52 Ancestors Week 17: DNA

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17:

The theme for Week 17 is "DNA." DNA has helped countless people make discoveries in their family history – some good and some not. Has DNA helped you solve a genealogical question? (Remember that if you post anything publicly, you should protect the identities of living people unless they have given you permission to share their story.)

Here we go again!

    It just wouldn't be a genealogy blog without an entry about mysterious DNA matches, would it? I've had so many mysteries over the years and thankfully some of them have been solved. You've all seen me figure out many puzzling DNA matches and I'm grateful for all the help I've had over the years solving puzzle after puzzle. However, there is one family out there that's been vexing me ever since they popped up on Ancestry as matches to me, my father and my great-aunt Nicolina. Follow along as I go through one of my greatest DNA related mysteries. This is definitely one for the books.

Hey, Franklin.

    Meet Franklin Richards. Frankie here is a DNA match to my great-aunt at 46 centimorgans across 1. He matches my dad at 52 cMs across 2 segments and myself at 52 cMs across 2 segments. 

    This seems pretty straight forward, right? The shared cM project puts him in a wide variety of positions in the family tree from half third cousin to as far back as 6th cousin.

    That really doesn't help much, does it? Franklin could be anywhere in the family tree. Naturally, I sent a message to the lady who manages Frank's kit to see if she knew anything about any possible connections I had with him. While I waited, I checked out the shared matches he and I had in the hopes that something interesting would show up.

    I checked out the shared matches and saw no names I recognized. I saw my father, my great-aunt and my dad's cousin Cathie. Below them were a bunch of matches that were a mystery to me.  I decided to check out one of them to see if I could find anything interesting. The matches name was Susan and she shared a mighty 46 across 1 segment with my great-aunt. And as an added bonus she actually had a tree!

    Franklin had a tree as well. However, the lady who managed the kit was working more on Franklin's maternal side and I didn't see any Italians on that side of the tree. She messaged me back saying that I probably connected on that side and to try emailing someone else in the family I did that and never got a reply. So, logically I must connect with Franklin and Susan on the paternal side of things.

    When I looked at Susan's tree, I saw a last name that rang a bell. The last name "Mazza" appears in various records in San Pietro a Maida. I found many Mazzas and put them on WikiTree. Surely the connection must be there, right? Uhh.... Nope.

    Apparently these Mazzas all came from San Pietro Apostolo, a town a good 38 kilometers northeast of San Pietro a Maida. Think I'd be frustrated? Yeah. You ain't seen nothing yet.

    If I wasn't connected to the Mazza family, the next logical step would be to check out his wife who was a Casale/Castelnova. The only thing is she was supposedly born in Brazil and I haven't been able to find much else about her.  At that point I just shook my head and labeled the two of them as unknown matches to figure out later. I wasn't about to spend time on this issue if I wasn't getting feedback from the matches themselves. No one responded and when that happens I get frustrated. I like bouncing ideas around with people. That's how I was able to solve so many puzzles! Genealogy isn't a solo gig! It takes a team and there's no "i" in team!    

    Over time I just let things simmer. It was clear to me that I wasn't going to solve this mystery overnight. I had other things to do and other puzzles to solve. That was when Jennifer showed up as a match to Nicole and as you can see she shares a mighty 79 cMs across 3 segments. This makes her one of the biggest DNA matches Aunt Nickie has in that family!
    
     Jennifer being the largest match of the bunch meant that there was something obviously going on here and the three of us had a clear connection with this family. I messaged her and unfortunately I never got a reply. At this point I realized I wasn't going to get any help from anyone in that family. It's a shame because I was hoping we could talk things over. We could find the connection and move on with our lives. The connection IS there despite the shared matches not going toward any family member I knew about. Frustration was building and I decided to take matters into my own hands.

    I compiled a list of all of the matches in that family group to see how they all match myself, my father and Nickie. As you can see Nicole matches everyone on the list and I only match a handful of them. That's to be expected as the older generation would match more people than I would.

    With that said, I used Ancestry's new comparison tool and my great-aunt as a guide to make a tree on DNApainter.com's "What are the Odds?" app. The results were pretty interesting.

Check it out!

    Yeah. This isn't very helpful, is it? I managed to cluster Franklin and his family together in a neat little package. Reed, Ben, Sue, Jennifer, Johnny and the rest of them all fit in quite well together. My great-aunt is likely one of those hypotheses and it's hard to say which one is accurate. Let's look at my great-aunt's tree and do a little comparison!

    Okay. As you can see here she's got a pretty ironclad tree thanks to years of research and help from the fine folks over at the commune office in San Pietro a Maida. Everything in her first thirty ancestors have been verified and I have yet to see any connection to the Mazza family or even the Casales. Nickie's DNA matches seem to hail from the Ferraiolo, Coppola and Tedesco branches for the most part and none of the "Richards" family match anyone from those three family groups. Could they come from the Gullos? It might explain why they don't match anyone else.

    I honestly have no idea. It's entirely possible that they descend from the Gullos or even that "Unknown Coppola" in her tree. The connection may even be farther back and I see big numbers because of endogamy. But, I see no evidence of endogamy at all here.

    DNA is very random and DNA doesn't lie. I doubt that these are false matches. Not when Nickie has that 70 cM match. I've asked for help on this issue many times and I've gotten nowhere. This is why this family vexes me so much. It isn't so much the lack of cooperation. It's more that I know there's a connection out there and I can't figure it out. There's also the possibility that their trees are wrong. I have no idea.  

