52 Ancestors Week 26: Slow

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 26

The theme for Week 26 is "Slow." We are living in a rapid world. Everything seems instantaneous. What is something an ancestor did that would seem slow by today's standards? (Farming and laundry come to my mind.) What about a line that has been slow for you to research?

What did the snail say when he was on top of a turtle's back?
WHEEEE!

    As a companion piece to last week's blog about how quickly I found a DNA match's connection to myself and my mother, here's a blog about how long it's been taking to find out another DNA match's place in the old family tree. I may have talked about it before. However, there's been a couple really good updates which may expediate the whole process. Let's first go through everything from the beginning and just take it slow. See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Yeah, that joke didn't have any traction. Slow and steady might win this race, I guess.

    We start our story way back when I first got my DNA tested on Ancestry. In 2017, I came across this DNA match, let's call her Isadora, who seemed to match virtually everyone who descended from my 2nd great-grandparents, Antoine Legault and Lucie Cadran. From the perspective of my mother and I, she was NOT a small DNA match. She matches my mother at a mighty 171 cMs and myself at 136 cMs. 

    My mother and I looked at each other like "Who was this lady? Why did she match basically everyone who descended from Antoine and Lucie?" Naturally, I sent a private message to Isadora as she was recently online at the time. I had hoped for a quick response and sadly that never happened. I didn't even send that awkward a message, either for once I swear!

    I basically just introduced myself and said that she appeared to be a DNA match to myself, my mother and quite a few Legaults. The Leeds Method proved that much at least. I said they all came from Haverhill, Mass and everything. Just pretty standard fare, really. What else could I say? The lady was a complete mystery to my family and several of the cousins had been asked me who she was! 

    When I compare my mother's ethnicity results with her, she currently stands at 35% French when compared to my mother's 46%. I know ethnicity estimates are just a rough guess and you should take them with a grain of salt. However, you really, really can't ignore something when it's in the double digits like this! 35% is a lot. 

Progress is progressing. Slowly.

      Eventually, I got tired of all this waiting around for some clue as to where Isadora fit in the grand scheme of things. I had important things to do and this case was put on the backburner. I ended up asking various DNA matches Isadora and I share how much they share with her so I could put them into DNApainter's "What are the Odds?" tool.

    To my surprise, the highest match was a lady named Kelly who shared a huge 331 cMs with her. That narrowed things down considerably because this meant that Isadora had to have at least descended from Antoine and Lucie's daughter, Delphine. Since those two had over a dozen kids, you have no idea how happy I was to finally get that narrowed down a bit.

    Little by little, I collected more data and I even checked Isadora's tree. It seems that her father's side is well established and that she has very strong Scottish roots. Makes sense given how large the amount of Scottish was in her DNA. So, this meant that the connection had to have been on the maternal side, right? RIGHT! I mean, it's not rocket science here, kids.

    Time passed and eventually my second cousin once removed, Pamela Leavey decided to take the plunge and get her DNA tested. Pamela knows full well how often I've asked about Isadora and she has wondered about her story ever since I told her about her. She wanted answers just as much as I did.

   Pamela's mother was Marguerite Rosalie David and my mother has many fond memories of visiting the Davids in Newburyport. In fact, she and her siblings used to get bait from Pamela's uncle's bait shop. I wonder if they knew they were family. Spoilers: They did.

    Ovila David and Delphine Legault had seven children and Pamela herself had several siblings. So, her testing would help the family solve this puzzle once and for all. Things took a while to get going. After all those AncestryDNA kits are not cheap. I let her know when a sale was going on and she ended up buying one for her and her daughter. I then had to play the waiting game and you all know how much I LOVE that game. It's the BEST!

    Pamela's results came in and to the shock of myself AND my cousin, she shared 729 cMs with Isadora. That's not a small number! According to the shared cM project, Isadora could be a first cousin or at least a half cousin depending on a few factors, of course.

    I put the exceptionally large number into "What are the Odds" to see what would happen next and for some reason the app really wanted to make her the daughter of Pamela's aunt Jeanette. Interesting theory. However, we'd still need more proof and more DNA matches.

    Thankfully, a new DNA match materialized recently. Pamela's cousin, Martha tested and has a full tree on Ancestry going back to Antoine and Lucie. I sent her a message introducing myself and I asked her if she could share with me how many cMs she shares with Isadora. The puzzle is slowly getting solved and I'm running out of options considering Isadora has been radio silent since 2017. To make matters worse, she has been online! I hate when that happens.

    At any rate, Pamela is going to do some sleuthing to see what she can dig up from her cousins. We know she is at least a descendant of Delphine. She likely descends from one of her kids. The cousin who just got her results in descends from Jeanette. Her match with Isadore could help solve the puzzle. Time will tell.

