Wow... I cannot believe it has been 18 months since my last post. My lack of writing has not been from lack of interest, but mostly lack of time combined with the lack of significant content to write about. My job and my daughter seem to occupy most of my time. Genealogy seems to be relegated to an occaisional evening when I manage to stay awake long enough, and have my laptop in bed. I should have written an article here when I found my father and my grandparents on the second day of the 1940 census release, but lack of time relagted it to a quick tweet and facebook post.

But a few minutes ago, I had a really significant breakthrough. I had written before about my great-uncle Guiseppe Cascio. His arrival record had eluded my early on in my research, though I had found my great-grandparents arrival record at Ellis Island in 1898, and they brought their second child with them, there was no sign of Giuseppe. Then I made contact with James Ragusa through a post I had made on an ancestry.com message board. He had done significant research on the Ragusa name and those who came from the village of Corleone. He was generous enough to share the research he had done on my branch of the family (one that he did not connect to his own Ragusa line) and that included the arrival record for Giuseppe. That record also showed that Giuseppe travelled to America with his uncle, Giuseppe Ragusa, and his grandmother.

Giuseppe Ragusa is the only know sibling of my great-grandmother, Anna Ragusa. Until today, my only hard evidence of his existance is that arrival record. I checked my correspondance, and that was a little over three years ago, just before my daughter was born. Since then I have looked for my 2x-great uncle many times. I found several possible matches, but never anything that I could pin down. I began to question if Giuseppe Ragusa stayed in the USA. Perhaps, he made the journey to accompany his mother and nephew across the ocean and then returned to Italy.

But today, I found him and his family!!! I was going through my ancestry.com hints (yeah, those little green leaves like on the adverts) during my lunch hour. There were a few 1940 census matches, the usual assortment of city directories, and hints that simply need dismissing.I skipped over a lot of UK hints, since I do not currently have a world membership. Then I came to Giuseppe Ragusa with six hints. I was not optimistic, since I was never able to dismiss many of the hints I had previously reviewed. I scanned down the list. I saw the 1915 NY State Census. Had I seen that hint before? It showed the name of a spouse and the eldest child. Then it caught my eye... the child's name is Antonina, the same as Guiseppe's mother, my 2x great-grandmother, Antonina Provenzano. I clicked in for more detail. The second child's name is Gaetano, the same as my 2x-great-grandfather. I started to feel some excitement. Could this finally be him? I looked at the census document itself to see where this family lived. Then I knew, with no doubt... Giuseppe and his family lived at 333 East 106th St in Manhattan, a mere two doors away from wherehis sister lived when she passed away three years prior.

I do love ancestry.com. I credit the website for getting my research off of the ground and providing me with well over half of my source material. That being said, their customer service is horrible. They never check their own bulletin board system. The comments on their blog are an unmanaged mess. When I asked the genealogy community for some ancestry.com advice on Twitter, I received a trite reply from @ancestrydotcom directing me to their customer service. So after months of no leads, I decided to take the tweeted advice and email customer service. Here is my email, regarding an Italian collection that was added earlier this year...

 

Earlier this year a new collection was added, Potenza, Basilicata, Italy, Civil Registration Records, 1861-1938. This was an exciting addition for my research. However, the village in Potenza from which I have ancestors, Bella, only has records dating back to 1923 and only death (morti) records. This is a quarter century after my ancestors left.

My questions are;

Are there more records for the village of Bella than what has been added to the collection so far?

Do the older records, marriage, etc exist?

Does Ancestry.com have the rights to them?

What would be the time frame to see additions to this collection?

Is there someone that works at Ancestry.com that oversees this collection or collections of Italian records that I could be put in contact with?

Thanks!

 

Seems like some fairly straight forward questions. Perhaps, it is crossing a line to involve a content manager with what they consider a customer service issue, but I have seen some ancestry employees interact with the general public in non-ancesty venues.

Anyway, here is their reply;

 

Dear Tony,

We appreciate your message.

Ancestry.com is constantly undertaking projects to add new site content in order to help you to be successful with your family history research. However, at times various issues cause these projects to be rescheduled or reprioritized. If you wish to keep informed about new content being added to Ancestry.com or submit feedback regarding Ancestry.com content, you can visit the Ancestry.com Blog at http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/category/ancestry-com/content/.

If there is anything else with which we might assist you, please let us know.

