Hunting History - Finding Family

I know it's been a really long time since I've written....genealogy unfortunately tends to take a backseat to my business, and other work, and family....but I had to share this revelation! Uncle Alan Heigert was the one who told me my ggrandmother Angelina's forst husbands name was Valentino Paganin.  For whatever reason I identify closest with my Italian heritage, and he was a complete mystery.  My ghost.  All I, or anyone, really knew was that Angelina's first husband, Rena's father, died when Rena was very young, and the family for whatever reason would not help support them, and they emigrated to the US, she married Giuseppe "Joe" Barra, had a passel more kids, and here we all are.  But you know I couldn't be happy with just that. No, I HAVE TO KNOW MORE. I've been hunting Valentino for years.  Unsuccessfully, I might add.  I have another blog post about that.  But this time, we found him.  Thanks to cousin Mary, (My Nona's twin sister ...

I may not have been blogging lately (I've been pretty busy with my business) but I have been working on my tree.  Recently a distant cousin from Kansas (who still spells his name Hiegert) contacted me and we spent weeks trying to connect our trees.  I have connected two other branches...not his yet, but it's there!!  Today, though, I'm going to talk a little about my Maternal side. I work really hard on the paternal side of my tree, because it's a challenge.  They're the immigrants, only being in the US for a few generations of several surnames.  But my maternal side, the Wellers, have been here for a very long time. Recently I've been watching the show "Who Do You Think You Are" on TLC, and last night's episode was mainly based on the Revolutionary War.  Which got me thinking, I have MANY Revolutionary War Veterans on the Weller side of the tree.  In fact, one was almost fresh off the boat....so we're going to look at some of them today.  ...