52 Ancestors Week 33: Troublemaker

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 33's theme is "Troublemaker." There's one in every family. If you don't want to write about a literal troublemaker, how about an ancestor who has been troublesome to research?



On my mother's side of the tree, I've had a few ancestors of mine who have been a bit troublesome to research. It wasn't that they were brick walls or anything. However, some ancestors such as Sarah Currey and Mary Abbott DEFINITELY fit the bill! Amy's right. Researching women in the family tree is no easy task. I would talk about them. However, I have something else planned! Did you know that someone can be both a troublemaker AND troublesome to research?

Jeremiah Felker and Elizabeth Fellows

It's true! I've talked about this guy quite a few times in the blogs. In fact, he probably will show up later and will keep showing up until the end of time. His name is Elias Felker and he was my 4x great-grandfather. Here are the cliff-notes about his life to help you get started:

* He and Martha Smart conceived a child out of wedlock as both cheated on their spouses. That child was Jeremiah Felker, my 3x great-grandfather.

* Elias had a paternity suit filed against him by Martha's father, Jeremiah Smart.

He definitely fits the definition of troublemaker. But, you know there's two sides to every story. We don't know what really happened in the 1800s and what the real circumstances were unless I were to get the actual court records or somehow discover time travel. That would be so cool. Brick walls would become obsolete.

Okay. So, you understand why this guy may have been a bit of a troublemaker, right? He cheated on his wife, Polly Brock and seemed to be a wee bit of a scoundrel....and not the Han Solo kind. What makes him so hard to research?

Elias's marriage to Polly.

Well, there's no real birth record for him for one. At least none that I can find on my own. Check his WikiTree page. I have him born around 1800 because I'm honestly not sure. The earliest record I have for him is his 1820 marriage record to Polly. Though, he MAY have served in the War of 1812. I am iffy about that. VERY iffy. Skeptical Chris is very skeptical.

For a while, Elias was a bit of a brick wall because I couldn't find anything about him. I had thought he was some random guy who had a fling with Martha and disappeared into the night. That was certainly how one of my DNA matches described his life. He came into town, cheated on his wife and supposedly died in 1844.

We found his death certificate and even a page on Find a Grave. In total, I have about twenty-two sources linked to him and none of them directly say who his parents were. Various censuses like the 1840 had him living alone in Epping, New Hampshire. It was weird that I could only find assorted odds and ends about this guy's life. I thought I'd never find his parents and that was it.

I then asked my friends on WikiTree for help and my friend, Laura made it a mission to help me in any way possible. Seriously, she was amazing. She looked up various people with the name "Elias Felker" and reported back what she found in censuses.

Around that time, I happened to find Jeremiah's death certificate in Haverhill. That's when I found something kind of shocking!

The man listed as his father wasn't his father!!

Jeremiah died in 1918 and on his death certificate a man named Joseph Felker was listed instead of Elias. I said to Laura that this was odd. Elias should have been listed along with his mother, Martha. I asked her if there was a mistake and if Joseph was actually Jeremiah's grandfather.

We did some digging and found a Joseph Felker living in Barrington, New Hampshire in the 1800 census. And check this out. Elias was ALSO living in Barrington, NH in 1800. That, my friends, is a smoking gun. Actually, it was more like a fire alarm. But, why argue over metaphors?

We had to make sure that there were no other Felkers in the town at the time and there wasn't any as far as we could see. To further cement this, Ancestry.com rolled out Thrulines which show how you may be connected to a DNA match.


Thrulines are only as good as other peoples' trees and are good research guides. They'd be better served by combining DNA information and traditional genealogy. In my case, they've been decent up to about the 5th great-grandparent level. That's where things tend to get a little dicey for me.

That said, I checked out my mother's Thrulines for Joseph Felker and she has a 5th cousin once removed who shares 14 centimorgans with her. He apparently comes from one of Elias's brothers. More research is needed. However, DNA does not lie.

The Thrulines wasn't what sealed the deal for me, anyway. What really drove the point home were the traditional genealogical finds. The census reports, the few Felker families in Barrington, NH and other small bits of information served as concrete proof that Joseph was Elias's father. I honestly hated jumping through hoops trying to find his father, who by the way ended up being a soldier of the American Revolution! The DAR record doesn't show Elias.

