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My Great Big Family

I had a first time experience recently.  A person who visited my blog recommended a website for me to write about.  This is really exciting...I actually have a reader!  To keep my reader happy, I decided to visit the site (My Great Big Family) and see what I could do.  I was actually surprised that my reader's recommendation was a web hosting service specifically geared to genealogy.  About 4 years ago I was looking for such a site...but never found one.  I eventually signed up with a web hosting service called APlus.net.  On this hosting service, I created my family history site, but it wasn't easy.  Most web hosting services are geared towards e-commerce.  When I was trying to set up my site on APlus, none of the design templates really fit my needs for a genealogy website.  It was very frustrating.  I ended up making one fit, but as I said, it wasn't easy...and I have never really been able to get it exactly the way I want it.

Brick Wall Breakthrough

For many years I've searched (unsuccessfully) for an immigration ship manifest for my grandfather Antonio Agazio.  I think my search is finally over.  The family story was he left Italy as a young teenager; arrived in Canada in the early 1900s; worked his way across the country; and finally entered the United States.  As you can see, the family story did not contain many details I could work with.  I was beginning to think I would never actually see a ship manifest with my grandfather's name on it.

About three or four years ago I stumbled upon a my grandfather's Declaration of Intention to become a citizen on the Washington State Digital Archives site that gave me information I've never seen before.  From this document I learned that he left his home town of San Giovanni in Fiore, Italy and arrived in France (I don't know the location in France or how he got there, but I assume it was by ship).  He then travelled by steam ship to Liverpool, England and from there, on the ship Lake Michigan to Quebec, Canada.  From Quebec, he somehow travelled across Canada and crossed into the United States at Sault Ste Marie, Michigan on 19 June 1901.  Despite having a date, ship name, and port of entry I could not find an immigration ship manifest - until today.

This morning I was fooling around with the Canadian Passenger Lists on Ancestry.com and decided to only use my grandfather's year of birth (1885) and the year of arrival (1901) from the Declaration of Intention as search criteria.  The search results popped up and four entries down I found a guy named Antonio Agarn who was born in about 1885 and arrived at the port of Quebec on 7 June 1901 from Liverpool on the ship Lake Megantic.  Since four of the six criteria match what my grandfather wrote in his Declaration of Intention, I decided to check this guy out.

When I looked at the name on the manifest I could clearly see the "Aga" and the "io," but the "z" kind of looks like an "r".  Since all of the other information fits to include his age (16), I am declaring that this manifest documents my grandfather's arrival in North America.  

For all of these years I failed to find my grandfather because of a transcription error.  This is not the first time this has happened and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Memorial Day Weekend at Gettysburg

Greetings from Gettysburg, PA where we will be spending most of the Memorial Day Weekend.  We usually never travel anywhere on these long weekends because the traffic is horrible when everyone tries leaving the Washington DC area at the same time.  This holiday weekend is different because my son's soccer team is taking part in the annual Blue Gray Cup soccer tournament.  Let me tell you, with the thousands of people coming in here for the tournament AND with all of the Memorial Day activities at the battlefield, I think this little town is more crowded than it was 145 years ago. 

I have not been to Gettysburg for at least 12-13 years and it's changed quite a bit.  The last time I was here the main destination was the battlefield park and there wasn't much to the town.  All that has changed.  Much of the town center has been restored and this is now a pretty little place.  I hope to spend a little time at the battlefield if time permits.  I'd really like to see the new visitors center and roam around the battlefield a little.

My son plays 4 games today and around 3-4 on Sunday...no sleeping in this weekend.

Times are Changing in Ireland

The Washington Post has an interesting article about Ireland today about how the modern world is changing a country once so poor millions risked everything to leave.  The headline talks about how rural pubs, once the center of Irish life, are closing, but it also discusses other interesting statistics:

- By 2005, there were 30,000 residents worth more than $1,000,000.  
- Ireland's per-capita income is more than the US, Sweden, and Japan
- The number of pubs has dropped from 6000 to 5000 in the past 3 years
- Regular church attendance has fallen from 90% in the 1970s to about 45% today

This sure doesn't sound like the historical Ireland I've been reading about recently.  When I visited Ireland in 1994, Dublin appeared like any other crowded big city with everyone rushing around, but when we went out into the countryside the pace of life appeared like I imagine it had for a hundred years.  According to this article, it sounds like this part of the country is changing too.  It's kind of sad in a way, but throughout history Ireland was a very poor and oppressed place - to see it vibrant and prosperous is a good thing too.

Happy Saint George's Day!

I apologize for being a day late in this celebration.  Maybe it was my Irish and Scottish heritage subconsciously keeping me from acknowledging the day where the English celebrate their Englishness.   Saint George's day is on April 23 so the English were partying yesterday. According to this article, Saint George's Day "is experiencing a revival as is the idea of Englishness itself."  As you probably know, Saint George was a Roman Soldier from what is now Turkey who was martyred for refusing to persecute Christians.  I'm not quite sure what this has to do with England, but the country adapted Saint George as it's patron Saint and the Saint George Cross is actually the English flag.  Apparently a lot of countries claim Saint George as their own...and why not?  Not only did he die a horrible death for protecting Christians in the Roman Empire, but he was also a dragon slayer. 

