Geneablogy - A Weblog about Digging Up the Family Tree (Genealogy)

Saturday, September 15, 2007

I suppose it's been a while since I posted here. When we bought our house four years ago, I knew that I would have to put genealogy on the back burner for a while. I didn't expect it to be this long.

Susan Kitchens has prevailed on me to post after this long absence. She's curating this month's Carnival of Genealogy. In conjunction with the upcoming release of Ken Burns' new documentary The War, the topic this time around is family stories about war. There aren't many war stories in my family. My grandfather enlisted in the Marines in 1944 and fought in the Pacific and was part of the force that occupied Japan, but he didn't talk about it much. I have one ancestor who fought in the Civil War and two in the Revolution, but I don't know much about them yet. But here's a story for you, Susan.

My grandmother was born in Austria-Hungary in 1912, right on the border between Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire in modern-day Ukraine. She was a small girl when World War I broke out, and given their location right on the border, there was a lot of back and forth, to and fro. It was not a great place to be. My grandmother told me that it was a difficult time. They grew their own food, and had a few animals. But the soldiers in the area weren't always well provisioned, and foraged for food as best they could. My grandmother's family, already at the ragged edge of survival as most peasant families in the area were at the time, had only one cow, and they couldn't afford to "donate" it to the cause. So, in order to hide the cow and keep the soldiers from taking it, they moved it inside. As in, inside their house. To the second floor.

Two adults, five kids, and a cow. I can't even imagine....

Posted at 3:05:15 PM || Link to this entry

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

I'm digging through my files now, figuring out what has come in in the past year or so since I last posted anything substantive here. One small thing I got was a copy of the Social Security application (SS-5) of my great-great grandmother Daley (Hertel) Schmitt.

I had gotten her death record a while back. She died in 1955, before the death records for Social Security were computerized, so she didn't show up in the Social Security Death Index, the easy way to get a copy of an SS-5. So I hadn't before. But the death certificate had her Social Security Number on it. That made it possible to send away for the SS-5 form.

There's not a lot of new information there. I already knew that her birthday was June 16, 1884, from her death record. I knew the parents' names, although it's interesting to see her list her mother Wilhelmina's first name as Minnie; now I know what my 3G grandmother went by in her daily life. And the SS-5 contains the best rendering of Daley's given name yet: Thecla Anna Hertel. So it was useful for that. Also, it's got her signature, which I didn't have before.

Social Security Application (SS-5)

Daley (Hertel) Schmitt

Posted at 10:17:39 AM || Link to this entry

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Welcome to anyone visiting this site after hearing about it on The Genealogy Guys Podcast. I was doing some ego surfing earlier tonight when I came across their podcast that mentions this blog (largely dormant since we bought the house). One of the podcast's hosts, Drew Smith, wrote a nice column about this blog (and how to start your own) for Genealogical Computing magazine a few years ago. He says some very nice things about me and this site in the podcast. The rest of the podcast (the parts that aren't about me) is pretty interesting, too. :-) The stuff about me me me begins about 13:30 into the show.

I haven't been completely inactive with my genealogy in the past couple of years, but most of my genealogy files are still in boxes, and the few things that aren't in boxes are not as organized as they should be. But I've got a couple of interesting stories I haven't told on the site yet, so I should be able to add them, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. And the house is really starting to come together lately, so I'm hopeful that I'll be getting the genealogy files in shape in the coming weeks and can restart my research.

In the meantime, I've added The Genealogy Guys Podcast to my subscription list in iTunes.

Posted at 1:31:56 AM || Link to this entry

Saturday, June 26, 2004

The archivist at St. John's - St. Luke Evangelical United Church of Christ in Detroit came through again. She had promised photographs of Charles (Herman) and Wilhelmine Hertel's grave in her last letter when she sent the records. About a week ago, I got another envelope from her. This one contained three photographs, all of that gravestone.

Charles F. H. Hertel 1847-1913; Wilhelmine Hertel 1850-1920

They're buried in Mt. Elliott Lutheran Cemetery in Detroit, on Mt. Elliott near E. Warren. According to the note on the back of one of the photos, this cemetery was known first as Trinity Cemetery, then as St. Charles before finally acquiring the name it's currently known by. The gravestone says that Charles F. H. Hertel (I've usually seen his name given as Charles H. F., so the stone may be wrong) lived from 1847 to 1913. So now I have a year for Charles' death, which means I can send away to the state of Michigan for a copy of his death record. I'm also going to write to the archivist to thank her for her help and to see if maybe there's a death record for Charles/Herman buried in her books.

