52 Ancestors Week 21: Tombstone

Week 21's theme is "Tombstone." I've always felt comfortable in cemeteries. I've always been fascinated with the stories scattered among the tombstones. Have any of your ancestors left an intriguing tombstone? Maybe you have a story of your search for where your ancestor is buried. (Any ancestors in Tombstone, Arizona? <g>

Great Scott!

I love Google stock images. Don't you? I could have put anything I wanted in that picture. I went with the "Back to the Future" reference because I had watched the entire saga on Netflix last week. I love the series. Then again I like science fiction to begin with and time travel is fun despite all the paradoxes and headaches along the way. Still, it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. And so is the topic of this week's blog!

You know...Some people take pics of behind the stone.
Just saying.

I woke up this morning intending to write about Jeremiah Felker and how his tombstone was in Walnut Cemetery in Haverhill.  I was going to discuss my plan to visit and perhaps spruce it up a bit. I've noticed that many Civil War veterans have fancy tombstones like this in place. On the stone you can see what company he was in and unit he was with. Interesting isn't it? I also liked the shield, too.

Stone designs have intrigued me for a while because you can have anything within reason. There's the standard tombstone and then there's the really emotional ones which give you so many emotions. I remember reading about a kid who died of cancer and loved the "Pokémon" series so much that his parents asked Nintendo if it was okay to put an image of him and his favorite Pokémon on the stone. Nintendo, of course, agreed. Why on Earth would they say "No"? Mario's house isn't heartless! More on this story from Kotaku if you'd like to read it: https://kotaku.com/wow-thats-an-awesome-tombstone-dont-know-if-it-was-wo-1441479010

I also wanted to see if there was anything on the back of the stone. Wouldn't you be curious? If it's anything like the stones for my grandparents, it probably has who he was buried with. I didn't take the pic in the blog. That was from his entry on Find A Grave. It's a good chance Jeremiah was buried with his wife, Elizabeth. But, that's just a hypothesis. A GOOD hypothesis. Hopefully, I find out more as my great-aunt on my mother's side offered to take me on a tour of the cemetery.

Getrude Stevens is in the center of the front row.

Yes. Things got derailed nicely when someone uploaded a picture of my 2x great-grandmother, Gertrude Stevens, her second husband, his parents and a few other relatives to FamilySearch. That's her in the front row, middle holding a baby and the more I look at her, the more I see my mother!

I bring this up because I've actually been on a hunt for several family members' tombstones. My great-aunt informed me that her parents, Austin and Henrietta are definitely buried in Walnut cemetery. It remains to be seen if they are within walking distance of Jeremiah's stone. It would be nice if they were. We just know for a fact that they are in there. Somewhere.

Gertrude's stone is another I would like to see. However, that would require a bit of a feat. She died in 1944 in Farmington, New Hampshire while she was living with her third husband, Charles Melvin Berry. I did my best "Google-fu" and tried to see what I could find.

Farmington, NH is sixty-seven miles north of me. It would take a while to get there. But, there's a problem. She may not BE buried there. What do you do then? Well, for starters you look up her death certificate or her obit and see where she might be buried. That should be the first thing to do before you head for upstate New Hampshire. I have found Charles's death certificate and in it it says he was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Farmington. That would be a place to start. However, it's not a sure thing. You never know. Getrude's second husband, Walter, was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Kingston, NH. She could be there, too. The best bet would be to find that death certificate!

Did I find Gertrude's death certificate? Yes. It lists her final resting place as in Farmington, New Hampshire. Okay so far. One issue, though. It doesn't list the actual cemetery. At least it's a place to start. It still would be a good idea to contact the officials and see what they can find.

It's important to follow a few steps before looking for the stone. You don't want to go look in every cemetery. That's what genealogists, LARPers and people who like cemeteries do. Best bet would be to look for an obit before anything else. Some day I'll find her stone. Some day.

Gertrude's grave, of course, isn't the only one I want to find. I'm still wondering where my 2x great-grandfather Antione Legault is buried. So far records have turned up empty. His death record isn't even online despite him dying in 1901. My great-aunt thinks he is also in Walnut cemetery with his daughter. Hmmm....

