So in a rare moment of wit, I entered Ancestry’s caption contest yesterday. They were looking for the best take on the photo above. Turns out, I won.
So here’s the winning caption, with Photoshop courtesy of one of the page’s other fans (Ronnie Bromm O’Rourke).
The folks at Ancestry tell me a prize pack is forthcoming. I’ll let you know what I get!
My DNA test results are in (cue the Maury Povich music).
Actually, they came back a few weeks ago. The fact I’m posting now should tell you they were fairly unremarkable.
I knew my background regions all along. So, no surprises there. But what did shock me was how little of my DNA seems to come from Italy.
My profile states that I am 51 percent Western European, 24 percent Eastern European, 11 percent Great Britain and only 8 percent Italian. Whaaaat??? My grandpa was 100 percent Italian, as in, both his parents came from Italy and I’ve traced their roots very far back.
My grandmother was 100 percent Slovak. My other grandparents were 100 percent Polish and 98 percent Irish, with a little French Canadian thrown in because the Irish branch emigrated through Canada rather than the US.
I was expecting more Italian. But, ah, perhaps ol’ Fillipo Aristodemo had some other types of blood running through his veins!
I suppose it depended on what was in my spit that morning I took the test. Maybe the Italian portions were still sleeping.
I do take a lot of comfort in knowing that the majority of “me” is made up of the DNA most closely associated with my wonderful Grammy and my equally gentle, loving and kind Grandpa Krajenke (the Polish portion, if you couldn’t tell.)
I’ve been thinking a lot about how comforting this notion of inheritance is, at least for me and in my circumstance.
My mother-in-law, you see, is not doing well. She’s in the end stages of a progressive and ultimately fatal disease. My daughter, despite visiting her every week along with her Daddy, will only know her in pictures. However, there is a portion of her that will always be with her, that will always be with Jason, too.
My mother and father will be with me and with my daughter long after they are gone. A part of me will be with my daughter until the end of her days.
So, that means Grammy, and yes, Phil, are with me right now.
In physics, you learn that matter is neither created nor destroyed. With this test, it shows that is indeed the case. Lives echo on and on, catching the shore of the present day like the tide.
Boy oh boy. As if it wasn’t bad enough for me to spend all my free time immersed in records or writing, now Ancestry’s made it possible for me to get real answers via science.
I just got my DNA kit and I don’t know if I can wait the six to eight weeks it takes to get the results. What’s really cool is if you have a membership, you can enter your kit’s unique ID number and it will sync other people to your profile. So, no more guessing if these people are really your relatives. DNA says they are. My biggest hope is that some Venezia or Brescia relatives have taken the test.
It’s very simple. Spit into a tube (I did it first thing in the morning, before I even drank water). Seal it. Shake it up. Slip it in a little medical baggie and mail it off to Utah. It was in my mailbox by 8:04 a.m.
My husband did it and, well, let’s just say I may have to start a whole new blog devoted to the search for his family.
I’ll keep you posted on how I did.
Get ready! July 23rd, baby!
This is such a hard post to write. The title of the post is a warning; so, if these types of things are hard for you, read no farther.
For so many years, I’ve wondered what happened to the child my great-grandmother had just before she died. I’d hoped that somehow the child survived and there was a branch of our family just waiting to be discovered.
Now I know that was never to be the case. A few days ago, Pennsylvania released an enormous collection of death records, from 1906-1963. What I wrote away for all those years ago is now available right on my Ancestry page.
The baby, never named, was stillborn on Dec. 28, 1916. It was a girl. For some reason, I had always pictured the child as a boy. In fact, in my book, the child is a boy because I felt so strongly that she would have another son. Further proof, I guess, that your strongest assumptions can be total errors.
My heart cracks in half. I am writing this with my daughter’s monitor perched by my side, watching her sleeping peacefully. Mommy is hugging her extra hard tonight. I don’t care if I wake her up.
There is such a potent rush of emotions that occur when you give birth. I know the joy of seeing that little face held up for the first time, hearing her cry and know that the two of you — mother and child — have just come through the danger (no matter how modern the medicine or healthy you are) together.
The form does not indicate on the form the reason for the stillbirth, so we don’t know if the baby was premature, had some type of birth injury or was born in circumstances that prenatal care, fetal heart monitoring, C-sections and other basic medical interventions mostly prevent these days.
I also know why there was no body with Saverina at Mount Carmel. The child was buried in Calvary Cemetery. I will be calling them in the next few days to see what information they might have. It’s possible this is a potter’s field burial, with no stone and very little information.
This information again shifts my extremely conflicted feelings about Mike and Saverina. For all I feel they did wrong (not keeping the siblings together), it’s possible that the lens of grief led to decisions that perhaps were not fully thought through. I can’t blame them for that. I also can’t forget that while these types of things were more common in this era — spousal death at a young age and death in childhood or childbirth — they were no less tragic. Grief is different for everyone and no one way is right.
