52 Ancestors Week 25: Broken Branch

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 25

After the storms that blew through my area last week, it seems appropriate that this week's theme is "Broken Branch." Have you had to trim a branch from your family tree after you figured out it wasn't the right line? Are you researching a branch that it feels like there is nobody else in the world who is researching them? What about a collateral line that seems to have gotten lost?

Just another tree floating in the ether. For now....

   

     When you look at my family tree on Ancestry, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? If your first thought is "Wow! There's a lot of Italians and Quebecois here!", you're not wrong. At the time of this blog's posting, my tree on Ancestry is sitting at a hefty 10,184 people. Yeah, there's a lot of profiles to cover and don't worry I have a very, very good reason for having so many people both living and deceased in there. Most of them are sourced, too! At this point I should really be calling the tree "The Forest of the Dead". But, that's already taken and is a great episode of "Doctor Who".  Besides, I have living relatives in my tree so it really wouldn't fit. Maybe I should call it "All Roads Lead to Haverhill"?  It's not selling out if it's your brand!

    The real reason why my tree is so extensive is not just because there are large families in there and because I research descendants of various ancestors like my 4th great-grandparents, Jean-Baptiste Bibeau and Therese Laroche. I have several floating branches which I am trying to connect to the big tree.

       Floating trees are a good way to get the lay of the land when you don't know how a DNA match or a friend connects with you. For example, I created a floating tree for my distant cousin, genealogist Mary Kiselyk aka "GesualdoGenie" when I didn't know how she connected with me. When I looked at her tree, she told me that we connect in several ways because Gesualdo, like many other Italian towns, have people who intermarry and a tree becomes a forest quickly when that happens. Looking at you, Famiglietti family.

    Early in my genealogical adventure, I found one route from Mary which led to my 6th great-grandparents, Domenico Petruzzo and Veneranda Gentile. Mary told me that there were other paths via the Carrabs line and other lines in Gesualdo. I stuck with that one as it was the first one I found. I'm sentimental like that. =) 

    Mary is a distant DNA match for my dad and a couple of his cousins on the Carrabs side. She has actually been very helpful in sorting out the Carrabs branches as she and another distant cousin did a lot of work researching the family lines in Gesualdo. They purchased the films from the region of Avellino and took pictures of various documents you would not easily get on Antenati or any other website as they are church records. She and her husband spent hours taking photos of the films. Once the scans were made available online, she was ecstatic!

    It's no wonder she picked "GesualdoGenie" as a screen name. She's just that good and honestly she was my gateway to the exciting world of Italian genealogy.

    Finding my connection to Mary happened pretty quickly because when I was working on the tree, we didn't have "MyTreeTags" since they weren't available when I worked on the line in 2018. "MyTreeTags" are a fun way to keep track of people on your tree without having to search through your database. I use them because my tree is so extensive and the labels you create sort of turn your tree on Ancestry into a mini version of WikiTree. As you can imagine I created a label for floating trees because I have no idea where they go. For now. I usually reserve that specific tag for certain DNA matches these days because I REALLY want to know what the connection is and sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands when someone does not respond to a message.

      Speaking of WikiTree, you can create floating trees there as well if you follow these steps:

1. Go to Add.

2. Select New Person.

    That's basically all it takes to create a floating branch there. I've done it many times as I research the Gullo and Butruce family lines. It also comes in handy for the "Italians in Haverhill" subproject I'm working on since I'm probably connected to many people there as well. Keeping track of all those floating trees is easier on WikiTree as every user on the site has a list of profiles they can manage. It's pretty handy and I try to connect the profiles stuck in the ether to the "big tree" whenever we have a "Connect-a-Thon". Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. As far as the "Italians in Haverhill" subproject goes.....I think I've managed to make a few connections.

    To the left is a list of connections I have to people in the "Italians in Haverhill" category on WikiTree. Many of them are blood relatives and many more are just connected via a marriage. All of the connections started out as floating trees on the website. Are they connected to the world tree? Some might be. So far I have ninety-eight profiles in that category and I've been working hard to find their connection to me. Blood or otherwise. I mean I do have cousins who descend from people in that book.