I do have some theories. 

1. The connection is very far back and might be at the 4th cousin once removed level like Zelda is. Remember her? Or it might be greater.

2. I connect at the Casales and that might link to San Pietro.

3. Endogamy might be at play here. I haven't seen any endogamy in my great-aunt's tree. But, you never know!

    If anyone else has any theories, please share them in the comments. I'd love to read them! 

    In any case, I'll just have to keep the Richards family on the backburner for now. I suspect that they are on the Gullo side of things because they don't match anyone else. So, logic dictates that they must have a Gullo ancestor that's connected to me. In theory. I could be wrong. All I can do is watch and wait. 

    DNA testing has helped me make countless discoveries. I'm not denying that. More discoveries will be made I'm sure. Right now this family vexes me in both the DNA area and especially on the communication front. Or rather the lack thereof. DNA has solved questions. But, in this case communication might be more helpful. Here's hoping I get a breakthrough with this Richards family!

See ya next time!

P.S. Hope you caught the references with the names I've used this week to protect the innocent. Reed, Ben, Sue, Johnny, Franklin and others are related to characters appearing in the pages of Marvel's "Fantastic Four." See Marvel's first family return to the big screen this July. And as for this blog? Well, to quote the ever lovin' blue-eyed Thing...."What a revoltin' development dis is!"

52 Ancestors Week 16: Oldest Story

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 16:

The theme for Week 16 is “Oldest Story.” What is the oldest story that’s been passed down in your family? Have you figured out if any of it is true?

I can hear that John Williams score....

       My family has no shortage of old stories. In fact, I've told the one about my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my grandma Ollie and others taking a trip to Italy many times in this blog. I've talked about how Alfred Hamel may have helped bootleggers during the Prohibition. Every yarn I've come across has had its own kernel of truth. However, there's one story that's older than any other tale I've ever told in this blog. Is it true? Well, that's for you to decide and for me to find out! Get yourselves comfortable. This one is going to be good!

Nana, the storyteller.

    Around the time I first heard about the adventures in Switzerland, my grandmother Natalie decided to share a story she heard growing up with me.  I forget the details of how she brought it up. However, I have a feeling I might have asked her if she had any good stories from her family. I remember her smiling and telling me that I had an ancestor who fought in the American Civil War AND who was in the White House band under President Abraham Lincoln.

    When I first heard this story, I was like "What?" At the time I knew my dad's ancestors were fairly musically inclined. Imagine my surprise in finding out that my mother's side had musicians as well! And yet through some strange twist of fate the music gene skipped me. It's okay. I can still jam out on Rock Band.....on Easy mode anyway.

       

     Nana never really said which ancestor of hers actually played in the band. She and others in my family were quite adamant in saying that someone fought in the Civil War and was a member of the White House Band. I wasn't about to disagree with them at that point. I was a kid and everyone around me seemed to be sure that actually happened.

    By the time I got into genealogy, one of the first things I wanted to figure out was whether or not this story was true. After all, having a bunch of musicians in the tree sounded like a great idea to me. So, I researched and found three ancestors of mine who served the Union during the American Civil War. Their names were Jeremiah Felker, David Webster Stevens and John Sargent Fisher. Once I had that confirmed, it was time to find out who played in the band and why he didn't tell Honest Abe that the play got bad reviews. Eh, that's probably a fixed point in time.  I am so sorry.

So close with that beard. Sigh...

    Its been quite a while since we talked about my 3rd great-grandfather, Jeremiah hasn't it? I can't remember the last time I wrote about him. To sum up his life as quickly as possible I'll just say this:

    He was born out of wedlock to Elias Felker and Martha Smart in the 1830s. Martha's father Jeremiah sued to get custody of the boy and Martha ended up raising him along with several other half-siblings. 

    Jeremiah enlisted in the August of 1864 shortly after marrying Elizabeth Deborah Fellows. He served in the first New Hampshire Heavy Artillery Unit and by the end of the war decided to retire to Haverhill, Mass in order to raise a family.

    To date I haven't found anything that would indicate that he was ever a musician. He may have had an epic beard like many musicians had. But, I don't think Jerry was in a band. Sorry, Jerry. You're not the next American Idol. At least he had a pretty cool beard. Side note: I still need to see if I can digitally fix this picture somehow.

    One Civil War soldier was down and only two more remain. David Webster Stevens turned out to be an interesting guy. He wasn't a musician or anything. He was actually a minister. And though I would like to call him "The Rock Reverend", I don't think David ever set foot outside of New England. 

    David enlisted in the September of 1862 and served with Maine's 25th Infantry Regiment. He rose to the rank of Private and like Jerry it doesn't look like he was musically inclined. Dave was ordained as a Reverend in the 1870s and he was never called a Rock Reverend by anyone. It's a shame because I'm positive he'd have written a song about losing his first wife Sarah at the beginning of the war and marrying his second wife Huldah at the height of the conflict. There'd be sad violins playing and everything! His life story would then be narrated by Ken Burns or Morgan Freeman.

This article is full of errors. 

    Finally we've come to the last Civil War era ancestor I have in my tree. He definitely has to be a musician, right? I mean the other guys didn't turn out to be musicians  and I'd hate to call my grandmother a liar.  Well, when I dug into John Sargent Fisher's past I found that he enlisted in 1861 as a musician in the company band for Massachusetts' 2nd Infantry unit.