Director of Basic Instinct and Robocop Writes Biography of Jesus

Paul Verhoeven, who directed two forgettable films (although Robocop has some great quotes), now has written a book called  "Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait."  According to this article, Verhoeven claims Jesus' father was a Roman soldier who raped Mary during a Jewish uprising in 4 BCE.  Verhoeven does have some respectability on the subject because he's a member of a scholarly group called the Jesus Seminar, but even members of this group think the idea is a "little bit out there."  Apparently this theory has been around for quite a while, but this is the first time I've heard of it.  Verhoeven hopes to eventually make his book into a movie...I just can't get past the thought of the Robocop director making a movie about Jesus.   

3rd Edition of "Who Are These People?"

I was really looking forward to this edition because it involves one of my all-time favorite family photos. As I was preparing to write this post a few days ago, a couple of Google searches lead me to informationthat solved my mystery, but I decided to write the article anyway.  To the left is the family of John Thomas Hartford (1869-1916) and Mary Elizabeth Lamping (1863-1928), and I never get tired of looking at all the details in this photo.  I wish it were in color, but I guess I can't have everything.  The location is probably in the Cripple Creek/Goldfield area of Teller County, Colorado.  The little girl in the lower right hand corner holding the doll is my grandmother (Anna C. Hartford, 1904-2002) and I estimate she's about 4 or 5 years old making the year the photo was taken around 1908-1909.  I think it's interesting how all of the toys are displayed, and how the family pets are also included - a dog is on the floor and the boy in the back row is holding a cat.  I also think it's interesting how all of the religious relics are displayed on the shelves - this was an Irish Catholic family.

The mystery centers not on the people who are posing, but on the portraits hanging on the wall behind thefamily...who are these people?  I've always assumed these four photos were the two sets of in-laws (my 2d great grandparents), but I didn't know who was who.  Just before I began writing, I used my great grandmother's name (Mary Elizabeth Lamping) as a search term in Google, and found a site that included the photo on the right.  Look closely...it appears to me the photos on the wall are head shots of the two people displayed on the right.  It almost looks like they took the photo of these two people and made the portraits hanging on the wall behind the family.  The clothes are the same, the expressions are the same, and I'm certain the people are the same.  According to the caption on the photo I found via Google, two of the portraits are Joseph Anthony Lamping II (1810-1887) and Susan Josephine Godard (1820-1897).  I assume the other two must be Thomas Hartford (1826-1911) and Isabel Rafferty (1824-1901). 

This stroke of my charmed genealogical luck allowed me to identify two of these four people, and then make a pretty good assumption about the other two.  While examining the family photo, I did noticed there are two other, not very clear, portraits on the left adjacent wall...hmmm, I wonder who they are?

(Click on the photos for a full size view.)

(The photo on the right is from the Park County Archives website where Ken Hicks is identified as the source.  The photo on the left was found in my grandmother's album and the original belongs to my brother and I.)

World War I Was in Color!

Did you know World War I was fought in color?  I never new this until a few minutes ago.  According to this website titled appropriately World War One Color Photos, it "contains hundreds of photos taken by the French in the last two years" of the war.  The fact they are in clear color makes them seem more real as opposed to those grainy black and whites I'm used to seeing.  There are some fascinating photos of destroyed buildings, soldiers, and this one of a field hospital is especially interesting.  Here's anInteresting one, and I don't think I need to describe it to you...I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. 

Reader Search Terms - Again

I was looking at reader search results again and found some interesting links to information on Italian immigration in the early 1900s.  One of my visitors on Saturday used the following search phrase :  why Italians moved to the us in 1904.  I chose this one because the subject was Italian immigration, but also because out of 1,850,000 results my blog was the very first one.  I've never seen this before so I wanted to take a deeper look at the results.  Here are some of the more interesting items I found:

1904 New York Times article about a US District Court Clerk selling blank naturalization papers for $5 to a counterfeiter who in turn sold them for $10.

NPR article titled "Italian Village Demands Return of Ancient Chariot."  Apparently in the early 1900s, an Italian shepherd found a 2600 year old Etruscan Chariot and sold it so he could put a new roof on his house,  Somehow J.P. Morgan bought it and it ended up in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I've seen it - it's a fantastic piece of history...now the Italian village wants it back. 

Italians in Pennsylvania.  This is an interesting article on the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission site about the history of Italians in Pennsylvania.  I may have linked to this before, but I'm not sure.

There were many more, but I found these fun to read.

Northern New York Historical Newspaper Project

Yesterday Randy Seaver posted an article about historical newspapers in Northern New York and included a link to the free Northern New York Historical Newspapers project.  There are a growing number of freeand subscription newspaper archives online having thousands of newspapers available for searching, but  they've been disappointing because I've never found any in towns or areas where my ancestors lived - until now.  I hit a gold mine in these old newspapers.

Saint Lawrence County in Northern New York is where three brothers from Dublin, Ireland eventually settled and raised large families.  They were in order of age Dennis Hartford, Thomas Hartford (my 2nd great grandfather), and James E. Hartford.  When I searched this newspaper archive for each of them I received scores of hits that will provide some life to their stories.  Like most small town newspapers, there were many short paragraphs showing them leaving on trips to visit friends and relatives and also when family visited them.  There was one about Thomas Hartford saying he received a card and $20 on his birthday from his son in Colorado...he received this card from my great grandfather John Thomas Hartford who moved to Colorado in the 1890s.  I even found Thomas Hartford's death notice. 

The best thing I've found so far is an 1898 article about James and Elizabeth Hartford celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary (James is my 2nd great grandfather's brother).  This article is full of info on where they were married and when they came to Saint Lawrence County.  The article also lists all of the people who attended the party, the gifts they received and how surprised Elizabeth was when she came home and found her house full of party guests.

I've only begun mining this resource and expect to find a whole lot more.  Finally there is a newspaper archive I can actually use!