    These are just a few examples of the "broken branches" I have in my family tree. Hopefully, they get "mended" sooner or later. For now, they are best served as guides and research goals for when and if they will be added to the main tree. Broken branches doesn't always have to be a bad thing. No, they are just points of reference for your research. Sure they may make your tree seem bigger than it actually is. But, in the end it's fun to make them because you might find a way to make those "broken branches" fit with a little help from a friend or fellow friendly neighborhood Wikitreers.

See ya next time!

Addendum: My friend, Azure, just put this thread up on WikiTree where she talks about how to create an unconnected tree on FamilySearch: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1435441/familysearch-how-to-add-an-unconnected-person

52 Ancestors Week 24: Popular Name

 Week 24's theme is "Popular Name." Do you have an ancestor who had a name that was popular/trendy at the time? Is there a name that keeps getting used in your family tree? Do you have an ancestor named after someone famous?

I wonder if it's too late to buy "The Big Book of Baby Names".

    Certain names appear many times in family trees. I can't tell you how many times I've found a "Giuseppe" or a "Jacques" somewhere in my own family tree. We'd be here all week and still barely scratch the first few pages of the "Big Book of Baby Names". Our ancestors certainly had a thing for certain names because they were either passed down through each generation or they were the name of some fictional character. For example, a friend of mine named his son "Bruce Wayne". I'll give you one guess what that is a reference to. ;) I still wish he named his son "Gotham" just so he could say to his wife "Gotham needs you" when the kid starts crying.

      My own grandfather, Robert Hamel, even got in on the act as my uncle Bob and my cousin, Robbie, were both named after him. For details, I invite you all to check out this blog from 2019 where I discussed how generations of men in the family were named "Robert Eugene". In the end, I came to the conclusion that the  name "Eugene" was simply honoring my 2nd great-grandfather, Eugene Hamel.

    That was a pretty reasonable explanation, right? Like I said. Sometimes people like certain names and just want to keep the name going for centuries. Though, I have to wonder something. What are future generations going to make of children with the names of characters from "Game of Thrones"? Grandma Daenerys might have some stories for you. Right after she tends to the dragons, of course. I wonder if she went out with that nice Tyrion kid down the street. His family sends their regards. Kids with pop culture names are going to have very interesting stories to talk about. That's for sure! "No, seriously. My name really is Peter Parker!" Yeah. Tell that to the DMV.

    I guess now would be a good time to discuss popular names on the Italian side of the tree. It's only fair. I do have one name that pops up very frequently. The name is "Concetta" and I see it everywhere on the  Ferraiolo and Coppola side of the tree. It's almost as popular as the name "Paolo". Almost....

    I suppose the first time I ever saw the name Concetta was in relation to my 2nd great-grandmother, Caterina's sister. Concetta was born in 1882 and like her brothers Giovanni and Paolo, she moved to Haverhill, Massachusetts.  My great-aunt called her "Aunt Zia" and has many fond memories of her as they lived pretty close to each other.

    Concetta and her husband, Vincenzo Papatola, had a daughter with the same name as her mother. Unfortunately, she died barely a month after she was born. She was the last child born to that family. However, she wasn't the last "Concetta". Not by a longshot. When I discovered that Concetta, I initially thought nothing of it and moved on. Looking back, that was a rookie mistake! 

    I really should have known better. Concetta had two siblings who came to America around the same time. Did they have girls named "Concetta", too? Yes. Yes they did!

The Coppolas!

    Born in 1915 to Giovanni Coppola and Natalina Marinaro, Concetta Coppola, seen on the far right on this photo, married Guido Thomas Pitocchelli and lived in nearby Lawrence, Mass. She helped her husband run the Pitocchelli funeral home and lived a very long life as she passed away in September of 2007. I really wish I could have met her. I bet she had some amazing stories. Sadly, times change and families unfortunately drift apart. It's sad. But, it happens.

