Thar She Blows!

We are currently sitting out a nor'easter here in Gloucester.  The wind's been very strong for about the last two days.  The rain comes and goes, but when it does; it's in sheets straight-lining out to the water.  It doesn't feel threatening and it's certainly not the worst storm we've ridden out here but it does seem to be getting a great deal of media attention.  I did have to anchor myself to get some of these shots earlier today:

Robert and Bobbie visited last weekend and we had a great time touring the sites and sounds of Gloucester.  We even caught a rainbow shining over their heads!

Robert seeks shelter from the rain.

We walked to the end of the breakwater on a lovely afternoon and waved at the boats coming in.

It was great to have some real time to sit and chat and get caught up.  We truly appreciated that they made the trip out here so we could share some of what we love about the place.

My birthday was very nice.  I've discovered that I love spending my birthday here, regardless of the weather situation.  Since it was rainy, we toured the Cape Ann Museum and the Maritime Heritage Center.  Naturally everyone else in the city had the same idea for a rainy day, but it was still fun. 

We are swiftly coming to the end of our little getaway so we find ourselves trying to pack in all that remained on our wish list for this trip.  I definitely got my fair share of family research accomplished!  We got ourselves some weather as an added plus.  So I guess I'll see you on the other side back in Harpursville again!

The good life continues here in Gloucester for me.  James stays in Harpursville during the week to take care of his obligations but I get to stay here.  It's a little lonely some of the time, but I have been working on family history so much that names and dates float through my head throughout the nights. 

James was here last weekend to celebrate his birthday.  A trip to Boston University to see one of his former field hockey players who now plays for UCONN.  It was a barn-burner but the "good guys" won in a shootout after a double overtime game.  He looks happy, doesn't he?

The trip worked out well as a trial run for my own trip to the Boston Public Library tomorrow by train and subway.  At least that's the plan for now. 

As I've been working on the family tree (all Ryan all the time), it's interesting to note that those little shaky green leaves that the Ancestry.com commercials talk about came to life this week--for the Italians!  Bentivoglio, Maistrelli, Manzelli, Dalpiaz and Odorizzi.........all these hints and I can't easily follow up on them until I get back to my records at home.  Stay tuned and we'll see what happens.

James got a nice phone call from Thomas for his birthday.  They had a nice chat reminiscing about street football games in the neighborhood.  Coincidentally, last night there was an episode of The Middle during which the mom tried to get the kids to get along better.  They ended up playing parents vs kids in street football--and it worked to bring the kids together!  The problem for the parents was that grew tired of these games much faster than the kids did.  I'm quite certain that wasn't a problem for James and Thomas during their games.....I'm right, aren't I?  :)  Anyhow, that show made me think about how nice it is that you siblings all found ways to get along and stay in touch.  I understand that's hard work but very much worth the effort.

On that note, we are expecting a visit from Robert and Bobbie this weekend.  We hope they enjoy Gloucester but, in any case, we are looking forward to time together continuing those efforts to share experiences and spend time together.  A report will be forthcoming.

October 10 1955 and 2014

This is one of our favorite first stops when we visit Gloucester!  It will be wonderful to be able to celebrate James' birthday here in Gloucester this year.  So far, I've been having a grand time -- doing family history research on a full time basis while James takes care of the homestead during the week.  Unfortunately for you, it's pretty much "all Irish all the time" and not so much with our Italians.

So let's add a new dimension to James' birthday celebration this year by thinking a little bit about October 10 1955.  It was a Monday, and we know that Monday's child is fair of face.  Right? So far, so good.  There were already 3 children of preschool age waiting at home for his arrival.  That's just hard to imagine. 

Eisenhower was President and Mitch Miller was playing on the radio.  Vice President Richard Nixon was featured on the cover of Time magazine that week--scary looking even then.  Speaking of scary, James shares his birthday with David Lee Roth. 

We had another "Pay it Forward" incident last week while James was here in Gloucester.  On our first night, we decided to have dinner at Giuseppe's, a restaurant we hadn't been to in a while.  We were having a drink at the bar while we waited for my aunt and uncle to arrive.  A woman was celebrating her 94th birthday so James offered to buy her a shot to celebrate.  Not surprisingly, she refused but was quite charmed at James' flirting with her.  I said if she refused a drink, she was definitely not related to the Ryans.  We were re-telling this story at our table after we were seated when a man approached the table to compliment James on how he treated the birthday girl.  He left his gift card with some remainder on it for us to apply to our meal and noted he was paying it forward. 

