I need to participate in Saturday Night Genealogy Fun more often. I believe because of my post, and a link to a past piece I wrote, Lorine McGinnis Schulze from Olive Tree Genealogy found my grandfather (Antonio Agazio) in the Ancestry.com border crossing database and kindly told me about it. I've been
searching for his border crossing record for a long time, but he's been hiding. The exciting part about Lorine finding this for me is I now have two more geographic places documented where his feet touched the ground. I have the feeling this document was recently added to the Ancestry.com border crossings database because I searched relentlessly for him, but stopped looking about a year ago. Of course I never searched for the name "Toney Agarzio" as it's listed in the document. I do appreciate Lorine taking the time to find this for me - it's a major find.
Of course finding this document is great, but as things usually go, it creates many more questions than it answers. According to my grandfather's first set of naturalization documents, he initially crossed the border at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan on 8 July 1901 following his trip from Italy. It then says he traveled to Spokane Washington where indications are he found work with a railroad company. This new document shows he crossed the border in September 1907 and lived in Winnipeg, Canada. The 1910 census shows him working on a railroad crew in Northern Idaho so I assume, before this crossing, he was in Canada in the same line of work - I don't know for sure.
This is new information for my family. We knew he immigrated from Italy to Quebec, and worked his way across Canada before crossing the border, but never knew he went back. We never knew he lived in Canada for any extended length of time. Just for fun, the following are the geographic points I have documented for him (some are where he said he was):
San Giovanni in Fiore, Provence Cosenza, Calabira Italy.
From Naples, Italy to Quebec via France and Liverpool England.
From Quebec to Spokane, Washington via a border crossing at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan (19 June 1901).
Winnipeg, Canada to Eastport Idaho and onward to Spokane (Sep 1907).
Republic, Ferry County, Washington (Dec 1908)
Bonner County, Idaho - 1910 census (12 May 1910)
Denver, Colorado (1913 marriage cert).
What I find amazing is he did all of this before he was 25 years old. I have quite a few documents after he arrived in Colorado, and I don't think he left the state until he died in 1949, but who knows what other adventures he had that I still don't know about.
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