Posted at 10:53:44 PM || Link to this entry

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

Charles Schmitt's death certificate says that his father, Robert Schmitt, was born in Detroit. Charles was born in 1880, so his father would likely have been born before 1860, and definitely by 1870. The state of Michigan has placed the Census for 1870 online in PDF format with a head-of-household index. So I searched for Robert. There were no heads of household named Robert Schmitt (or any variations) in the state of Michigan in 1870. So I looked at the PDFs of the census pages for every Schmitt, Schmit, Schmidt, and Schmid in Wayne County in 1870. There was only one Robert Schmitt in Wayne County in 1870 (at least in the census, near as I can tell). He was 13 years old and living in the house of his parents, John and Rosalinda (I think that's her name; it's hard to read, and might be Rosalia) Schmitt. Robert was the sixth of eight children listed. He was born in Michigan, presumably around 1857. His father John was a grocer, and clearly a prosperous one. He is listed as having real estate assets worth $50,000, quite a sum in 1870. John was 49 in 1870, which would place his birthdate around 1821. His birth place looks like Hessen Germany. There are three or four countries from back then with "Hessen" as part of their names, but the blob after "Hessen" doesn't look like any of them. It looks like Germany. I don't think Germany unified until 1871 or thereabouts, though. Go figure.

Anyway, I haven't been able to find Robert in the 1880 census on the Mormons' site. So I figured I would look for John, thinking that maybe Robert and his wife and newborn baby would be living in his father's house in 1880. Sure enough, there is a John Schmitt listed, living in Detroit, 59 years old in 1880, born in Hesse and a retired grocer (good for him!). He's living with his new wife, Anna, age 22, and his son, Francis J. Schmitt, age 14, who was 4 on the 1870 census, so this is apparently the same John Schmitt. And there's nobody else in the house. (Boo hiss!) In fact, I can find hardly anyone who was in the household in 1870 when I look at the 1880 census. Some of these names would be pretty hard not to find. There are only fourteen Cornelius Schmitts in the entire United States in 1880, for example (counting possible alternate spellings). There are only three Leander Schmitts. Unfortunately, none of them match other characteristics from the 1870 census, like age or parents' nationalities. The only possible match I found was a Charles Schmitt, born in about 1848 and with a father from Hessen and a mother from Baden, living in Detroit with his wife Mary and son Walter.

I'm not ready to claim this family as mine yet; I need proof that the Robert in this family is my Robert. But there's something interesting in the names of the children from 1870 that makes me wonder if this might not be them. I've seen the name of my 2G grandfather rendered as Charles Lean Schmitt. Until now, I thought that middle name might be Leon; it wasn't clear in my great-grandmother's handwriting. But looking at this family in the 1870 census, the two oldest sons of John and Rosalinda were Charles and Leander.

Posted at 11:11:32 PM || Link to this entry

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

I guess it's been a while since I posted anything here. Buying and owning a house has proven to be a bit more time consuming than I expected. We're unpacking things slowly, because there's work to do on parts of the house and it's easier to move stuff around when it's still in boxes. So my genealogy files are still in a couple of boxes. At least I know where they are. In addition, we're down to one car at the moment, because Laura's was totalled in an accident a couple of days after Christmas. That means that if one of us needs to go somewhere in the evening, the other one stays home. So my usual routine of going to the local LDS facility to look at films on evenings when Laura is out dancing just hasn't been possible. But that doesn't mean I've been totally inactive.

In late February, I sent mail to the archivist at St. John's - St. Luke Evangelical United Church of Christ in Detroit seeking information on my relatives, who attended St. Luke a century ago. I had found a marriage record in the files of Wayne County showing a Daily Hertle (sic) marrying a John Smith, something which confused me mightily, as I have a birth certificate for my great-grandmother showing her parents as Daley Hertel and Charles Schmitt. At least Schmitt and Smith are reasonably close. That marriage record showed that the officiator at the wedding was Charles Haass. Haass had been a clergyman at St. John's. I received a reply from the archivist a few weeks later with a number of documents. Not among them was a marriage record for Daley and Charles, though. The archivist tells me that Charles (Carl) Haass was retired by 1902, and that his son Otto was pastor at St. Luke's at that time. She checked the records of St. John's and St. Luke and the marriage wasn't in either. She suggests that perhaps the marriage took place at St. Luke but wasn't noted in the records for some reason. Very strange.

