52 Ancestors Week 6: Surprise

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 6:

The theme for Week 6 is “Surprise.” What ancestor dealt with a surprising thing in their life? Any stories of surprise birthday parties? How about the most surprising thing you’ve found or something in a surprising place?

It's an unknown DNA match!!

    It seems like surprises are common when you're out on your genealogical adventure. Don't let anyone tell you it's mundane looking for an ancestor or two. Even when you take a DNA test you'll still find surprises around every corner. Of course that's where the real fun begins!  I've lost count of how many surprises I've found since I took at that DNA test back in 2017. When you've been at it as long as I have you'll likely find cousins you never knew existed and maybe you'll reconnect with a branch of a tree that's been covered by the sands of time. Whatever the case is, you're going to find something out there that can and will shock you. Case in point. My great-grandfather Vincenzo Ferraiolo had yet another child out of wedlock.

Vincenzo and Maria.

    Longtime readers  might remember me writing a blog where I wrote about the time when Vincenzo went up to Alburg, Vermont in the mid 1930s for work and ended up getting a woman named Louvia Mitchell pregnant.  She sadly passed away a few months after giving birth to a woman named Joyce. Joyce had many children and two of them took a DNA test on Ancestry and were matches for my great-aunt Nicolina my father and myself.

    To make a long story short I contacted them and we sorted out the family story. I haven't really heard much from them since those days. I hope they're doing well.

    Anyway, not long after I sorted everything out and talked to Aunt Nickie about what I found another very close DNA match showed up for her. I'll be changing the names to protect the innocent. Let's call this one Joey. Joey matched her at a mighty 466 cMs. That's a pretty solid match! At that number a person could be anything from a half first cousin once removed to a great-grandparent. It was not a false positive. Naturally, I messaged Joey in the hopes of finding out who he was.

      While I was waiting for a response, I did some digging into seeing who he shared matches with and I found that he shared matches with virtually every Ferraiolo and Coppola DNA match who tested at that point. I had my work cut out for me. Thankfully, I got a reply back!

That is not a small number!

    Joey's DNA test was managed by a woman named Rachel and she said she had no idea how the three of us connected with her adopted son.  That would have been the end of it had I not been persistent. You guys all know how persistent I can be! Though, the trick is finding the fine line between persistence and being a pain in the butt.

    I asked Rachel if I could see her son's DNA results. I tried explaining to her that 466 cMs is nothing to sneeze at. It's a fairly large number. She said it was fine as she was more interested in finding the identity of Joey's father and the three of us turned out to be maternal matches.

    After walking her through the whole process I was finally able to see all of Joey's results. Sure enough the Ferraiolo and Coppola cousins were all there.  His highest match was a woman who I saw on my match list before. I asked Rachel about her and she said "Oh, that's Phoebe. She's Joey's cousin." She shared over 900 cMs with Joey and that made her a solid first cousin match.

    I took a step back and went back to asking her some questions. At this point I had no idea they were descended from Vincenzo. That revelation didn't come until later. She asked me if I knew a lady named Monica who lived in Massachusetts. I said I didn't know anyone named Monica. Rachel explained that Monica was also adopted along with her brother Ross. She told me Ross was Phoebe's father and that Monica was Joey's mother.

    Monica apparently gave Joey up for adoption and Rachel adopted him in the late 1990s. The adoption agency never gave her much information about his birth family as his birth mother claimed several men were his father. Phoebe ended up being raised by her maternal grandmother. With all this information I knew I had to do something to make sense of the stories I was reading. So, I opened up DNA Patinter's "What are the Odds?" app and went to work on trying to figure things out.

Well, now. That's pretty solid.....

   Using WATO I put in what I knew of Joey's family and put in his shared matches. It didn't take me long to figure out my great-grandfather was the common ancestor of the six matches I put in.

    The second hypothesis turned out to be the most logical theory since I already knew Phoebe was a solid first cousin to Joey.  Everything else wouldn't have made much sense. So, I came to the conclusion that Vincenzo was Joey and Phoebe's great-grandfather.

    I sat back in my chair and sighed. Vincenzo once again had another child out of wedlock. I honestly shouldn't have been surprised. The man was a known philanderer and when I told my parents about what I found they weren't terribly shocked. I mean I had already told them about the Vermont relatives. Nothing else surprised them after that reveal. 

    I asked my father if I should tell Aunt Nickie. He said that wouldn't be a good idea as she was still coming to grips with the whole Vermont issue at the time. She had talked to her half-sister before she passed away and it wasn't a fun experience for her. We had no idea how she'd react to this news so we didn't tell her. And we never got a chance to since she passed away not long after I made the WATO tree. I might have told her daughter Cathie and I'm sure she didn't tell her mother about Joey and Phoebe.

Marco and Cammie!

    After the dust settled, I explained my findings to Rachel. She didn't seem as interested as she was again more focused on finding her son's father. Rachel did tell me that she tried to contact Phoebe and apparently she doesn't want anything to do with her father Ross or that side of the family. 

    I asked her if I could try and contact Monica because I still had one very important question to ask: "Who are Ross and Monica's parents?!" I have a sinking feeling that they might not even know as they were adopted. Rachel told me that their birth name was "Gellar" and that didn't tell me much. Gellar isn’t their real last name.

    So, who could Vincenzo's fourth child be? I'm afraid I might not ever find out that person's identity. I have no clue if it's a man or a woman. I assume it's a woman because Ross and Monica were both born with the last name Gellar.

    Finding that fourth child's identity is going to be a huge challenge. The best thing to do would be to think things through logically.

    Vincenzo went back and forth from San Pietro a Maida to Haverhill several times before marrying my great-grandmother Maria Tedesco in Italy in 1921. Nicolina was born in 1923. Marco was born in 1925. Maria went to America in 1929 and they all lived together until she passed away in 1943. After Maria passed away he married Fortuna Grasso in 1944 and remained married to her until he passed away in 1970. There are sizable gaps of time here and because of that the child could have been born any time.  He was also not above philandering since Joyce was born in 1935 in Vermont while he was married to Maria.

    Could Ross and Monica's parent have been born while Vincenzo was married to Fortuna? It's very likely because both Joey and Phoebe were born in the 1990s. Rachel told me that Ross and Monica were in their fifties and that puts their birth in the early 1970s. If you put two and two together, it seems very likely that the tryst may have happened sometime in the early days of his marriage to Fortuna or a bit earlier. It's honestly hard to say. Any theories would be welcome!

    As you can see surprises happen all the time in genealogy. Skeletons come out of the closet and everything gets revealed. I'm just saddened by the fact that Phoebe doesn't want anything to do with that side of the family. I had messaged her before I knew any of this and never got a reply. I guess now I know why. It happens, I guess. 

    I'm uncertain about what will happen next. Will Phoebe come around and write me back? Chances are good she doesn't know half of this information. Joey and his mother are still trying to find out who his father is and I've been told not to seek out Monica because of some issues I don't really want to go into. 

    I guess for now I can close this chapter or at least put it on the backburner for a while. I'll likely never know the full ins and outs of this story and it's fine to be honest. DNA proved the connection and as we all know DNA doesn't lie. People do. 

    This just goes to show that surprises happen all the time like I said. Sometimes they get solved and sometimes they do but more questions are left up in the air. Here's hoping some answers are revealed. I did help answer their questions regarding the Ferraiolo and Coppola connections. At least one good thing came out of it!

See ya next time!

P.S. I am well aware of the Friends references in the blog. I'm just sorry I didn't have anyone for Chandler. Could that BE any more insulting? RIP Matthew Perry.