Genealogy Reviews Online

My Greatest Genealogical Mysteries - How Did He Find All of Those Young Wives?

Young Wives of Domenico Aggazio (1844-?).  This is one of those situations where I will never know the true story, but it would be fun to know more.  My paternal great grandfather Domenico Aggazio apparently was the source of a small population boom in Southern Italy.  Between 1869 and 1903, Domenico had 3 wives (not at the same time) and, at last count, sired approximately 11 children.  There actually could be more because I haven't gone through all of the records yet.  Everything I know about Domenico comes from the civil records of San Giovanni in Fiore - a little town in Calabria.  I'm hoping Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org gets this town's records online and indexed so I can more accurately sort out Domenico's marital and paternity issues.

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My Greatest Genealogical Mysteries - Sentenced to Prison, but for What?

Crime of Franklin E. Zaring Sr.  My maternal grandfather apparently was not a very nice guy - at least when he was drinking.  When he was 21, got my grandmother pregnant, married her in 1920 when she was only 15, and my mother was born about 5 months later.  Now I know people got married at a young age in the early 20th century, but there's a big difference between a 21 year old man and a girl of 15.  My grandmother also discovered he was an abusive alcoholic.  In fact the only thing I remember her telling me about him was "he got really mean when he was drunk."  He abandoned my grandmother and her two small children in the early 1920s and disappeared (both in real life and in government documents) on and off throughout the years.  For a long time I had nothing on this man between his 1937 application for a social security number and his death in 1964, but I soon learned more about him than I really wanted to know (not really...I want to know everything, but what I did learned was a shocker.)

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My Greatest Genealogical Mysteries - Illegal Immigrant or Not?

I was in my idea booth recently (a hot steamy shower) trying to think of a topic to write about, and for some reason, I started thinking of various mysteries surrounding some of my ancestors.  These thoughts weren't necessarily about brick walls, but about events in my ancestor's lives where I just scratched my head and wonder what the heck happened.  Over the next few days I plan on writing about a few of these characters.  I'm not sure how many I will get to because we are leaving early Saturday morning for a week long vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and I don't know how much time I will get to work on this series.  I'm hoping to have some quiet time where I can just sit back, listen to the ocean waves, and write.  So here we go with the first installment...

Canadian Border crossing of Antonio Agazio.  My paternal grandfather was born in the town of San Giovanni in Fiore located in Calabria, Italy in 1884.  He boarded a ship in Naples sometime in 1900 and immigrated to Canada - there's a story behind this too, but I'll save it for another time.  A family story has him traveling with a slightly older cousin (my grandfather was about 13-14) and entering North America somewhere in Canada.  He then worked in the Canadian timber industry and eventually crossed the border into the United States.  I don't have any official documentation showing this as fact, but in his citizenship paperwork from the mid 1920s he says he arrived at the port of Quebec, traveled by train across Canada, and crossed into the Untied Stated by ferry at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in July of 1901.  He goes on to say he traveled to Spokane, Washington and I assume his intent was to look for work.  Nine years later he shows up in the 1910 census as a railroad worker in Idaho's pan handle - a short 74 miles from Spokane.  This is all good information, and it's probably true, but the only documentation I have is what he wrote in the Citizenship documents about 25 years later.   

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My Irish Heritage

What does it mean to be Irish?  To be honest with you, I have no idea.  In fact I didn't know I had Irish ancestors until a few years ago when I started pursuing my maternal grandmother's family.  I was quite surprised when I discovered my second great grandfather (Thomas Hartford: 1826-1911) was born in Dublin and immigrated with his family to Canada sometime in 1832.  For some reason, as I was growing up, I thought this side of the family was English or maybe German, but I wasn't interested in genealogy so it really didn't matter.  I've thought hard about the times I spent with my grandmother (Anna Hartford: 1904-2001), and her family, to see if there was any indication of Irishness or Irish customs passed down through the generations, but I mostly drew a blank.

I say mostly because it's possible my family's Catholicism may be the only Irish link there is.  I always assumed my being raised a Catholic was a function of coming from an Italian family on my father's side, but because it was my mother who was so devout about church and who attended Catholic schools, I suspect this might be the Irish part coming out.  It was my mother who ensured my brother and I attended church and Sunday school - without fail.  My father was raised a Catholic of course, but was really ambivalent about the church.  It's possible I'm wrong about this though.  If religious activities are "mother centered" in Irish families like in Italian families, then my grandmother became a Catholic because of her non-Irish mother instead of her Irish father...leaving my little theory in the dust.

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