit of luck! Posting about this on the Internet certainly doesn't hurt!

    At the end of the day, it seems that prosperity in my family means a rich life that has little to do with riches. It's more about the people who you surround yourself with. That's really the secret to prosperity. Sure you may live a long life like my great-aunt or my grandfather Robert. But, Aaprosperous life should be a good, long life surrounded by people who genuinely care about you because riches can be turned into rags in a blink of an eye. That's definitely what they had in spades! Hmm..How logical. .Perhaps I am a Vulcan after all. Fascinating.

 See ya next time! Peace and long life. Live long and prosper!