From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 40:
The theme for Week 40 is “Cemetery.” (Honestly, this is one of my favorite themes!) Any memorable trips to an ancestral cemetery? Whose burial place have you searched for, but haven’t found? Any sextons in the family tree? This is their week.
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| Everyone's dying to get in! |
It's pretty ironic we got this prompt right at the beginning of spooky season. Halloween starts on October 1st! Don't let anyone else tell you different!
Right. Now than that's out of the way, let's get down to business. I've often talked about Saint Patrick's Cemetery in the blog since that's where both of my Italian great-grandparents and their relatives are buried. Saint Patrick's in Haverhill, Mass is basically the de facto Italian cemetery in the city. Sure there are Italians buried in nearby Linwood, Saint James and other cemeteries in Haverhill. It's Saint Patrick's that has the most people of Italian descent interred there. This week, I've decided to give everyone a tour of the stones. Don't worry. It's hard to get lost and I'm pretty sure it isn't haunted. If it was, you'd hear Italian ghosts asking you why you don't call anymore and you'd feel a pinching sensation on your cheeks.
Before we dive into it, here's a little backstory on Saint Patrick's that I've managed to dig up due to careful investigation or constant nagging. As far as I can tell, Saint Patrick's has been in operation since the late 1800s and that makes it one of the more recent cemeteries in Haverhill. Stones there date back to 1896 whereas cemeteries in Haverhill like Maplewood have stones dating as far back as the 1700s. You won't find any soldiers of the American Revolution here. You will find Civil War soldiers at Walnut, though! Legend has it that it and nearby Hilldale cemetery are haunted. The older the cemetery, the more haunted it is. I don't make the rules!
Over time, the cemetery was designated the Italian and Lithuanian burial grounds due to the various members of Saint Rita's Parish wishing to be buried there. Once Saint Rita's merged with other churches in the area to become All Saints Parish, people from all over the city ended up choosing this cemetery as their final resting place.
Saint Patrick's is pretty easy to navigate as the property has rectangular sections. To make things even more helpful, the stones themselves are organized by decade of death for the most part. For example, if someone passed away in the 1980s, their stone would be among others who passed away in the same time period. Sometimes that's not the case as families have stones nearby. It's still convenient! Just like access to my grandfather's stone.
The final resting place of my grandfather, my great-grandfather Vincenzo, my great-grandmother Maria, Vincenzo's second wife Fortuna and my grandma Ollie is one of the easiest stones to find. It's along one of the main "roads" on the property and is one of the first stones I remember visiting. Every Christmas season and Memorial Day my dad would drive us to the cemetery to clean things up, plant flowers and decorate it. We still put wreaths and other decorations up and try to keep things looking neat and tidy. The groundskeepers do a great job of course. But, there's no harm in giving them a hand!
Maria was obviously the first in the plot to be buried there since she passed away in 1943. I've often wondered what the stone looked like back then. For as long as I can remember the stone that's currently there was always there. I just figured the names were chiseled in over time. The plot also has memorial markers dedicated to Marco and Vincenzo's service in World War 1 and II. There's also a plaque that says "Buona Fortuna" or Good Fortune there as well.
When I was growing up, I didn't really venture too far from the stone. We did our work there and visited my other great-grandparents' stone to see if that needed work done. Thankfully, my dad's cousin Bob took care of the plot. In recent years, he started a tradition where he'd put a small pumpkin on the Ferraiolo and Carrabs stones. Someone on Find a Grave took a picture of the stones with the pumpkins on them, uploaded it to the site and now Bob's handiwork is forever immortalized on there and as hints on Ancestry.
The Carrabs plot is further down the "road" from my other great-grandparents' stone and a few rows in from the front. It's still relatively easy to get to. It's also very well maintained by Bob like I said. He makes it a point to visit the stone and his parents' stone in Linwood.