This definitely merits reconnaissance. I see a trip to that cemetery in my future to see if that is true. I've been to several other cemeteries in Haverhill. Namely St. Joseph's, St, Patrick's and Linwood. Couldn't hurt to check out Walnut, right? Right!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 20: Travel

Week 20's theme is "Travel." Even though we aren't do much traveling these days, we can still use it as inspiration to write about our ancestors. Which ancestors traveled a long distance in his or her lifetime? How about an ancestor involved in a travel-related industry, such as railroads or ships? How about an ancestor you researched when you did some genealogy-focused travel?

On the boats and on the planes....

Traveling to different places seems to be something that's very common in my family. When I was growing up, we took vacations to Aruba, the Bahamas and we even took a trip to the happiest place on Earth, Disney World. When I was much older, my parents took me to Montreal, Canada to a dental convention. We've even traveled by boat to places all over New England. Sufficed it to say we traveled quite extensively. Not as much as my great-grandfather, Vincenzo, though.

The Ferraiolos circa 1929

For a guy who was born in San Pietro a Maida, Italy he sure did travel a lot in his lifetime. Tracking down all the places he went to was no easy feat, I assure you. At first glance you might think "Oh, it was probably another Vincenzo Ferraiolo who traveled to and from those places." I can see why you might think that. But, it's not the case here. Let me explain.

According to various records, he traveled from San Pietro to New York for the first time in March of 1912. He was seventeen years old and was visiting his aunt Concetta and his uncle Vincenzo. They had moved from San Pietro shortly after their wedding in 1907 and most likely paid the way for Vincenzo to visit.

He ended up staying for a number of years until he decided to go back to San Pietro a Maida to get married. Vincenzo married Maria Tedesco on January 15th, 1921. They had two children, my grandfather and my great-aunt. He then decided to go back to America shortly after my grandfather was born.

By 1929, he sent for his family to join him in America and they left with the Tedesco family on board the Roma. The rest would have been history. However, he ended up traveling several more times! He was raking in the frequent sailing miles! I think out of everyone he traveled the most and the furthest because Italy is clear across the Atlantic ocean! If there was a record for longest distance traveled by an ancestor in my tree, chances are Vincenzo would take home the gold.

Vincenzo and Fortuna

Maria passed away in 1943 and by the mid 1940s he married a woman named Fortuna Grasso in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Vincenzo didn't travel much after they got married until the late 1960s.

Vincenzo decided to take two more trips back to San Pietro. The last one proved to be the final time he would ever stand on Italian soil. As the story goes, he, my grandfather, my grandmother Ollie, my great-aunt, her husband and a few other people were invited to go to a wedding in Switzerland. They arrived in Naples and stopped by San Pietro to visit the family. Once there, the entire family took a train up to Switzerland and took part in the wedding festivities.

Shortly after the trip, Vincenzo became ill and he passed away in 1970. It was sad. But, he still managed to do what many immigrants couldn't do. He stayed in contact with the family back in "the old country". Usually, you don't see that happen. Clearly this isn't the case here.

Sometimes families would lose contact with each other once a relative moves clear across the Atlantic. This often happened in the days before the Internet became a fact of life. Once they moved, you never saw them again. Oh sure you could write letters. But, it was hard tracking them and people just stopped over time. In my mind, I think Vincenzo wanted to stay in contact with family. Like I said before, famigilia was important. So, when something is important to you, you make the time and effort to keep in touch.

That's especially the case these days!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 19: Service

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 19's theme is "Service." Military service might be the first thing to come to mind with this week's prompt. However, you don't have to go that route. Any service station owners in the family tree? (I'm raising my hand on that one!) How about someone who served their church, school, or community? 

Eugene Hamel and Celanise Lefebvre

Amy’s right. It would be entirely too easy to talk about someone who was in the armed services this week, wouldn’t it? If you’ve been reading my blogs for a while, you would find out that I have that in spades. This week we are going to do something a little differently. When the prompt mentioned school, one name came to mind. Eugene Thomas Hamel, my 2x great-grandfather.

