52 Ancestors Week 39: Homestead

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 39

The theme for Week 39 is "Homestead." Is there a home you think of when you think of your ancestors? For me, it's my Grandma's tiny post-WWII era house that somehow fit all of the extended family on Christmas. What does "homestead" make you think of?

Home. Home on the range....

    Growing up I was fortunate to be within driving distance of several houses owned by my ancestors. This was obviously due to the fact that I live one town over from where everyone lived. There's a reason why this blog is called "All Roads Lead to Haverhill".  Several of my ancestors called the Queen Slipper City home at one point or another and while I obviously never went to every ancestor's house in the city, I did visit two of their homes on a regular basis.

Not a bad looking place, huh?

   When we would go to my grandma Ollie's house from the marina where our boat was docked, it often felt like we were literally going over the river and through the woods. Though, technically we went over the Merrimack River twice because of how the river flows through the valley. It's not a straight line by any stretch of the imagination.

    Grandma Ollie lived at 754 Washington Street in Haverhill and to this day I still remember where everything was and what it looked like. It wasn't until I got older and asked questions that I learned that she and Grandpa Marco weren't the house's original owners.

    My great-grandfather Vincenzo built the house in the 1950s and lived there with his second wife Fortuna for many years until he passed away in 1970. He left the house to my grandfather and the rest is pretty much history. My parents and I would visit almost every week and when I close my eyes I can still remember where everything was down to the last detail.

    Ollie was a very amiable person. She would literally feed you the second you walked in the door after greeting you with a warm smile. If you were family, she'd give you a hug and not let go after a few minutes.

    When you walk into the front door, there was a room where everyone's coats and shoes would go. If you looked to your right, there was a door that led to the garage. If you go to the left, you were suddenly in the kitchen.

    In the middle of the kitchen was this round table where I heard many stories about the family and eat many of the delicious goodies my grandmother cooked. 

 

    To the right of the kitchen was grandma's living room and that's where my brother usually went first.

    Seriously. He'd plop himself down on the couch and watch television until dinner was ready. The living room had many of her old pictures on display. I remember seeing pictures of her father Giuseppe, his brothers, her mother Clementina and so many other pictures. The room was like a museum dedicated to the Carrabs family. One of the funniest things though was that there was this old timey telephone on display. The thing never worked so my brother and I would play with it all the time! Ollie didn't care because it didn't work..

Grandma Hamel hanging out with the
Little Old Italian Ladies. 

    To the left of the kitchen was the sun room. If people weren't comfortable out in the kitchen, you could relax in the sunroom. There was this pink couch where I played with my toys while the adults were talking. The room and the kitchen had an open floor plan so I could hear everything that was going on. I remember never going across the room to where my grandmother kept some dolls.

    I think they reminded me a bit too much of the creepy dolls my grandma Natalie had in her house. They were astonishingly lifelike!

    In the corner of the room there was a collection of swords and canes my grandmother said Grandpa Marco bought. When grandma Ollie passed away in 2002, I inherited the contents. I never played with those things. I knew to stay as far away as possible from sharp objects! The canes were cool, though. I just wish I knew their full story. From the sunroom there was a door that led to the patio and the backyard.

    In the back of the kitchen there was a little hallway that led to Ollie's bathroom and bedroom. I never went into the bedroom. Some places were just off limits. It wasn't that she told my brother and I to stay out of there. We just knew it was her private area and we stayed where the adults were congregating. The door in front of the front door led to her basement and I flat out never went down there. It's a shame too because that's where Vincenzo's old toolbox was stored. Had I went down there and gotten the box, you can bet I would have asked her about the contents!! Hindsight is 20/20, I guess. The basement was also where Vincenzo kept his wine.

    Grandma's house wasn't the biggest house in the world and that's fine. It was the perfect place for friends and family to meet and have a great time. It didn't have to be gigantic and impressive. Sometimes even the smallest houses can be fantastic. The size of the house isn't what matters. It's the people who live there. Though, I checked out the house on Google Earth recently and saw that the new owners installed an in-ground pool that takes up two-thirds of the backyard I once played in. UGH! Waste of a perfectly good backyard. Humans vex me sometimes.