    Meanwhile, Concetta's sister, Angelina, married a man named Giovanni Procopio and as you might have guessed they had a daughter named Concetta  who was born in 1920. Getting tired of all the Concettas yet? We still have a few more to go! There's a reasonable explanation for all of this and the answer won't surprise you if you're familiar with Italian naming conventions.

I wonder how many times I've
used this pic.....

    For a while I thought Paolo was the odd man out. He had sixteen children with two wives. Did he have a daughter named Concetta, too? Yes, he did! She was born in 1931 and she's actually the only one I know the least about. This is due to the fact that at the time of this blog's posting, Concetta could still be very much alive and in her early '90s.

    For privacy reasons, I'm not including a link to her profile on WikiTree. She is on my tree on Ancestry and I have very little information on her save for the following tidbits:

1. She married a man named Roger Powers who passed away in 1996.

2. They had at least one son who unfortunately passed away in 1982.

    That's about it. I'm making a point to ask my Coppola cousins if they know anything about Concetta or her whereabouts. I'd love to talk to her. Fingers crossed, everyone!

    That just about does it for America. Let's head back to Europe where things are about to go full circle.

Healthy living in Switzerland. Can't beat that!

    Say hello to Concetta Ferraiolo, daughter of Marco Ferraiolo and Caterina Coppola. She was born in San Pietro a Maida on October 9th, 1912 and lived a very long life. Longevity seems to run in the family because she passed away in March of 2005! Can you imagine all the things she has seen?! It boggles the mind thinking about it. I think about her life and Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" pops in my head.

    My cousin Caterina told me about her mother and how she married a man named Giuseppe Aleardi before leaving for Switzerland. Concetta also made it a point to keep in touch with various family members near and far. My great-grandfather Vincenzo went to her daughter's wedding in 1969 and that ended up being his last trip to Europe. She even kept in contact with her sister, Caterina, who had moved to Buenos Aires with her husband, Lorenzo Astorino. Family was clearly very important to her and I wonder if she knew about the many Concettas in America. Spoilers: She probably did.

   At long last I bet you're all wondering where the name Concetta came from in my family. It just so happens to be the first name of my fourth great-grandmother, Concetta Nistico who was born in San Pietro a Maida around 1814. I don't really know much about her save for the fact that she married a man named Giuseppe Suverato and had at least four children including my third great-grandmother, Rosa. More research is clearly needed.

    Judging by all the Concettas in the tree, you can safely say that this is a textbook case of following the Italian naming conventions. Here's how it works. Concetta Nistico was the great-grandmother of Caterina, Paolo, Giovanni and Concetta. There is no disputing that fact and while Paolo, Giovanni and Concetta did their own thing when it comes to naming their children, it's really Marco and Caterina who really stuck with it like so:

* The first male is named after his paternal grandfather. (Vincenzo.)

* The second male is named after his maternal grandfather. (Paolo)

* The first female is named after her paternal grandmother. (Caterina)

* The second female is named after her maternal grandmother. (Rosa)

    Concetta appears to be the odd name out. How did the name enter into the equation if naming conventions are that strict? Well, here's the thing. After so many children are born, names of various other relatives would be used. The parents would end up naming their children after saints, characters in literature or even other ancestors. That's likely what happened here. I could be wrong, though. Maybe they just liked the name? It is a pretty solid Italian name.

    I have so many names in my tree that are just as popular as "Concetta". Paolo is one. What's really interesting is how I have "Anthony" on both sides of my tree and in different languages: French and Italian. I think that should be a topic for another blog. And both are at the second great-grandparent level!! Weird. In the mean time, I think I am going to talk to my Coppola cousins about the Concettas and see if they know anything. It's a popular name. I hope I covered them all!

See ya next time!

Editor's note: In April of 2023, I found that Giovanni Coppola was not the brother of Paolo, Caterina and Concetta Coppola. He is likely a first cousin of the three. Look for details in a future blog post.

52 Ancestors Week 23: Mistake

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 23

Mistakes. We all make them — and that includes us and our ancestors. What's a mistake that an ancestor made? What's a mistake that you've made in your research?