So there were a bunch of records, and among them was a burial record for Charles Schmitt. It says that he was born March 29, 1880, died July 19, 1935, and was buried July 22, 1935 in White Chapel Cemetery out in Troy, Michigan. That rang a bell for me. My grandparents and great-grandparents are buried in the same cemetery, so it makes sense that my great-great-grandparents might be there as well. There was no record provided for Daley (Hertel) Schmitt. I called White Chapel to see if I could find a death date for her. They were very kind and looked it up over the phone for me. Sure enough, she's there as well, and died on July 16, 1955. I had asked my dad if he remembered Grandma Schmitt, but he said he didn't; that's kind of odd, since he was almost twelve years old when she died. I tried contacting my aunt, who has a better memory, but her e-mail address appears to have changed. In any case, now that I had definite death dates for both Charles and Daley, I sent off to the State of Michigan for their death certificates, hoping that they would include their parents' names.

They did.

So now I know that Daley (Hertel) Schmitt's parents were Herman Hertel and his wife Wilhelmine, maiden name unknown at the moment. I had come across them as a family in both the 1880 and 1900 censuses as I was searching for Daley. But since I knew Daley was married by 1902, I didn't look at 1910, 1920, or 1930 yet. Now that I know the names of her parents, I'll have to look at those and revisit the earlier ones. Now I also know that Daley was born on June 16, 1884, in Detroit, where she spent her entire life. She worked as a cleaning woman according to the death certificate. The informant was her son Marshall.

Charles Schmitt's death certificate didn't tell me anything new about dates (which I had gotten from his burial record, above), but again, it gave me a couple of names. Charles' father, my 3G grandfather, was named Robert Schmitt, who was born in Detroit. His mother's name was Anna Souliere, my 3G grandmother, also born in Detroit. That's interesting; I had heard there was potentially some French Canadian ancestry in my tree, and this may be the beginning of it. I noted on Rootsweb that the surname Souliere was present in Quebec as early as the 1750s. So now I have to revisit censuses looking for Robert and Anna Schmitt in Detroit. My next step on this is to send away to the state of Michigan for Charles and Daley's birth certificates.

Now that I knew who Daley's parents were, I revisited the records I had received from St. Luke's. Among them was a burial record for Wilhelmine Hertel, my 3G grandmother, who died on August 12, 1920 and was buried at Mt. Elliott cemetery in Detroit on August 14, 1920. Wilhelmine is listed as either the wife or the widow (it's hard to tell) of Chas. H. F. Hertel. Possibly he went by the name of Herman? This will take some research. Most interestingly, this record shows the name of the town in Germany where Wilhelmine was born, Elsterberg, Sachsen (Saxony). Wow! So now I've crossed the Atlantic on this line! There's even a web site devoted to Elsterberg. Nothing about genealogy there that I can tell, but then again, my German is limited to knowing how to order a pepperoni pizza and a beer.

There was no burial record sent for Herman/Charles Hertel. It may pay to contact Mt. Elliott and enquire if they have a death date for him so I can ask the state for his death certificate, and also to ask the archivist at St. John's - St. Luke to see if she can find a burial record, which might also show his birthplace with any luck. I'll also have to look through the Germans to America series of books to see if I can find a record of them coming to America.

The Hertels were definitely here by about 1877. They're listed in the 1880 census with two children, Robert, age 3 and born in Michigan, and Emma, age 1 and born in Michigan.

There were some other interesting finds in the information from St. Luke. Immediately following the burial record for Wilhelmine Hertel was a burial record for Florence Minnie Miller, born to Russell and Evelyn (Schmitt) Miller. My grandmother had another sister! Unfortunately, she didn't live long; she was born on April 9, 1920, died on August 24, 1920, and was buried on August 26, 1920. I had never heard about Florence. I wonder if my grandmother knew, or if my Great Aunt Betty knows.

There was a baptismal record for my great grandmother, Evelyn Clara Schmitt. She was baptized on September 7, 1902. Her parents are shown as Charles Schmitt and Thekla Schmitt. I've seen Daley's middle name rendered as Theola or as Thekla, so this seems to be her.