    Finally, I found my music guy! I don't think he was a drummer boy or anything. He enlisted as a thirty-one year old when he was actually closer to forty-one.

    Like the others I've talked about, he didn't stay in the service that long. Johnny here served from the May of 1861 to when he was injured in the June of 1862. He ended up being disabled for the rest of his life.

    Could he have been to Washington D.C. and been a member of the White House Band at any point? It's hard to say. While I do think it would have been awesome if he was a member of the band, I haven't found any evidence that put him as a member of that organization. Googling the White House band only led me to a British noise band called "Whitehouse" that was formed in 1980. 

    I uhh....don't think that was his band! I even checked the White House's website to see if any band members were listed. It looks like the identities of the band members are lost to time.

    At least my grandmother's story was half true. We did have a musician ancestor! The jury's still out on whether or not he actually in the White House band under Lincoln. It's not like I haven't tried to find a list of band members. I have! It's just impossible to know for sure. Could he have gone from Massachusetts to D.C.? Yes, of course. They had trains in those days. It might have taken Johnny a whole to get there. But, he'd be there! Was he ever at the White House? No idea. And I doubt they keep guestbooks from the 19th century hanging around.

    Either way at least we know that John Sargent Fisher was a musician. I'd like to know what instrument he played. It's pretty cool to have creative people in your family tree and Fisher seemed to be creative. It's a shame that after he traded his instrument for a rifle that he got injured. I wonder if that had impacted his music. Did he still play despite being injured? I'd like to think that he did. He seemed like a cool guy with great hobbies. Check out the obit for details. There is an error or two, though.

    Stories like this one are definitely worth checking out. Would I have liked it if my grandmother actually gave me his name? Yes. But, it's okay. I found my three Civil War soldiers and each one of them has a story worthy of a Ken Burns documentary. Did Nana misremember things? Maybe. In the end it doesn't matter. Just being a creative person rising above a disability or a Reverend or a man who raised his own grandson is more than enough for me.  They didn't have to prove themselves to anyone and are still rock stars to me. 

See ya next time!

52Ancestors Week 15: Big Mistake

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 15:

The theme for Week 15 is "Big Mistake." Our ancestors weren’t perfect. They were real people who sometimes made mistakes. Likewise, we aren’t perfect, and sometimes we make mistakes in our research. This is a good week to write about an ancestor who chose poorly or a time when a research mistake made your work harder.

Who's up for more self-deprecation?!

    Like Amy said. Our ancestors weren't perfect and we definitely are not perfect, either! I mean I accidentally marked myself as deceased on WikiTree on my first week there! That was an honest mistake! At least I made some cool friends out of it like the forest elf, Eowyn.  Way to look for that silver lining, huh? Well, at least that was one mistake that didn't cause me to leave the site altogether. We laugh about it every time it comes up because self-deprecation is cool and keeps you humble.

    There was a mistake I made on my genealogical adventure that just made me swear off a certain genealogy site for Italian genealogy. To this day, I haven't been back there and I don't think I ever will. If you know me, you'll know that I've been on the Internet for a very long time. I've been a member of several websites and it honestly takes a lot for me to leave a place once I've settled there. This week, I'm going to talk about a site called Italiangenealogy.com and my experiences there. You may have had good luck there and that's great. Me? Not so much. In the end, I'll let you decide if me asking for help there was a good idea or was one of the biggest mistakes I made on my genealogical adventure.

    I honestly don't remember what brought me to the site in the first place. It was shortly after I registered on WikiTree and someone suggested I check out a site dedicated to genealogy on the Italian peninsula. I thought that was cool. What's not to like about a website devoted to finding out where nonna and nonno came from? 

    I was curious and I thought I'd ask a couple questions. At that point I had no idea that records in San Pietro a Maida were locked behind the Family History Library walls. So, I asked them what I could do about researching my great-grandparents, Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco. Seems innocent enough. Oh, but wait. Things are gonna go sideways fast.

    When I finally logged into the site, I noticed that it was actually a series of message boards set up in the same style of many message boards I frequented in the early 2000s. That didn't fill me with a lot of confidence as vbulletin boards were notoriously unstable and easily hacked. I guess if they were maintained constantly and had a great tech tech behind them they could still work decades after being first introduced. Anyway, I put my harsh criticism aside for the moment and posted my questions about Vincenzo and Maria. Who am I to judge a site based on appearances alone?

 

    I posted my question and gave them all the information I could about my ancestors. I even mentioned Vincenzo's parents, Marco and Caterina and Maria's parents, Antonio and Maria Domenica. Nothing bad happened afterward. A guy told me to check out Antenati and I explained to him that records weren't there.  They gave me a few other tips such as checking out the San Pietro a Maida Facebook group. I thought that was a good idea and I signed up there.

    Then things took a left turn into Crazy Town. Not long after I sorted out my ancestors and built a tree up on WikiTree, someone sent me a private message saying he could help me out. He claimed to be a professional genealogist and he didn't want people to know his real name.

    My spider-sense immediately started to tingle. One of the first rules of the Internet is to be wary of private messages from people saying "Yeah, man. I can help you out. But, I can't let anyone know my real name. Not even you." 

At first I ignored him. Like "Really, dude? Get out of here with that mess."

    The man persisted and I was like "Fine. Let's play this game. I have a block button with your name on it." I didn't put it in those exact words. Lord knows it was tempting. The guy said it would take a while to dig through the records of San Pietro a Maida as he was on his way to a Family History Library to look into things for me.