    If grandma Ollie wasn't home, you could bet she was at her sister Louise's house at 26 Bartlett Street in Haverhill. I think this house was a homestead in every sense of the word. The house had three good-sized apartments and it was the home of the Carrabs family from when they arrived in America in the 1910s to 2010. That's a century's worth of laughter, tears and more pasta than you can eat!

    I don't know who built it. But, I do know that Giuseppe and his wife Clementina lived there with their family in every census I found them in. Over time, one sister would live on each floor of the place. It was amazing.

    I don't remember the details of Louise's apartment much. However, I do remember there was a big round table in the kitchen like the one grandma Ollie had. She also had a living room with a bunch of old pictures on the wall. Ironically, she had more pictures of Giuseppe's brother Rocco than Ollie had. I never figured out what that was the case.
 

    Louise was just as warm and caring as her younger sister was and she would talk to you for hours about any subject. She would also feed you. Seriously. You would not leave that woman's house unless you were fed! The meals she cooked were amazing and when you visited her house you felt right at home. Louise was also very funny. I remember going to Foxwoods Casino with her and my parents and she'd say to me "If anyone asks, you're my grandson and it's your birthday. You're with me." And that's how I learned to scout slot machines.

Aunt Louise!

    Aunt Louise was a fun lady and I miss her and my grandmother a lot. Their houses were the very definition of homesteads. People could go there and feel right at home because they were the warmest people you would ever meet. They'd share a story or two and feed you at the same time. It's what little old Italian ladies do. They feed you and you aren't leaving until you got fed!

    Their homes were filled with the smells of all the goodies they were cooking and the laughter of everyone who visited them. Everyone felt at home there and in a way Grandma Ollie's house and Aunt Louise's house were a second and third home to my brother and I. We were always welcome and we still cherish the memories we made there to this day.

    Those houses were the ones where I first got interested in genealogy and so it makes sense that I'd hold them close to my heart. I'm glad that both places are still around these days so that the families currently living there can have the same memories my family did.

    And that is what "homestead" means to me. Most people think of the ranch houses people buy out west. For me homesteads will always be a place that's been in the family for a very long time. They're places where memories are born and stories are told. They're houses filled with memories of love, loss, laughter and tears. That's what a homestead should be. A place to build memories that last several lifetimes. I only wish the walls in those houses could talk. 

See ya next time!

Pictures of the houses are courtesy of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 38: Symbols

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 38

The theme for Week 38 is "Symbol." Has a symbol given you a clue about an ancestor? Maybe it was on a tombstone or in a letter. How about a math teacher in the family tree; they use lots of symbols!

Lady Liberty, symbol of America in the Starbolts webcomic!

    Symbols are all around us whether we realize it or not and they all have a special meaning for everyone who sees them. They could be something as innocuous as the "S" logo on Superman's chest. Could that "S" stand for "Superman" or is it the Kryptonian symbol of hope? It's hard to say because many writers have interpreted and reinterpreted the Man of Steel's logo for almost a century. On the genealogy front, we've seen symbols in places like cemeteries or on buildings. Symbols are everywhere. But, by far the most important symbol everyone should keep in mind is a large copper statue standing in New York Harbor. I am of course talking about the Statue of Liberty.

"She's tough. She's
a harbor chick!"

    In the early 20th century, the statue was the first thing many immigrants saw when they arrived in New York from all corners of the globe. She is and remains to this day a symbol of hope, freedom and democracy. The statue assured all immigrants that they'd be safe in the new land they eventually called home.

    She was designed by French sculptor and painter Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and gifted to the United States during the 1880s to serve as a memorial for their independence. After all, the French did play a huge role in the American Revolution just a century earlier. The quest to give the Americans the gift initially started in the 1860s and really got off the ground once the nation abolished slavery.

