52 Ancestors Week 16: A Quiet Life

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 16 is “A Quiet Life.” Not every ancestor was a swashbuckler living a life of adventure. Who in your family tree had a quiet life? What have you found to make their story more detailed?

Peace in the valley.....for like five minutes.

    A quiet life? Uhhh.....No one in my family tree has ever had anything remotely resembling a quiet life. On one side I have loud Italians who would call your name from one side of the house and sit you down to Sunday dinner with your cousins where you'd discuss various stories that frankly should stay internal. On the other side, I have French men and French women who have adopted that same New England flair for being loud and boisterous. The same applies to the tiny portion of my tree that has colonial American roots. No one has or ever had what you might call a "quiet life". They lived in New England. We don't do quiet here contrary to what movies, television shows and post cards have told you. A quiet life only exists if you essentially move off of the grid like an uncle of mine did. Though, I don't think even that could be considered "quiet" since he is in constant contact with his large family. Let me explain.

    While it is certainly true that not every ancestor I had was an adventure seeker, it is true that all of them had interesting stories to share about their childhood, their families and everything in between. By and large no one really life in the countryside living a quiet life. This even includes the Italian ancestors who lived in Gesualdo and San Pietro a Maida believe it or not. Life got loud and life got complicated. It's how life is and that's why today I'm going to write about how no one was ever truly living a quiet life.

Vincenzo and Nicolina

    You would think that small Italian communities would be the ideal place to have a quiet life. I used to think that was true until I learned more and more about San Pietro a Maida and Gesualdo. The lives people live there before immigrating to America are anything but quiet.

       Take my great-grandfather Vincenzo and his family for example. Long before his sister Caterina married Lorenzo Astorino she had a boyfriend who was drowning in a nearby river. Vincenzo and Caterina's brother Nicola rushed to saved the young man's life and sadly the pair ended up drowning in the river As a result, Vincenzo named his firstborn child after his brother when she was born in 1923. Her name was Nicolina Ferraiolo.

    That story was told to me by my cousin Caterina and confirmed by my great-aunt herself who had heard the story all of her life and I consider it proof that even in small towns in Italy life may not be as quiet as it seems.  Accidents happen and even in a small town life doesn't always slow to a crawl.

    Even after immigrating to America Vincenzo and his family made it a point to travel to Italy every chance he got. After all, they all went to Switzerland to attend his niece's wedding in 1969. He constantly traveled and constantly stayed in touch with family back in San Pietro. 

     Nicolina herself visited San Pietro and stayed with her mother's family, the Tedescos and back in the United States she never really lived a quiet life. She lived in Memphis, Tennessee with her daughter and life was never quiet....especially since she had a little yappy dog who thought she was a big dog. Dogs tend to make life interesting and every day was an adventure. 

    Meanwhile, Vincenzo's relatives stayed in the Haverhill area and life for them was not quiet. Haverhill may not be as big as Boston but there was a sizeable Italian district in the city as I've discussed and things were never

Giuseppe and Clementina

    For the Carrabs life was always an adventure. Giuseppe and Clementina had five daughters and their siblings were always nearby in Haverhill, Everett and Melrose. Their extended families were big. VERY big. To date I have dozens of DNA matches who descend from Giuseppe or Clementina's brothers and the best part is that my parents knew who belong to who for the most part!

    If there's one thing Italians are known for aside from great food it's that they have large families and with large families there's no such thing as "quiet". "Quiet" does not exist when you're sitting around the kitchen table talking about the love life if your second cousin. Keep that in mind when I talk about my mother's side of the tree in a minute. She also comes from a very large family. 

    Large families tend to prevent anything remotely resembling a quiet life from ever happening. Life in the city was very seldom like "Little House on the Prairie".  When you gather around the table in an Italian house, you will be told stories and you will learn right away that peoples' lives were seldom quiet and while people did do quiet things like fish and all that other stuff they were still a loud bunch of Italians who loved to travel, fish, hunt and tell stories about their past that were anything but quiet.

Austin and Henrietta

    My mother's side is very much like my father's side. Less vino and still very adventurous, though. I think that's why my parents clicked so well. They both came from very large families and even though my father is an only child he still had his cousins to hang around with while he was growing up.

    Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault also had many children and many of them lived very adventurous lives. My grandmother Natalie married a soldier in the Air Force. Her brother Austin moved around a LOT and was definitely someone who was adventurous. The same could be said for any member of the Felker clan.

    Family get-togethers with the Felkers were honestly like Italian get-togethers. The parties were loud and I had that one great-aunt who was louder than everyone else. You would swear she was Italian when she wasn't. I blame the fact that she grew up in Haverhill. If you grew up in the Merrimack valley, chances are you are going to be loud and have had a very adventurous life. Life is very seldom dull in the valley. 

    While the Felkers did live far from the Italian quarter in Haverhill, they still were a stone's throw away from the excitement in the city. Excitement eventually followed them to Plum Island where they had a boat and had many adventures out on the Merrimack river and even the Atlantic.

And that takes is right to Newburyport, home of the Hamels and adventure on the high seas. I've already talked about how my great-grandfather  Alfred Hamel  had a Fix-it shop and may have repaired ships for bootleggers during the Prohibition era. He was a man with a million stories and he passed them down to his children. One of whom became a fireman and another who basically became Captain America.

    Once again the families were loud and boisterous. Newburyport, like Haverhill, is a very cosmopolitan city home to people of all stripes. It's going to get loud there and the people have to adapt in order to survive. 

    There's a theme here with all these little vignettes. If you're from a large family like I am, life is very seldom dull or quiet. There's always something going on or some party you have to attend and you meet a relative you hadn't seen since you were in diapers. In my family, it happens a lot and I sometimes find myself reminding my nephews who is who and everything. My extended family is big. Very big. There's a reason why my tree sits at over 20,000 people at the time of this blog's posting. By the end of the year I could have more people added. 

    As you can see a quiet life simply doesn't exist in my family at all. I come from generations of adventure seekers, loud people and epic storytellers. Both major ethnicities in my tree tend to be loud and adventurous. It happens! Sure some people have led quiet lives for one reason or another but in the end it's not something that really happens in my family. Everyone wants to know what's going on with their second cousin or something. Some people manage to escape. Me? I'm used to it. In life there has to be a balance between living life to its fullest and settling down. There's a happy medium in there somewhere and I think that despite having a ton of stories my ancestors have found some elements of a quiet life out there despite the drama and millions of relatives coming over for dinner every Sunday!

See ya next time!