Oh, that'll just come right out.....

    It's time to once again talk about one of my greatest hits! Who doesn't love a blog that doesn't involve self-deprecation in some form? That is why you're all here, right? Hey. If you're on the Internet, you'll find a lot of self-deprecation out there. In fact, some people on YouTube make good money poking fun at themselves. (Shout-out to my friends, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug of "Atop the Fourth Wall", Brian "The Last Angry Geek" Heinz of "Comic Book Issues" and Mathew "Film Brain" Buck of "Bad Movie Beatdown/Projector". If you like comics and movies, check their stuff out!) And those are just some of the YouTubers I'm friends with. 

    If you're a genealogist, you make tons of mistakes. Fess up. We've all been there. We've all put in a Peter Parker when he should have been Pietro Perrelli. Mistakes happen and thankfully people in the genealogy community are generally okay with them for the most part. Just don't make a habit of it or else they'll spam your inbox! Nah. I'm kidding. Maybe. 

Paolo and Lena.

    I actually had a pretty big mistake cleared up yesterday thanks to the help of my 4th cousin, Cynthia. Cynthia descends from my 2nd great-grandmother's brother, Paolo and she is a user on Familysearch. We ran into each other on the site when she saw that I was working on the Coppolas. She was very grateful for all the information I put in about Paolo, his parents, the many children and all of the cousins. We exchanged e-mails and I sent her the file our cousin Jeannine had sent me so that she and I would be on the same page. Makes sense, right? I like sharing information and helping people. Why would I hoard it all to myself? That's just ridiculous! Information like this needs to be free!

    I had every intention to write this week's blog about some lame mistake I made concerning the Tedesco line. But, I think this one follows the same vein. You need to be very, very careful when dealing with a common last name--Especially ones as common as Tedesco and Coppola. Those are probably the two most common last names in all of Italy. Check Cognomix if you don't believe me!

    I was about to write my epic blog when suddenly I got a private message alert. I checked Familysearch and saw a message from Cynthia. I hadn't talked to her in a while and wanted to see what was going on. She said she was working on a few odds and ends on the tree and has been trying to make the tree as accurate as possible. She'd be great at WikiTree. I really should invite her to join us. We don't bite. 

Mmmm. Chewed up paper. Yummy.

    Cynthia messaged me to tell me that she had to disconnect Paolo and Lena's supposed daughter May from the tree because of a mistake on the birth document. She asked me if that was okay. I said it was fine. I appreciate the honesty. I had added her as a daughter back in 2020. I have no problem with any edits. I just needed to know one thing. "Why?" I don't get mad if someone edits something I've worked on. I work with an editor for my comics and I've had help with my videos from time to time. So, working with someone on a problem is not anything new for me. I just wanted to know why the change had to be made.

    As it turns out, I didn't pay too close attention to the ACTUAL document when I attached the source back in 2020. Look at the corner! It's ripped, mangled, chewed and just messed up. Why didn't I see that before? Well, Cynthia believed it was a mistake on Familysearch's part and no one else's. There's a surprise. They're usually pretty good about errors.

Good thing I can edit these....

    If you look at the initial hint, you will see that Paul Coppola and Lena King were listed as May's parents. In 2020, I had thought that was enough to justify adding her as a child for Paolo and Lena. I created the profile on Familysearch and on WikiTree. After that, I just went about my business. I saw the document. Don't get me wrong. But, I didn't see how badly mangled it was until yesterday.

    My cousin planned on messaging Familysearch about the error in the transcription since it looks like there were several births conflated into one person. She believes that the birth was supposed to be intended for Rosie May Coppola. Rosie unfortunately died young in 1911. I accepted the facts and then asked her how she came to these conclusions as I set out to edit my trees on Ancestry and WikiTree.