My great-grandmother suffered so much in the two short years between Francesco’s death and her own. The death certificate for the baby notes her maiden name as Saverina Venezia, and I wonder if she never did get over losing him. Because her death occurred in such a short period of time, she also never got the redemption that sometimes comes with years and understanding. I am hoping, at least, that the faith she had was her final comfort.
One of the most fun parts of writing the book has been connecting to relatives that I didn’t know I had. The Brescia brothers are an interesting lot to be sure, but I’m thrilled to have found the Venezia siblings, too.
My great-grandfather was one of three apparent children. Antonio was the oldest. Then came Teresa Sebastina. And, in what seems to be somewhat of a “surprise!” pregnancy, Francesco came along.
I owe this great bit of information to the incomparable Dina, who routinely goes to Sorbo’s main record halls to photograph records and managed to find the Venezias.
I also learned that it was very common for the folks from Sorbo San Basile to use their middle names, rather than their given first name. This most likely had to do with the Italian naming convention of male children being named for their grandfathers and female children for their grandmothers. It would get confusing after a while, I’m sure. All you have to do is remember the scene from ‘Goodfellas’ where Ray Liotta’s character is at his wedding and introducing his wife to all the cousins. So Antonio was, in reality, Giuseppe Antonio. And Francesco’s real name is Michele Francesco.
I can’t help but see that Saverina happened to marry a man who had the same first name as her deceased husband. Maybe that was her first mistake — to think the same name would equal the same type of person. Not all Michaels — or Laras or Philips or Jasons for that matter — are created equal.
And I also have come to find out why Antonio disappeared from the U.S. record. Antonio followed his little brother to America. He left behind a wife and five kids (yes — real Venezia relatives!!) to come to America. While here, he lived two doors down from Francesco and Saverina.
Antonio himself, sadly, would not live much longer than his brother. He died in 1918 back in Sorbo and is buried there. Of the five children, I have records for just two — the oldest and the youngest daughters. Each of them went on to have enormous families. Nearly 20 children between them.
I see so much of my grandfather’s story echoed in his father and uncle’s. Phil and Joe never lived more than a few miles apart, with the majority of their lives lived on the same street. As much as they could, Francesco and Antonio did, too. Because he was so much older, I imagine Antonio as perpetually amused by his little brother, but liberally dropping the “big brother” card if he had to. Perhaps this is far, far from the truth. But as I said before, I’ve taken a lot of liberties and fiction lets me. So why not consider Antonio from that angle, and hope that at least for a little while, Phil had more than one adult male he could look to for support?
In business-ese, digging into something and spending a lot of time with it has a jargon-y phrase: taking a deep dive.
Well, I’ve been scuba-diving in the 1940 Census since it was released a few days ago.
It’s not exactly relevant to my writing project. It’s more like a roadmap for what happens next. If writing is about building a story arc, then these bits of information might help me craft scenes that allude to something that may not happen for a decade, but still matter. And besides, if I see where they go, it will help me stitch together the path of how they got there.
Of course I had to look up Grandpa first. What I found is interesting. He’d moved out on his own. He was listed as a lodger at a boarding house on Lockhart Street. It doesn’t exist anymore. The street dead-ends under bridge on the North Shore. It’s interesting that Grandpa’s noted as having zero education. I’d always heard he’d never gotten beyond 8th grade. But it looks like the census man spoke with him directly. Hmm. I was happy to see he worked all year in 1939 as a “produce man” (I suppose that could be an abbreviation for manager or it could just be produce man). But that he’d made only $1000 for all his effort. It sounds abominable, but in reality, it was on the lower end of middle class. I figure he had a lifestyle very similar to the one I had when I was single and working for my first newspaper. You were OK, but you really hoped no big bills or unexpected circumstances hit.
I wonder how he felt, living alone. I know that when I shut the door on the first day of living in my first apartment, I was so excited to be in charge of everything. Seems crazy now, of course. Haha. But I wonder how a guy, who’d spent his entire life making sure his family stayed together, felt to finally have a little bit of space for himself. His little brother was married. His sister was being taken care of at the Fresh Air Home. Maybe he just relaxed a little. I hope he had some fun. I hope he went out at night, had girlfriends and found something interesting to do in his spare time. Maybe that’s when he learned to play the concertina!
As we know, Joe and Ruth got married in 1932, so they were out of the Brenckles house, too. They lived in the rear of Ruth’s mother’s house. They had been living there at least five years, too. Joe is a laborer in Retail Food. I’m not sure if that means he’s slinging produce boxes at Donahoe’s with Phil, if he’s working for the Brenckles’ stand or something else.
I also looked up Marion, to see if she was still hanging on. She was. She was still in her house on Ruby Way, but with one more kid. And her brothers were still living with her, although it seems that this person who’s doing the correcting to their posts has made the boys Stephen’s brothers. Their names are also misspelled, but misspelled in the same way they were a few times in the fire coverage. Grost. In fact, the cursive D looks like a G, so the Ancestry algorithm could just be picking up the variation.
