52 Ancestors Week 21: Yearbook

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 21

Get ready for fun (or cringe-y) hairstyles, old-time slang, and cryptic autographs -- it's "Yearbook" week!

"The Real Student Handbook"- Salem High School Class of 1997

    I've always found yearbooks to be great to look at because they are quite literally a time capsule. Take my high school yearbook for example. I graduated in June of 1997 and inside those pages I definitely see the hairstyles, the slang, the references to '90s pop culture and more. We even had a video version made and thanks to some ingenuity someone put the whole thing on YouTube. Our theme song was even R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as we Know It" for some odd reason.  All that was missing was some Rob Liefeld art and we'd definitely have a book that encapsulated a decade. Then again, if you know me you'd know that I do not want Liefeld anywhere near my yearbook! The '90s were weird when it came to comics and pop culture in general. At least it was a fun ride. We did see the rise of the Internet, the console wars and three back-to-back Star Trek series on television after all. What do you say we skip all of that and go further back in time to 1939?

    The year proved to be an important one when it comes to popular culture as films such as "The Wizard of Oz" graced the silver screen and a company called "Timely" launched its first comic called "Marvel Comics #1". Hmm...I think they'll turn out just fine. Just give that Stan Lee kid a chance. He's going places! War was on the horizon and my grandmother, Olympia Carrabs, was a student at Haverhill High.

    I've always liked my grandmother's yearbook because it really gave me a sense of what life was like in the 1930s. When I was little, she would bring the book out every once in a while and we'd talk about the contents. The first thing I did was start with her page because that version of grandma Ollie I never got to see. By the time I was born, her black hair had grayed and so she dyed it blond. It was so cool to see pics of her with her natural hair color and rare, too!  I'm not sure when she started going gray. Maybe it was after my father was born. ;) Make of that what you will, Internet!

    What was really cool about her entry was how she was described as:

"A joking, jolly, pleasant girl, Whose hair is in a natural curl . There's always in our heart a place For her laughing eyes and smiling face".

    Let me be the first to say that whoever wrote that passage did not exaggerate at all. My grandmother did have her funny side. She was always kind and had a great sense of humor as I've described many times in the blog. According to the book, she was in the Glee Club and a Philomathean. Not bad, right?

    Thanks to someone donating the yearbook to Ancestry, I can flip through the scanned pages of "The Thinker" online without having to drag out my grandmother's copy. That's pretty handy. Let's see what's inside! (And yes her copy is in a safe place. We treat it like gold! It's with my grandmother Natalie's yearbook. She graduated from the same school.)

New music to avert sleepiness, huh? Hmm....

    One of the cooler things I've found is this class will. A lot of things in it have actually come to pass in the decades since this was printed.

I especially like Article II and how they left yeast cakes to the underclassmen so they would rise earlier. That's funny because my class left...umm....Jolt cola. Hey. It was the '90s. We didn't have time to make yeast cakes. At least we didn't mix "Coke" and "Pop Rocks".

    Article VII is fun. Wait until they hit the Rock and Roll years. I guess those kids aren't ready for it. But, their kids and grandkids are gonna love it.

    The will itself is pretty standard. Lots of funny bits and you know I'd probably would have liked "A Thousand Ways to Dodge Homework". 

    It's nice how in the end they left "an inexhaustible amount of chalk and paper". Way to think ahead! (Wow. See what I did there?)

I really can spot my grandma
in a crowd. Neat.

    Other interesting parts of the yearbook include messages from the staff and other notable people at the school. I bet if I was looking at my grandmother's copy, I'd see messages from her classmates. There was a section in the book where various people were given various titles. There was:

"Mr. Smart" (Every class has their "royal smart person".)

"Miss Attractive". (Oof. I don't think that would fly now. Well, then again....)

"Mr. Singer." (Sadly this was NOT a young Frank Sinatra.)

Oh and before I forget, there IS a "Mr.. Attractive." I guess that balances it out. There were other titles for various students and I couldn't find Ollie in the list. For someone who was carefree and funny she was somehow absent from these. Huh....The mind boggles.

    Many clubs have also had their picture taken and sadly the Glee Club was nowhere to be found. All isn't lost! The Philomathians are here to save the day with their love of learning. Good thing I was able to find my grandmother relatively easily. The group was big.

Really big....

     That's definitely quite the group! 

  

    As a writer, I really enjoyed this bit about the history of the class. The chapters outlined what it was like coming into the school in 1935 with their hopes and dreams and how they stuck together for their four years. That was pretty cool and it reminds me of the Class of 1997 in a way.

    The only difference was that in Salem there are five elementary schools and our class came together as one class in the 6th grade before going to Junior High. We were basically together since 1990 with new classmates coming in or moving away.  I wonder if it was the same in Haverhill. It might be! You never know!