    While I wait, there are still plenty of things I could do in the meantime. I have asked Pamela if I could look at her DNA match list to see if I could sort things out for her from her perspective. She has offered to talk to cousins, like I said.

   

    Unless Isadora contacts us, there's little much else we can do. So, in this case you can see that solving this DNA match's puzzle is a slow process. Though, I don't blame her for the slowness. 

           I can understand her reluctance in communicating, though. Think about it. We're all shocked by her appearing in our DNA match list. Can you imagine what it must be like for her to see all these clearly French-Canadian descendants taking up the top twenty in her DNA match list?! Yeah, that has to be a little shocking to say the least. Then again, I don't know if she's even looked at the match list. Some people do the testing for the ethnicity and yet they should probably expect surprises. Her life has probably got flip-turned upside down. I can only imagine what she thinks about this whole thing. Solving DNA matches can be a slow process. At least this wall has been chipped away a little at a time.

See ya next time! Here's hoping the story of Isadora gets solved!

52 Ancestors Week 25: Fast

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 25

The theme for Week 25 is "Fast." I feel the need... the need for speed! (Yeah, the coffee has kicked in.) This theme might make you think of cars or horses, but it could also be an ancestor who didn't take long to find. Don't forget about names like Quick and Race! Have fun with this theme!

I got time to think about my past as I dodge between the bullets...

      Building a family tree upward into the past is a very important part of your genealogical adventure. However, building a tree down toward the present can have its advantages ,too, because doing so will quickly solve various questions you might have about where certain DNA matches belong in the grand scheme of things. That's why descendency research is just as important as going back in time.

    Just today I quickly put a DNA match my mother and I have into the family tree. The match, let's call her Jessie, shares a hefty 179 cMs with my mother and shares 46 cMs with me. Not bad, right? I believe 179 cMs can get you into the second cousin bracket according to the shared cM project.

I looked at her tree and saw that her mother passed away in 2019. On a hunch, I checked my tree to see if I had her in there and lo and behold there she was. She was married to a Senter and that Senter was the grandson of my second great-grandmother, Gertrude Stevens.

    If you remember from my previous blogs, Gertrude here was married to three men over the course of her life: Wilfred Felker,  Walter Howard Senter and Charles Melvin Berry. I descend from Wilfred and Jessie, it seems, descends from Walter. This is a pretty slam dunk case because it took all of five minutes to actually solve. I find I may be a bit disappointed.

    However, you know this will not work for everyone. You need to do the work and build that tree down. It makes finding your DNA matchs SO much easier. That and it helps if a DNA match has a tree which clearly shows the way forward! You know, this isn't the end of the story. Sure I've found a half second cousin once removed and everything. But, there's still something else that may connect us.....on the French side.

That's a lot of French ya got there, Jessie.

    Whew. Jessie has quite a bit of French in her doesn't she? What could that mean? Well, her mother is clearly of French-Canadian descent. How do I know this? Her name was Marcelle Justine Lambert. That's a pretty French-Canadian name, guys. Marcelle, anyway. 

    When I did a search for her, I found that her parents were Armand Lucien Lambert and Jeannette Bernadette Martel. If that doesn't prove a French-Canadian connection, I don't know what will. Tickets to a Montréal Expos game? Poutine?

    She was clearly French-Canadian and this means that I likely have a connection with her mother waaay back on those lines. We're talking 8th and 9th great-grandparents as common ancestors here. Too far back for DNA, of course. But, not too far back for a paper trail. Gotta love Québec.

    Jessie's closest relation to me is still obviously Gertrude via her son, Lawrence. After sorting it all out, I sent a message to her and I really hope she replies. I tried my best to explain that I descend from Getrude's first husband and that my mother has stories about the Senter clan. It's true. I believe a few of them were invited to my parents' wedding. 

    So, that's it. Now I wait for a reply from Jessie and see what she has to say about everything. Will I get one? I'm not too sure. The returns on people responding to private messages on Ancestry are pretty low.  We'll see, I guess.

    The one thing I am sure of is the connection I have with Jessie and it's a pretty strong one. There's little chance that it's a false match. I may have a paper trail to her mother and I already did the research down to her parents. All I had to do was put in her name. It was that quick and easy.

    Do keep in mind that this may not work for everyone. It only worked here because I already did the legwork. I put in the hours of research and everything into the Senters and documented who descended from who. Finding Jessie's mother was easy because I already had her in the tree. 

    This is why it pays to do descendency research in your tree. You get to build the tree down toward the present and quickly solve any DNA related puzzles. However, this may not work if someone's tree is private, not connected, there's no tree at all or if someone uses a screenname on the site that you tested. Still, it's a good idea to build the tree down to the present because you'll never know who you'll find. Building trees up is good. Finding those cousins by building it downard is even better. Terms and conditions may apply!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 24: Last One Standing

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 24

The theme for Week 24 is "Last One Standing." My thought with this theme was there are some ancestors that we research, and we feel like we are the only one researching them. (Or maybe I'm the only one who has felt that way!) Of course, feel free to interpret the theme however you'd like!