Gatto is a last name. Facts.

    While I was waiting for Mr. Mysterious to get back to me, I thought I'd ask a question about Antonio Tedesco's mother, Angela Gatto. I had just found out about her thanks to a few people who worked at the commune office in San Pietro. Some people were confused about the name because "Gatto" means "cat" in Italian. They thought I was making it up. I tried to explain that English has last names that are animal names, too like "Wolf", "Falcon" and "Fox". 

    I told them that the commune office gave me the last name "Gatto" and that I trust them. Someone went so far as to call the clerks illiterate. I'm not talking about the 19th century clerks. I'm talking about clerks currently working 9 to 5 in San Pietro at this very moment!!

    Spider sense started to buzz even more at this point. How could people who work with Italian genealogy be so judgmental and arrogant?!  I was about ready to leave the site and never look back because I really don't want to deal with jerks on the Internet. That was when Mr. Mysterious finally messaged me back!  I rolled my eyes and opened the message to see what he found out.....if anything. I was already not a fan of this site and morbid curiosity got the better of me.

    Mr. Mysterious said that he checked all of the records in San Pietro and found three potential fathers for Antonio's father, Tommaso.  He gave me a list of names and I swear to God he said "Pick one of these people and he could be your ancestor" as they were all having children in San Pietro at the same time. My jaw dropped. I shook my head in disbelief. That was the worst way to research someone--EVER! You know how there's a Genealogical Proof Standard? This guy uses the "Eenie Meenie" standard!

   It gets even better! The guy saw my question about Angela Gatto and said that the last name was really "Gullo" and that the commune office messed up. He then proceeded to give me the birth record for an Angela Gullo, her siblings and their parents, Vincenzo Gullo and Caterina d'Elia. He said that was accurate and that the commune office was wrong.

    I didn't know what to say at that point. I'm normally very grateful for any help I get on my genealogical adventure. Two heads are better than one, after all. I sighed and said "Thanks" and I was about to go out the door when my cousin and genealogist Mary Tedesco messaged me.

    Mary said she was contacted by a user on the site who said he knew me. He apparently demanded (not asked) her for records about my great-grandfather Vincenzo. The blood drained from my face and I was ready to rage-quit that site and burn all of the bridges.

    I apologized profusely to Mary.  I had mentioned her in passing because I thought it was the right thing to do. I never intended for the weirdos on that site to message her about anything. I did go back and publicly say that they didn't need to contact her for me. She damn well knew who I was and was not stranger to me or my family. I gave them a nice rant and left the place. I hadn't been back since. I even forgot my password! It's just as well. To this day I'll tell people that they'd be better off going to the Italian genealogy Facebook group and other Facebook groups. They'd also be better off going to WikiTree as well. As for ItalianGenealogy.com? I can't honestly recommend them to anyone.

    If you have Italian genealogy, I highly suggest avoiding the site at all costs. I don't like to throw websites under the bus and I don't like to make things personal in cases like this. But, in this case I think I can make an exception. The users may be helpful at first. But, they get a lot of information wrong. I ended up getting help from real genealogists and volunteers on WikiTree and the Italian Genealogy Facebook group and we found the right ancestors in the San Pietro records. Their attitudes were not great and creepy guys doing "back-door" genealogy via private messages is just not a good look.

    That thing with Mary was the last straw for me. I get that they were trying to help. But, you don't demand information and say someone she knows sent them. I was so embarrassed and for a long time I couldn't even message my cousin. It was humiliating to say the least.

    So, what do you all think? Was it worth going there in the first place? I got some minor help here and there. But, in the end I got the same hints and help elsewhere. Not to mention sources. I honestly don't think Italiangenealogy.com is that good a site for Italian research. It's just a lot easier to talk about what you need in a Facebook group or even Wikitree/Geni. A site that is supposed to be all about Italian genealogy should be helpful and shouldn't tolerate misinformation and people going out of their way to ambush a genealogist who just so happens to be a cousin of the person asking the question. But, that's just me. 

    I could go on for a lot longer ranting about the site. But, it's probably a good idea to end here. Even writing about it is bringing back a few bad memories. Eh, whatever. I won't be talking about this site again. So, let this blog be a warning. If something looks sketchy at the start of your visit, it probably is. Lesson learned. The site may be good for some people. But, I don't think I can trust it ever again.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 14: Language

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 14: Language

The theme for Week 14 is "Language." Have you researched an ancestor who spoke a different language than you or dealt with records in another language? What about an ancestor who was known for their use of language? This is a good week to write about them!

Just think. Google Translate is the Universal translator from
Star Trek. It beats putting a small fish in your ear.

    As readers of this blog know I am half Italian and as an Italian-American I've been exposed to the language of my grandfather's homeland for as long as I can remember. Even though Marco passed away when I was four, my father still spoke Italian on occasion. However, there's one catch. The Italian he spoke isn't exactly like the language spoken by Italians living in Italy. Words and even peoples' names have been transformed once an immigrant settled into a new area and they begin to adapt to their new surroundings. So, imagine my surprise when I found out the Italian I was hearing at home was very different from the language spoken by my cousins in Italy.

La famiglia di Ferraiolo

    To understand how this happened, we're going to have to go back in time. We're going to have to go back to when the immigrants first landed in America and tried to assimilate into life in a strange country. One of my earliest blogs was about how my great-grandfather Vincenzo's name became James in America. Check it out here.

