52 Ancestors Week 43: Dig a Little Deeper

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 43

The theme for Week 43 is "Dig a Little Deeper." Answers don't always come easily in genealogy. This week, what is something you had to dig a little deeper than usual to find?

That's....quite a hole.

        When you start out on your genealogical adventure, you tend to take whatever help you can get on the Internet be it from a Facebook group or even from a forum. For the most part people have been more than willing to help me out of a jam or two and I've had a moderate degree of success. However, there have been some instances where I've had to take matters into my own hands and dig a little deeper to find the information I was looking for.

    In 2017, I started talking to a man named Giuseppe Bova on Facebook about my family in San Pietro a Maida. Giuseppe worked at the commune office there and he would bring back all sorts of information for me. In one of his trips, he told me that my 2nd great-grandfather Antonio Tedesco's parents were Tommaso Tedesco and Angela Gatto. 

    I didn't want to push him for more information as I didn't want to make more more work for the guy. Luckily, he gave me the ages of Antonio's parents at the time of his birth. That gave me a ballpark figure for where to look for their own birth records. Antonio's birth record said the following:

Antonio Tommaso Tedesco, born 23 Jul 1876 to Tommaso Tedesco aged 26 and Angela Gatto aged 21. This meant that Tommaso was born in 1850 and Angela in 1855/56.

    Now, I didn't have access to San Pietro's records at the time this information was given to me. So, I decided to do something which was probably not the best idea I ever had. There's a forum on the Internet which specializes in Italian genealogy and I sought their help in finding the records. Were they helpful? Well, yes and no....

Tommaso Tedesco's birth record!

     Users on the forum found Tommaso's birth record easily enough. I thanked them and asked about finding Angela. Surely that would have been an easy find. "Gatto" wasn't a common last name. One user said that I had to have meant "Gullo" since "gatto" is "cat" in Italian. He said he found an Angela Gullo who was probably Tommaso's wife.

    I didn't want to fight with the user and said that while it's true that "gatto" meant "cat", the last name was in fact Gatto. I explained that the commune office gave me the name and everything.

    He told me that they probably misread everything and gave me a few other excuses along with the actual document. I looked at the record and I felt something strange in my throat. It was like I was being force choked by Darth Vader himself! I thanked him for his time and went about my business. I didn't want to tell him about the "force choke". But, that was a great indication that the information they gave me was wrong. I usually get a "spider sense" when I see wrong information. Never mind a "force choke". That information must have been incredibly wrong.

    Of course I wasn't about to explain my misgivings to those people. They probably would have laughed me out of the webpage and if it's one thing I learned early on in my days on the Internet  it's that you need to have a very thick skin when dealing with certain people. So, what did I do? Well, I took the Gullo data and make pages for them on WikiTree. It seemed like the best thing to do.

    

    I mean it wasn't a total loss, right? I do have Gullos in my tree and I MAY be connected to her and the hundred or so other Gullos in San Pietro a Maida. I just didn't feel right adding her as a mother to Antonio. Something just didn't sit right with me and I couldn't explain what it was to anyone.

    Once that was settled, I decided to take it upon myself to try and find Antonio's mother. I had a rough date of 1855 to work with and dogged determination on my side.

  

    My friend Kathy eventually showed me the San Pietro birth records from 1855 and I went to work hoping I could find the woman I was looking for. I knew she existed and I KNEW her last name was Gatto and not Gullo like the users in that forum assumed.

    In order to put the spelling issue to bed, I e-mailed the commune office asking for a notarized version of Antonio's birth record. In no time at all, they gave me the document and in high res black and white it said his parents were Tommaso Tedesco and Angela Gatto. I uhh...don't think it gets any more official than that, my friends.

FINALLY!

    Anyway, I looked through 1855 and I sadly didn't find Angela there. I did find my "friend" Angela Gullo fairly early on, though. I mean she was born in February so of course her record would be among the first for the year. I sat back in my chair wondering if she was actually born in 1856. The years you're given in those records are estimates after all. So, I decided to give 1856 a shot since it was clear the forum users never thought to look there.

      I found an Angela Gatto born on March 7th, 1856 in San Pietro to Antonio Gatto and Maria Ciancio. Her record also told me that Antonio's father was a man named Gennaro. That was a lot of useful information. Now I just needed proof that she was actually Antonio's mother even though it seemed pretty obvious to me.

    It seemed obvious because after checking 1857 and even 1854 I found no other baby born in San Pietro with the name "Angela Gatto". And you can see on the document that it was speelt g-a-t-t-o. I don't see a "u" there. Do you? Sorry if I sound punchy but I would think the commune office would know what they were talking about. They would not give me wrong information and if they did, they'd immediately correct any errors they made.

    Another thing to note was the names. Granted sometimes Italians didn't  always play by the naming conventions of naming a child after a parent or grandparent. However, there's too much of a concidence here. Antonio Gatto would be Antonio Tedesco's grandfather, right? And Maria Ciancio would in turn be  Antonio's daughter Maria Tedesco's great-grandmother, right? There's too much of a concidence here. She had to be the droid I was looking for.

    In order to seal the deal, I emailed the commune office and asked them if they could provide me with Tommaso Tedesco and Angela Gatto's marriage record. I figure they were probably married around 1874 or 1875 at the latest given when Antonio was born and what I know about him and his siblings. Seemed like a good place to start.

    As far as the forum goes, I haven't been back there since the whole Gatto/Gullo thing and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have other means of finding documents now and I have friends who won't give up so easily. Now, don't get me wrong. I have found some great things on that site. They just seem to rub me the wrong way and this honestly wasn't the first time they led me astray. That's a story for another time. I don't want to turn this into a hate blog! It just goes to show you that you should always be careful where you get help on the Internet. Lesson WELL learned.

So glad I finally found her. When I did, my throat didn't hurt and I felt a warm feeling come over me. No idea what that was. But, I'm gonna go see if I'm force-sensitive now. 

See ya next time!