52 Ancestors Week 27: A Record I Read Differently Now

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 27:

The theme for Week 27 is “A Record I Read Differently Now.” Genealogy isn’t just reading a record once and being done with it. (At least, it shouldn’t be!) What is a record that you found some time ago that has a different meaning for you now? It could be because you understand that record better or maybe you’ve since learned something about your ancestor that makes that record appear in a new light. 

Nothing like going back and saying "Huh. I didn't see that before."

    Believe it or not I've actually gone back to look at several documents I've collected over the years if I'm bored or there's not much going on. Call me crazy but I do like checking stuff out in case I missed a clue that's been tapdancing in front of my face the whole time. See Jeremiah Felker's death record for details.  His grandfather was listed as his father instead of Elias, his actual father. I still don't know if that was a mistake on the part of the informant (His wife Elizabeth) or if there was some bad blood between father and son. To be honest, I kind of don't want to know. Clearly there was some drama and sometimes you don't want to pull the band-aid off. Check the profiles on WikiTree or read some of my blogs with him in it and you'll see what I mean. 

    Aside from the American records, sometimes I look back at Italian records and see if I missed anything there. For a long time I couldn't really read Italian and now that I can I can read them a lot differently. See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Yeah, I didn't think that joke was funny, either.

    The marriage record for my great-grandparents Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione is probably one of the first Italian records I ever found. Back in 2006, I decided to put a tree up on Ancestry for fun. I put a tree up and added what I knew about my grandparents, my great-grandparents and a few second great grandparents. It was not the best looking tree on the website and really needed polishing. I still don't understand how it automatically added a line that went to 1000 AD on me. When it was proven wrong, I had *SO* much fun deleting all those people. I was honestly happy to get rid of them. Someone was worried that I'd be mad. Why should I be? If it's erroneous, they need to go!

    Anyway, the marriage record was one of the first Italian records I found. I didn't know about Antenati back then. All I got on my Italian side were records scanned by a lady named Gesualdogenie. Gesualdogenie aka Mary scanned the entire town of Gesualdo with some help and her tree is a big help for anyone who has roots in Gesualdo.

    In 2006, I really couldn't read Italian at all. Back then my experience with the Italian language was basically just the words "ciao" and maybe a few curse words. I'm not going to repeat them here! This is quite literally a family blog!  Naturally, I wanted to make sure that these records were accurate before attaching them to my tree. I sent a message to Gesualdogenie and she assured me it was one hundred percent accurate. She told me how she got the records and even translated a few for me. I didn't just get Giuseppe and Clementina's marriage record. I got their birth records and several generations of records in the span of one weekend. Like I said. Mary spent a lot of time working on Gesualdo and this was before Antenati was a thing! Her help was incredibly invaluable. At that time I wish I knew Italian.

    As time went by I eventually learned some Italian thanks to a few friends and figuring stuff out on me own. I decided to go back and read the documents Mary sent me back in the day. It wasn't that I doubted her by any means. No, no. I knew she was correct. She's a pro genealogist and while sometimes even pros make mistakes I just knew Mary was right about the Gesualdo documents. I'm not sure why. Call it a gut feeling. Sometimes those work.

    I looked at the records again and to the surprise of no one she was correct. The record clearly stated that they were married on March 11th, 1905. Both sets of parents were listed along with their jobs and living status at the time. What the record doesn't tell me is how the witnesses were connected to the happy couple.

    I suppose I should pick my battles, right? Right. I'm likely not going to get information on every single person on one marriage record. It would be nice. But it's not necessary. If anything, the people listed were probably cousins of the bride and groom. I just wanted to see the information for myself since I was starting to get better at reading Italian and of course that depended on how well the document was scanned and how legible the handwriting is. Let's face it. Some of the clerks out there had pretty bad handwriting. Not gonna lie.

    After twenty years working on my family history, I guess I can say that I can read Italian records differently now. And by that I mean I can actually READ them. All it took was a little time, patience and some help from some very cool people. Does this mean I can carry on a conversation with someone in Italian? No. Of course not! Don't be silly. I can tell you what a record says as long as the scan is decent.  I'm just glad that I can read the records better now than I did before. It was hard in the beginning asking people if they could translate something. I'm sure it was a little annoying. But I got through it and now I help people with their Italian records. The Circle of Life continues.

See ya next time!