    She said that the information did not line up with everything I had gathered. Paolo and Lena were living in Beverly, Mass at the time and the town has sixteen miles between it and Andover. This had to have been some other child or a combination of children born in the same area. While courting distance is a thing, so are places where you could deliver a baby. In 1905, home births were still pretty common and I HIGHLY doubt a woman in labor would go sixteen miles to give birth in another town in 1906! That isn't done! Not unless you have Seabiscuit working for you or something.

Umm...You're not May.

    Curiosity got the better of me and whilst I was talking to my cousin, I decided to check out the births in Andover that weren't indexed. Someone HAD to have been born on March 27th, 1905 in Andover, right? Right?! Well, someone WAS born on that date. Someone who was definitely not Italian. 

    Her name was Louise Doherty and she was born on that date to Edward and Margaret Doherty. They were of Irish descent and worked in mills. Oh and she was a twin, too! All of that just made me go "HUH!" 

    At that point I just shrugged my shoulders. This slight mistake was no skin off my nose. If you come across a mistake like this, it's best to just take it all in stride and edit it. There's literally nothing else you can do to change the facts to fit your narrative. And just to be sure I checked to see if there were any other girls born on that day. Nope. Louise was the only one. "Huh.", indeed.

    With nothing else to do, I just decided to edit everything. What else could I do? This was a pretty big mistake. I had given someone a kid who probably wasn't theirs and since Paolo and Lena couldn't tell me without the aid of a Ouija board I had to take matters into my own hands.

Before

    Over at WikiTree, we pride ourselves on trying to be more accurate than any other world tree on the Internet. If there's a problem and there is a source backing it up, we spring into action and correct the problem as quickly as possible. With that said, I ended up disconnecting "May" from her parents and deleted her on Ancestry. I know it sounds cold. But, I have my reasons.

    The reasons why I so readily accepted the deletion of the profile is pretty simple. Aside from that one source on her page, I was never able to find any other source for a "May Coppola" in Haverhill or anywhere else in the Merrimack valley for that matter. She never appeared in the censuses. I assumed she just died young or in between census years. However, there would have been a death certificate or a hint in the death index in that case. Nope. There was never any hint which indicated a date of death. So, I did the only sensible thing. She had to go.

And After

    I edited "May"'s profile since we can't really delete profiles on WikiTree. Instead of using a proper name, I gave her the unfortunate name of "Unknown". I hate doing that. Unfortunately, in the genealogy business you need to do that from time to time. It happens. You deal with it and move on until you happen to find the actual name. 

     Even though the source was ripped, it still counts as a source and so I left that in place. There was a Coppola born in 1905. We just don't know who.

    If I look closer at the ripped section of the page, I can see that the "Coppola" was on one page and "May" was on another with Paolo Coppola and Lena King. This lends credence to the belief that this was intended to be Rosie May Coppola and not May. Oddly enough the preceding and following pages did not show the contents of the page. They may have been lost to time. As a result, "May's" page on WikiTree now has her as an unknown Coppola. She was a child born in 1905. There's no question there. We just don't know who.

    You might be wondering why I didn't just convert her profile into one for Louise Doherty. That required a lot of work and I really didn't want to leave her profile floating in the ether of Wikitree, unconnected and just sitting there collecting dust. I know the same will happen to the May Coppola page. But, I might merge it into Rosie May's profile. We'll see. I'm not entirely sure what I am going to do with the profile, yet. However, you might be interested in learning that Louise did live a nice, long life as far as I can tell as I've found her in the 1950 census in Peabody. That's pretty cool! I just hope it's the same one.

    Situations like this illustrate why you have to be careful with certain last names. Common names can cause some errors in your tree. Not just the Italian ones. If you come across a "Smith" or "Jones", may whatever deity you believe in have mercy on your soul. Common names are tricky to research. What I've learned from this is that you need to focus on the "Smith" or "Jones" in your general area. That's how I managed to research all of the Haverhill Coppolas. In all of Haverhill, there was only one Coppola family who wasn't connected to Paolo, Giovanni or Concetta.  That was pretty amazing and a stroke of luck because that last name is incredibly common.