 Growing up, I knew much about him thanks to my grandfather telling me everything I ever wanted to know about the man and his wife. This included the proper way to pronounce “Celanise” and “Lefebvre”. I had issues saying the name much to my grandpa Hamel’s amusement. :) That being said, while I knew much about the man, I didn’t know until much, much later that he was actually a teacher!

Eugene was born in 1864 to Leon Hamel and Rose Flavie Dussault in St. Albans, Canada. From the look of him in the picture you might never guess that he was a teacher, right? He’s got a cigar in hand and a winning smile. He looks like he’s about to do a Groucho Marx impression!  His wife, meanwhile, has this look  on her face that says “Oh, God. What’s going to come out of his mouth now?!” 

I found out he was a teacher by trade despite various censuses saying he was a cotton mill spinner in the 1900 US census for example.  In 1900, he was living in Allenstown, New Hampshire with his new wife and several children including my great-grandfather Alfred who became known as “Mr. Fixit” in Newburyport, Mass. By the 1910 census onward, he was listed as a teacher. It didn’t give me any indication of what he taught or where he taught. Still, it does merit some investigation. 

I don’t want to assume anything. I could stay he taught math when in reality he probably taught English or chemistry. We don’t know. With that in mind, I would definitely have to check out school archives in Allenstown to find out what he taught and where. It would be tricky because by the 1910 US. Census, he and his family were living in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Did he teach there, too? It’s possible. He was 46 years old at the time. Sure that’s young by today’s standards and general life expectancy. But, one never knows unless they dig into the archives.

Even then, there’s still the issue of what grade he taught. Did he teach high school? Was he a cool teacher with a Québécois accent? The guy’s got a cigar in his left hand and a smile on his face. You tell me. This guy was probably one of the “cool” early 20th century teachers. 

Finding out he was a teacher was definitely something I didn’t expect. He definitely served the communities of Allenstown and Amesbury well. Trust me when I say that those communities are like night and day. Allenstown is a small town. Amesbury is a small city along the Merrimack river. I am willing to bet people learned a lot from him. But, I might be biased here. I just wish my grandfather told me he was a teacher because I’d have had so many questions. 

“Laborer”? Sure, Jan....

Eugene passed away in June of 1943 and man the obituary is riddled with errors. It’s kind of annoying isn’t it. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Eugene was an English teacher?  I am not sure who wrote the obit. Why would the fact that he was a teacher be omitted? OH! Could it be because back then being a teacher was considered a women’s profession? Who knows?  Or maybe teaching was lumped in with laborers?

Whatever the case is, it’s safe to say that Eugene was a teacher. He served two very different communities very well over the course of his life and it would definitely be a good idea to dig into what kinds of classes he taught. Is there a way to look it up? You can look up anything these days! I would not be surprised if there was something somewhere about his teaching profession!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 18: Where there's a Will

Week 18's theme is "Where There's a Will." This can be a fun theme! Maybe the will you're thinking of is a legal document. (There are certainly some intriguing finds in wills, such as my ancestor who left money to provide for the education of his daughters.) Another way to approach it would be an ancestor who was strong-willed or tenacious. Could there be an ancestor named Will?

In brightest day.....

In brightest day. In blackest night. No evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power--Green Lantern's light! 

In DC comics' lore, the Green Lantern Corps uses the color green to symbolize willpower. Other colors symbolize other parts of the emotional spectrum including anger, avarice, fear and hope. Being a Marvel fan, I've always respected DC's characters and the writers' expansion of the mythos. You still can't beat "with great power, there must  also come great responsibility", though. Need to give Stan "The Man" Lee some credit! What does any of this have to do with genealogy? Plenty if you REALLY think about it.

Came to America eleven years before GL debuted.

Our ancestors had to have had a certain amount of willpower to get them from point A to point B. Did they have a Green Lantern ring? No. However, you can't deny that you needed to have some sort of drive to cross vast oceans or move clear across the continent. Take my great-grandparents on my dad's side for example.