    It's generally agreed that the nickname for Vincenzo, "Cenz", was quickly transformed into James. It didn't just happen for my great-grandfather, by the way. Virtually every man named "Vincenzo" that I've come cross that has immigrated to America has become James.  Think that's wild? Buckle up because there's more!

    When you sound out the name "Cenz" with a thick Italian accent like the one Vincenzo supposedly had, people not in the know are going to think they hear the name "James". That name gets put down on records like censuses and naturalization papers and suddenly Vincenzo is known as James for the rest of his life. Granted, he could be called "Vinny" but most of the time Vincenzo became James in America. Now that's wild.

   Of course that was just one example of a name being changed to suit the new land the immigrant lived in. What about the words? Well, several words have changed and if you've seen movies like "The Godfather" or "Goodfellas" and even television shows like "The Sopranos", you'll know what I'm getting at. It isn't just Hollywood making things up. Let's give Tinseltown some credit. They're very careful about how they portray Italians on screen. Thank you, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.

La Famiglia di Carrabs

    So, how are some Italian words changed in America, then? Here's an example. My father reminded me that his grandmother Clementina would ask him to go into the garden and pick something called "vuzinagaul". I'm not sure if that's the right spelling. Please don't Google it! The results might be unpleasant. 

    The word was used in "The Sopranos" and even a few cooking videos on YouTube. He asked me to look it up and eventually I gave up and just watched the video with my dad to see what the lady was talking about. It turns out she was sprinkling a little basil on the dish. Apparently "vuzinagaul" is actually basil! HOW?! I went to Google Translate and basil in Italian is "basilico".

    How.....How did THAT happen?! I mean I totally understand if an Italian word was just flat out converted to English. But, basil?! Hmm. As near as I can tell the "b" sound and the "v" sound both sound very similar to each other if you speak with an Italian accent. But, the rest of it just sounds completely different to me. It's almost like an alien language and if you were to say it in Italy no one is going to understand what you're saying!

    I think the word like other words just changed over time as Italians adapted to life in America. There's no real mystery here. That word and other words that I know to be slangs were picked up by Hollywood and used in various media. That's why you might hear your nonna say something a mob boss says on television. If that ever happens, there's one thing you can do. RUN!

Grandma Ollie!

    Speaking of grandmothers, my grandmother Ollie often taught me a bit of Italian. She may have been born in Haverhill like my father, but, she learned quite a bit of Italian herself from her parents Giuseppe and Clementina

    Granted it was never anything elaborate. It was more basic words like "ciao" and "arrivederci". She never gave me lessons or anything. She encouraged me to learn Italian as I learned Spanish in high school. Both languages are similar thanks to being rooted in Latin. Thank you, Roman Empire. 

    I never really had the chance to learn Italian because Merrimack College didn't offer it during the time I was there. It's a shame because as time goes on the generations that grew up hearing those Italian words and speak in Italian are fading away. All we have left are classes and apps we can learn foreign languages on.

    All isn't lost! I'm actually learning the language of my ancestors through trial and error! That means I just use Google translate when I talk to relatives in Europe or when I need to translate a document on Antenati. Your mileage on that may vary as other apps may be more reliable. I'm actually getting decent at translating various documents. It just depends on the quality of the handwriting. You never know what clerk you're going to get and just how well their handwriting is. In that case, another set of eyes is always welcome!

     Either way, I'm sure grandma Ollie, her sisters and my four Italian great-grandparents would be pleased that I'm trying my best with the language of their homeland. It's just so weird how certain words transform into words that make little or no sense if you're an Italian from Europe listening to those words. I've never come across them in an Italian document or heard them spoken by an Italian relative. Words change over time and like I said the number of Italian speakers in America is declining despite immigrants still coming to America.

    Language will always be a part of my heritage whether it's Italian or French and even the French they speak in Quebec is a little different from the French they speak in France! That's a topic for another day. However, I think the same logic applies. If you're going to move to a new land, you need to adapt to life there and unfortunately that means changing your language in order to lift that language barrier. And the French in Quebec has had hundred and hundreds of years worth of changes. Still, it's a good idea to learn the language of your ancestors wherever they come from. It will help you understand the culture, allow you to talk to people living in those countries and gain an appreciation for what they had to go through when they learned the language of the area you're living in these days. That way your ancestral language won't have to go out with a bang.

Ci vediamo la prossima volta!

P.S. Grandma Ollie also taught me the word "Mangia!" This is the Italian word for "Eat!". This was probably a bad idea on her part.

52 Ancestors Week 13: Home Sweet Home

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 13:

The theme for Week 13 is “Home Sweet Home.” What ancestor makes you think of home or when you picture them, you think of their home? Or maybe you had an ancestor who homesteaded? This is a good week to write about them.

While I was taking this pic, a small dog who thought
he was a big dog was barking at me....

    There are sadly not many houses I can associate with an ancestor. My maternal grandparents spent most of their time in Florida and at their house in Raymond, New Hampshire. Naturally, I  can also picture the house I grew up in and one day I might write about the place when the prompt comes up again. Whenever I look at my grandma Ollie's picture, I picture her house on Washington Street in Haverhill, Mass. The house now looks like a bachelor pad. I'm not joking. They have a swimming pool in the backyard and everything! Thankfully, I wrote about her house last year and many memories came back to me during the writing process. Check it out here.