Greetings from scenic San Pietro a Maida!

    Researching your ancestors is a great way to spend your time and you get to meet all kinds of people on your genealogical adventure. That's why I like sites like WikiTree. It's a collaborative community of genealogists from all over the world working together to build a single tree for every human who has ever lived on our small blue planet. With a little luck and ingenuity, you may find yourself on the world tree and end up connecting with distant cousins you never knew you had. That's definitely the case for my mother's side of the tree!

    My dad's side is a little complicated and it often feels like I'm the only person who is researching his paternal ancestors. His mother's side of the tree was researched by the incredibly awesome and talented genealogist, Mary Sytko aka GesualdoGenie. If you look at her tree on Ancestry, you will find a well-sourced tree that covers everyone who had ever lived in Gesualdo, Italy from the 1700s to the early 1900s. It represents twenty plus years of hard work and I am thankful for her work, time and dedication. It helped me so much in the past and little by little I'm importing her work onto WikiTree as part of the Gesualdo One Place Study. With her permission, of course. The information on that tree is too good NOT to share! She has told me that she doesn't have the time to upload the 60,000 people from her tree by herself. Who does?!

     That just leaves the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida where my grandfather Marco was born. There are days where I feel like I'm the only one researching the town, I'm not going to lie. To keep this blog from becoming a pity party, I'll just say right now that I have had help on the San Pietro side of things and it's not like I'm completely alone. I just might be the only one actively researching the town at the moment.

Astorino? Where have I seen that name
before?

    I don't know if I actually AM the only one researching San Pietro a Maida as I've seen trees such as this one over on Ancestry.com which has people from that Calabrian town on them. Naturally, I've done my best to try and contact the owners of the tree to see if they could help me out since we both have ancestors from the same place. Makes sense, right?

   The problem is those messages don't always get recieved by these people and I still end up feeling like I'm on an island researching a town no one else seems to be working on. As you can imagine, I get a frustrated!

    At this point, you might be thinking I've been feeling a little antsy, too. No communication between potential paisanos can do a number on a guy's ego, right. Fear not, my friends. I've decided a long time ago that if I was going to be the only one actively researching San Pietro a Maida, I'm going to make a hell of a research project with guns blazing. If I'm going to do this alone, I might as well do something about it!

    In late 2021, I launched the San Pietro a Maida One Place Study with the hope that my work researching the town would get the notice of everyone else who was working on San Pietro. I put my study in the Directory of One Place Studies page along with the Gesualdo, Newburyport and Haverhill studies and that has helped to garner some attention for my work.

    Has it helped? I'm not really sure. I like to think it does because every once in a while I get a message on WikiTree from someone who has ancestors from San Pietro. So, you tell me if it works or not!

    Creating a One Place Study for San Pietro a Maida isn't the only thing I've done to try to get notice. Well, aside from this blog I mean. Over on Ancestry I decided to create a tree dedicated to people whose ancestors came from San Pietro and settled in Haverhill, Mass. I call it "From San Pietro to Haverhill". 

Caterina Butruce, huh? Hmmmm.....

    At first glance it looks a lot like my great-aunt Nicolina's tree and you're right. It is. I figured that if I was going to make a tree all about the connections between an Italian town and a city in Massachusetts, I might as well start with her and use her tree as a basis for all the connections I find.

    To date, that tree has 1060 people and it totally got the attention of various people here and there. Not as much as my main tree, though. Maybe I need to add more sources to it? I wonder if that helps a tree get noticed on Ancestry. Does more sources=more hits? Someone should look into that!

    I have gotten a few messages from people who have looked at that tree. So, you never know. They've asked me why "Person X" is on the tree and if I'm connected to them somehow. I've explained why I created the tree and they've used the research for their own work. That's great and everything. However, I would really like to be working with someone at the same time on a project!

Keep a close eye on that Caterina Butruce.
We may be seeing her again. She could be
the same one in Nickie's tree....

         There's something to be said for working in a group. So, I created a spreadsheet on Google where I've been documenting everyone who was born in San Pietro from the early 1800s to 1861.  I was initiallly working on it by myself and then I decided to invite people to work on it with me. 

    I've gotten some help from various other Wikitreers and some non Wikitreers like my friend, Ashley. I have to give them props for helping me start this project and providing me some avenues to explore as I research the town where my ancestors were born.