I forget what gave me the conclusion that Joseph WAS Elias's father. But, I do have to thank and give a HUGE shout-out to WikiTree's Laura Bozzay for helping me build this tree and figure this guy out. I couldn't have done it without her. It just goes to show that two heads are better than one and when you have a genealogical puzzle sometimes an extra pair of eyes is something we all need.

I just wish I had to go through so many hoops to get information on him. That's life, I guess. See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 32: Small

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 32's theme is "Small." Small house, tiny person, a small detail that helped unravel a mystery? How will you interpret the theme this week?

Small town=big surprises

I had a couple of options to write about for this week's prompt. Do I write about the little old Italian ladies in my family? Nah. I did that a couple weeks ago. Do I skip over an Italy week and talk about my 2x great-grandmother, Georgianna Ross? My mother and her siblings used to call her "little grammy" because she was like four foot tall. I think I have a better idea for this week. How about I talk about how small Italian towns can yield big results in genealogy and even offer up some big surprises? Sound good? Here we go!

Giuseppe and Clementina.

Gesualdo, the town where my great-grandparents Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were born, has 3,446 people living there according to the census taken in 2017. That's a small town when you compare it to Naples to the west which has over nine hundred thousand people in the greater metropolitan area.

Don't let the size of a small Italian town discourage you because you will still find some great things. Even though the town is small, it will have many records both online and at the local church or commune office. Results, of course, will vary because it depends on when each town started writing down records.

In Gesualdo's case, a distant cousin of mine called "Gesualdogenie" on Ancestry went to the town and scanned a TON of documents. This allowed me to get information and documents for many of my direct ancestors, their families and their families' families and so on. It was a literal gold mine of information. I still haven't gone through the entirety of her work.

Birth record for Giuseppe Carrabs,

Many of the scans, like this one, are courtesy of Antenati which is a repository for Italian births, marriages and deaths. Many civil documents have been scanned there from all over Italy. If you have Italian ancestors, you simply owe it to yourself to go check it out and see for yourself.

There is a caveat, though. Yes, there is a language barrier. However, you can manage by asking an Italian genealogy Facebook group for help. They will be more than happy to help you out. Trust me! Plus keep in mind records like these are only available from a certain point in time and not all of them have been scanned. You can also find these and other documents on Familysearch. Those sites will help you on your Italian genealogical adventure as long as you know the name of the town your ancestors come from. Good luck!

Vincenzo Carrabs

One of the many surprises that came out of the town of Gesualdo involved DNA matches. Up until I discovered a third cousin for my father, I thought just the children of Vincenzo Carrabs and Maria Giovanna Capobianco came to America. As it turned out, there was a DNA match living in the Worcester area who descended from Vincenzo's sister, Anna. She married a man named Francesco Palermo and a few of their children ended up in Worcester, Massachusetts. One of them even changed their last name from Palermo to Desimone! Why? I honestly have no idea. Palermo is a great name. Yes, it's also the name of a city in Sicily. But, I digress.

When I first saw my father's DNA matches for the Palermo clan, I thought it was a bit odd. Then I noticed something. The same match also matched people who I knew descended from Vincenzo and Maria. I thought that was weird. So, I checked out Gesualdogenie's tree and saw that she had all of Vincenzo's brothers and sisters including Anna and even her birth banns from the town.

I went back to the match's tree and it didn't take long for me to find Anna again. She was indeed there and her parents were there as well. Don't worry. They were sourced using Gesualdogenie's scans. I'm not one to add someone without some documentation. Since DNA didn't lie, I put two and two together and found that yes Anna was indeed Vincenzo's sister. Her kids and grandchildren just ended up in Worcester while everyone else was in Haverhill or Melrose.

I did the next logical thing. I messaged the DNA matches my father and I shared with the Palermo clan and I learned some interesting facts. Apparently, one family changed their last name from Palermo to Desimone is because they felt like it. How anti-climatic was that?

Regardless, it was still a surprise to me because I thought the entirety of the Carrabs clan went to eastern Mass.  Apparently not. This got me wondering, actually. Are there cousins still living in Gesualdo? It's a possibility and one I should definitely explore!

Small Italian towns have a ton of information which can go back centuries and centuries if you know how to look. I admit I got lucky because of Gesualdogenie's efforts. I thank her every day for her tireless work because she did such an amazing job. Just because a town is small, you are bound to find a bunch of information. The same holds true for my other Italian ancestral town, San Pietro a Maida and I've already found cousins still living there!!