Either way, by the eve of World War II, it looks as if everyone had put the events of the past behind them. They were, after all, a solid 17 years behind. For grandpa, it was actually pretty significant. He was 16 when it happened. He was now moving into a future where he was a full lifetime removed from all the troubles of his childhood.
When I think about Phil’s life, sometimes I think of Andy Dufresne from the ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and the line in the movie, as Andy’s escaping: *Morgan Freeman voice* “Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side…’
That’s about right.
Yeah, I kinda flaked for a year there on my postings.
To be honest, my research shut down as I conducted two more vital ones. The search for a new job (my choice, don’t worry!) and a new house (because it was time).
I’m happy to report that both were successful. I’ve got a new gig in Corporate America where I will continue to write, but in a different format and style. And Jason and I, after three years, finally found a place to call our own. Thanksgiving 2010 was spent binge-researching at the Carnegie Library. Thanksgiving 2011 found me elbow deep in paint and spackle.
But now that things have finally calmed down at work and on the homefront, I’ve gone back to my evenings in front of the TV, where I “Play along at home” as I watch ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ The first episode of the season was Friday (Martin Sheen) and I dug into the website after the show.
Saturday’s mission was seeing if I could find out what happened to the Drost kids. Marion, Frank, Thomas and Joseph survived the fire just as Phil and Joe did. Surely, they had scars from that ordeal, and likely more deeply because they lost their sister. Phil, miraculously, kept his sibling.
So, I started poking around. I found the family easily enough in the 1910 Census. Their father was also Frank. And he was an iceman in this family snapshot. Interestingly enough, there is the children’s mother, Teresa. The family appears to be of Polish-German origin, which means over the next two censuses, their national identity will change at least twice as the boarders shift due to war.
But a decade later, Teresa is gone. Frank, as the papers had said, was a police officer for the city. Interesting. I look up at the date on the census. It was recording literally the month before his children became wards of the Allegheny County Juvenile Court. A policeman. With four kids in county care. That alone would be front-page news today.
It’s hard to find big Frank, but by 1930, I think I may have found Marion and little Frank, along with Thomas.
If it is the same family, Marion is now Mrs. Marion Baker, with a young son named Paul who is almost 3 (quick math, NO he is not Howard Lager’s). Frank Drost and Thomas Drost (correct ages) are living with them and recorded as being brothers of the head of household, a title Marion and her husband Stephen seem to share. He’s recorded as Head, but there’s an H next to her name.
Again, though, I can’t be 100 percent sure because someone has used the feature Ancestry gives you to allow corrections to historic documents. I could have made one, for instance, when I saw how badly Pasquale’s name was misspelled in the 1920 Census.The corrected name is something else entirely, which holds me back from believing this is the outcome for Marion and her siblings.
I hope it is. Because that would mean that she at least (I hope) found peace and a home of her own. Her husband is a steelworker, and if Stephen’s personal history held to the wider arc, that would mean the family probably found a solid, middle-class life. And, just like Phil, she managed to keep her immediate family together.
Since I discovered his existence, I’ve been curious about Mike Natale. I wondered about the man he was, what motivated him and, most importantly, what compelled him to walk away from three children who’d just lost their mother.
There are plenty of good men out there who step up to the plate and raise other people’s children — whether they’re uncles, stepfathers, grandfathers or good friends. Why was Mike Natale not among them? Heck, even Pasquale, such as he was, took his niece and nephews in.
I’ve found no indication that the siblings remained with Mike after their mother died. And if she was in the hospital for a month, it could be possible they were shipped to Pasquale’s before that.
Natale is a hard name to trace because there are many, many, many Natales. With a first name like Michele (Mike), it’s is even harder. I at least have his birthdate from the marriage record in 1916.
So, I do what so often ends up working for me. I Google and Ancestry until I come up with … something.
What I found tonight could offer an enormous explanation. Once again, it was a variation of the name (which you can set filters for on Ancestry) that brought up the hit.
If it’s true, it adds a whole new dimension to my grandfather’s brief life with his stepfather.
You see, the Mike Nataley I found, who was Italian, the correct age, was a widower and living in Allegheny County was, in 1920, living in an insane asylum.
If this is indeed the same man who for a year was Phil’s stepfather, it would go a long way to explaining why he didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, take care of the siblings. It also creates a very sobering picture of what life might have been like for my grandfather in his home.
And it becomes even harder to judge “what kind of man” this stepfather was in light of this information. He could have been undone by grief and been dealing with a variant of depression. Mental illness was so incredibly misunderstood in this era people were locked up for things we treat successfully with talk therapy and medication today. He also truly could have had something very serious such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, which even today can require hospitalization. He could have been an addict. I don’t know. And what’s more, I don’t know if this Mike Natale(y) is our Mike.
So I’m Shoeboxing it until I find further supporting evidence.
And I’m left to wonder. Not just about Mike, but one of the perpetual questions of my search. What happened to Mike and Saverina’s baby?
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