    Lady Liberty's design itself was based on similar statues like the Statue of Freedom, which sits atop of the Capitol rotunda in Washington D.C. Bartholdi wanted to simplify the design a bit and he even gave her the face of his mother, Augusta Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi. Huh. I always wondered where that face came from!

     In the following years, the statue's purpose grew much larger than Bartholdi and many of his contemporaries could have ever imagined.

    It goes without saying that since her introduction millions upon millions of immigrants saw the statue on their way to Ellis Island. We've seen representations of that moment where immigrants have seen the statue in countless movies, television shows and more. While the imagery is powerful. Can you imagine what the real immigrants must have felt when they saw that symbol of liberty for the first time?

Giuseppe and Clementina

    My great-grandparents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione first saw Lady Liberty herself when they arrived in New York with their daughter Jenny in the 1910s. Jenny passed away when I was very young. I never got the chance to ask her what it was like to sail into the harbor and see the statue for the very first time.

    However, I did hear from second-hand sources about the event itself from a very, very reliable source---My grandma Ollie.  She told me that her parents left their home in Gesualdo due to the poor living conditions there. They wanted to make a better life for themselves and their new family. When they saw the statue for the first time, it was a new beginning for them. It was then that they decided they wouldn't be going back to Italy because America was their home.

    Looking back, that's a statement many immigrants make and in the Carrabs' case, they had no reason to go back to Italy since Giuseppe's brothers and sisters settled in Melrose and Everett and Clementina's brother followed her to Haverhill. Of course, I've also been told that Clementina just didn't want to travel again. I can't say that I blame her. The accommodations on those ships were not the best.

    Now we know that the statue of liberty was a symbol of a new beginning and hope in America and is a vision shared by many immigrants. What does it mean to immigrants who went back and forth from their homeland many times?

La famiglia di Ferraiolo

    My great-grandfather Vincenzo famously traveled to and from America several times over the course of his life. When he first saw the statue in the early 1910s, I'm sure he saw it as a symbol of hope and freedom like my other Italian great-grandparents did. The only difference was he decided to go back to his hometown several times and on one of those journeys he married Maria Tedesco, my great-grandmother.

    When Maria saw the statue for herself in 1929, she must have felt she had come home. Granted, she was wrestling with two small children at the time and no husband in sight, But, she still must have had a real sense of coming home and a bright future coming for her family on the horizon.

    In Vincenzo and Maria's case, I think America ended up being like a second home to them. Granted they had family in America like the Carrabs. They still had family all around the world. For them, the symbol of liberty was likely just as strong. However, they still had strong ties to their homeland.

    
    Despite having different stories, both sets of Italian great-grandparents clearly saw the statue as a symbol of hope, opportunity and prosperity for themselves and their young families. It is sentiment that's still shared by immigrants today. Granted, no one sails to Ellis Island like my ancestors did these days. Still, the statue has became larger than life and has been seen around the world as a symbol of hope and freedom for everyone and not just Americans.

    Somehow I doubt Bartholdi ever saw that coming for his statue. The world changed so much since his time and now his statue still stands in New York Harbor welcoming the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The statue is a symbol of the melting pot America became and is a symbol of hope for everyone around the world.

See you next time.

Lady Liberty is property of Starbolt Productions. Art by the talented Faeore Grasha.

Statute of Liberty picture: By AskALotl - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149005856

52 Ancestors Week 37: Tombstone

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 37

The theme for Week 37 is "Tombstone." If you're like me, cemeteries are your happy place. (I even had shirts made!) Have you found an interesting tombstone for one of your ancestors? Has a tombstone given you a surprising piece of information?

I still get a kick out of this banner. =)

     Tombstones are interesting I'll give Amy that. I just kind of want her to make a t-shirt that says "Go to the cemetery. Everyone's dying to get in.". I joke, of course. Though, I really want to see those shirts Amy made. They'd be great for Halloween!