    This time around, I decided to go one step above grandma Ollie and talk about her parents' house on nearby Bartlett Street. Whenever I see their picture, I think of that house. The home of Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione was a hub of activity up until the death of my great-aunt Louise in 2010. That's quite a long history and I was fortunate to have been to the house many, many times growing up.

Be it ever so humble....

    I'm not sure if I've talked about the house before. I might have and that's okay because it bears repeating! It's a great house to talk about and I have a lot of memories going there. When I was a kid, I was told that Giuseppe and Clementina's house was spot to be for the Carrabs clan. Giuseppe's brothers, Rocco and Pasquale always went there with their families.

    I'm not exactly sure about the origins of the house to tell you the truth. The answer must lie in Haverhill City Hall. A quick look at Whitepages reveals that the house was built in 1910. This makes a lot of sense because at the time of the 1920 census Giuseppe and his family was living there!

    Sometime between 1910 and 1920, my great-grandfather bought the house and it's been in the family ever since. The house has three apartments and at one point in time Giuseppe and Clementina lived on one floor while two of the daughters lived on another floor. That's a pretty tidy arrangement, isn't it? And it is remarkable how the family stayed in that house for almost a century!

    When I came around, it was just Aunt Louise and her husband Arnold Villanucci living there.  Grandma Ollie had long since moved to Washington Street and the other sisters were nearby. The distance didn't seem to matter because no matter where they were, they all ended up at either Ollie's house or Louise's house. I remember my parents and I going to grandma's house only to find she wasn't there. This was before cellphones so we had no way to contact her if we were on the road. We went over to Louise's and she was there chatting with her sisters. It was a 50/50 shot where grandma would be most of the time. Sometimes she'd be at her house and sometimes she was at Auntie Louise's.

    Aunt Louise's house was not really much different from my grandmother's if I'm going to be honest. Like my grandmother, she had a big round table in the kitchen. The only difference was that it was against the wall and not in the center of the room. The hall to the left led to her bedroom and bathroom and straight ahead was the living room.

    It was there that I first saw a picture of my great-grandparents. Louise had many pictures around the house and many of them were in the living room. There was a nice picture of Rocco by the television as well and I remember asking all kinds of questions about him.

    Naturally, my great-aunt was a lot like my grandmother in that she also liked to tell stories. Though, sometimes they had a humorous flair to them.

    I remember one time we were at the house at they were talking about the family who lived upstairs around the time of the 1950 census. The family of Alessio Schena lived upstairs and for a long time the sisters wondered if they were related to him because a Schena married one of their Penta relatives. A woman named Antoinetta Penta married a man named Rocco Schena. Sadly, I haven't found any connection to that Schena since Rocco and Antonetta had four children together and none of them were named Alessio. Still, Alessio could've been a brother to Rocco. I'll have to dig into this one once they've found a way to create more hours in a day!

I wish I knew where this
pic came from.

    Anyway, the house is special to me because Ollie and her sisters told me about what it was like growing up there with their parents. They told me about Giuseppe's garden in the back which was very much like the garden we have at our house today. He also grew tomatoes, peppers and just like any other Italian he had his own wine. The stuff was strong. But, not as strong as Rocco's, apparently. I heard it could be used to peel paint off of wood.

    Yes, we've actually had debates over which brother's wine was the strongest. After much deliberation it was agreed that Rocco's was the strongest. Who knows what he put in the stuff to make it that way!

    I digress. The house on Bartlett street was the place where I learned all about my great-grandparents and being there made them seem more real than just photos standing on a mantle. It was easy to see Louise and her sisters growing up there as the place seemed so inviting like the house on Washington street.

  Things may have changed since the days my great-grandparents lived there. However, the stories of the house and the people who lived there endure to this day and I had a great time visiting the house every time we went there. 

    Out of all the houses I've been to in Haverhill, it's the second one I associate with an ancestor. The first, of course, would be my grandmother's house. Though, that house was my great-grandfather Vincenzo's house first.  For the story on that one, check out the other house tour! I am immensely grateful that I got to see grandma's house and the house on Bartlett street. Both places have a place in my heart and I'll always think of my ancestors whenever we go by there. Just....no one better turn them into swinging bachelor pads. That's all I ask.

See ya next time!

Pic of 26 Bartlett Street is courtesy of Google Earth.

52 Ancestors Week 12: Historic Event

    

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 12:

The theme for Week 12 is "Historic Event." Historic events aren’t always world or national events. Technically, any event that happened in the past is a historic event 😉 How was an ancestor affected by an event, either large or local? (One that pops into my mind is my grandmother, her parents, and siblings barely escaping their house during the Great Flood of 1913.)

.

    Every generation has had to live through an historic event. Like the song goes: We didn't start the fire. It was always burning as the world was turning. People remember where they were during the attacks on September 11th, 2001. We witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. We watched as the Boston Red Sox finally broke the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. I remember all of those events as if it was yesterday since I obviously lived through those times. But, there's one event that's forever etched into the memory of my generation. I am of course talking about the Challenger Disaster.

    Ask anyone born prior to 1986 and they can tell you exactly where they were on January 28th, 1986 when seven astronauts lost their lives in an explosion that rocked a nation. Aboard the shuttle was a teacher named Christa McAuliffe, who just so happened to be from the Granite State.

   Due to New Hampshire being her home, everyone from my state was glued to television up to that day. We were so excited to see someone from our state making a name for themselves because how often do you hear of someone famous coming from New Hampshire?  News programs leading up to the launch focused on her and her life and it served to hype New Hampshirites more than all you can eat shrimp night in Portsmouth.