At first, I thought it was an appropriate turn of events following my previous efforts.  Then we learned that Giuseppe's unexpectedly closed its doors for good the very next day!  I think we'll try to have birthday dinner someplace we hope will be open the next day.

WWW Dalpiaz

As I've mentioned before (probably several times), sometimes I just Google names to see what comes up.  Most recently I did that for the surname Dalpiaz and came across a few interesting new websites for you to check out when you have a chance.

First of all, here's a Dalpiaz ancestry blog for the Trentino area:  Dalpiaz Ancestry   I think you'll see familiar names and locations here.  I'm not the only one out there attempting to blog the ancestry for your family!

This Trentino Heritage blog is run by Sal Romano, with whom I've had some correspondences for the Trentino area and history.

Another interesting exercise is to seek the Dalpiaz name in cemeteries around the world, which can be done at Find A Grave.  Here are the results.  I participate in this volunteer effort and it has taken me on some interesting adventures!  Some of the pictures here are mine.

Of course, there are many ways to spend your aimless online surfing time but if you just need to take a look at something new and different, I'd suggest these.

On another note, perhaps you've heard that Amy "said Yes to the dress"!  I took a trip to Erie yesterday so that she could show me the dress she'd fallen in love with.  Unfortunately, the shop sample of this dress had been sold so Amy couldn't model it for me.  She had pictures from a previous visit and it is quite beautiful.  But the confirming fact for me was that she loved it so the dress has been ordered.  It was much more emotional than I was expecting.

The emotions were on high alert after we found some evidence in our house that Ron Henry had stopped by for a visit recently.  He had a habit of moving the toilet paper around in the downstairsbathroom, which kind of drove me nuts.  When he died, I thought "Well, at least I won't have to go move the toilet paper back any more."  The night before I went to Erie, the toilet paper roll had been moved to Ron's favorite spot.  We believe it's a message from Ron.  He would have belly laughed himself silly to hear me tell the story of driving out to Erie to find my hung over daughter ready to go to the bridal store to try on a dress that wasn't there.   And then paying for it.  Cue the emotions.

Harpursville update

Dear blog, I have not abandoned you though I don't blame you for thinking so.  I haven't done much genealogy recently and my creativity seems to have run dry.  I think there's a connection there :)

I guess the best thing to do is offer an update on what's going on around here and what's on my mind.  I have fretted quite a bit about the blog wondering about potential topics, but to no avail.  So I guess this will be a bit like a Facebook Newsfeed to update you. 

First of all, our little Shea went missing over a month ago and we now believe she's using the Litter Box in the Sky.  She was Jim's cat and was especially fond of him.  She would be very antsy when he was gone and quite contented in his lap every night.  She was a birthday gift to Jim and he named her appropriately.  Now both his favorite Sheas are gone.

She was a very good kitty -- the other two seem to miss her as she was the most submissive and now they only have each other to tease. 

Amy and Michael came for a short visit and Amy agreed to try on bridal dresses locally.  I'm pretty sure she was only doing this to make me feel part of the process but I didn't particularly care why we got to go--I was just happy that we did.  Though we didn't "Say Yes to the Dress", we did find a style that seems to suit her and realized there's a wide price variation between Erie and Binghamton!  So, of course I had to post that picture Pat took of Amy in 1993 in a wedding dress.  I like the idea someone had to use it on the shower invitation.  It looks like I'll be heading out to Erie again soon for more dresses.  Honestly, I'm just grateful she's interested in a traditional bridal dress and isn't planning to wear a football uniform or some such.

I also had a couple of interesting "Pay it Forward" experiences in the last few weeks.  There's a Facebook initiative to Pay it Forward that I decided to try and it was an interesting exercise.  You promise to send off a little token of remembrance to the Facebook friends that agree to give it a try.  Some of my Facebook friends that agreed are people I know well and see often.  A couple are not and those were the ones I found to be intriguing.  I took the opportunity to stop and think of these people carefully in ways I don't generally.  I found little tokens to send off that I think will appeal to their interests and personalities.  No pressure (like with Christmas) and no timeline (ditto).  I liked taking time to think of those that don't often come right to mind.  Then these friends are supposed to offer the same out to their Facebook friends.  It's a neat way to spread a little kindness.

The other experience took a bit longer to come to fruition.  Quite a while ago, I bought a small bunch of ephemera  at an auction that included personal items like letters and pictures.  I had promised myself that someday I would reunite such memorabilia to remaining family members, and these items seemed to be good candidates.  I carefully reviewed the items, taking note of names and dates then did some research to see if I could find this family online.  It seemed there were 2-3 potential family members with tress on Ancestry.com for whom this might be valuable material.  I wasn't sure how to proceed picking the family to whom I would offer these items first so I responded in the time honored tradition of putting it away to think about later.