    In the end, I suppose I'm not really alone as I work on figuring out who's who in San Pietro a Maida and how they're connected to me. I've had people translate various records in the past, go to the family history library for me and even coach me on what to do next. Still, I do have to fight how lonely it makes me feel that I'm the only one actively researching San Pietro. As long as I have help, though, am I truly alone? I may be a man alone looking for roots there. But, I have friends who are more than willing to lend a hand or an ear when needed. I just hope someone has the same drive I do to dig into this essentially unknown territory and bring to light the history of San Pietro a Maida. I hope they contact me and we can work together on this project because genealogy doesn't have to be a solo adventure.

See ya next time!

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 23: So Many Descendants

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 23

The theme for Week 23 is "So Many Descendants." Sometimes when we're researching, we'll come across a set of ancestors who seem to have a gajillion descendants. Who is that in your family tree?

And that's just on WIKITREE!

    One of the biggest lessons I've learned on my genealogical adventure was that the further back in time you go, the more people share the same ancestors as you do depending on their family trees and everything. Take my 4th great-grandparents, Jean Baptiste Bibeau and Therese Laroche for example. As you can see from this week's banner, they had many descendants and over one hundred of them are DNA matches for my mother and ninety-seven people match yours truly. There are so many descendants that there's even a Facebook group dedicated to this family. With such a stagger number of matches, how do you deal with all these people?

Proceed along the highlighted
route.

    First off, you don't want to panic. Everyone likely has a large family who had a ton of kids and their kids had a ton of kids and so on and so on somewhere in their family tree. It's just how life was many years ago. In my case, one child of Jean Baptiste and Therese made her way to Haverhill, Mass with her husband Pierre Cadran in the early 1900s. Her name was Marie Eulalie and explaining that to the DNA matches has been nothing short of interesting because most of her siblings ended up in Minnesota as I explained in a previous blog.

    There's nothing wrong with the land of a thousand lakes. I just feel so awkward trying to explain to DNA matches that I descend from the one lady who decided to put down roots in the Merrimack Valley. I still wonder if they kept in touch via telegram or letters. That would be so cool and you know I would love to see them. I just hope that some form of correspondence is out there....somewhere. Call it wishful thinking if you want. I'm just being cautiously optimistic.

    

    Optimism aside, I still have hundreds of people to put into the tree. Do I add them all? Are they all legit paths? Well, thankfully the Thrulines for Jean Baptiste and his wife have been proven to be largely accurate due to the trifecta of awesome that is Minnesota's civil records, Quebec's civil records and my own records from the Bay State. I've been very lucky in that my Thrulines experience has been pretty good. Other people haven't been so lucky. One person's grandfather somehow became their uncle. How did that happen?! Oh, right. Other peoples' trees. That's where the data comes from!

    To make things a little easier on myself, I started adding DNA matches based on where I had the largest number of matches. I wanted to get the big groups out of the way because they would likely have the most information readily available to me. The rest would have to wait for another day.

    With that in mind, I began with Eulalie's siblings, Henriette and Leandre. They both had VERY large families of their own. Henriette had eleven children and Leandre had eight. The matches who descended from Henriette was the bigger of the two groups. So, I decided to work on her family first.

    Going into this, I knew it was going to be a tremendous undertaking. These families were huge and there was going to be a lot of great information about them everywhere. You honestly could make a descendency study about this group. I guess that's why there's a Facebook page about them.

A, Morrisette is not Alanis. I've checked.
Though, I probably AM related to her somehow.

    Henriette married a man named Jean Baptiste Morrissette when my third great-grandmother was just seven years old. Together, they had eleven children and though I have matches who descend from most of them, their daughters Angelique and Zoe had the most at five a piece.

    For now let's follow Zoe's path. Zoe married a man named Remigius Capistant in 1861 and as you might have guessed, THEY had a ton of children as well. Whoever said family history was easy never worked on a French-Canadian family tree. At least at this point I was still in Minnesota and still one step closer to my connection to the DNA matches.

    Zoe's children, Eugenie and Genevieve have two and three matches who descend from them respectively. From there I went down the line and confirmed everything until I reached the DNA matches themselves who turned out to be my 5th cousins AND my mom's 4th cousins once removed. Not bad, right?

    The question you have to ask is.....Am I crazy enough to add in ALL one hundred plus DNA matches who descend from my 4th great-grandparents to the tree. I think we all know the answer to that one. It's pretty clear looking at the screencaps of the Thrulines that I've already began the exhaustive work of adding all these DNA matches. I keep telling myself that this research will all be worth it and yet I'm still buried in tons and tons of hints from Minnesota.

   Surprisingly, several of the other descendants of Jean Baptiste and Therese are moderately close matches to my mother like the one you're seeing here. I wonder if this could be due to the fact that Charles was five years older than Marie Eulalie and was married by 1857. He and his wife, Maris Jeanne Vadnais had twelve children between 1860 and 1883.