Vincenzo Ferraiolo, Maria Tedesco, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were all born in southern Italy. They all came to the United States and settled in Haverhill, Massachusetts without knowing the language. Why did they do it? What made them leave Italy?

Well, for starters Vincenzo had family living in Haverhill at the time of his arrival. His aunt and uncle lived there and most likely helped pay the way for their nephew to visit. He ended up going back to Italy to get married and returned a few years later with his wife and family.

You hear this story all over genealogical circles or even in casual conversations all the time. Someone has a friend or family member in another part of the world and they invite them from "the old country" to stay for a while. Sometimes even permanently. Sometimes it was only for a job. In Vincenzo's case, it seemed like he was visiting family and if you're Italian you know that "la famiglia" means everything to us. So, the Ferraiolos' willpower was based solely on familial connections from what I've learned. There could be more to the story. It probably doesn't involve cosmic powered trinkets.

The Carrabs clan!

In Giuseppe and Clementina's case, I'm not 100% sure why they left Italy and what drove them and literally their entire family to settle in Massachusetts. Giuseppe didn't travel alone. He left with his wife and young child. His brothers and sister left for Massachusetts, too, leaving his parents and the rest of his family behind. Clementina's brothers and sisters even came to America! What prompted such a mass exodus? Well, let's take a look.

According to various ship manifests, Giuseppe made several trips with his family from Italy to America. His last one was in 1913. The first world war started on July 28th, 1914. However, there were rumblings of war throughout Europe before the first shot was fired. Did the Carrabs family see the writing on the wall and decided to leave because of trouble in Europe? I'm not sure.

We do know that both he and Vincenzo served the United States during the war.  Did he want to leave and help liberate Italy from a threat? It is something to think about and probably something I should look into.

In any case, plenty of our ancestors have the same story. Willpower drives us to do certain things. Do we take the bus or drive to work? Do we do this or that? The drive is there in all of us. In the end, I definitely have the willpower to seek the answers I am looking for in my research. I've even got a Green Lantern ring. =) So, I got that going for me!!

So much nerd cred this week. See ya next time!

52Ancestors Week 17: Land

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17's theme is "Land." Farming ancestors, homesteaders, and military bounty land claimants are all on deck this week. Who does "land" make you think of?

With your powers combined....

We're finally here! The last of the elemental blogs! If you want to read them, check them out here: Water was about Rings Island Marina and my adventures there. Fire  was about the fire needed to travel across vast distances. Air was about something interesting I found about my grandfather who was a paratrooper during the second world war. What should I write about this week for "Land"? Well...

Vegetable prison

I hinted about my parents' garden before in the harvest blog from September of 2019. That was written at the tail end of the gardening season. Here we are in late April and that, my friends, is usually when the fun starts. It's around this time that we start thinking about planting various things in the garden. In late April, we usually start tilling the soil and plant stuff like potatoes. By May, we toss everything in there we can think of. These would be plants such as basil and thyme and veggies like tomatoes, peppers and green beans.

Right. So, how did all of this get started? What prompted my parents to make gardening such a major hobby of theirs? It's hard to say. My parents always had a garden of some sorts. I want to say it started really taking off in the early 1990s. That was when I was involved with cross country and running in general. My mother always told me that we grew vegetables because we would know where our food came from and let's face it fresh basil makes the BEST pesto sauce. I may be biased here. =) She may have a point, though. Fresh vegetables always tended to make everything better and nothing and I mean NOTHING beats the smell of fresh tomato sauce cooking for like seven hours inside your house. So good! There's something to be said for fresh tomatoes because my teammates on the cross country team asked for it all the time! 

Want some tomatoes?

I ran cross country all throughout high school from 1993 to 1997 and my mother would make tomato salad for the team to have during parties or something to snack on before meets. She would cut the tomatoes, sprinkle basil and garlic on it and have it soak in a pan of olive oil. They were so good that this conversation usually took place before the home meets:

Coach: Litchfield runs a good game. But, it's important that we keep energized. I think we have a good chance at beating them since we're on our home turf. The course is nice and neat. We definitely can win.

Everyone: YEAH! 

Coach: Chris?

Me: Yeah, Rhoades?