There was a baptismal record for a child of Daley and Charles', William Hertel Schmitt, born April 17, 1923, and baptized May 5, 1923. Interestingly, immediately above that is a baptismal record for my great uncle Charles Warren Miller, son of Russell Miller and Evelyn (Schmitt) Miller, born April 23, 1923, and baptized May 4, 1923. So that means that my great-grandmother and her mother were pregnant at the same time and gave birth less than a week apart. Sadly, William Hertel Schmitt did not live long; there is a burial record for him stating that he died on November 25, 1923 of cholera, and was buried on November 27, 1923, in St. Charles Cemetery. I'm not familiar with that one.

The last record was a burial record for Arnold Hertel, the son of Chas. and Wilhelmine Hertel. He was born on April 7, 1889, died on December 27, 1911, and was buried on December 29, 1911. Again, there's the name Charles as married to Wilhelmine. That will take some investigation.

I think the next step is probably to contact Mt. Elliott Cemetery to see if I can get a death date for Herman/Charles Hertel. Then I can send away to the state for death certificates for Herman and Wilhelmine. I'm also going to ask for birth certificates for Charles Schmitt and Daley Hertel now that I have their birth dates. I'll probably also contact the archivist for St. Luke to see if she can find a burial record for Herman in the hopes that it, like the one for Wilhelmine, will list the town in Germany that he's from. The 1880 census shows he was born in Sachsen (Saxony), so I suspect he's probably also from Elsterberg, but I'll need to investigate that. Plus I'll need to look up censuses for the Hertels up to 1930 and revisit the 1880 and 1900 censuses.

Baptism Records

Burial Records

Death Certificates

Posted at 6:25:48 PM || Link to this entry

Monday, September 15, 2003

Unfortunately, genealogy has had to take a back seat for a second time this year. Fortunately, it's for another good reason. My wife and I are buying a house. My father got a job in Florida, so my parents' house became available just as the lease on our current house was coming up. Perfect timing, that. We've been so busy with packing, throwing things out, filling out paperwork, talking to lawyers and bankers, documenting our finances and the like that there's been no time for research to speak of. I have three films sitting at the local Family History Center that are getting lonely; I ordered them when I was unemployed and had lots of free time, but now I have a job and an impending move, and I have no free time. Anyway, that explains the recent lack of postings here, not anything like lack of interest. I'm looking forward to having some time to pore over records and solve puzzles again, hopefully in a month or two once we're settled into the new place. The move happens in a little over a week.

Posted at 3:24:16 AM || Link to this entry

Sunday, June 8, 2003

[ Ralph Brandi, Jr., age 2 or thereabouts ]

I got e-mail from a cousin of mine today. He mentioned that the photograph of my grandfather on the front page of this site reminded him tremendously of his own grandfather, my grandfather's half-brother. That prompted me to match what I did for my grandmother who passed away in 2000 and post a page of photographs of him, something that I didn't have at the time.

Posted at 5:57:36 PM || Link to this entry

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

I've been thinking about going in to the National Archives in NYC for the day for a while now, but wedding preparations kept me busy. Now it's over, and we're back from the honeymoon, but I'm starting a new job on Monday, so if I want to go, I better do it in the next couple of days. So I was going through my notes to figure out what I wanted to look up. One of the things I was thinking of going for was a copy of the shipping record from 1909 for Atillio Maracci, Laura's great-grandfather on her father's side. The last time I looked on the Ellis Island site, they didn't have that page available, so I figured I'd need to look at the microfilm.

Good thing I looked again, because now it's there. As I mentioned before, he arrived in New York on the Regina d'Italia on 6 May 1909. The record shows that he came from Arcola, rather than Oriola as transcribed, and it shows that he left behind his wife, Casimira Peri, whose name we already had, so I know this is him. He's listed as going to Hibbing, Minnesota, which matches the stories Laura's family told us, and which is right near Chisholm. Most interestingly, the manifest tells me that Atillio was indeed born in Fivizzano. So given that I know roughly when he was born (1867-8) and now where he was born, I can get the records from the Family History Center (when I can find some time what with the new job) and push this line back at least one generation. The records that the FHC has for Fivizzano start in 1866, so hopefully he's in there.

Other items on the manifest include the fact that Atillio was joined by another person from Arcola, Eduardo Mosconi, who was the same age as Atillio and was going to the same location (same person, even), and that Atillio had been in the US before, from what looks to maybe be 1901-1905, in Albany, Minnesota. I haven't been able to find a record of that trip yet.