    They had children who may have been closer in age to my second great-grandmother and her siblings. With the oldest born in 1860, that's a distinct possibility. I'm not sure if age really plays a role here. It's all a matter of when they had children and when their children had children and so on. 

    Some descendants are bound to be closer relations than others and that's just how things go when you work on a family tree. It's just that "YO" appears to shared the greatest amount of centimorgans with my mother out of all the Bibeau descendants.

    The Bibeau line is just one of many families where there seem to be a lot of descendants and these are just DNA matches. Imagine how many people are connected to me just by the paper trail alone? It's amazing to think about, isn't it. Like I said at the start of the blog, the further back in time you go, the more ancestors you'll likely share. That's why when people say "This is my tree" it vexes me a little. You don't own your ancestors. We're all conneccted in one way or another and as a genealogist it's your job to figure out how the pieces in the puzzle fit together!

    Now, will I continue researching the descendants of Jean Baptiste Bibeau and Therese La Roche? Why not? I want to have an accurate family tree and there are so many stories out there. Some are great. Some are sad. In the end they're all connected to me and will get a spot on the tree as long as there are sources backing them up. I welcome all cousins be they DNA matches or connected via paper trail. 

    Researching every descendant of a an ancestor can be a challenge. There's no doubt about that. As long as you remain dedicated and confident in your research, it shouldn't be that daunting. Just focus on the facts and if all else fails contact the people who are also researching the same ancestors as you. You never know who else is working on them. If you work together, there's nothing you can't accomplish!

See ya next time!

Images of Google Earth are property of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 22: At the Cemetery

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 22

The theme for Week 22 is "At the Cemetery." Cemeteries are some of the most special places to a family historian. Whose grave have you particularly wanted to find? What neat tombstones have you found?

I ain't afraid of no ghosts!

    The last time I wrote about this topic was back in late May 2021. I ended that blog wondering if my 2nd great-grandmother Caterina Coppola's siblings were buried in Haverhill's Saint Patrick's Cemetery because at that point I had no clue if they were. Past Chris, you were so naive. Long story short I did find Paolo and Concetta's graves there and now they have profiles on Find a Grave along with their cousin, Giovanni. At the time of my posting, I had no clue just how many Coppolas were at Saint Patrick's until I did a cemetery run with my dad's cousin, Bob. As it turned out many of them were the children of Paolo!

Thanks go out to Rob Williams
at Find a Grave!

    Detective Paolo Coppola's grave took a little while for me to find to be honest because of just how many Coppolas were interred at the cemetery. Saint Patrick's is set up in such a way that people who passed away in a certain decade would be near each other. For example, if someone passed away in 1985. the person would be near people who also passed away in the 1980s unless they were interred with someone else as in the case of my grandfather who was buried with his parents. 

    Since Paolo passed away in the 1950s, I naturally tried to find him in the 1950s area of the cemetery. Along the way, Bob told me stories of some of his friends who passed away (much later than the 1950s!!) and I still had trouble locating him. So, I did what any sensible person would have done. I eventually emailed the cemetery association and asked them to help me locate Paolo. They complied and it turned out that he was buried not too far from my grandparents' final resting place. Actually, he was oddly closer to where my great-grandparents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were buried than anything else. I posted his exact location on Find a Grave with the intention of eventually going there myself and a nice user there was kind enough to take a picture before I had a chance to visit the final resting spot. Huh. Talk about "First come, first serve".

       The first thing I noticed about the picture was the wreath. This was in early December and the wreath meant that someone in the family still tended the gravesite. That actually made me feel good, you know. It's unfortunate when graves go untended. But, it's a sad fact of life when the people maintaining the stones are eventually unable to care for them. It happens. At least volunteers will always be on hand to take care of everything! And don't worry. Rob Williams did take a pic of the back of the stone. Paolo is interred with his second wife, Antonia and a granddaughter who unfortunately died young.

    To date I've found nine of his children at St. Patrick's out of fifteen! That's a lot of kids! Keep in mind that he had two wives and a few of the offspring unfortunately died very young. I had thought I found everyone until I went on a cemetery run in April with Bob.

    I had just put in my requests at Haverhill city hall regarding Giovanni and a few other people and we thought it'd be a good idea to visit the cemetery on the way to Walnut Cemetery. More on that adventure in a bit. We were walking around and since it was late fall/early winter we were literally burning daylight because the sun was close to setting. I looked at my watch and I was about to call it quits when I saw this stone.

    "Cheney?", I thought to myself. That name sounded familiar to me. Sure it was a common last name and everything but something else dawned on me. I was missing a couple Coppolas and one of them married a Cheney. Her name was Mary Rose and I rushed to the back to see if it was her.

