52 Ancestors Week 39: Surprise

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 39

The theme for Week 39 is "Surprise." Genealogy can be filled with surprises, both good and bad. This week, write about something that was surprising to you or that would have been surprising to your ancestors.

Who will it be next week? Your father's uncle's cousin's former
roommate?

    Surprises can come around every corner while you're on your genealogical adventure and believe it or not they can happen more frequently if you have a tree on WikiTree.com. I know I might be a little biased considering I have a rather extensive tree there. It's all good because while the site has a collection of wonderful and talented people working on a singular world tree, it is also great for cousin bait. Just this last week I had a huge surprise of my own and it all started with just one page.

Welcome to Wikitree.net. It's dot com!

        This is Domenico Marinaro and he was one of the many Italians featured in the book, "Italians in Haverhill". Like my great-grandparents, Domenico was born in San Pietro a Maida and immigrated to Haverhill, Massachusetts in the 1910s. So, naturally I have this guy in two one place studies AND in the Italians in Haverhill study. The overlap happens more times than I care to count!

    Domenico was the brother-in-law of my 2nd great-grandmother Caterina's cousin, Giovanni. I think I'd better slow down before this gets even more convoluted. I know we're all connected, but, sometimes there's a tangled web. And what a web this is!

    According to the book, the family stayed in New York for a couple of years before moving to Haverhill to be near family. That was pretty much the extent of his biography until I got an email last week about Domenico from his granddaughter, "Zelda".  The names are once again changed to protect the innocent!

    

    Zelda found the profile by chance and sent me an e-mail asking me why her grandfather was on WikiTree and if I wanted information. Naturally, I jumped at the chance for more information. I wanted to be as accurate as possible with these things and leave absolutely no room for error. All I knew was that he was in the Italians in Haverhill book and that he was a tailor by trade. I even found that one of his sons was killed in action in Europe.  Little did I know that things went a LITTLE deeper than that! You might say it was written in my genetic code.

DNA does not lie.

    Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I matched Zelda on Ancestry since she mentioned that she took a DNA test there. I figured "Why not?". What's the harm in looking? Well, it turned out that I share a mighty 15 cMs across 1 with her while my dad shares 17 across 1. I thought that was cool and then came the biggest surprise. My great-aunt Nicolina shares a whopping 32 cMs across 2 segments with Zelda! Was I blown away? You bet I was. How could I not be? It's rare that a DNA match would find me on WikiTree and Zelda didn't even know we were cousins. I think the evidence is clear here.

    I told Zelda that we were cousins and I wish I could've seen her face when she read the e-mail. She seemed to be very happy about it as she had wondered about my connection to her grandfather. That prompted her to send me a few pictures of the family while I tried to figure out what our connection could be.

    The only Marinaro connection I've found so far is my 4th great-grandmother, Domenica Marinaro. She was the mother of Pietro Francesco Gullo and I haven't been able to find her birth in the San Pietro archives, yet. That isn't to say there aren't many Marinaros in there. No, no. There are a ton! I just haven't found any other direct Marinaro ancestors.

    With all this talk about DNA and everything, I asked her how much she shared with a few DNA matches she and Nicolina share. Seemed like a logical step, right? I needed to find where she fit in the grand scheme of things and I was a little shocked by some of the findings.

    Zelda said her largest of the matches I asked about was a woman who shared over 100 cMs with her. That woman, as it turns out, is a third cousin of my great-aunt. That cousin descends from Frank Coppola, son of Giovanni.

    When I told my new cousin about that connection, she told me that a Frank Coppola was in her father's address book. She had no idea who that man was and as it turns out we have a few other Coppola cousins in common. As you can imagine, the gears in my head were turning!

The connection is somewhere in this
tree.

    In no time at all I finally got a place where I could potentially look for my connection! I made a tree on Ancestry and transferred it over to WikiTree with Zelda's blessing of course. From what I can see, I will have to see if I can find Bruno Marinaro's parents or Elisabetta Marinaro's parents.

    Then again, the connection might not even be in the Marinaro side of things at all! We could connect on her grandmother Angelina DeSando's side. I think that would make more sense because Nicolina and Zelda share some matches who connect at Domenico Desando and Angela Maria Timpano.

    When you match someone at 32 cMs, anything is possible!

    At any rate, this surprising discovery has opened up some insight into the pretty barren Coppola and Gullo trees I have. For all I know, I could match her on both trees since endogamy is a thing in Italian towns. It remains to be seen where we connect. For now, the best I can do is of course e-mail San Pietro a Maida's commune office and go to Haverhill city hall to make sure I have the Desando parents right and everything. I've been reassured that it's correct. It never hurts to ask!!

I've lost count how many people I connect with
in this book. I think I'm at like 60.

    Surprises are around every corner in your family tree and you can't really help but discover a few from time to time. Sometimes those surprises find you when you least expect it. If you have a tree online, you're bound to run into a surprise every now and then! The most surprises, of course, come from DNA testing. Some just happen by sheer coincidence. Zelda was surfing on the Internet and was surprised to find her grandfather on WikiTree and that a distant cousin was managing his profile.Talk about a surprise for her, right? Many more are out there. So, it's best to be prepared and take it in stride.

See ya next time!

"Italians in Haverhill" is property of Arcadia Publishing. Image comes from page 101.