    The class president's address after everyone's photographs is definitely interesting in hindsight. In it, he discusses "The World of Tomorrow". No doubt it's a reference to the then recent World's Fair. He mentioned that America always believed in progress and that while the rest of the world was in turmoil,  America was focused on living differently and better in the future. Wow. Right in the feels. It makes me wonder how he felt about these words in the following decades. He then talked about being forward-thinking people in a forward-thinking country and ended his address saying  "Let us hope that someday we may be privileged to say that we have done our part in building a better world." Very optimistic, right? Yeah, I definitely wonder how he felt about those words as the years came and went. It was actually very progressive for 1939!

Haverhill High circa 1939

   In many ways Haverhill High in 1939 mirrored Salem High in 1997. Both classes were cheerfully optimistic about what the future might bring and both generations of teenagers wanted to help make the world a better place. Did the world change in between those dates? Of course it did. You'd be crazy not to notice.

    With change there comes adversity and while my generation can never compare with the threat of war on the horizon, we certainly had our own tragedies. I think what Doc Brown said in Back to the Future III still holds water. "The future is whatever you make of it. So make it a good one." Just make sure history never repeats itself.

    This copy of "The Thinker" is one of three yearbooks from Haverhill High that I have in my collection. The other copies belonged to my grandmother Natalie (Class of 1945) and my father (Class of 1965). It's not a bad collection by any means because you really get a sense of what life was like in the 1940s and 1960s when reading through the book. It's actually kind of jarring reading the cheerful optimism in 1939 and then reading the Class of 1965's book immediately afterward! Imagine how jarring it'd be going from 1939 to 1997 or even today! Times do change and unfortunately the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's fun to look at the stories of the past and it reminds us that we still have time to make the world a better place. Youthful optimism is a good thing no matter how rocky the tides of time become.

See ya next time! And here's to the 25th Anniversary of the  Salem High Blue Devils Class of 1997.

    

52 Ancestors Week 20: Textiles

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 20

Week 20's theme is "Textile." Clothing, quilts, weaving -- there are so many ways to talk about textiles in our family history! Be creative with this week's theme!

Woven into the tapestry of our lives.

    Textiles and the Merrimack valley go together like oil and water. While the rise of textile mills along the Merrimack river in the late 19th century certainly caused a great boom in the economy of the region, you can't deny that they also caused considerable havoc on the environment. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. I mean they did attract thousands of Italian and Quebecois immigrants who were looking for work and a better way of life. Way to look for that silver lining, Chris....

    You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Merrimack valley whose family was not shaped by the mills which were as far north as Concord, New Hampshire and stretched all the way to the mouth of the river in Newburyport, Massachusetts. That is a lot of real estate to cover! The Merrimack is only 117 miles long and yet so many people were influenced by it and the mills around them over the years. Take my maternal grandparents, Robert Hamel and Natalie Felker for example.

Robert and Natalie Hamel

    After my grandfather's honorable discharge from the United States Air Force, he found work as a store manager for the J.M. Fields Department store in Haverhill, Massachusetts and later he worked at the Merrimack Valley Textile museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

    Out of all the cities in the valley, Lowell was the one that benefitted the most from the mills. The city was founded in the 1820s as a planned manufacturing center for textiles. You could argue that this was where the growth in the valley began. The mills sprung up here first after all and from there they stretched to cities and towns all around the valley. Amazing and yet kind of scary if you think about it.

    The museum closed in 2016 and was dedicated to the history of the mills in the valley. Their primary focus was on wool and each exhibit focused on telling the story of how it went from a sheep to the clothes on your back.

    Luckily, there are other museums in the area which could help satiate your desire to learn more about the textile mills and the effect they had on the valley. These include:

1. Bootts Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell.

2. New England Quilt Museum in Lowell.

    By the time I came around, my grandfather had long since retired from his work at the museum and I don't really remember him talking about it that much. He was more interested in telling stories about his life in the Air Force and of course his family. My grandmother on the other hand? Uhh...yeah this is where it gets interesting.

How much ya wanna bet those two tortured
my uncle Bob?

    I've already talked about how grandma Natalie liked to make sweaters for all ten of her grandchildren. Including me. She was also adept at needlepoint. That's not all! She also made clothes for her children. Wow. Look how adorable my mom, my aunt Susan and my uncle Bob look in this pic. Chances are good their mom made those clothes for them.

    I can't get past the gloves on my mom's hands. Quite stylin' for 1955, right? She may not have cooked much as I explained last week. At least she could put together some clothes. The only problem is that when she made my sweater it was so incredibly hot and itchy. I think it was made from leftover wool from the textile museum. It certainly smelled like it! It wouldn't surprise me.