    BINGO! It was definitely her! She was buried with her husband, Everett Cheney. The odd thing is that she and her half-sister share the SAME NAME. I had to make sure it wasn't her and it wasn't. There's eight years between the two of them and the younger sister married a man named Arthur Dinges.  I bet things got real confusing around the dinner table when the two were growing up. From what I understand, one sister went by Mary and the other went by Rose. It's hard to say who was who. Maybe they alternated every week?

    With the discovery of the last Coppola child at Saint Patrick's that I knew about, I was off to my next adventure.

    On the way out of Saint Patrick's, I took some photos that I'm frankly not that proud of. The sun was setting and when I took the pictures, I caught some serious lens flare. The only person who wouldn't complain about them would be J.J. Abrams. See his reboot of "Star Trek" for details. 

    While we drove to our next destination, Bob told me he never actually went to Walnut before. That made sense. None of Bob's relatives are at Walnut. Why would he go there? Sure he could help maintain the grounds. But, I think he has his hands full with St. Patrick's, St. James and Linwood! Let's give the guy a break, huh?

    At least he knew the way and that was the important thing. He wondered if I was looking for anyone in particular. I said I was looking for my 3rd great-grandfather, Jeremiah Felker and other Felkers in the area. 

    By the time we got there, I noticed how wooded it seemed to be. I told Bob that the cemetery was supposedly haunted. He said "Yeah, it looks like it!" Seriously, I could hear the "Scooby Doo" intro playing in my head as we rode around the place.

    To my dismay, the sun was setting faster than we could drive. We drove past my great-grandparents' Austin and Henrietta Felker's stone and thankfully pictures were already taken of their final resting place. I saw Jeremiah's stone in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by several of his children and grandchildren. Sadly, the stone appeared to be at a 45 degree angle. I was reluctant to touch it and straighten it out. 

    I only had time to take that one picture and it was worth it. I would've uploaded it to his Find a Grave profile, but, there are already two photos there. One is from 2010 and the other from just two years ago. Time has not been kind to the stone. See what I mean when I talked about people not being able to maintain the stone? That's exactly what happened here. Jeremiah passed away in 1918. I bet it's been several decades since a family member visited his final resting spot.

    Anyway, I wish we had more time to explore Walnut. The next time Bob offers to go on a cemetery run, I'll ask him if he wants to go to Walnut again because there are still a few more people I wish to find like his wife, Elizabeth.That adventure and a few others will have to wait for another day. It might be best to go earlier in the day so I don't feel rushed and pictures won't come complete with a lens flare!!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 21: Brick Wall

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 21

The theme for Week 21 is "Brick Wall." Do you have an ancestor (or 4) who you can't seem to make any progress on in your research? This would be a good week to write about that ancestor and really think about what you know about that ancestor, how you know it, and where you might look to fill in the gaps. Writing is part of the research process!

Welcome to Atop the Brick Wall....

    "Atop the Brick Wall" would be a fantastic name for a genealogy blog, wouldn't it? However, it's far too close to the name of my friend Lewis's webshow, "Atop the FOURTH Wall", where he reviews comics, the occasional television show and all things nerdy and awesome. I think the name "All Roads Lead to Haverhill" works just as well because it's a play on "All roads lead to Rome". Besides, it's not like I haven't done anything nerdy and awesome in this blog, right? That and calling my blog "Atop the Brick Wall" would just confuse people into thinking I was Lewis....again.

    Anyway, brick walls are an annoying part of the genealogical adventure. For a while my 2nd great-grandmother, Maria Domenica Gullo was a brick wall made of solid titanium until I did some genealogical jiggery pokery to sort out who her parents were. Once that was solved, there was peace in the valley. Little did I know that a simple trip to Haverhill city hall would change my family tree and inadvertently break down another brick wall.

La famiglia di Coppola

    It started simple enough. I had a list of people I wanted to find the exact death dates for and on that list was Giovanni Coppola. You may have seen me mention him a few dozen times in the blog. He was the guy responsisble for bringing most of San Pietro a Maida to Haverhill back in the day. For a long time I just assumed that he was a brother to Paolo, Caterina and Concetta because of various factors here and there. Yeah....life has a way of throwing a wrench into the works, doesn't it? Fear not, true believers. This story has a happy ending!

    Giovanni passed away on October 4th, 1960 in the city of Haverhill and his parents weren't Paolo Coppola and Rosa Suverato as I originally assumed. Instead, they were Giovanni Coppola and Angela Suverato. I was a little annoyed at first. I then realized that several of my great-aunt's DNA matches who descend from him were a little on the low side. There was only one match of hers who decended from Giovanni who was in the triple digits range at 137 cMs. Curious, right? Well, it's about to get a lot more curious because I've actually seen the names of Giovanni's parents before!