Good luck and see you next time!

52 Ancestors Week 31: Large

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 31's theme is "Large." Large family, large business, living large, larger than life...  How will you interpret this week's theme?

I wonder if the font was big enough.....

Large families are the norm for both sides of the tree. My mother has over fifty first cousins and my father has a ton of first, second and third cousins I knew about long before I ever took a DNA test. This week, in honor of a picture I discovered in one of my grandmother's albums, we will be talking about the family of Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault and their large 50th wedding anniversary party!

Austin and Henrietta in November of 1963.

Let's go back in time to the November of 1963. Earth's mightiest heroes, the Avengers, had just made their Marvel Comics' debut on newsstands across the country and would eventually become a box office juggernaut. Just one day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the worldwide phenomenon the world would know as Doctor Who premiered on the BBC.

The year was definitely interesting and no doubt many of the then current events were discussed at the party. The Kennedy assassination, however, was likely not the topic of discussion as the party was held a few days before the tragic event in Dallas, Texas.

A little bit of backstory before we continue. Austin Felker and Henrietta Legault were married on November 29th, 1913 in the city of Haverhill. The couple had six children between 1914 and 1929 and had several.....SEVERAL.....grandchildren. I need a scorecard to keep track of them all because by the time of this anniversary there were twenty-two grandchildren including my mother. Christmas was likely a big deal.

In the album, I found several pictures from the event and naturally I asked my mother about them. She was fourteen at the time and she remembered quite a bit. In fact, when I colorized that picture on MyHeritage, she noticed a few glaring omissions. Firstly, Austin apparently had the bluest blue eyes ever. I doubted that until I saw pictures of him in color from my parents' wedding in the early 1970s. His eyes were VERY blue. Note to self: Use discretion on the colorizer.

Back to the party. It was clear by the pictures that many of Henrietta's siblings were there. My mother was quick to point out her aunt Matilda and a few other relatives. From the looks of things, everyone had a great time. You can tell just by looking at the picture above that the happy couple were all too thrilled to have their family gathered at the event.

Sadly, I had to crop out the cake after I scanned the photo. There were bits of tape all over the photo as it had been ripped due to time and being stored for ages. It happens. Luckily, I happen to be a master of the fine art of jiggery-pokery. After scanning, I edited the photo in my paint program by brightening it and removing ink spots on Austin's jacket. I thought I did a good job. I think, if I print it out on glossy paper, it would be as good as the original. Isn't modern technology amazing? =D

Back to the story. My mother remembered the party as there were quite a few relatives she hadn't seen in ages because she was living in California at the time. Everyone had a great time and I think it really set the stage for what was to come in the future. Every once in a while the Hamel and Felker clan would throw large parties so people could catch up. Think of them as family reunions or an excuse to have some fun and a lot of food! It happened quite a bit while I was growing up in the '80s and '90s.

Grandpa Hamel and eight out of ten grandkids.

My grandpa Hamel's ninetieth birthday in 2013 was another one of those events that brought the entire family together. Some of the people who were at the party fifty years prior to that were there and obviously several people were gone by that point. Notably my grandmother.

That is life,. People come and go and you have to document everything at these large events. And that's exactly what I did! By 2013, I was in my third year of making videos on YouTube. I decided to take it upon myself to record what I could of the event on my camera. Yes, people were taking pictures. However, I was one of the few people with a small camcorder!!

His 90th birthday party was supposed to be a surprise party. Hiding a small camera was an interesting feat. Still, we had a great time and I managed to get a few bits of genealogical information from the people there. Recorded? Eh....Not really? Don't worry. I got the important stuff.

I guess this brings me up to my final point. Large parties, like dinners with your great-aunts, can yield a ton of genealogical information if you know what to ask. I did ask several questions. Parties are great places to do that because 1. How often do you see these people? and 2. They won't feel too pressured in a social setting. Sometimes people don't like being interviewed.

I do wish I was a fly on the wall at my great-grandparents' 50th. I remember my grandparents' 50th in 1998 pretty well and I wish I had asked questions then. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. For now at least, I have these amazing pictures of my great-grandparents' 50th. They put faces to the names and dates on my tree and actually makes them come to life again. The pictures mean that much to me and maybe somehow they were at the same events I was at in spirit. Who knows? I like to think they were.