      I've never been really sure where she got her skills. However, I would think that her mother Henrietta taught her everything she needed to know. Henrietta probably learned from her mother, Lucie. Generations of women in the family may have been proficient in making clothes for people and these days it's my aunt Linda who seems to have the gift of making clothes and even pet beds!

The Hamel clan. Note the matching pjs....

      My aunt has called textile stores her "happy place" in the past. She has been known to spend hours and hours in those shops. As a result of her affinity for textiles she produced many Halloween costumes from a single Superman cape to even a comic accurate Spider-Man costume complete with accurate mask. Not bad at all. The costume even scared my cousin Ryan who was two at the time! I didn't mean to scare him! All I did was open the door and said "Hi.".

    The costume was so good that it even got first prize at the Woodbury Junior High 7th grade Halloween dance. Not bad. Still wish I had functioning webshooters, though.

    She even made my cousin Kristyn and her husband a Poison Ivy and Joker costume once. There's an odd pairing for you. I guess Harley Quinn moved on....Or Ivy was going to get her revenge. I'm going with the latter! Watch Harley's show on HBO Max and you'll see what I mean.

      These days my aunt has gone from making clothes to producing beds for dogs. My aunt is a life-long dog breeder and was responsible for giving my brother and I two canine friends growing up. In time she began her own "Distinctive Bedding by Creature Comforts" pet supply shop on Facebook. She once asked if we needed a doggie bed even though we have a cat now instead of a dog.  My parents agreed and I think the results speak for themselves!

Draw me like your French cats.

    Imagine that. Cats really like beds made for dogs! Well, they would sleep on just about anything. It took Cara a while to warm up to the idea of sleeping in a bed like this. But, she did and like I said. The results speak for themselves.

    The bed must have taken a while to make and clearly a lot of thought and love was put into it. It may have been made for dogs that weigh in at about forty pounds. But, it's good for a fifteen pound Maine Coon, right?

    Now let's be quiet. The kitten is sleeping.

    As you can see textiles has influenced my family pretty well. You could say it's woven into the fabric of our lives. Heh....Heh.... Wow, that joke was bad. I'd better end the blog post on a less cringey note. Dad jokes have no place in a genealogy blog! Actually, I take that back. They might....

  Like I said before, these days the mills are closed and have been converted into apartment buildings, offices and other facilities. However, the legacy of the mills remain and you can't really deny that they played some part of peoples' lives here in the valley. Did they inspire the women in my family to create such awesome (and itchy) products? I'm not sure. 

If you'd like to learn more about how textile mills shaped the Merrimack valley, please check out these sites:

* https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/the-merrimack-river.htm

* https://www.nps.gov/articles/building-america-s-industrial-revolution-the-boott-cotton-mills-of-lowell-massachusetts-teaching-with-historic-places.htm

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lowell,_Massachusetts

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawsheen_Village_Historic_District

Enjoy that light reading! See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 19: Food and Drink

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 19's theme is "Food and Drink." Few things bring back memories like food does. This week, write about an event that prompted a special meal, an ancestor who was a really good (or really bad!) cook, or a food that always makes you think of someone in your family. (Or whatever else you want to write about 😊)

It's that time of year. Let's make people hungry!

    When you grow up in an Italian-American household, you learn a few things. Here are the top three rules which could help you out the next time you're at an Italian-American house. These three facts could even save your life!

1. No one is yelling! They're just talking really loudly! Yes, I know the person they're trying to talk to is clear across the house. It doesn't matter! They're just loud and passionate! That and they really want the other person involved in the story that they're telling!

2. Always take the wine when it's given to you. It doesn't matter if you don't like drinking or have other issues with wine. You take the wine because you don't know where it came from. It could be from Nonna's family vineyard in the old country for all you know. They could have even made it themselves! Either way you take it and you enjoy. It's very offensive if you don't take the wine.

3. Nonna's awesome cooking is probably due to her mother teaching her everything she knows! When you have someone else's cooking, you end up comparing it to hers through no fault of your own. Sometimes those awesome recipes are even taught to other people in the family like in-laws. There are no secrets to certain recipes. If they want to learn, nonna will be happy to teach you everything you need to know! And she'll tell you great stories while doing so!

Grandma Ollie, master chef.

    As I've mentioned many times in this blog, my grandma Ollie and her sisters were amazing cooks. They made everything from pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans) to cookies. You name an Italian dish and chances are they made it with style and it was so good!

    Naturally, I've had many Italian dishes. Ancestry even once posed a question in a poll. "How often do you have the food of your ancestors?" I plead the fifth on that one. Just last week I had prosciutto and fig pizza from Tuscan Market. They uhh....know my family by name there. Seriously. The wine guy is one of mine dad's patients.