Susanne
Member Solutions
Ancestry.com

 

 

Thanks for the canned response that answered... how many was it?... oh yeah... ZERO of my questions!

Generally, I'd say it is a great thing to have another family member who had a head start doing research, and hands you a whole pile of research and documents. The downside is that when obtaining a large pile of documents at one time, I did not scrutinize them with the same eye for detail that I might have if I had done the research myself and had to scrap for each piece of it.

This past week I was looking through the sources for the Irish branch of my family tree, hoping to find some glint of info that might help me to make a connection with some of the 23andme Relative Finder cousins that I have been in touch with. In particular I was looking at my great-great grandparents Norris Donaldson and Eliza Reid, who were both born in Ireland and settled in England. The only parent I had on my tree was the the father of Norris, Alexander Donaldson. He also moved from Ireland to England, so while I had plenty of sources for both men, I could not find anything that actually showed that Alexander was the father of Norris. 

I began to search my paper and electronic records to find the missing link. I finally was able to locate it when I viewed the marriage certificate of Norris and Eliza. English marriage certificates of this time period only list the father of each participant and here was my paper trail to show that Alexander was the father of Norris. 

But, what I had failed to see when I obtained this document from my cousin last year, is that Eliza's father, James Reid, is also listed. I am no closer to having any idea where in Ireland any of these people lived, or where I might even start to search for more info, but I did discover the name of one of my 3x great-grandparents, and only the sixth one on my family tree. 

 

23andme ran a promotion last month for their ancesty edition. After sitting on the DNA sidelines for the past couple of years, I figured this might be a good time and price point at which to jump in. I ordered kits for me, my mom and my wife. My wife was sick when the kits arrived so hers was sent in a couple of weeks behind the others. Today I will write about the results of my Mom and I.

Some background. My Mom is from England. My Dad's side of the family is 100% Italian. My Mom's mom had no father listed on her birth certificate. Her grandmother also had no father listed. This leaves a pretty big hole in her family tree. One of my goals in asking her to take a DNA test is to attempt to identify who some of those ancestors are.

So here are the Relative Finder results. I have 86 cousins in RF, seven of those are predicted fourth cousins, the remaining are predicted fifth cousins. My Mom has 190 cousins in RF. 26 of those are predicted fourth cousins, the remaining are predicted fifth cousins.

We had a few people make contact within the first day or so after our results were posted. I have shared surnames and family tree info with a few people and we have exchanged some interesting messages, but thus far, no common ancestors found. In fact, what I am finding is that a fifth cousin is a fairly distant relative and finding a genealogical link between needs each of you to have your common line traced back about 250 years. I perhaps only have one line I can trace back that far.

One thing I found quite frustrating is that there is no easy way for me to reconcile the results from the two profiles with data in my account. Since those results are for my Mom and I, it would be interesting if I could see the intersection of our RF results or see all of my results that are not her results. This would be good info to have before making contact.

Being a geek, I wrote a program to sort through the RF results so I could see for myself how many RF results I have in common with my Mom. As it turns out 60 of my 86 are in common, and I have 26 that she does not share. My understanding is that southern Europeans are not as well represented as northern Europeans, so I suppose my 26 is not too bad.

From what I have read the success ratio for contacting cousins on RF is not very high. I only initiated one contact so far, and received a response, so I am one for one. I am sure that will change.

I have not had much of a chance to post recently. Been very busy around the house, with my daughter's first birthday last week and with work. I have managed to do a few things of genealogy interest.

I took advantage of the Oprah promo at 23andme and ordered three ancestry kits. They will go to my Mom, my wife, and myself. I asked my Mom to do it because she has never known the identity of her maternal grandfather and I thought there is a chance that we could identify him. My wife did not want me to spend the money on hers, she says it will come back and tell her 100% Chinese and never find and cousins. I'm hoping for a surprise. And then there is me. Besides my mother's missing branches I am hopeful I might be able to connect with a distant cousin from Italy. Hey, you never know unless you try.

This morning I filled out and mailed our 2010 census form. I have a whole new perspective on filling out the census now. I also made sure to scan the two pages I filled in so that my descendents can see it before it becomes publically available in 2082.

This afternoon I submitted an application to be on a reality television show called 'The Generations Project'. It is run by BYU TV and the first season is being shown now. I wrote about my great uncle Joseph and the Christmas day daughter that he had on the day that he was murdered. I don't know if I got in on time, but if I did get chosen, I think it would be an amazing experience. 