    Anyway, tombstones are very interesting like Amy said and can mean a lot to many people depending on the design and the culture of the dearly departed. I've seen a few interesting ones myself ranging from a cube-like tombstone for my 4th great-grandmother, Maxime Lepine to even one dedicated to a child and his love for Pokémon. You'd better believe Nintendo gave the sculptors permission to carve a Pokémon out of marble for the family! If they didn't, Mario would have made some serious enemies and I'm not just talking about Bowser.

    Tombstones in cemeteries all around the world are all unique in their own way. There's one cemetery in particular that seems to go above and beyond in ways they honor the deceased. My third cousin Melina Astorino recently visited the Cimitero Comunale in San Pietro a Maida while she was visiting the town and took some amazing pictures for me. Let's check them out!

Melina would be great at Find a Grave.

    Naturally one of the first tombstones she checked out was for our second great-grandparents, Marco Ferraiolo and Caterina Coppola. They're our most recent common ancestors and I'm sure she wanted to pay her respects. Hopefully, she passed along a message from their American great-great-grandson. I can dream, can't I?

    This tombstone I'm already familiar with as my cousins Caterina and Adriana also took pictures of the stone. Right away you can see how it differs from memorials in America. Not many of them have pictures attached to them. In fact, I've only ever seen one stone with a picture attached to them and that was for my mom's cousin, Sheila. I guess it's just not common to have a picture in the stone here.

    I've also seen the practice in Latin American countries. It would be nice if more stones in America had pictures. I'm just saying that names and dates are nice and everything but, a picture really says something about the person interred in that tomb.

        The pictures might be a little hard to see. Melina thankfully zoomed in. Let's take a closer look!

Nice pic!

    Now that is a great picture of Marco and Caterina! You can really get a sense of who they were from the picture. I had seen one before and they look like they were nice people. On the stone they were joined by pictures of other family members like their daughters Rosa and Concetta and their husbands. Their son Paolo also has a picture there as well. It's curious that he has one since he passed away in Rome. It makes me wonder if he has two memorials.

       Paolo's wife, Maria Elisabetta Azzarito doesn't appear to be mentioned on the memorial. So, perhaps there is another memorial for the two in Rome. That's just a guess. I haven't figured out how to ask about her stone and not make it sound creepy.

   There were certainly a lot of Ferraiolos on that stone and as you all tell it's been well kept and has been decorated for quite some time. What a way to honor their their memories and I'm glad it's still being tended to by relatives in San Pietro!

   This next stone made me do a doubletake!

Oh, hi Angela Gullo!

    I knew Melina would be looking for Astorino stones in San Pietro. That was a given. She found the birth records for her great-grandfather, Lorenzo and his father Gregorio. Gregorio was born in 1869 and so he would theoretically still have a memorial in the cemetery. Well, we don't know if that's true or not. However, she did find this stone for Tommaso Astorino and Angela Gullo.

  I have two reasons why this stone made be do a doubletake. The first one is obvious. There's a "Gullo" on the stone and I have Gullo ancestors. The second reason is that I've seen those names before! 

    My great-aunt Nicolina has an Astorino DNA match and on the match's tree are Tommaso Astorino and Angela Gullo. I had messaged the owner of the tree and never got a response. I know she's likely connected to Melina because there's only one Astorino family in all of San Pietro. Could the DNA match be connected to me via the Gullos? Hmmm.....It's a possibility!

    

    There was another stone she took a picture of that gave me pause. Check this out!

I'm sorry. What?!

    Marco Tedesco?! Who is Marco Tedesco? Did my great-grandmother Maria have a brother named Marco? I'm not sure. I know she had a brother named Tommaso and a sister named Caterina. Caterina has a stone elsewhere in the cemetery and I believe I've shared it in the blog a few times. Rumor has it Tommaso went to Bari. So, I don't know what became of him.

    I think I'll have to ask my Tedesco cousins about Marco here. Am I connected to him? It's a possibility. Tedesco, like Coppola, is a common name. I'll ask around and see what happens. There's no harm in doing just that!