.    Whenever I have an Italian dish, I often think of my grandmother's cooking because she took such care and time into making the most delectable goodies you have ever had in your life. There really is nothing like homemade cooking! Both she and her sisters were just that good. She was always more than willing to cook for her two grandsons whenever she looked after us or  we visited her.

    It goes without saying that I loved my grandmother's cooking. Things change a bit if I have someone else's lasagna, though, because my mother is the undisputed "Queen of Lasagna".  And I haven't found any lasagna that quite matches her style. Wow. I sound like Garfield....

Don't look directly at it!

    Yes, my very French-Canadian mother makes very good lasagna. Is that possible? Of course it is! You don't have to be of a certain nationality to make food from a certain culture. Some people make a living doing that on Food Network or Youtube! Results of course will vary. And no. Cooking pasta on a island counter does not make you a chef. It makes you messy and gross. 

    So, how did my mother get started making lasagna? Well, my mother married an Italian. I think you can see where this is going. She wanted to learn how to make certain dishes for everyone and helping her along the way were my father, grandmother, Ollie's sisters and basically everyone else related to us within a ten mile radius.

    My father, of course, was a food tester and critic. He would explain to my mother how certain food was prepared thanks to his grandmother teaching him everything there was to know about how certain food is prepared. She could have gone directly to the source and ask my grandmother about how to make the dish perfectly. However, there was a slight problem with that plan. Grandma Ollie never made lasagna. Her specialty was baked ziti. So, what could she do? Well, I can tell you there was a lot of trial and error and eventually she made her own recipe! And we LOVED it!

Cousin Carol and Clementina!

    Most lasagna recipes calls for a variety of meat to be put in between the layers of pasta. My mother traditionally put in mozzarella cheese, parmesan and ricotta in between the layers. The sauce was always homemade and it's so good. There really is nothing like it! It's hard to explain why it's so good. It just is!

    Because of the filling nature of the dish, we had lasagna on holidays like Thanksgiving. It's a traditional dish, right? Miles Standish asked his friend Giuseppe Pavorati to make it and everyone loved it!! ;) They were totally paisans!

    For as long as I can remember, we've had the dish every Thanksgiving without fail. It was requested and required. 'Nuff said! Sure we'd have the traditional turkey and all the fixings. Along for the ride was a big pan of lasagna.  I'd have a little bit of turkey first and the lasagna as the main course. My brother took the crispy corners and I had a side or middle/side piece. Sufficed it to say everyone was in a food coma afterward!

        You would think that my grandmother would have also critiqued my mother's cooking. That was never the case. She loved the dishes my mother prepared and when it came to lasagna on Thanksgiving she loved it. She always went for the crispy side pieces. I was never a fan! Anyway, Ollie loved the lasagna and never had a bad word to say about the meal. She did, however, go for the lasagna first before getting to the turkey. I honestly can't blame her!

Yes, my nephew dabbed. What?

   These days my mother still makes lasagna and my brother's in-laws, the Grammaticos, love the dish as well. Of course they would. Who wouldn't? I remember one Thanksgiving my father and my sister-in-law's father would compare notes about the types of dishes they would have at Thanksgiving. It was always interesting to hear Mr. Grammatico talk about his experiences since his family was from Sicily whereas my dad's was from Campania and Calabria. There are subtle differences of course. But, you have to understand Italy is a large country and many different regions have different ways of preparing certain food. I still need to try Calabrese lasagna. Look at this pic and tell me it doesn't make you hungry! Mr. Grammatico also loves my mom's cooking because it reminds him of his mother and her cooking.

    In order to preserve the recipe and/or help my sister-in-law, my brother has went so far as to record my mother prepare the dish. Whatever works, right? I'm thinking that video was enshrined on a zip drive somewhere. I should get a copy or better yet film it myself!

    Italian food always makes me think of my Italian heritage and I think you can probably tell I am pretty proud of my ethnic background.  I wish I could say I had some French-Canadian cuisine growing up. But, I never really had any French-Canadian dishes and my other grandmother did not cook nearly as much as Grandma Ollie did. I mean no disrespect of course. It is what it is. My mom learning how to cook a variety of dishes proves that anyone can be a great cook. You don't have to be Italian to make great Italian dishes. It just takes time, effort and love. 

See ya next time! Ciao!

52 Ancestors Week 18: Social

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 18's theme is "Social." Maybe you have a story or photo of an ancestor at an ice cream social. Maybe your ancestor was part of a society, like the Masons or Odd Fellows. Maybe you've made a connection with a cousin or made a great discovery thanks to social media. Whatever it is, write it down!

Was so tempted to use the Facebook logo.