In my previous post I wrote about my phone call to Calvary cemetery in New York City. Since I now knew the location and exactly who was buried in the plot, I added the three names to findagrave.com. I also added photo requests for each, but in reality, I wasn't sure at all that there was any marker to photograph, and I was not sure if anyone would venture out until the spring to fulfill my request.

Much to my surprise, just over twenty-four hours after my phone call, I received an email from a generous woman named Rebecca, who took four lovely photos of a very nice tombstone.

I recently wrote an article about my search for information about my great-uncle Joseph who was murdered on Christmas Day 1924, the same day that his daughter was born. It was a good exercise, because it forced me to go back through all of the documentation I had collected thus far. One unrealized avenue of research jumped out at me. Joseph and his mother (my great-grandmother) were both interred at Calvary Cemetery in Queens New York. I had never looked into contacting the cemetery and trying to get their interment records.

So after reading some advice on the ancestry.com New York City message board, I called the cemetery. The woman I spoke with told me that the records would cost $75 for the first name, and $5 for each additional. A bit pricey I thought, but this could be a treasure trove of information.

Since I had two names, and I did not know if they were in the same plot, she asked the name and date of death and burial for the most recent. I gave her the info for Joseph. She put me on hold for about a minute and then came back and told me the plot was purchased by Antonio Cascio (my great-grandfather) on 06 Aug 1912. This was four days after his wife, Anna, had passed away. There were only three interments in the plot. Now I knew that Anna was one. I also learned the location of the plot.

The woman on the phone told me the last interment was in 1951. She put me on hold again and looked up the record. When she came back, she told me that the third name was my great-grandfather. He was buried on 21 Feb 1951. Since I still don't know his date of death, this would be the only new info I would learn.

When I asked her about ordering the record, she somewhat scolded me and told me that she just looked up all of the information for free, and I should save the $85. I agreed with her advice and thanked her for her help.

BTW... I should add, for anyone searching for info on contacting Calvary Cemetary. The phone number is 718-786-8000. It is located in Queens, New York. The address of the main office is;

Calvary Cemetery
49-02 Laurel Hill Blvd
Woodside, NY 11377

This image does not lend itself to being wordless...

I came across this while doing a search for my great-aunt Jennie's husband, Gabriel Bruno. Family lore is that he died in prison and Jennie remarried. I only discovered his name when I obtained the marriage cerificate for their only child, Charles Bruno. I doubt the Gabriel on this page is the one I'm looking for, but it was the other names on the document that surprised me. There are 19 people from Bella, the hometown of my great-grandparents in Italy. More interesting, in the join a relative column, several give the address "Cross Highway Westport Conn". This is the street where I grew up, and in 1901 was mostly farms. Did my great-grandfather provide a source of employment to those still in Italy that wanted to come to the USA? Was this a cheap source of labor? How many more people may have made the journey to come and work for my great-grandfather? It is amazing what a ship manifest can tell you about the history of your family, even when they are not mentioned.

Growing up I knew very little about my Grandmother or her family. She died from complications in childbirth when my Dad was only four years old. I heard her mentioned and saw a few photos, but she remained an unknown through most of my life. My Dad stayed partially in touch with three of his cousins, who were referred to as the 'New York family', but I knew little about exactly how we were related, and nothing of any of my other cousins from this side of the family.

As I dove into the genealogy of this family, relatively quickly I was able to find information on most of my Grandmother's siblings. I found marriage certificates and census documents. Received word of mouth info from living family members and identified children who were my first cousin's once removed. In fact I was able to learn the spouses and names of children for six of my Grandmother's eight siblings.

However one sibling, the eldest, eluded me. His name was Joseph, and he was 16 years old on the 1910 census. His occupation was listed as 'Piano Maker Shop'. He was born in Italy and he had not traveled with his parents when they came to the USA in 1898. I spent many hours searching ship manifests, as well as the 1920 and 1930 Federal Census, but to no avail.

Then I made a breakthrough. I was searching the death index for New York City for 'Cascio', the original spelling of the family name. An entry caught my attention. It was for a 'Joseph Cascio', 30 years old  who died on Christmas Day 1924. That made the birth year about 1894. I went back to my only other record, the 1910 census. The age matched. Was this man my Great Uncle? I ordered the certificate from the NYC Municipal Archives and waited.