52 Ancestors Week 30: The Old Country

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 30's theme is "The Old Country." There are lots of ways you could approach this prompt. An immigrant ancestor. A trip back to the old country. A family tale or an heirloom that they brought with them... maybe a favorite recipe that made its way across the border?

Forza Italia!

You knew this was coming. Every other week I alternate between talking about my mother's side of the family tree and my father's side. This week happened to fall on the Italian side of things. So, we're going to talk about Italy! It's the one "old country" I've never been to as I went to Canada with my parents years and years ago for a dental convention. Canada was nice. Montreal is a very nice and very clean city. Sadly, my stay there wasn't very long. I'd have liked to have seen the place the Legaults called home because they were from the area. Still, going to Montreal felt like I was going home. I bet if I were to go to Italy, I'd feel the same way. In fact, it's probably a sure thing!

Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione.

Where would I go exactly? I'm not about to go to the cities of Rome, Venice or even Naples. No, I'd really rather go some place more meaningful to me. Yes, those places are cool. Don't get me wrong! Naples is the pizza capital of the world. Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance. The canals of Venice are so cool. The list goes on. Italy, like all of Europe, has centuries and centuries of history behind it. The country itself was even the center of the Roman Empire!

I just want to go somewhere else. It's that simple.

 Looking at the header, I have two options starred on Google Maps. I could go to the Gesualdo area where my great-grandparents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were born. A few cousins of mine on that side have been to to that town and have told me how nice the people were. It's a mountainous town just outside of Naples and taking a walk around there on Google Maps Street view proved to be pretty fascinating. Seriously, they have a castle right in the middle of town. How could you not want to check that out?!

That isn't to say San Pietro a Maida doesn't have its charms. Located near the toe of the boot, it's where my other Italian great-grandparents, Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco were born.

Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco

My grandfather was also born there and like Gesualdo it is a typical Italian town with houses close to each other. Just outside of San Pietro there are olive trees as far as the eye can see. When I was looking up information on my ancestors in the town, my contact there told me all about how everyone harvested the olives and made olive oil.

He also shared pictures of carnival and various other events happening around town. He really helped make the town come alive for me and I thank him for that.

Eventually, I found out that I have several second cousins still living in the town. I talk to them on Facebook every once in a while. I mentioned how I met them before in this blog. To recap: I went to the town's Facebook group, asked around and a cousin came out of the woodwork and asked me if I was related to my great-aunt Nicolina. I said I was and the rest, as they say, was history.

That's probably two points in San Pietro's favor. My great-aunt visited the town many times in the '60s and '70s. Along for the ride were my grandpa Marco, my grandmother and Vincenzo. My great-aunt has told me all about San Pietro and showed me pictures as well.  It's honestly hard for me to decide between the two towns! San Pietro also has family I know is living there.

As of this blog, I have no clue if I have any relatives living in Gesualdo, Frigento or Grottaminarda. I might. It's hard to say. Having done research on the towns, it's a distinct possibility. Giuseppe and Clementina's parents had tons of brothers and sisters and while some of their descendants went to America, some may have elected to stay in town. After all, if I were to use Cognomix and look up Carrabs, Capobianco, Forgione and Penta, I would find families with those names still living in those towns.

Since I have family I know in San Pietro, the best and safest bet would be to go to San Pietro a Maida because of la famigilia. It's a town I know the least about and everyone, including my cousins, are so nice and welcoming. It's hard to not want to go there. Perhaps some day I will. Perhaps I'll even go to both towns if I stay there for a few weeks. For now at least San Pietro wins the coin toss of Italian towns I'd go to because I know family is there. It's honestly the wisest choice for me. Of course, I have other reasons to go....

Grandpa Marco.

I really want to see where my grandfather was born, you know? He died when I was four and though his sister filled me in on everything there's just part of me that wants more questions answered. Questions she can't answer. He wasn't around. So, the next logical step would be to go there and talk to cousins and the like.

And here comes the elephant in the room....

With current events being what they are, it's hard to even think about traveling at this point. But, I should try to remain positive. Some day I'll get the chance to go. My cousin's wife, Rosa, put it best when she talked to me for the first time:

"A piece of us is there , in America.. and a piece of you is here in Italy"


IF that isn't incentive to go, I don't know what is!

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