1860 births, #73

    This is the birth record for Francesco Coppola, born in San Pietro a Maida on November 10th 1860 to Giovanni and Angela. Could Francesco be an older brother to our friend Giovanni? It's possible. There's only a fifteen year gap between the two births as Giovanni was born in 1875. Italain families back then tended to be huge. So, it's certainly possible that the 1875 Giovanni is this kid's brother. I hope that makes sense because I'm getting cross-eyed trying to explain the logistics.

    At any rate, Italian naming conventions come into play here because of the name "Giovanni". A lot of Italian families named their children after grandparents and even after themselves once they run out of parents. Speaking of grandparents, note how Giovanni's father Francesco was mentioned. Put a pin in that. We'll be going back to that one. 

    Now, I know what you're thinking. "Chris! Coppola is a very common Italian name! You can't jump to conclusions like this!!" Ordinarily, I would agree with you. "Coppola" is a very common Italian last name much like "Tedesco". Just hear me out because I've been researching the records in San Pietro and to date I've only found TWO Coppolas in the town. One was the wife of a guy named Nicola Mazza and the other was this family.  There may be a connection to Nicola Mazza as the woman's name was Caterina. The jury's still out on that one. Let's just focus on this story for now, shall we?

This must have been some party....

    Once I put Giovanni with his family, I started to think about a few things. He HAD to be related to me somehow. You can't fake a 137 cM match can you? That's a solid match because that's right smack dab in the middle of the 2nd to 3rd cousin range. The odds seemed pretty good, my friends.

    So, I got to thinking. What if Giovanni was a first cousin to Concetta, Caterina and Paolo? He was already a confirmed first cousin to Rosa and Marianna Stella. He paid the way for his cousins to come to America. What if he did the same for Concetta or Paolo? Why else would my great-grandparents, Vincenzo and Maria go to his house just after arriving in America in 1929? Why else would Concetta have been at that anniversary party in this photograph? Because she was his first cousin.

    I don't think this is as big a stretch as you might think. I'm not Marvel's "Mister Fantastic" after all. Many people paid for their family's trip across the Atlantic and it stands to reason that the Concetta had some help from her dear cousin as well like Marianna and Rosa. Were Paolo, Concetta and Caterina really first cousins with Giovanni? It's a distinct possibility when you consider desecendants of the three siblings are all DNA matches with my great-aunt's 137 cM match. The descendants of Rosa and Marianna are also DNA matches with her. Even if you take endogamy into account, this does seem to be the most logical conclusion.

    Eventually, I put in my great-aunt's DNA matches into "What are the Odds" on DNApainter to see where she would fit into the puzzle and if my theory held water. I ran the simulation and here's what I came up with once all the facts were in place.

    I eliminated the impossible and used the Pallaria DNA matches as a sort of anchor for everything I'm about to say. I really hope this makes sense! One of the Pallaria DNA matches, a 96 cM match, is a known 3rd cousin and I used that as a basis for my theory. He descends from a woman named Caterini Coppola who was a sister to my 3rd great-grandfather, Paolo.

    Using what I know, I scrolled down the page and saw that the 96 cM match appeared as a third cousin in two places. Which one is accurate? It's hard to say. I lean more toward hypothesis six given what I know of the family and everything. There isn't proof of a half-relationship as shown in hypothesis 2. 

Either way, two very strong DNA matches were holding this tree together. It couldn't be denied that there was a connection. After all DNA does not lie and at the end of all of this, the 137 cM match became a third cousin just like the 96 match. 

By the way, my father and I also match the same woman! I match her at 56 cMs and my father at 104 cMs.

    With that in mind, I've been able to deduce that the previously unknown father of my 3td great-grandfather was Francesco Coppola based on DNA evidence, family history and simple deductive reasoning. There can be no doubt that Francesco was the father of Paolo, Caterini and Giovanni. That brick wall was solved. However, I still had a problem. Ummm....Who was his wife?! I can't keep calling her "Unknown Unkown"! That doesn't sit well with me and that puzzle will have to be solved another time.

One of two Angela Suveratos.

    Another puzzle that will have to wait is the identity of Giovanni's mother, Angela Suverato. There were in fact two Angelas born in San Pietro who could have been his mother. One Angela Suverato was the daughter of my 4th great-grandparents, Giuseppe Suverato and Concetta Nistico. The other one was the daughter of Marcantonio Suverato and Elisabetta Desando. An entire year seperated the births of the two girls. So, either one of them could be Giovanni's mother! More research is clearly needed.

    Her identity probably wouldn't change anything other than the most recent common ancestor. This is just on one branch of the family tree and on this branch Giovanni's descendant who holds everything together appears to be a third cousin to my great-aunt. Was she Rosa Suverato's sister? Maybe. One set of brothers sometimes marry a set of sisters. That was a pretty common practice.