BREAKING NEWS!   I've just found my mother and her parents, Robert and Natalie in the 1950 census after a month of searching the space between spaces!  I'm glad that problem was solved thanks to the diligent work of people over on Ancestry. I still need to fix a few names on Familysearch, though. We might have to wait a little longer for Skynet to take over. It never ends! Onto this week's blog!

    These days social media is everywhere. As the 11th Doctor once said, "We are living in a WIFI soup.". Everywhere you go there's Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and all sorts of platforms for every desire you could possibly imagine. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes it isn't. When it comes to genealogy, though, I've found that social media comes in handy when you're researching that long lost connection and you just so happen to be talking to a cousin researching the same family line.

Paolo Coppola and his first
wife, Lena.

        I've made it a point to talk to cousins long after I made that important connection on the family tree. Why not? We're family, right? It doesn't matter to me where you are on the family tree. You could be as close as a first cousin or as far away as a fourth and you'd still be family. Social media has helped to cement those connections as I've added a number of cousins to my Facebook page and I've found their input very valuable on this genealogical adventure I've been on and in turn I've been helping them on their adventure.

   

    Take my 3rd cousin, Jeannine, for example. Jeannine lives in Haverhill and her great-grandfather was Paolo Coppola. Paolo, if you recall, was my second great-grandmother Caterina's brother. Ever since I contacted her we've been trying to root out the truth of Paolo's origins since various documents said he was born in either Naples or Sicily. I've shown her all of information I've collected and she went out of her way to e-mail me a very, very long .pdf file which outlined the family history of Paolo's second wife, Antonia Iellamo (Yellum).

   

     While the file went into exhaustive detail into the Iellamo family line, it did mention Paolo a bit and started to cement his origins in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida. Another clue to his origins came in the form of the 1920 census where he was living with his sister, Concetta, and her family. Concetta was definitely born in San Pietro a Maida as evidenced by her naturalization papers, birth certificate and you know....talking to my great-aunt kind of confirmed it. She was her "Aunt Zia" after all.

    Jeannine and I felt this all was enough to cement the connection and we built our trees down to each other on Ancestry. We had that information AND the overwhelming DNA evidence to fall back on. I remember asking her if it was okay to look for more information and report back on what I've found. She said it was fine. Over time, I presented her with more facts such as our cousin in Switzerland remembering how her grandmother Caterina used to talk about her brothers and sister in Haverhill. I was taken aback by that find. But, nothing could have prepared me for what came next.

Big livin' on High Street!

    On April 1st, 2022, the 1950 census was released to the public and right away I searched for various people like my parents, grandparents and everyone else I could think of. It wasn't until recently that the entire census became available on Ancestry to browse through as an index was created by thousands of volunteers. When it did, I thought it'd be cool to look for Paolo and see what he was up to in 1950. I thought it'd be a fun little find and I could share it with Jeannine. That fun find turned out to be something extraordinary!

    As expected, Jeannine's grandmother Beatrice was living with her parents and several siblings on High Street in Haverhill. She was twenty-one years old and was working as a weaver in a shoe factory. In addition to that, she was on the "Sample line" on the census page. This meant that on the bottom of the page, there would be more information about her and her family history. Grandpa Marco, Georgianna Ross and Vincenzo Ferraiolo were just a few of my direct ancestors who were on this line.

    On Beatrice's sample line, it asked the following questions:

1. Where were your parents born?

2. What was the extent of their education?

3. How much did they earn?

    Usually people put down a generic location such as "Italy" or "USA" as their parents' birthplace in the sample lines. Beatrice, for unknown reasons, did not. Instead of going with the generic answer, the enumerator put down "San Pietro, Italy" for her parents, Paolo and Antonia. I sat back in my chair and laughed. We definitely cemented the connection and encased it in solid titanium this time!

    After collecting my thoughts, I sent a message to Jeannine on Facebook with this information. I had hoped she was was online and sure enough she was. I told her I had news for her and explained what I found. As always, she congratulated me on a job well done. She's always been supportive of the work I've been doing and that actually kept me going as I dug through the line.

    While it was certainly possible that she could have meant another "San Pietro, Italy", there's really no doubt that it's San Pietro a Maida as most people from that town refer to the place as "San Pietro". The evidence at this point is overwhelming. Paolo was definitely born in San Pietro a Maida to Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato.

    After the discovery, Jeannine and I talked as we normally do. I told her to share the information with the family. She said that she wished she could find more information about her grandfather's family. I've done what I could on that front for her and I offered to go to Haverhill City Hall to see if we could find information. It couldn't hurt and hey we could go to Benedetti's Deli for lunch! 

    One question still burns in my mind, though. Why did Beatrice put down "San Pietro, Italy." instead of just plain Italy as seen on the other sample lines?