Several months later ( and within the time since the last blog post), I renewed these efforts and decided to select the family tree that seemed to be best documented.  I contacted the tree owner to offer to send the items along and apparently picked absolutely the correct person.  The items seem to belong to her grandfather.  This woman believes she is the only living descendant of this man and she was very pleased to agree to accept the items.  So off they went!  I know how happy I would be and was glad to be able to bring that joy to someone else. 

Perhaps the good karma will open the creative gates for me in the near future.  Thanks for hanging in here with the blog.

August 1994

I'll be taking a break from the recent historical posts about long lost ancestors and related family members.  I can almost hear the collective "whew!".  I thought it would be fun to dive back into the photo albums again and see what was going on 20 years ago this month.  Turns out there was quite a bit going on that month!

All the while that James was doing marching band and the kids were young, we'd typically take our own vacation time during the month of August, so I guess it's not too surprising to find so much for August 1994.
It was the summer that we got our new pole barn built after the old one caved in under heavy snow in a previous winter.  The clearing of the land for this new barn (we have always called it the bus garage since it was home to the marching band bus) created a large pile of debris which the fire company burned for us in spectacular fashion.  This is Amy and Brad watching that fire:

This is one of my all time favorite pictures and memories. 

The Hartman clan came for a visit that year! 

Baseball Hall of Fame

Of course, we went to a Binghamton Mets game.  This is Jeff Barry with Amy and Brad.

I think this might be at Jean's for Mallory's birthday--Drew, Marisa and Amy.  Looks like Drew is showing Marisa the clutch.

Ryan having a catch with your Dad.

Your Dad playing volleyball in someone's back yard.

Sometime that summer, Angela hosted a reunion..what a crew!

James and I went to Chicago that summer and we took Amy and Ryan to stay on Long Island.

I think this is Pat's picture from that visit!

Good ole Harry was still around.  We went to Sesame Place where James danced on stage with Burt and Ernie.  It's pretty tough when even Ernie is laughing at you.  Ryan did not like it one bit that those huge creatures whisked his father away.

 We even found time for a trip to the Syracuse Zoo.  Who knew then what the future held for this pensive little girl?

I guess we kept ourselves pretty busy but when the kids are young, you try to do all kinds of stuff.  It's pretty close to where Jake and Lindsay are right now with Emily and Joey!  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A reminder (shameless plug) about the new public blog Gathering the Cousins.  I created it specifically as "cousin bait"--that perhaps one day an unknown relative would stumble upon it and recognize either the Irish or the Italian lines as their own.  It would be great if you'd visit the site once in a while--I think the more hits it has, the more likely it will be to show up high enough on someone's search results to be found.  To have a relative find us this way would be a serious affirmation of my efforts with blogging and family history research.

Uncle Luigi

Michael Lessie's father was Louis and Aunt Josie told the story that Louis had two sisters who schemed to have him jailed so they could take the family's land.  Further, she said Antonia married him to get him out of jail!  It's a crazy story, but one thing I have learned over all these years of research is that Aunt Josie was right on most of the time in her remembrances, so I have faith there is some truth in this.

When I started tracking Michael Lessie, one of those iconic trembling leaves popped up for Luigi Lisi's death.  I dope-slapped myself for being so stupid as to fail to translate (once again) the Americanized name to the Italian.  Once I started researching Luigi Lisi, the doors opened wide for me.  Duh. 

Double dope-slap to myself as I went back and looked at records I already have that plainly indicated that Antonia was coming to the US to be with her husband Luigi Lisi.  Double Duh.

Right on the heels of Michael's death cerrtificate, I also received this for Uncle Luigi.  It's clearly the right guy.

Initially I was excited to see his father's name Michael, which makes sense as Italians generally named their first son after the paternal grandfather.  But then I noticed Antonette Contento is listed as his mother, but she was his wife so now I'm less certain that the information is accurate. 

I did some further research and located an immigration record for a Luigi Lisi that intrigues me.  In 1900 this Luigi Lisi emigrated stating Boston as his final destination.  He is listed as a shoemaker.  Neither of these facts line up with what I think I know about Luigi.  He lists his last residence as Montalbano, which is close enough to Bari to reasonably be the Luigi we seek.  1900 is about the right date and his age at the time matches up so those are in the plus column for tentative identification as the right Luigi Lisi.  We'll probably never know for sure, and I'll just have to accept that!