The certificate arrived, and at once I knew I had found Joseph, but I had no idea that this would raise many more questions than it would answer. I saw the names of my Great Grandparents on the certificate. But it was the cause of death that really jumped off of the page. I could not read all of the handwriting, but I what I could make out said "bullet pharynx right orbit homicide".

I went to the website of the New York Times and did a search of the archives. It only took me a few minutes to find an article with my Uncle's name from Dec 26, 1924 with the title "One Dead and Two Dying, Others Wounded by Holiday Bullets". It was on the front page. I quickly purchased the article and read on in disbelief.

... five victims of the gunmen had been hurried off to Mount Sinai Hospital in an automobile by the brother of one of the wounded men, Joseph Cascio, 32 years old, of 242 East 105th Street. Cascio had been shot in the head, and his brother, Thomas, of 327 East 106th Street, was at his bedside in the hospital when he died about two hours after the attack. Thomas Cascio had requested the police not to take word of the critical condition of his brother to the victim's home because the wife of the dying man had given birth to a daughter less than six hours before the shooting.

A tragic story, but also one the reveals some amazing detail about my family. I have a cousin born on Christmas day 1924. But who is she? How could I ever find her? Might she still be alive? Did Joseph have other children? These questions have become one of my foremost genealogy goals, and foremost brick walls... to learn the identity of this cousin.

Since my discovery I have learned a little more about Joseph before 1910. He was born Giuseppe Cascio on Nov 6, 1894 in Corleone, Sicily. He traveled to the USA in 1901 with his Grandmother and Uncle, three years behind his parents. But from there, the trail goes cold.

I do know that according to his death certificate, his wife's name was Ana. However, I have been unable to find any marriage record for a Joseph or Giuseppe Cascio to an Ana. Likewise, I remain unable to find Joseph on the 1920 Federal Census. I have read through the scans of the area of Italian Harlem where is likely to have lived and tried to search misspellings, but he is not to be found.

I found a cousin, but my only documentation is a newspaper article. I know the birthday of my cousin, but I do not know her name. Even if I did know her name, a birth certificate from New York City in 1924 can only be obtained from the Office of Vital Records and then only by ones self or with written permission of the person.

And so my best hope for a breakthrough is to share this story with the world, and hope that someone can provide me with that missing piece of the puzzle. Any information or ideas are always welcome. Please contact me through the comments section or send me a message via Twitter.

I tuned in to PBS last night to watch the first episode of Faces Of America. Overall, I thought it was a good show, though it is a little difficult to keep track of the details of all twelve of the people who are profiled. I really enjoyed the segments on Yo-Yo Ma and Kristi Yamaguchi. Some of the research seems quite impressive, and I would have liked to have seen a little more about how some of those documents were obtained. I think the show could have done four hours on any one of the twelve.

I read on another blog that one of the upcoming episodes will explore genetic genealogy and the show makes use of 23andme's service. That is exciting as that is a step I have been considering for several months. 

Many people trace their ancestry to recent immigrants to the United States, and many of those who came entered the country in New York City, either through Ellis Island or earlier Castle Garden. While for many of them this was another stop on the journey to other final destinations, for many others New York City would be a place they called home.

I count myself among those who can trace my ancestors back to New York City. My paternal Grandmother's family lived in New York in 1910. I know this because, as I mentioned in my last post, I found them on the census of that year my first day as a member of ancestry.com. But after that the trail went cold.

My search led me to the Italian Genealogical Group and to the New York City Municipal Archives. This would be my first venture into using databases other than what was offered on ancestry.com, and it proved key in putting together important pieces of information on the history of my family.

While one can visit the Municipal Archives in person (and I do hope to do that one day) there are amazing databases of vital records indices that can be searched from the IGG website, or also from the Stephen Morse One Step website.

I searched for my Grandmother and found an entry for her in the NYC Brides Record Index.

Cassio Clara    Nov 19 1929   8545    Bronx    C200
Masiello James  Nov  9 1929        Bronx        8545

Although the dates were different on the two entries, I ordered the certificate online (current price is $15 plus s&h) and it arrived about one week later.