Okay. I asked my cousin Caterina Papatolo and it turns out that this man isn't related to my Tedesco family. Huh. Well, there's another way to find out this man's identity. Ask the commune office! What other options are there? It's a good thing I asked Caterina! I shouldn't be surprised. Tedesco's a common last name. Don't you just love doing genealogy while writing a blog? It's a good thing I didn't add him to anything!

    Another tombstone is one that might be of great significance to my friend and fellow Wikitreer, Denise.

Things that make you go "hmm".

    Denise has Barberio ancestors who came from the Calabrian town of Pianopoli. Pianopoli is but a stone's throw away from San Pietro and naturally I wondered if there's a connection with this Maria and her Barberios. It's a longshot. But, there may very well be a connection. 

    She recently discovered a connection to Haverhill via a few other families. I showed her the Italians in Haverhill and she found a few names that seemed familiar. It just goes to show that it's a small world out there and we're all connected in one way or another.

    Denise also told me that Pianopoli doesn't seem to keep their cemetery as clean as San Pietro's. I hope you can tell by the pictures Meli took that the townspeople here take extra care in preserving the memories of the deceased and make every effort to keep those precious memories alive for future generations. After all cemeteries are supposed to be monuments for those who have come before us.

    It's important to remember that in Italy and in other places around the world, land is at a premium. That's why San Pietro's cemetery is set up the way it is. Many Italian cemeteries have a fifty year rule and that means that the person is interred for fifty years or more before someone else takes up the plot. The remains are placed in a vault and another person takes the spot unless the family keeps paying to have their remains interred in that cemetery.

   

Concetta Ferraiolo and Giuseppe Aleardi

I have to keep that in mind should I ever go to San Pietro. If you go to an Italian cemetery, you likely won't find stones for someone who died in the 1800s and beyond. Instead, you'll likely find information about them in cemetery offices and in town halls.

    I'm fortunate in that I have cousins who have gone above and beyond to take pictures of graves. I'm not sure if I'll ever find everyone's grave. But, there should be information about them in the town hall.

       For now, I made a page about the cemetery on Find a Grave. It's the least I could do to do my part in keeping everyone's' memory alive. I thank Meli for the pictures she took. They really show that the people of San Pietro a Maida care for those interred at the Cimitero Comunale and as a bonus I've connected a few of the people there to people buried at Haverhill's Saint Patrick's Cemetery. I think you can   guess which connections I made!

     Tombstones often reflect what the person or people buried in the plot were like. Why did someone pick a cube for a tombstone? Who can say? As for the tombstones in Italy, I can actually say a picture is worth a thousand words because they come with pictures. You really get a sense of what the people were like in life and seeing the pictures give people the incentive to keep the memories of the dearly departed alive.

See ya next time!

All tombstone pictures were taken by the talented and awesome Melina Astorino!

52 Ancestors Week 36: We Don't Talk About It

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 36 is "We Don't Talk About It." Admittedly, this could be a difficult theme, so please be gentle with yourself. Feel free to write about something else or skip this week entirely. That being said, is there an event or a person in your family that seemed to always end the conversation whenever it was brought up? What have you discovered about it, or are you still looking for the answers?

Keep your mouth shut, capiche?

        This week's blog is probably going to be a sequel to the one I wrote in June about my second great-grandparents, Wilfred Felker and Gertrude Stevens and their divorce proceedings. In the blog, I wrote about how I asked the Essex County courthouse for details about their divorce. To sum up, I found that he basically accused her of abandonment. The divorce was granted and the matter was closed. Sadly, that's how things operated in the early 1900s. There was no DNA testing and women weren't afforded anywhere near the kinds of rights they have today. It was a different time.

    Not long after I wrote the blog I sent it to a half second cousin who descended from Wilfred and his second wife, Mary Ann Pierce. He told me that the story tracked with what he knew of the man. What he told me next reaffirmed why no one in my family ever talked about my second great-grandfather.

Wilfred and George Amos Felker.