    You know what? I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. There are times when you need to scale back the questions and just be thankful for the surprises that await you. Curiosity is one thing. Too many questions turn you into "The Riddler".

    This story is exactly why social media has been so beneficial for genealogy. With it, you can talk to cousins as nearby as Haverhill or a world away in San Pietro a Maida instantly. People can help, encourage and even make the genealogical adventure not seem so lonely while you're working late on the computer. If anything, social media has been a tremendous boon to the field (Especially during the pandemic.). It allows sites like WikiTree to grow and prosper. Vast distances even become a thing of the past.

    With that said, I suggest you go out there and make the connections with relatives if you can. You never know what stories you can confirm or how much fun you'll have talking on social media.

See ya next time!

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 17: Document

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17

"Document" can be a noun or a verb and, as genealogists, we should be using it as both! Perhaps this week you share a neat document you've found or write about your efforts to document an ancestor.

The temptation to use Clippy was strong.

    Where would we be without documents? Well, as genealogists we'd be up a creek without a paddle because documents are quite literally our bread and butter. Documents can tell you anything from when a person was born to even their height. Sadly, there isn't any document that can tell you what your crazy uncle Ed's favorite color was or his shoe size. We're getting there, though. It's the Internet and the stuff you upload to it, news stories and social media adventures stick around forever! I probably have stuff from like twenty years ago on some long forgotten corner of the web. I don't invite you all to go looking for it! Besides all the cool stuff is on our sister site, Starbolt Productions. 

    On the genealogy front, you always want to be mindful of the documents you find. I was half joking when I said "Have you verified the source?" in the banner above. You really want to verify things before you attach them to your tree because sometimes a Paolo Coppola may not be *YOUR* Paolo Coppola. Look before you leap or attach a document in this case. That's just common sense.

      I know various documents show up as hints and it's very tempting to accept everything you see as gospel. However, sometimes you might want to think outside the hint box and do a little sleuthing on your own. You never know what kind of documents you might find. 

    This was especially true a few months ago when I found this unlikely holy grail of information. Ladies, gentlemen and others, I present the death certificate of one Antoine Pierre Legault.  Antoine, as you might recall, was my second great-grandfather who met an unfortunate end in 1901 shortly after the birth of his son, Oliver. He was the father of thirteen and husband of Lucie Cadran. He was also a factory worker working in one of the many textile mills in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Antoine passed away due to pulmonary phthisis aka tuberculosis.

    I found this particular document after it was suggested that I should probably try and find things that didn't require a shaky green leaf or one of those blue hint boxes on Familysearch. I figured why not? What could happen? A lot, apparently.

    I came across this document because I was not satisfied with the original death record hint Ancestry and Familysearch originally presented to me ages ago. It had no meat. No potatoes. No substance of any kind. I was not willing to accept a name, date and cause of death. I needed MORE information! The list of names just wasn't cutting it!

Need more meat, yo.

    While the information on the deaths in 1901 did give me his cause of death, his parents and his age. It left out a few other odds and ends I'd have been interested in. For example, stuff like where he was buried would have been awesome. More on that later. 

    Then again it was just a basic report on who died that year in Haverhill. I don't think it was intended to have a lot of meat. So, I shouldn't be too upset.  Either way, I had a goal. I wanted to see if I could find a document in the vast document filled archive that is Familysearch which had more information than what was provided here. While cool, it lacked the explicit details I needed.

    Armed with a thirst for knowledge, I decided to check the Vital records in Haverhill in 1901 to see if there could be anything on Antoine. These records weren't indexed and thus wouldn't show up as hints for anyone until some time in the future. I had over two thousand images to slog through. How was I going to find what I needed?

    Fortunately I had everything I needed for a search on Antoine's page on WikiTree. His date of death was on October 19th, 1901. I just needed to find that date. So, what I did was I put in random numbers into the image viewer until I got close to October of that year. It didn't take long to find his death certificate on image 1209. I smiled. Had I hit paydirt?

    I had to verify things of course. His date of death matched Antoine's. His parents also matched the parents I have for him as well. They were Jacques Legault and Delphine Gourgon. I should note that thanks to some miscommunication at the border, Antoine's mother is forever listed as "Delphine Gourgon Samorette" instead of "Delphine Gourgon dit St. Maurice" on so many documents. Even my grandmother's records had the bizarre misspelling! I digress. Despite the glaring errors, the document was clearly showing this man was my

 2nd great-grandfather.

    Finding Antoine's actual death certificate meant I had more information available than I ever had before. Aside from his cause of death, it had the following bits of information:

* Parents' names.

* Address

* Duration of his illness (About a year, it seems.)

* Place of burial.