Posted at 9:14:52 PM || Link to this entry

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

I've been busy in recent months working on an addition to our chart: our wedding. So, not much time for genealogy. But since I'm not working at the moment, I may have more time for genealogy once the wedding is done.

We got a neat package in the mail today. It's large-format printed charts of our genealogy. Heartland Family Graphics out in North Dakota is run by a gentleman named Tim Lundin who is a big fan of the genealogy program I use, Reunion for Macintosh, and he's got a business that does a great job of printing out the huge charts that Reunion can generate. They do nice work. Highly recommended. I got the charts made for the wedding. I think they'll go over well.

Posted at 6:25:37 PM || Link to this entry

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Back in June, I mentioned that I hadn't proven to my own satisfaction yet that Francesco di Rosa, Laura's 4G grandfather, was the son of Giovanni di Rosa and Sebastiana Irace and the widower of Maria Nicolais.

Now I have.

I ordered the film of marriage records from Cairano, a town near Calitri and the place where Francesco's wife Colomba Frieri was from. I hadn't found a marriage record for them in Calitri, so I figured they probably married in the home town of the bride. I was right.

Francesco and Colomba married in Cairano on 5 Jan 1811, after having banns posted in both Cairano and Calitri on 23 and 30 Dec 1810. The marriage record shows that Francesco, age 27 and a native of Praiano, on the coast south of Naples if I recall correctly, was the widower of Maria Nicolais, and the son of Giovanni di Rosa, a 55 year old trader living in Calitri and his wife Sebastiana d'Irace, age 50. Colomba, age 21, was the daughter of the late Carlo Frieri and his wife Rosa Frieri, still living at the time of the marriage and 55 years old.

I hit the jackpot here. Francesco would have likely been born about 1783, and Colomba about 1789. Giovanni di Rosa and Rosa Frieri would have both been born around 1755, and Sebastiana Irace about 1760.

As I mentioned in June, Jason has a copy of a document about this branch of the family that fills in some of the details. I haven't seen that yet, but hope to eventually.

Marriage Records

Francesco di Rosa and Colomba Frieri, 5 Jan 1811

Posted at 7:54:34 PM || Link to this entry

Sunday, January 19, 2003

Laura and I visited her parents' house tonight and pumped them for more information on her dad's family. We drew up a tree of everyone we knew, including siblings. Good thing we did, because I think that's led to a breakthrough.

One interesting thing we learned was that Laura's great-grandfather, Atillio Maracci, came to America at one point. He went to Chisholm, Minnesota, and we were told he brought his daughter Emma, Laura's great aunt, to Minnesota to marry. So I searched on the Ellis Island site, and I found both of them. When I first found Atillio, I wasn't sure it was the right man, even though there was nobody else with that name, but now I am. He came to America on the Regina d'Italia, arriving in New York on 6 May 1909. He was 41 at the time. This would place his birthdate at about 1867-8, which is new information. Unfortunately, the image of the shipping manifest appears to be missing on the Ellis Island site, and I wasn't able to find it using Stephen Morse's alternate search interface, either, so I'll have to get this from the microfilm. The transcript shows his place of origin as Oriola, Genoa; there are a number of Oriolas in Italy, but none of them appear to be in Genoa province. I believe this is a mistranscription.

Emma, age 16, came to America on The America, arriving in New York on 5 Sep 1910. She was travelling with her cousin, 31 year old Paolo Tognoli, at her father's behest. Atillio paid for both their passages, and they were listed going to join him in Chisholm. The manifest says they were both from Arcola. Arcola could easily be misread as Oriola, particularly if it's written the way it's written in Paolo's entry. When I looked up Arcola on Multimap, it turned out to be right next to Pitelli, the village that Laura's grandmother listed as her hometown on her Social Security application. Even more interestingly, Emma and Paolo both have a different town listed as their birthplaces. I wasn't sure what the manifest said, so I entered the first few letters I could puzzle out into the search engine on Multimap and came up with Fivizzano, which is some few miles inland from Pitelli, Arcola, and La Spezia. It's also apparently the only town in Italy that starts with the letters "Fiv". Rereading the manifest with that knowledge, the birthplace definitely appears to be Fivizzano. And when I search for Maracci on the Ellis Island site, there are a number of other Maraccis who come from Fivizzano. Also, the Labo surname map shows one of the larger concentrations of the name Maracci today right in the area of Fivizzano. And Maracci isn't a common name, appearing in only 55 places, many of which are in the area around La Spezia. One other thing; the manifest lists Emma's mother as Catarina Peri. We have her name as Casimira Peri from other sources, including Laura's baby book and Albana's Social Security application. Since everything else checks out, I believe this is a mistake on the original manifest.