    It's a good thing Cynthia pointed out the mistake when she did and I thank her for helping me out. Mistakes happen all the time in genealogy. If you say you've never made a mistake, you're only kidding yourself. Own up to the mistakes, correct them and some day you'll be laughing about it with your friends and coworkers.

See ya next time!

P.S. Go check out Brian, Lewis and Mathew's stuff. They're good people! 

Editor's note: In April of 2023, I found that Giovanni Coppola was not the brother of Paolo, Caterina and Concetta Coppola. He is likely a first cousin of the three. Look for details in a future blog post.

    

52 Ancestors Week 22: Conflict

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 22

Conflict seems to be part of human nature, and it can be an unpleasant thing to examine in our family history. (On the positive side, it can create records for us to use.) What ancestor was involved in a conflict, whether it was a war, a feud, or a legal matter?

A banner so good I used it twice.

        It goes without saying that conflicts happens a lot online. You can be a fan of something like "Star Trek" and there'd be a fight over whether or not Captain Janeway should have let Tuvix die in the classic "Star Trek: Voyager" episode, "Tuvix".  The episode aired over twenty years ago and people STILL debate over that one season two episode thanks to streaming services like Paramount +.

    Even in the genealogy community conflicts tend to happen from time to time. If you're a member of a site like WikiTree, you might find yourself at odds with a user who says that Jane Foster married Scott Summers. However, you're Jane's great-grandson and she really married a guy named Donald Blake. Scott married Jean Grey in another city! When that happens, you can take the issue to the Genealogist to Genealogist forum. If you post there, users can help sort out the problem you might be having. That's cool and everything. But, what happens when there's a conflict with someone who isn't on WikiTree? That's a good question and it's happened to me more than once. In two instances, the conflicts resulted in amazing friendships and led to some great discoveries! Let's talk about one of them!

    Not only am I a user at WikiTree, Geni and Ancestry. I also use Find a Grave as a resource. At the time of this blog's posting, I've added forty-eight memorials and manage eighty-four profiles. It's not a lot compared to some other users' work on the site. Then again I really just prefer to take care of the profiles connected to me in some way and whose final resting place is within driving distance. 

    In 2019, I came across a Find a Grave entry for Mariarosa Stella and submitted some corrections to her profile based on her appearance in the book, "Italians in Haverhill". The user who created the profile accepted the changes and all was well with the world. I went about my business and I later got a message on Ancestry from user named Rhonda who saw the changes to Mariarosa's profile on Find a Grave and was confused by my edits since I had her as a daughter of Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato on my OWN tree on WikiTree and on Find a Grave. I later found out that the information was completely incorrect! Whoops!!

The source of the problem was the dreaded
semicolon! =O

        Rhonda was never really THAT upset with me and I thought that was nice. You often get a lot of attitude online when someone makes a mistake or does something someone else doesn't like.  It's happened to me many, many times. Take it from a recovering YouTuber. It's not pleasant confronting someone over some minor issue in a video. You really need to pick your battles in those instances. If worse comes to worse, the "block" button becomes your best friend.

    Rhonda began her first message to me with the following statement: She wished she could have contacted me sooner. I sat back in my chair. Had she been watching my genealogical adventure from afar like some sort of genealogical ninja?! No. As it turned out, she found my tree and had been checking to see if I had correct information. She had intended to contact me and just never found the time. No genealogical ninjas. Sigh.... (I still think they exist. Prove me wrong!)

    She then asked where I got the information from. I mentioned the Italians in Haverhill book and that I was a DNA match to people who descended from Concetta Coppola, my 2nd great-grandmother's sister. Rhonda then explained that I shouldn't accept information from an online tree without first looking at the facts. That goes without saying! I then showed her the picture above as the book can be seen on Google Books. Thanks to some bad editing, I assumed Mariarosa was a Coppola because I thought there was a comma by her last name under the picture instead of a semicolon. I even looked at my physical copy and saw the same mark. The book didn't make things clear at all. I saw my mistake and winced. All of my problems were brought on by an error in the punctuation. 