    It doesn't change the fact that I have potentially identified a 4th great-grandfather in the middle of all these genealogical gymnastics and that makes me pretty darn happy. I don't like calling people "Unknown". They had names!!! To solve that puzzle, I think a call to the commune office is in order.

    Brick walls are an annoying part to genealogy. I can't deny that it feels good breaking through one like the "Kool-Aid Man". This case wasn't so much breaking it down as it was going around it using the genealogical tricks of the trade, common sense and what I already knew about the family. Is this accurate? It's hard to say. You honestly cannot deny the facts once they've been presented. 

    That said, I did have to change a few things in the blog. Every post where I mentioned Giovanni as a brother to Caterina and the others had to have a notice attached that mentioned how things had changed since I posted the blog. I don't mind correcting mistakes because everyone makes them from time to time. No one is perfect. 

    Time will tell if this theory of mine proves to be accurate. The movie I had in mind for "Italians in Haverhill" may have changed a little. But, the plot is still the same. Giovanni is still an important member of the family and a key factor in the immigration story. Nothing about that has changed even if his position in the family tree did.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 20: Bearded

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 20 is "Bearded." This week, record something about a relative who sported a beard (or maybe someone who struggled in that department). Of course, feel free to interpret the theme however you'd like!

It's been three years since I last talked about beards and I
STILL can't grow a ZZ Top beard. Sigh....

    In the three years since I've last posted a blog about men with magnificent facial shrubbery, I have discovered one more ancestor who had a mighty beard and that brings my bearded man roster to a grand total of three! My paternal second great-grandfather, Marco Ferraiolo joins my third great-grandfather, Jeremiah Smart Felker and my fourth great-grandfather, John Sargent Fisher as the bearded few who dared to say "no" to the Norelco razor. Could there be more bearded men in my tree? I have no idea because cameras weren't invented until 1826 and even then getting your picture back then was very cost-prohibitive. You'd have been better off paying someone to paint your picture back in those days.

So dignified!

    Marco was born in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida in 1868 and though his beard wasn't as long as Jeremiah's or John's, it still counts! If anything, that beard reminds me of Sigmund Freud's for some reason. It's a nice one, that's for sure! It's clean, short and commands respect and projects thoughtfulness and dignity. Yes, I quoted  Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation". Leave me alone!

    When my cousin Caterina gave me this photo of her grandparents, Marco and Caterina in February of 2021, I tried to figure out when the picture was taken. Marco passed away in 1958 and Caterina in 1962. So, clearly the picture had to have been taken before 1958. That narrows it down, doesn't it?

    The answer actually lies with the little girl standing in front of Marco and Caterina. Who is that? Well, that's actually my 1st cousin 2x removed, Adriana Serrao, daughter of my great-grandfather Vincenzo's sister, Rosa. I talked to her on Facebook about the picture and she said she was about three years old when the photo was taken. She was born in 1947. So, then this picture would have been taken some time in 1950.

   

    That was a quick and easy mystery to solve, wasn't it. I should have asked for more information like "Do you know if there are any more pictures of these two?" Or "What was the occasion?" I'm not sure if Adriana would have remembered the specifics. Give her a break. She was three! Do you remember anything that happened when YOU were three?!

Pasquale is in the middle.

    Marco probably would have bern pleased that at least one of his descendants is currently rocking a beard. Check out actor Pasquale Aleardi's awesome beard of awesomeness. My second cousin once removed descends from Vincenzo's sister, Concetta. For those of you keeping score at home, Concetta was my cousin Caterina's mother and that makes Pasquale her nephew. I think I need a scorecard or a bigger family tree....

    ANYWAY! To date he is the only relative on that side of the family who currently has a beard. Lord knows I can't grow a decent one. I can't even grow a moustache.

That doesn't stop anyone else in the family from trying....

Clean-shaven and an ad for Lenscrafters.

     When my brother got married in August of 2002, my father was sporting a beard of his own. I'm not sure why he decided to grow one. Back in the day he had a moustache and then he shaved that off. Then one day he decided to go with a full beard. It honestly did not last long AT ALL!

    Still, his beard is forever immortalized in all of Jim and Kathleen's wedding pictures. I bring this up with him from time to time and some days he says he wants to grow it back and some days he says it's better to be clean-shaven.  I guess it depends on his mood.

    Beards seem to be a rarity in my family. I can see why because growing them can be a bit itchy and caring for one can be a hassle. Some people can work wearing facial shrubbery. Me? I definitely can't. But, it is fun to see friends and family sporting beards and wondering if they've now become the "evil twin"since most "evil twins" have beards.

Hey, it worked in "Star Trek"....

See ya next time!