Posted at 10:33:12 PM || Link to this entry

Thursday, January 9, 2003

Looking at the web site for the State Archives in Przemysl, I find a list of other archives that contain records from the area that the Przemysl archives covers (scroll toward the bottom). Interestingly, Bircza shows up twice. Some of the records from Bircza are at the State Archives in Krakow, for whatever reason, and some are at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. I really wonder what kind of records are there.

Posted at 12:03:21 AM || Link to this entry

Friday, November 22, 2002

My 6G grandparents Domenico Rapa and Cecilia di Missere were in the Catasto, as was their son, my 5G grandfather Antonio Rapa. I didn't learn a whole lot from this one. The information in this entry seems to have been compiled in 1753. Antonio, who was born in January, 1749, is listed as four years old, and Isabella, born in April, 1751, is shown as two. Also, Maria Costa, who was born on 27 Dec 1753 and lived until 22 Apr 1822, is not shown in the Catasto, so I think that's a pretty good indication of when this entry was recorded. Domenico is shown as being 38 years old, which places his birthdate around 1715, and Cecilia is shown as being 39, making her birthdate about 1714. Unfortunately, that doesn't really do anything to clear up the question about who Cecilia's parents are, because either of the ones who show up in the baptismal records could plausibly be her, having been born in 1715 and 1716.

Other children from this family shown are Salvadore, age 7; and Tomaso, age 6. Oddly, those dates would place this record as having been compiled in 1751. That's why I can't take the dates like "about 1714" too seriously; there's too much leeway for them to vary by a few years.

Carlo Manzo and family also show up. This record is interesting because I had only seen his wife's name in Latin before, and wasn't sure what the name would be in the vernacular. The name is rendered here as Pressea Piazza. They are my 7G grandparents. My 6G grandfather, Domenico Manzo, appears here as a one year old. He was born on 10 Dec 1751, so that's a vote for 1753 as the compilation date. Other son Francesco is shown as eight years old, and he was born on 5 Feb 1745, so that's another indication that 1753 is the date here. Carlo is listed as 40 years old, so he was born in about 1713. And he wasn't born in San Potito, but rather in nearby Sippicciano, a frazione of Piedimonte d'Alife. He worked as a plowman. Pressea was 37 at the time of the Catasto, which places her birthdate at about 1716. There is a baptismal record for a Praxidis Dorothea Piazza, daughter of Domenico Piazza and Antonia di Biaso, on 10 Oct 1712, but I don't know if this is her or not. The date is a few years off. The name is right, though; Domenico Manzo's baptismal record, written in Latin, gives his mother's name as Praxide Piazza. Likely but not proven.

My 6G grandmother, Pietronilla Izzo, appears with her parents, Ambrosio Izzo and Cristina Riccio, my 7G grandparents. This is interesting because I can pinpoint reasonably well that Pietronilla got married to Andrea d'Amato in about 1754. The record appears to be from either 1752 or 1753; son Francesco, born in March, 1741, is listed as 12 years old, while daughter Nunzia, born in March, 1745, is listed as 7 years old. Pietronilla, born on 20 Dec 1735, is shown aged 16, which suggests 1752. Her future husband Andrea d'Amato appears aged 19 years old on his family's entry, and since he was born 1 Dec 1732, that suggests his family's entry was created in roughly 1753. And according to the baptismal records, Pietronilla and Andrea had their first child, my 5G grandmother Angiola d'Amato, on 19 Oct 1755. So roughly 1754 looks like a very good fit for their marriage.

Ambrosio Izzo is 40 years old in this record, making his birth date about 1713. And Cristina Riccio's age is 37, I think, making her birth date about 1716. I know from Petronilla's baptismal record that Ambrosio's father was Filippo Izzo, but I don't see Ambrosio in the baptismal records, or in fact any Izzos born to a Filippo Izzo. There is a Cristina Riccio born on 23 Jul 1713 to Domenico Riccio and Anastasia Sauro, but as usual, without other documentation it's hard to prove that this is the right one.