    When I was growing up, everyone talked about their family. I learned a great deal about my Italian side and all of the cousins. I've even heard stories that frankly should be kept internal. Some things just aren't safe for WikiTree or blogs. Keep in mind that they weren't even close to Mafia stories. So, get that idea out of your head!

    My grandmother Natalie always talked about her father Austin, grandmother Gertrude and the Senter family. No one ever really talked about Wilfred. When they did, it was usually in passing. It was something like:

"Oh. Austin's father was a man named Wilfred. Let's talk about his grandfather Jeremiah instead."

    People were really good at evading the question. I typically had to shrug it off and go about my business. If grandma wasn't going to talk about it, then there was no way to get information from her. It's that simple.

    Once I showed the blog to my cousin it became clear why no one ever really talked about Wilfred. My cousin explained that Wilfred was apparently a very difficult man to live with according to his father. He remembered his aunt Grace hinting he and Gertrude were a bit promiscuous.  I'm honestly not too sure about that last part. However, Wilfred being promiscuous does make some sense at least considering the fact that Wilfred got Mary Ann pregnant while my second great-grandmother was pregnant with Austin.

Grace Felker

    That was only the tip of the iceberg. I wasn't sure if I wanted more information. But, I got a full e-mail outlining just what kind of a man Wilfred was anyway. 

    Apparently, Wilfred was never really home and whenever my cousin's father Richard would visit there would always be pipe smoke in the air. It got so bad that Richard would never go inside the home to visit the old man.  He was apparently a real jerk who was just plain old nasty to everyone he ever met. Because of this, he lived by himself in a fishing shack in his later years.

    Wilfred even went so far as to say his son George was a half-brother to his siblings! That's a bit much.

    I was taken aback by those comments and I wasn't sure what to make of it until my cousin told me a story involving Wilfred, his father and my cousin's older sister. I settled down and read it several times before I could make sense of the madness.

    The last time my cousin's father Richard ever saw Wilfred was in 1951 just before he died. Wilfred, Richard and a cousin were all being introduced to the new baby (my cousin's sister) when they all got into some sort of argument and punches were being thrown at each other.

Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault

    That was a lot to take in and his story made me remember all those times my grandmother would never talk about Wilfred. It all started to make sense because why else would she have dodged the questions. 

    Wilfred's story might also explain why all or most of the Felker children and grandchildren moved to Indiana once they were able to do so. I hadn't heard about any Felker relatives until I found my cousin on WikiTree in 2017. 

    I guess it makes sense now why Wilfred wasn't talked about much if at all. The guy was a jerk. And that's putting it mildly.

    It also explains why Austin was living with his grandfather Jeremiah in various censuses and not with his father and half-siblings. Everything made sense and it hit me like an eighteen wheel Mack truck and now that I know more about Wilfred than I ever thought possible, what do I do with the information?

    I can't very well ask my last living great-aunt about her grandfather. I doubt she'd have pleasant memories about him. If she brings him up, the most I can do is simply listen and not say anything. But, that's only if she wants to talk about it. I'm not about to say "Aunt Elaine, can you tell me about Wilfred Felker?" I don't think I need to ask her that question now and at her age it might upset her. So, the best thing to do is to be quiet on that issue.

 

      As for me, I'm going to have to take this in stride because I honestly have to. Wilfred passed away decades before I was born and I can't really judge someone I've never met before. No one can really judge an ancestor. The only thing we can do is break the cycle, you know. It may take generations but cycles can be broken. I think Austin may have seen what his father was doing and started to break the cycle himself because there are plenty of good stories about him. So, it's best to focus on that and not so much the actions of someone who lived a long time ago.

    At least now I can probably close the book on Wilfred Felker. What's past is past and the reason why no one ever really talked about him is now known by all parties. Was he a good man? That's not for us to decide. Events of the past are in the past and we must remind ourselves that we are not our ancestors. We must also remind ourselves that no human is perfect and that's certainly the case here. I just wish I could go back and hug my grandmother knowing what I now know about her grandfather. Maybe then I wouldn't have asked that question.

See ya next time!