    I had just turned seven the month before the disaster and all these years later I remember everything so vividly. I was in the first grade and our teacher, Mrs. Lynch, had all of the first grade classes sit in her room. I sat next to several of my friends and listened to the teachers as they all talked about how important the launch was. McAuliffe wasn't a teacher at North Salem Elementary. However, you could tell that our teachers had a profound respect for their colleague even if I didn't quite understand it at the time.

    The teachers rolled in one of those big television sets and turned off the lights. We sat as patiently as any six to seven year-olds could as the reporters and everyone on television was talking about how important the launch was. We waited and then we saw the shuttle itself on the screen. It was so massive and we watched in awe it finally lifted off.

    Sadly, the shuttle exploded shortly after launch and I remember Mrs. Lynch quickly turning off the television as she wiped tears from her face. All the kids were too shocked to really say anything. Some kids were crying. The principal shortly announced that school was cancelled and that they were working to notify everyone's parents. I got up from my chair and I was like "I gotta find my brother." He was in third grade and he was watching the event on his class's television one floor above the first and second grade classrooms. I was told to wait for him in the principal's office.

Christmas 1986, 11 months later.

    Jim came running in when he saw me and gave me a hug. We waited for our parents in silence as we didn't know what was going on. I remember seeing teachers running around and staff frantically trying to contact parents. Someone even had news on in their office and hearing the talking heads explain everything somehow didn't comfort anyone. 

   Our parents picked us up and I broke the silence by asking about the shuttle. They didn't really want to talk about it right then and there. Looking back, it's understandable. They likely saw the launch themselves or heard about it on the radio and didn't really know what to tell us.

    I thought we were heading home and to the amazement of my brother and I we drove past our house and headed toward our Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete's house since they were taking care of us at the time. They dropped us off and I can remember Aunt Mimi making stuffed grape leaves for lunch.  Since that day it sort of became a comfort food for me. It's not a bad one, too!

Aunt Mimi and Jim circa 1996

    Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete did all they could to keep the two of us entertained. They wisely kept the television off until it was time for her "stories". Re: Daytime's finest soap operas.  We tried to talk to them about what we saw and she told us that everything would work out and that sometimes tragedies happen. She told us that all we can do is talk about what happened and be there for other people when tragedies occur.

    That was a great lesson to learn. It was probably the most important lesson I ever learned that school year. Forget the basics. Empathy is an important life lesson. Aunt Mimi likely was talking about her own family experiences as well. I didn't learn about what her family went through until decades after she passed away. Was she talking about her life or empathy in general? I like to think it was both, to be honest.

    Eventually, our parents picked us up and my mother was ready to talk about what happened. She pretty much echoed what Aunt Mimi told us. Sometimes tragedies happen and the only then we can do is stick with those we love and try to focus on good times with them. You never really know what will happen tomorrow. 

    That night I went into my room to play and took a long look at the toys in my room. I had a LOT of space-related toys from Legos to He-Man figures and Transformers. As a kid, I was heavily into space-related toys. You name it, I likely played with it. Though, things seemed different the day of the accident, I remember pausing a bit looking at them since it was space that killed a teacher. My mom took one of the Transformers and put it in my hand telling me that everything was going to be okay.  My brother came into my room with his Transformers and we started to play together. Yup. Nothing says unity and compassion like playing with two warring factions of transforming sentient alien robots. ;)

 

It's been a long road....

 I know that wasn't the point. The point is to move on despite tragedy and not to dwell on them because you'll drive yourself crazy. Space shuttles were relatively new at the time and sometimes tragedies happen as my mother told me. 

    I took that to heart and smiled as my mother gave me a big hug. The Challenger explosion was the first historic event everyone in my generation can remember. In the weeks that followed, we talked about what happened in class and once again the lessons Aunt Mimi and my mom taught me were passed down to us kids. In this case, it was good to hear the adults repeat what the other adults in our lives said over and over again. Still, while the adults in the room remained unchanged, the kids were forever changed.

    Today, friends on Facebook post on the anniversary of the explosion and ask where people were that day. They talk about the event with shockingly good clarity despite the lot of us being in our forties. Whenever someone asks me what the first event I remember hearing about on the news was, it's always that day because I was there. The day's events are forever etched into the brains of an entire generation. You never forget where you were or who you were with whenever tragedies or moments of great triumph occur.

    Tragedies happen. But, that doesn't mean we can't stop living. Did the event change my parents? No. Not really.  I still played with my space-related toys and watched science fiction movies and television shows with my dad despite what happened. I remember Star Trek IV: Save the Whales...er....The Voyage Home even was dedicated to the Challenger crew when it premiered that November. Monuments honoring McAuliffe were put up all around the state and every once in a while WMUR or other stations would talk about her and her legacy.

    Looking back, you could say it changed my generation in a way other events changed other generations before and after us. Do we wish it was a positive one? Yeah. But, sometimes events are negative and you have to deal with it as best you can. That's the only way we can stay sane. The Challenger explosion changed a lot of lives and forever changed how we handled traveling to the final frontier. You learn from the mistakes and try to make a better tomorrow while paying respect to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

See ya next time!

Pictures of the Enterprise and the Challenger crew is courtesy of Wikipedia.