    Wait! Place of burial?! YES! This death certificate listed where Antoine was buried and to my surprise it was not in Saint Joseph's cemetery in Haverhill as I had originally hoped/theorized. All this time I thought he was buried in Saint Joseph's with Lucie and the rest of the Legault family. He could have even been at Walnut cemetery. That's two strikes. Turns out Antione was buried in Saint James cemetery! Well, that saved me two trips. 

   

    I should note that I found this document in winter when there was like a foot of snow on the ground. It was a pretty snowy January. It's probably not a good idea to do cemetery runs in the middle of winter anyway!

    Saint James cemetery is a good sized cemetery on Primrose Street in Haverhill. It's also across Little River from Hilldale cemetery, one of the most haunted cemeteries in New England. They actually have night tours for that cemetery around Halloween. I'm not joking. 

    Once I discovered where he was buried, I sought out to make a page for him on Find a Grave. I had enough information to make an entry so I thought I would get ahead of the game. I put in a photo request because I wasn't sure when I would have a chance to go there. Hopefully, I get a chance to visit soon. I just wonder where to start to be honest.

    Most cemeteries, like nearby Saint Patrick's, have people buried by decades. I think I would have to start by looking for the graves in the early 1900s. Or I could just call the cemetery office. I mean....That would be the most sensible thing to do. Still, I hope the photo request is claimed either by me or someone in the area. It'd be really cool and whoever finds it would have my gratitude.

    In hindsight, it is a a sad document to find. Now I can see just what exactly happened to him and suffering tuberculosis for a year is just depressing. At least there's finally closure on that chapter. I created a Find a Grave profile and reunited him with his wife and children. Now we wait. Will I get a pic or will some volunteer take a photo? I have no idea!

   For now, this document has been attached to Antoine's profile on Wikitree and will be a testament to how great things can happen when you think outside of the usual hint box. Sometimes you need to take initiative to find the documents you're looking for. You might yield some amazing results. Ever since I found that death certificate, I felt the need to see what else I can find that hasn't been made into hints. Those stories will have to wait for another day. Finding documents online is a great way to prove facts in your favorite tree. I invite you all to check out your hints and even do your own deep dive into the archives!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 16: Negatives

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 16: There are some negatives to family history... Discovering something "negative" about an ancestor, not finding what you were expecting, and even film negatives. This week, explore one of those negatives. Maybe it will turn into a positive!

Don't be so negative.

        On my genealogical adventure, I've discovered many negative aspects to family history ranging from DNA matches who couldn't see the forest for the trees to stubborn brick walls that seem to be made out of titanium. Some fellow genealogists have even taken to criticizing me because I do most of my work online. I don't really want to talk about those negatives as I don't want to turn the blog into a soapbox or a rant about some DNA matches. So, let's focus on something negative that I've discovered about one of my ancestors.

    Amy's right. When you do family history, you are bound to find something negative about your family. They could be slave holders or they could be total jerks. People were human back then and it's important to remember that as you dig through their stats, court appearances and everything else. It's also important to remember that you are not them. You may have their DNA coursing through your body. But, you are a completely different person with your own thoughts and ideas. Keep that in mind as I delve into some negative things I've discovered about my great-grandfather, Vincenzo Ferraiolo.

    In 2018, I took a DNA test on Ancestry to see how much I shared with my parents and my great-aunt, Nicolina. It was something fun to do and a lot of connections I grew up hearing about were confirmed. Everything was great until I saw something odd in my DNA match list. There were these two women who matched me in the 300 centimorgan range. I had no idea who they were and neither did my father who matched them in the 500 centimorgan range. That makes them likely to be my dad's half-first cousins once removed according to Ancestry and the shared cM project.

    My father and I had no idea what was going on. I went online and asked for help in a genetic genealogy group on Facebook run by Dr. Blaine Bettinger. Some people theorized that my grandfather Marco might have had an affair. I nixed that idea right away. The timing was off and the women seemed to have been born in the 1950s or 1960s according to their profiles. Someone suggested I look at my great-aunt's DNA matches to see how much they matched her and that's where things got interesting!

That is not a small number!

    I asked my dad's cousin if I could see Nicolina's DNA match list. When I did, I saw that she matched the two women in the high 1000 centimorgan range. That....That is not a small number! That is a large number!!! I needed to figure out what was going on because my neither my cousin nor Nicolina had any clue who the women were. I asked them if it was okay if I did a little digging. They said "Absolutely!" and I went right to work. I think they wanted answers as much as I did!

    I messaged one of the women and stated my case. I explained who I was, how much DNA I shared with them and more importantly how much Nicolina shared with each match. I gave them my e-mail address and waited for a reply. I was so nervous and certain that I turned someone's world upside down. What if they blocked me? What if they ranted at me or something? I wouldn't have the answers I was looking for. I wasn't as confident in messaging DNA matches back then as I am now. Sure it's still awkward, but, I don't have these doubts any more. 