Coach: Did your mom bring any of those tomatoes? We probably could use some.

Me: *laugh* Yeah, she did. Don't worry about it.

Rhoades loved the tomatoes and so did the rest of the team. There really is something to be said for homemade tomato salad. It wasn't exactly hard to make. That's probably not the point. The point is that we had fresh veggies to help us with our game. The coach really didn't like having us have pizza before a meet. Makes sense. Your body would be digesting that as you're trying to run in the woods. That's a discussion for health blogs. 

Years later my mother and I ran into Coach Robert Rhoades shortly before he passed away and he jokingly asked if she still made those delicious tomato salads. She said she did and he laughed. I was amazed that he actually remembered since it had been over ten years since he last had them. It just goes to show just how good homegrown vegetables are. That's definitely a lesson you can learn from this story. If you have something homegrown, it's going to be in your memories for a long time to come. 

My grandparents more than likely passed down the value of homegrown food to my parents as they even had gardens of their own. Learning how to grow food is something that's been passed down throughout the centuries and is probably one of the most important things you can teach someone aside from fishing. Now, what will happen with the Ferraiolo garden in 2020? It's hard to say as we haven't planted anything. Everything's in the planning stages and I'd honestly really would like Mother Nature to cooperate! I will keep everyone posted and if I could I would definitely send you all some of that delicious tomato salad.

See you next time!

P.S. The tomato salad was technically Caprese salad without the mozzarella slices. So good. =D

52 Ancestors Week 16: Air

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 16's theme is "Air." This theme might be a bit tricky, as most of us don't have pilots or hot air balloonists in our family tree. Be creative. Think of place names, such as Mt. Airy or the "Big Sky" area of Montana. Or "toss it all up in the air" and pick someone at random!

Blue skies.....Smiling at me.....

I think Amy missed an opportunity to talk about an ancestor who was full of hot air. But, that wouldn't be polite and we do like to be polite here at All Roads Lead to Haverhill. Sometimes. Still, we probably all have a relative who is late that. That's beside the point. Let's talk about air! Well, it's partially nitrogen and oxygen. It's odorless, colorless and plants generate...Oh. Right. This isn't a scientific blog. In that case....

Private Marco Ferraiolo and dog.

I've already talked about how my grandfather, Marco Ferraiolo was a paratrooper in World War II. He saw combat in the European theater (Italy) and in North Africa. As a paratrooper, he flew in many missions with the 101st Airborne. He wrote my great-aunt (His sister) detailed letters about his exploits with the 101st. Sufficed it to say, they got pretty graphic.

In one letter, he talked about what it was like to jump from an airplane and how you have to count before you open your parachute.  He talked about how he lost a friend in a jump. It was pretty surreal reading the letter and actually looking at his handwriting--something I never saw before.

A few weeks ago, I found something else from my grandfather's stint in the army that I never saw before. Ancestry recently updated their World War II database with colored images of various draft cards. Naturally, my grandfathers' profiles both received new hints. I checked out my grandpa Robert first and saw nothing new or out of the ordinary. I then saw my grandpa Marco's profile and saw this. His US WWII Hospital Admission card.

When I found it, I checked with my parents to see if this was accurate. We knew he was injured in the war. We just wasn't sure how. The Admission card had a lot of great information in it which explained a lot about his time in the service to the United States army.

If you look closely, you can see a great deal of information. His rank. His age. When he was admitted. Apparently, he got shrapnel to the knee and needed to be operated on immediately. He was discharged in June of 1944 married my grandma Ollie in June of 1946.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Finding more about my paternal grandfather's past means a lot to me than anything else to be honest. He died when I was four and I guess that really effected me. Like I said before, I had people tell me about him all of my life. My entire family told me stories about him and it helped to fill that void. And that's a good thing since I lost him at such a young age.

Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered! See you next time!

52 Ancestors Week 15: Fire

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 15's theme is "Fire." Fire played a crucial role in our ancestors's lives, whether it was providing heat for homes and cooking or providing power for forges and engines. Of course, fire can also be destructive, both on a personal level or in our research (such a record loss in a courthouse fire). Think, too, about place names that make you think of fire. (One of the best names I've seen for a cemetery is Hell's Half Acre Cemetery in Whitley County, Indiana.)