52 Ancestors Week 11: Brick Wall

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 11:

The theme for Week 11 is "Brick Wall." What ancestor is giving you fits in your research? What ancestor had been a brick wall, but you’ve broken through? Or, how about an ancestor who built brick walls for a living?

Welcome to Atop the Brick Wall....

    With apologies to my friend and fellow comic nerd, Lewis "Linkara" Lovhaug, I welcome you all to another edition of "Atop the Brick Wall". The name of that genealogy show would rock so hard. But, it's too much like my friend Lewis's show, "Atop the 4th Wall". If you're interested in his reviews and retrospectives, I highly suggest checking him out here: http://atopthefourthwall.com/

    That said brick walls are truly one of the most annoying aspects of genealogy. Imagine chugging away adding ancestors and suddenly you hit the wall like Wil E Coyote. It's not pleasant. Earlier this year I talked about one such brick wall in the form of Moses Goodwin. Three months later and the wall still hasn't been broken. That's okay. There are other brick walls out there and many of them are on my mother's side of the tree.

What's this? Wikitree has a new look? Yup!

    Meet my 6th great-grandmother, Phebe Southwick, a woman shrouded in so much mystery she reminds me of a femme fatale in a James Bond movie or something. Seriously. There's like nothing on her anywhere. I only know she existed thanks to her marriage to James Frothingham in 1784 and through the births of her children. So, she did exist! I wasn't just imagining her or anything. 

   That's always a plus, right? I'd hate to find out if someone never really existed. However, even with the marriage and births used as a source it's still not enough to break that brick wall. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked!

    Researching women is tricky. I'm not going to lie. Researching women in a specific time and place is even worse sometimes because all you get is stuff like her first name. Gender roles have thankfully changed. Though, it is interesting to note that women in predominately Catholic countries don't have this issue for the most part. Though, you do want to be careful because your Domenica Gullo or Célanise Lefebvre may actually be a lady with the same name. You still need to research even if you have all the information in front of you. Look at how long it took me to break the brick wall that was Domenica Gullo!

Phebe's son, Richard.

    Let's put all of that aside for a minute and look at how I got into this mess in the first place. As stories go, this is a good one. I was building up my second great-grandmother Gertrude Stevens's tree using Massachusetts records. You really can't go wrong with records in the Bay State for the most part. Anyway, my path to Phebe went from Gertrude to her mother Evaline Fisher to her mother Frances Miranda Frothingham to her father Richard Sprague Frothingham and them Phebe herself.

    That's where things went a little sideways. I initially found a Phebe Southwick and when I was starting out I was sure that she was Richard's mother and the wife of James Frothingtham.  I built her tree up and it was one of those family trees that goes back to the 1000s. If I remember correctly, Ancestry automatically added that branch. This was back in 2006/2007 so I didn't have any means of checking my work. I assumed things were great until I started taking genealogy up again in 2017. I started to look at my old solo research to see if there was anything I needed to clean up. After all you want to check your work every once in a while!

    I asked for help confirming a few things on geni.com because I was skeptical of what I saw. A branch as full as that should not have been automatically added to my tree. That and I don't recall there being any sources. This was why I asked for help. Another pair of eyes is more than welcome every once in a while. To make a long story short, there were two Phebe Southwicks existing at the same time. One who had a link to the distant past and the one who turned out to be Richard's mother.

    The other Phebe turned out to be a "gateway ancestor". That's a person whose lineage dates back to the signers of the Magna Carta and usually those trees can be pushed back further than 1215 AD thanks to the signers being royalty and all that. 

        Proving that James didn't marry that Phebe was relatively easy. The Phebe who descended from the Magna Carta Surety Barons died before a few of Richard's children with the other Phebe Southwick were born. If memory serves, this included Richard himself! I couldn't believe I never saw that. Ah well. We all make mistakes! Naturally, I took a chainsaw to that branch and deleted all of the profiles dating back to the 1000s.

    The story of Phebe Southwick is why pre-1600 genealogy gives me trust issues. I still don't understand how the branch was auto-added onto my tree on Ancestry in 2006.  I'll probably never have an answer to that nearly twenty year old mystery. There must have been a glitch or something because Ancestry never did anything like that again!

    When the dust settled, I still had a problem. Who was the Phebe Southwick who was clearly Richard's mother? Where did she come from? Who the heck were her parents?! I honestly don't know. The only clues I have to her identity is her marriage to James. In fact, her last name might not have been "Southwick" at all. That would be problematic! It doesn't help that she wasn't referenced in the Southwick genealogy book.

    The only thing I know for sure is that she was born around 1760 as evidenced by her marriage and the births of her seven children. The only way I know that she was connected to the Southwicks somehow is because her husband unfortunately died without a will. A man named James Southwick took care of the estate and belongings. His connection to the family is unknown. He could have been a brother or another relative.

    As of March 2025, Phebe remains one of my strongest American brick walls. She's a tough one to crack because researching women in New England during her time is tricky when there are other women around who share the same name. Brick walls like her are definitely annoying and when you hit it you have no choice but to move onto another branch on the tree. There's not much anyone can do here and my friends and I have exhausted all avenues of research. If you look at her profile on Wikitree, you'll see what I mean.

    I did learn one valuable lesson from all of this. Pre-1600 genealogy is not for the faint of heart. I still don't understand how all those people were automatically added back in 2006. It's a good thing I deleted them all. I was always a bit skeptical about them. Now I know why!

See you next time! Here's hoping the mystery of Phebe Southwick gets resolved!