    Shortly after I sent the messages one of the women replied and she seemed to be willing to discuss the situation with me. She and her half-sister took DNA tests to see if they could find some roots and if a rumor they heard growing up was true.

Not a Sicilian.

    According to them, a "Sicilian boarder" went to northern Vermont for a job in the mid 1930s and got their grandmother, Louvia Mitchell, pregnant. Louvia passed away shortly after their mother, Joyce, was born and she ended up being raised by her husband's family. 

    Right away I was a little confused. "Sicilian boarder?", I asked myself. Vincenzo may have had olive colored skin but not every Italian comes from Sicily! I explained that my family was from Calabria and Campania. Vincenzo was born in San Pietro a Maida in Calabria! I had no roots in Sicily whatsoever. The match explained to me that she heard that his name was "Vincenzo Ferriola" and that he came from Haverhill. At this point I was down the rabbit hole!

    I sat back in my chair and I was like "WHAT?!" I gathered my thoughts and analyzed the situation. In the mid 1930s, Vincenzo was married to Maria Tedesco and had two small children in Haverhill. Could he have gone to Vermont? According to my father, it seemed very likely.

    Vincenzo worked as a laborer for the city of Haverhill and helped to build roads. He probably got a job in Vermont and went there for work. It was the middle of the Great Depression and in those days you worked where work was available. Then again he was working for the Works Progress Administration or WPA at the time. They may have sent him to Vermont to do some work on the roads. Even in the 1930s it was "Infrastructure Week in America"!

   Unfortunately, this all meant that he cheated on Maria and the kids with a woman in Vermont. I know it takes two to tango. But, it is what it is. Who knows what really happened between those two? We can only speculate. What is known is that Joyce apparently had a hard life and was shuffled from home to home never knowing who her parents were. She was likely the subject of gossip and innuendo within the family. I think this is where idea of the "Sicilian boarder" came from. That is only partially true. Calabria is close to Sicily after all.

   

For reference, Alburgh is WAY up near
 Lake Champlain.

    I also did some research on Louvia and found her in various censuses, marriage to her husband and her death certificate. She died less than a year after Joyce was born from brain cancer. Yikes. That was incredibly sad to hear.

    Joyce's birth certificate had something on it that I found odd. Louvia listed her then husband Edward as the baby's father. I suppose the rationale was that this was supposed to be a "family secret" and that no one was supposed to learn the truth. Well, someone did find out the truth and DNA doesn't lie! It only took what eighty years for the truth to come out?

    After gathering all of the necessary information, it was time to present it to my family. I kind of wish I had flow charts and diagrams. In the end, I just showed them the facts and what I was seeing in every DNA test. Shockingly everyone took it well. Even my great-aunt did. I was taken aback because I was the one who discovered this secret. I asked why everyone was so calm. My dad said "It is what it is." Vincenzo had been gone for a long time and it's bad juju to be mad at someone who died over fifty years ago. Everyone said to basically accept it and move on. It was oddly pragmatic. It's not like I expected tables to be flipped or anything. Everyone involved was dead and like the old adage says "Dead men tell no tales." Their DNA on the other hand....

I still want to know what that dog's name was.

    Nicolina did ask me an interesting question, though. She asked me if Vincenzo would have taken care of Joyce if he knew about her. That's a loaded question. I didn't have an answer. I want to believe he would have stepped up and took care of her. I think Nicolina would have known more about her father's actions than I would have. I mean she did grow up with him. I only heard stories and this was one untold story that was hidden until the advent of DNA testing. There was no other way we could have known they existed.

    My great-aunt did eventually reach out to Joyce and the half-sisters talked for quite a bit about their lives. I have no idea what they talked about. I only know that they exchanged photographs and stories. Joyce sadly passed away in early 2019 and the only thing I can say is that at least she is at peace, knew what her father looked like before she died and hopefully is reunited with him in the afterlife.

    One thing puzzles me. If he had an affair during his marriage to Maria, did he have a girlfriend after she died in 1943? What about during his marriage to his second wife, Fortuna? The possibilities are endless and questions like that are just going to drive me crazy. So, it's probably best to take a cue from my family and say "It is what it is. Nothing can be done about it." The truth came out and who knows if there are more children out there. It's best not to dwell on such things.

    If there's one thing I've learned from this adventure it's that everyone is human and we all do things we might regret or do at the spur of the moment. I don't know what happened in Vermont. No one really does. In the years since I found out about his dalliance, I've learned to just accept it and move on. Nothing can be done about it. So, why harbor resentment or anger? The only thing we can do now is ensure that history doesn't repeat itself. That goes for anyone who finds something negative in genealogy. 'Nuff said!

See ya next time!