Bob and I used to take walks around the cemetery if I asked him if he wanted to take me there and to the library. It's been a while since I've gone there with him and when I went I always made sure to take pictures and listen to whatever stories he'd tell me about the area. He knows much more about the cemetery than I do! So, any facts I have can be attributed to him!
Before I started my genealogical adventure, those were the only two stones I ever visited. Lame, I know. What can I say? I didn't really feel like exploring the area and I didn't know who to look for at the time. So, imagine my surprise when I found out just how many connections I have to the cemetery! I'll try to sum it up as best I can.
Bob and I once did a cemetery run where we were trying to find the Coppolas and man did we find them. Most of them were connected to me in some way aside from a Coppola stone across the "street" from Vincenzo and company. I looked into it and that Coppola family hailed from Sicily.
My second great-grandmother Caterina Coppola has family buried at Saint Patrick's. Her sister Concetta and brother Paolo are interred in different parts of the cemetery along with several members of their families.
Listing them all would take some time. Let's just say most of their kids and their spousal units are also in Saint Patrick's save for a few people. Finding them all was like shooting fish in a barrel. The cemetery is full of Coppolas. I suppose it makes sense given how large their families were.
I should note that I made it a point to share the picture of Concetta's stone with her grandson in San Pietro. His dad, Francesco, was sent back to Italy and as a result my cousin never met his grandmother or his aunts and uncles in America.
The hunt for the Coppola stones went pretty well. I mean it wasn't hard finding them all. There was still one Coppola stone I had not been able to locate and that was the stone belonging to Paolo and Concetta's cousin Giovanni. I knew Giovanni would be buried there. Where else would he have been? Imagine my surprise when I found his family's stone two stones away from the Ferraiolo plot! I honestly never noticed!
Sigh. I know. I know. I should have been more observant! There's a reason for my lapse in judgement. I knew about the Coppola stone for ages, of course. We'd drive by it on our way to the Ferraiolo plot. I just never thought to look BEHIND the stone to see who was buried there. All I saw was "Coppola" and thought nothing of it. Coppola is a common Italian last name. It could have been anyone and my parents had no idea who was there.
A few years back I was with my parents and we were cleaning up the Ferraiolo plot. I decided to check out who those Coppolas were once and for all. At that point I had looked all over the cemetery for Giovanni's stone to no avail. I was beginning to think that maybe they weren't buried there at all despite all evidence pointed to that cemetery. His death certificate DID say he was buried at Saint Patrick's!
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| Honest mistake. Really! |
I went to the back and smiled. There they were. Giovanni, his wife Natalina, their children Frank, Mary and Angelina and their spouses. I laughed and took the picture right away. They were right there the whole time! Talk about hiding in plain sight.
Then again it wasn't exactly like they went anywhere.
Still, it was cool finding their stone and even cooler knowing that it was almost next door to the Ferraiolo plot! It makes me wish I checked out the cemetery more when I was younger. Sure I wouldn't have known who Giovanni was at the time. I would have asked my great-aunt Nickie or my grandmother about him and they'd have told me all about him.
These are just a few of the stones you'd find at Saint Patrick's. Some are easy to find and some are a little hard to spot. Still, it's important to remember the people buried under the stones and honor them in the best way possible. I've done my part by having their profiles on Wikitree. Users on Find a Grave had done the same thing and created profiles for the people buried there. In time, more of those people will have profiles on WikiTree. I promise! At the time of this blog's posting, there are 6,189 memorials there. Not bad when you consider Saint James has 9,547 memorials! No wonder I can't find Antoine there. Some day.....
All in all, Saint Patrick's a pretty good cemetery and even though it's not as old as some of the other cemeteries in the city it still has a ton of stories to tell. The cemetery tells the story of the Italian and Lithuanian immigrant experience and their lives. It was the first cemetery I remember visiting and it's the one I have the most connections to. Sure I have relatives in Walnut and other cemeteries in the city. However, it's probably Saint Patrick's that means the most to me because my Italian grandparents and all four of my Italian great-grandparents are buried there.
See ya next time!
