More Friday night breakthroughs
Sep. 10th, 2004 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twilight33A week ago tonight I solved the mystery of my great-grandfather's family. My grandma's cousin & I have been in touch almost daily since, my little family's pictures were emailled to over a hundred related families, and we're tackling identifying people in a picture I have that she's never seen (she'll soon have more than a digital copy) that was taken in the 1890s.
Tonight, I might have solved the mystery of my great-grandmother's identity. The family story is that her parents were forbidden by their families to marry in France, so they intended to elope in New Zealand (who knows why). New Zealand wasn't accepting any more French immigrants, so they moved to Italy, changed the last name & got Italian citizenship... then moved to New Zealand where my great-grandma and her siblings were all born in the 1890s. Apparently NZ wasn't what they thought it would be because they all packed up and left for San Francisco just before the 1906 earthquake.
The last name sounds, looks, and all genealogy research says it's Italian. My mom remembers my great-grandma mentioning the real French name when she was little, and said it 'sounds close to' the Italian. It's been driving me insane since I know French sounds, and the combination of letters in the Italian version just doesn't happen in French.
Then through soundex research on ancestry.com I hit on something that struck a familiar cord, went poking around and might have found the reason why the parents were forbidden to marry. If the person from this very distinct last name & identical first name with a matching birth date range is the same, he was... um... previously married with 3 kids that he left behind in France. Oops. I thought it a bit odd that his first child was born when he was around 36, ancient for the late 1800s. I have a lot more digging to do before I can prove anything the way I did with my great-grandfather's family, but it's one of those gut instincts & so far those have proven extremely accurate for me.
I had my husband take a look at the latest development online, and he just laughed at the continued drama from all sides of my family tree. What is definitely true is that both sides of my beloved grandma's line had deliberately false last names, not mangled by immigration. History may have repeated itself as there is a fair amount of question regarding the accuracy of the last name my husband & I have too.
My head is also starting to spin from info overload, but I've got to cram in as much of this as possible now before class starts later this month!
Tonight, I might have solved the mystery of my great-grandmother's identity. The family story is that her parents were forbidden by their families to marry in France, so they intended to elope in New Zealand (who knows why). New Zealand wasn't accepting any more French immigrants, so they moved to Italy, changed the last name & got Italian citizenship... then moved to New Zealand where my great-grandma and her siblings were all born in the 1890s. Apparently NZ wasn't what they thought it would be because they all packed up and left for San Francisco just before the 1906 earthquake.
The last name sounds, looks, and all genealogy research says it's Italian. My mom remembers my great-grandma mentioning the real French name when she was little, and said it 'sounds close to' the Italian. It's been driving me insane since I know French sounds, and the combination of letters in the Italian version just doesn't happen in French.
Then through soundex research on ancestry.com I hit on something that struck a familiar cord, went poking around and might have found the reason why the parents were forbidden to marry. If the person from this very distinct last name & identical first name with a matching birth date range is the same, he was... um... previously married with 3 kids that he left behind in France. Oops. I thought it a bit odd that his first child was born when he was around 36, ancient for the late 1800s. I have a lot more digging to do before I can prove anything the way I did with my great-grandfather's family, but it's one of those gut instincts & so far those have proven extremely accurate for me.
I had my husband take a look at the latest development online, and he just laughed at the continued drama from all sides of my family tree. What is definitely true is that both sides of my beloved grandma's line had deliberately false last names, not mangled by immigration. History may have repeated itself as there is a fair amount of question regarding the accuracy of the last name my husband & I have too.
My head is also starting to spin from info overload, but I've got to cram in as much of this as possible now before class starts later this month!