 

The marriage certificate for my Grandparents

 

I also attempted to order my Grandmother's birth certificate. I had a birth date from her headstone, and had determined her year of birth to be either 1906 or 1907. I paid to have both years searched but came up empty. There are not indices online to search birth records, and based on what I know now, I believe the my Great-Grandparents did not register the births of their children with the city.

I did however dig back into the database search. In the next year I would locate and obtain five more marriage certificates and two death certificates. The certificates proved to be a treasure trove of information about the story of my family.

My Grandmother's marriage certificate would help me to identify the ship manifest showing my Great-Grandparents arrival at Ellis Island in 1898. This document showed me that the original spelling of the family name was 'Cascio' and that my Great-Grandmother's family name (which was difficult to make out on the marriage cert) was 'Ragusa'. From here I found a haunting entry in the database. 'Anna Cascio' age 36, died Aug 2, 1912. I had no idea if it was her, but the dates lined up, so I ordered the certificate. It was her. She left nine children behind, and I would learn that my Great-Grandfather had the younger children placed in an orphanage and remarried.
 

 death certificate of my Great-Grandmonther

 

It made sense now, why I could not find them on the 1920 census. I spoke to my first cousin once removed, Fanny, whose Mom, Mary was also placed in the orphanage. She gave me a hint on the identity of the woman my Great-Grandfather had married. There were twelve marriages in the groom index for Anthony/Antonino/Antonio Cascio, but I now narrowed in on one, a mere five months after the passing of Anna Ragusa.

The tragic early death of my Grandmother was preceded by the tragic death of her mother. I could now understand a little about the life they led and imagine the difficulties they both must have faced. And from these records I learned the names of all four of my Great-Great-Grandparents who were all from the village of Corleone in Sicily. In less than a year I had gone from not knowing the maiden name of my Grandmother, to understanding a little of who she was and learning the names of all four of her Grandparents. 

I, like so many others these days, started my genealogy research with a 30 day free trial on ancestry.com. I'm not sure why I picked it at the time, there were no adverts on tv yet. I'm guessing I had seen ads online and in magazines. However it happened, I typed it in and signed up.

I started an online family tree. I entered in my name, my parents and grandparents. I was thrilled that right out of the gate I found my Masiello family on three different year's census. I also found my Cassio family on one census. In less than an hour I found my paternal grandmother with her parents and eight siblings. Even though I grew up knowing my paternal grandfather and four of his sisters, I learned of another sister that I never knew of.

It was an amazing and intoxicating start. I was catching the bug. But I would soon learn that these breakthroughs were not always so easy or so straight forward. Names of spellings can change. Indexes of records can have transcription errors and omissions. Census enumerators made mistakes. 

While I found my Masiello family on the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census, why couldn't I find them in 1900. I knew this because my two great aunts who I grew up near were born in 1898 and 1900. My Cassio family was more of a puzzle. I only found them on the 1910 census. 

The moral of my story is that ancestry.com is a great launching pad. It is still one of my primary resources. I love the online family tree feature. I continue to use this feature as my primary place to document my research. Some people will have an experience like the tv advert show. Type in a few names and get the leaves (hints) and connect to the family trees of others and fill in large parts of your tree. But many other people won't have such luck. And it is not the fault of ancestry.com. This kind of history is not an exact science. I have used many different websites to do research. I hope to write about some of the resources which have been most helpful to me. 

Today I start a new blog specific for my genealogy research. I wish now that I had started this blog back when I started on this quest. But at the time I thought I would have my 30 day free trial of ancestry.com, fill in some gaps, and be done. But nearly two years later I have come to realize that this is a lifelong quest that will always offer things to be learned and discovered.

I had an interest in my family roots, and I can remember making family trees when I was a kid, but it was never something that I had got back to as an adult. For me it started on the day my father died. A group of family and friends had gathered at his house, and we had taken out some old photos while looking for his military discharge papers. There was a photo of my dad's mother, my grandmother. She died when my dad was only four years old. I looked at the photo and thought about how I knew nothing about her, not even her maiden name and as of today I could not ask my dad about the little bit he knew about his mom's family.

Since that day I have made amazing progress. I have learned many details about my grandmother's family, as well as the other branches of my family, and my wife's family. More to come on those.

I am giving this blog the title of 'Across An Ocean' in dedication to six people in my family who gave up their life in their native country and came to live in the United States. To my great-grandparents, who came from Italy in the 1890s. To my mom who came from England in the 1960s. And to my wife who recently came from China.