Thursday, February 20, 2025

52 Ancestors Week 8: Migration

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 8:

The theme for Week 8 is “Migration.” Almost everyone has ancestors who came from somewhere else. Who is someone in your family tree who moved away from where they were born? How did they get there? How far did they move?

You can take someone out of New England....

    While Haverhill, Massachusetts is indeed the center of the universe as far as my family tree is concerned, it should be noted that many people in my family did indeed leave New England for better job opportunities or had just plain old wanderlust. I can safely say that no ever went to California because there was gold in the hills or anything like that. Though, these days a little gold might help. I'm just saying.

    Several people opted to go to places as far away as Nova Scotia, Florida and other places around North America. It's no surprise that many people pulled up stakes and moved to various places around the continent. They wanted to see what was out there. This week, I'm taking this blog out west to Vegas, baby! Okay. It's not technically Las Vegas, Nevada. It's really nearby Reno. I'm still contractually obligated to say "Vegas, Baby!". I should have read the fine print in my contract.

Vincenzo's in the middle.
    Vincenzo Carrabis, the oldest son of  Pasquale Carrabis and Raffaela D'Adamo was the undisputed king of wanderlust. He was born in Gesualdo, Italy in 1918 and settled in Everett, Mass. Once he was old enough, he left New England with his second wife, Dolores Washburn and they got married in Carson City on August 18th, 1967.

    From there they moved to Reno and spent the rest of their lives there. While in Nevada, Vincenzo aka James worked as a bus driver. James sadly passed away five years after he and Dolores got married. I can only hope that those few years were happy.

    I have to assume they were. My cousin Joanne recalls visiting her aunt DeeDee (Dolores) quite frequently until she passed away in 2000. Still, I have to wonder what brought James all the way to Nevada. He had six children with his first wife Margaret D'Aiello. They had married young and by the mid 1960s they divorced. Maybe they wanted to enjoy their retirement years by moving to a place that's sort of exotic. I'm honestly not sure. Looks like I might have some inquiries to make!

    Of course James was never really a stranger to traveling. Longtime readers might remember a blog I wrote in 2022 where I talked about James's trip to Ohio. In the blog, I said that James went to Ohio and got a woman named Edna pregnant and that he was the grandfather of a DNA match.

    Three years later and I'm still not sure what he was doing in Ohio and everything. I only know that his son Donald was born sometime before his son James was born to him and Margaret in 1950. My DNA match Wendy shares a whopping 830 cMs with him.  That's still a large number!

    Anyway, James clearly did his fair share of traveling before settling in Nevada. Several of his children ended up there and built lives of their own. Joanne suggested that I message one of them so I could get the whole story about James and why he moved all the way to Nevada. I might want to leave out the bit about Ohio. But, I have a feeling news spread fast about it as it tends to do in large families.

    James is just one of many people in the family tree who migrated elsewhere on the continent. Did he expect to find riches in the Reno area or did he and Dolores just feel like it was a great place to spent their twilight years? I'm going to go with the latter because that seems like a romantic notion and I'm in a romantic mood today. Either way, many people have many different reasons for going from one place to another. The families obviously stayed in touch but back in the day it must have been a lot harder to do. Some people traveled far. Some stayed in the same general area. In the end, it doesn't matter how far you travel and put down roots. You're all still family in the end.

See ya next time!

2 comments:

  1. Ohio was a bustling industrial center with plenty of job opportunities and a large Italian immigrant population as well. Just saying!

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    Replies
    1. True. But, He didn't stay there long as no one knew he went to Ohio before I found out about this DNA match. =D

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