We didn't start the fire. It was always burning as the world's been turning!

"Hell's Half Acre Cemetery" certainly sounds like a badass name for a cemetery doesn't it? Of course there are a ton of places named after Hell. Hell's Kitchen in New York City is notable for comic fans as that's the home of Marvel's man without fear, Daredevil. Hell's Kitchen is also the name of a  cooking show by chef Gordon Ramsay. There's no doubt about it. Fire and Hell by extension has been ingrained in our media and our lives in general. However, there's another type of fire we should talk about. The fire which drives an ancestor to go from one place to another. That, my friends, is a different type of fire!

You're probably sick of seeing this image showing
up as a hint on Ancestry.

When we talk about that ancestor crossing the Atlantic, most people conjure up imagery of a wooden sailing ship on a perilous journey across the sea. What drove people to make that journey in the first place? What put the fire in their belly and had them decide that "France/England is no longer the place I want to be. I want to get away from here!"

For many people religious persecution forced people to set sail. This mass migration would later be known as the Great Puritan Migration and it lasted between the 1620s and 1640s. One person who made the trip from England during that time period was my 11th great-grandfather, Tristram Coffin Sr even though he wasn't a Puritan himself.

Out of all of my ancestors who took part in one of humanity's largest migrations, Tristram was probably one of the more notable ones. He has a page on Wikipedia! That's got to count for something! Yeah, right. I have a page on IMdb and I'm a Z-grade Internet personality. Still, we shouldn't discount his life because he WAS a big deal.

Ponce de Leon's got nothing on me!

Tristram was born to Peter Coffin and Joanna Kember  on March 11th, 1608 in ye olde England. His reasoning for leaving his homeland after marrying his wife Dionis Stephens is somewhat up for debate. While he wasn't a Puritan, he likely crossed the ocean at age thirty-seven because of the crisis brewing between King Charles I and Parliament. He was one of the landed gentry and wanted no part of the drama unfolding in London.

After arriving in the New World, he wasn't done making a name for himself. He helped to settle the city of Haverhill, Massachusetts in the 1640s after finding nearby Salisbury and Newbury. By 1643 he had a tavern and eventually left to help settle the island of Nantucket where he'd spend the remainder of his life.

Tristram was notable for helping to settle many great colonies which would give rise to the cities my French-Canadian and Italian ancestors called home. The obvious one being Haverhill. Whatever his real reason for leaving England was, you can believe he and his family definitely had an impact on New England. Check out some of his notable descendants:

1. Levi Coffin, the president of the Underground Railroad.

2. Elizabeth Coffin, daughter of a wealthy merchant from Nantucket, was mother of the prominent Massachusetts industrialists Henry Coffin Nevins and David Nevins, Jr

3. Elizabeth Coffin (1850-1930), an artist, educator and Quaker philanthropist, was known for her paintings of Nantucket and for helping revive Sir Isaac Coffin's school with a new emphasis on craft.

Not bad, huh? There's more to Tristram's story than I've covered here. His wife supposedly brewed the best beer in town. He made many deals over the course of his life and certainly ingrained himself in local history.

Growing up I only heard about the Hamels who helped settle Quebec in the early 1600s. I had no idea who Tristram was until much, much later. After reading up on him and his family's exploits in New England, I get a better understanding of what it must have been like sailing across the ocean and dealing with the colonial hardships of early New England. Sure I read about it in history class. But, now you get a very real sense of it because the actions somehow become more real when you have a personal stake in what was going on in the world.

It took a lot of guts and certainly fire in your belly to make the trip to the New World. You have to appreciate it even though sometimes some ancestors may not have been altruistic. Reading up on Tristram gives me a sense that he was. It's certainly an interesting story and like I said his founding of Haverhill and other Merrimack Valley towns paved the way for my Quebecois and Italian ancestors to settle in the area by the 20th century.

As the song goes, we really didn't start the fire. It was always burning as the world was turning.