There is a Filippo Izzo in the Catasto, along with his wife, Anna di Muccio. He's the only Filippo in the Catasto, but since I can't find Ambrosio in the baptismal records, I can't state for sure that this is his father. I think it is, but I need more proof, like a marriage record or death record that states who his mother is as well. Filippo and Ambrosio are both carpenters, so that's something that makes me think there's a connection. Filippo is listed as 72 years old. None of the people on this record appear in the baptismal records, but taking 1752 as a reasonable guess, that would place Filippo's birth date as about 1680, plus-or-minus, give-or-take. That would have made him about 33 years old when Ambrosio was born. Anna di Muccio was 64 years old, which would place her birthdate at about 1688, and she would have been about 25 when Ambrosio was born, prime child-rearing years. So I think it's likely that Filippo Izzo and Anna di Muccio are my 8G grandparents, but not proven.

Thus endeth my sojourn through the basics of the Catasto Onciario. There's a lot of information there about how wealthy all the families were and such, but it's going to take a lot more work on my part to parse out what's said there. I haven't found too many sources on how to read a Catasto Onciario, and my Italian isn't good enough to just read it cold.

Catasto Onciario Records

Baptismal Records

Posted at 7:42:12 AM || Link to this entry

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

My friend Mario found Laura's great great grandmother Lucia Nannariello and her daughter Mariantonietta (listed on the manifest as Mariangela) on the Ellis Island web site. They came over on the SS Liguria, arriving in New York on 6 Nov 1902. This time, Lucia's name was mistranscribed as Marmariello. I had found an earlier entry for them on the SS Lahn on 27 Oct 1902, but their records had been crossed out, which Mario pointed out to me. He suggested that they probably had missed the ship and come over on the next available one. The short interval between the two records would certainly make that a plausible explanation. Thanks a ton, Mario!

Posted at 10:36:35 PM || Link to this entry

Glutton for punishment?

Well there's more where that came from:

The Backstory

For Christmas, 1995, my Great Aunt Betty sent my father a family history that had been compiled by her cousin Hugh. It was a fascinating document, one that traced my father's mother's family in this country back to 1632, and before that in England to the mid 1500s.

But because of where the history came from, it necessarily didn't cover large segments of my genealogy.

I made fits and starts over the next five years trying to do more research, but didn't really put much effort into it or make much progress. I taped and interview with my grandmother on my mom's side, and my dad asked his father where Ralph Brandi Sr. had been born, but that was about it.

Forward to January, 2000. Both of my surviving grandparents passed away within eight days of each other (opposite sides of the family). My grandmother didn't exactly surprise us, but my grandfather's passing came totally out of the blue. I had been planning to call him and ask more questions, but first I wanted to finish some work I was doing on some photos of gravestones of ancestors mentioned in the history Aunt Betty had sent so I could send it to them.

I miss my grandparents very much. Working on this has been a way to keep them in my minds while doing something that helps me deal with their passings in a constructive way.

I've done much of my research on the Internet, but I've also gained more than a passing familiarity with microfilm readers. This is a record of what I've found, and pointers to where I found it.

Ralph Brandi
March 1, 2000 (updated July 13, 2005)

FAQs

Geneablogy?

It's a bad visual pun. Don't try to pronounce it, you'll just hurt your tongue.

Explain, please

This is a weblog (or "blog" for short). A weblog is basically a page or set of pages of links to items of interest on the web, updated regularly or semi-regularly, usually with some sort of commentary. It's kind of the web equivalent of the e-mail you get from friends pointing you to neat pages. They're very hot on the net right now. Geneablogy was the first genealogy weblog, started on March 1, 2000. There are others that cover more general topics within the field, but this one is narrowly focused on my own search and research. This blog has been the subject of columns in The Detroit Free Press (March 24, 2001), Personal Journaling magazine (June 2002), Genealogical Computing magazine (October, 2002), and Family Tree Magazine (February, 2005). I also have another weblog that is not focused on genealogy, but covers a wide range of topics, There Is No Cat.

So why are you doing this?

Mainly as a personal diary of my research for myself, and also so that friends and family can keep up-to-date with the neat stuff I'm finding out if they're so inclined. If you're not family or a good friend, you'll probably be bored stiff by this. And if you are family or a good friend, you may still be bored stiff by this. :-) (If you are family and you're not bored stiff and want to contact me, a good way to do so is e-mail to an address made up of my first name at this domain name. Please forgive me for not spelling it out; I get enough spam as it is.)

And way back in third place, if I find some useful resources, I'll link to them (but usually only in the context of what I found there).