    I asked Rhonda if we could move our discussion to e-mail because I felt more comfortable there than messaging on Ancestry. She complied and we exchanged e-mails. It was also easier to share images that way!

La famigilia di Coppola

    It turned out that she knew Mariarosa Stella and was thankful that I had made a profile for her on Wikitree. She just needed to let me know that there were some things that needed to be changed. I asked "What kinds of changes?" I said that my great-aunt had to be connected to the family because Mariarosa's daughter Mary Rose married man named Domenic Pallaria and their son is a DNA match with her at like 96 centimorgans. DNA doesn't lie. Especially at that range!

    She agreed with me that DNA does not lie. I just needed to rearrange the tree a little bit. But, not too much. I was confused. What did she mean? If she agreed that DNA didn't lie, then she probably accepted the match as it was. The truth was that apparently Rosamaria and her sister Marianna were in fact first cousins of Giovanni, Paolo, Concetta and Caterina Coppola. I had their first cousin as a sibling! I laugh at it now. But, I was floored when she told me! This conflict was turning into a comedy.

Caterina was named after
her aunt?!

    Rhonda explained how she had been researching the Giampa line for some time and found that Marianna and Mariarosa's parents were Pasquale Stella and Caterina Coppola. My spider-sense began to buzz. That was my second great-grandmother's name! What was going on here?!

    As it turns out, the elder Caterina and my 3rd great-grandfather, Paolo, were in fact brother and sister. Their parents would be the common ancestors for the Pallaria DNA matches I have on the match list. Rhonda pointed me toward the evidence of this--Marianna's marriage to Antonio DeFazio in 1906 listed all four parents.

    That was great and all. But, I still missed one connection. Where did the connection with the Haverhill Coppolas come in? She mentioned Giovanni quite a bit in the e-mails. As it turns out, Giovanni paid for the sisters' passage to America and on the manifest, they listed the man as a cousin. A....first cousin. That sealed the deal right there and I apologized for being skeptical and everything. Rhonda said it was okay and we became pretty close after that incident.

    Ever since that week in 2019, I made an effort to e-mail her with discoveries I've made here and there concerning the family. She's a genealogist herself and as everyone knows; many genealogists have next to no time researching their own trees. Some of the things I've found for her include:

1. Mariarosa's birth certificate in San Pietro a Maida. (I asked for it as I was a little curious.)

2. Giovanni Coppola's grave in Saint Patrick's Cemetery in Haverhill. (I still can't believe it was only two stones down from my grandparents' after all this time and I never thought to LOOK!)

3. An article concerning the final fate of Giuseppe Giampa.  (That was a hard one for her to find.)

4. Marianna Stella's Naturalization Papers

    With all the work I've done. she thanked me for all the hard work and said that I was pretty good at genealogy. That was a great compliment coming from her! I just wish things didn't start out rocky. But, it is what it is and it turned out well in the end.

Been there for years and I never thought
to look two "doors" down?!

    I also took pictures of other Giampa graves and put them on Find a Grave for her since she had long since moved away from New England. If she ever needed my help finding something in the cemeteries in Haverhill, all she has to do is ask and I'd get right on it.

    Oddly enough, it turns out we are probably distantly related via the Hamel line as she has a line that goes to Quebec like I do. We're not DNA matches but we likely have a paper trail that connects as both. I'll have to dig into that next!

    So, I guess you could say this conflict had a happy ending. I made a great new friend who has helped me clean up a pretty big mistake. Hopefully, the mistake hasn't spread to other trees like a virus. That would be awful! Rhonda also helped me by filling in some blanks on an unexplored branch of the tree and told me some interesting stories about the Coppola line. In turn, I helped her find some much needed information. We still e-mail each other with news and if we just wanted to talk. If only all conflicts ended this peacefully. If it did, the world would be a MUCH better place.

See ya next time! 

Editor's note: In April of 2023, I found that Giovanni Coppola was not the brother of Paolo, Caterina and Concetta Coppola. He is likely a first cousin of the three. Look for details in a future blog post.

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!