Hunting History - Finding Family

I've thought all week about what my favorite discovery has been.  It was hard; I've been doing genealogy for about twenty years now, and I've discovered a lot!  Proving (or disproving) family lore, figuring out why my DNA doesn't reflect my Italian roots, many notable Weller's (whiskey makers, pottery makers, long lines of reverends...) even a murder.   The best discovery though, has been much closer than the rest: my husband had a half-sibling he didn't know...and we found her using genealogy! I started working on my husbands tree around 2013, he wasn't (and still isn't) near as interested as me, but I plugged away anyway.  When researching his dad, we had a wealth of information  Robert had been a lifer in the military and we had hard copies of all his documents.  He'd been the youngest of five, and passe when my husband Kevin was eleven.  Kevin was telling me of an aunt that came over when he was about nine, and he'd been around eighteen; he...

Last week I touched on the Italian side of my family, The Barra's from Brossasco and the Nardin's from Asiago for "So Far Away."  This week's prompt is "Same Name" and I'm going back to Asiago, to talk about the same family, only this time it's because of a mystery; because I have no idea how my Great Aunt ended up with the name she did - the name of a major battle ground in the Italo-Turkish War. Rena Paganin Giustina Maria Ain Zara "Rena" Paganin was born February 26th, 1912 in Asiago, Italy to Catterina Angela Nardin and Valentino Paganin.  Eleven months after Rena was born, her father would be dead, and less than two years after that she would be on the Duca D'Aosta steam ship with her mother and grandmother Mary Strazzabosco headed to Ellis Island.  But this time we're not talking abut what happened during or even after Rena's life, we're going to talk about what happened before.   December 4th, 2011...

Week four of the #52in52Ancestors prompt has been a difficult one for me.  Everyone is doing how far away their ancestors came from, and they all did; if you're American chances are your ancestors came from somewhere else, far across the ocean.  I thought about spinning a tale of that crossing, which I still may do one day, but not today.  While browsing some new features on my Ancestry app last night, I found this really cool section where it plots out where each of your ancestors were born and significant things in their lives happened.   It's super interesting to see it all out on that map, little dots spread out (in my case) all over Germany, England, and Scotland.  And then, all the way down in the bottom, are two little dots, far away from each other, in Italy.  One high in the Alps by Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, and one far over towards France.  I actually never realized just how far away those two very important places were, until ...

With almost 2000 images in my Ancestry gallery, and another large personal family album full of old photos I'd inherited and scanned when my Nona passed, you'd think that the challenge of "Favorite Photo" would be a difficult one, but it wasn't.  As soon as I heard it, I knew exactly which photo I'd use.  So this will be a much shorter post, as these are people I've certainly blogged about many times before, and I'm going to focus a little more on them and a little less on the genealogy this time. Mary & Frank on their wedding day - 7/7/43 Hands down, this is my favorite photo ever.  There are so many things I love about it; including the people.  This is my Grandma Mary "Nona" Barra on the day she married Grandpa Frank Anthony Heigert, July 7th 1943 in Staunton IL.  This was taken at the farmhouse where Frank grew up, a big old home that's still there, unfortunately not still in the family, it was donated before I came along...

It took me three days to think of what subject to use for the "Long Line" prompt.  No lie.  I thought about my longest researched line, which would be the Wellers, but I've talked about them pretty extensively.  I thought about the long line of tough-as-nails Italian women I've descended from, but I've written of them more than once as well.  None of our branches have held a particular position over many generations, with the exception of farming, and that's pretty much every American's story, so I didn't find it all that interesting, albeit noble.  In the end, I did ultimately decide to go with a Weller's story, but in a different direction; the long line it took him to get here and thrive. Johannes "John" Weller was born in Diedenshausen, Germany May 24th, 1716.  At age 17, he made the long trek from Diedenshausen to Rotterdam, Netherlands and boarded the Lydia, a Strassburger-Hinke pioneer ship.  This move would have taken him about ...

"The first Weller to immigrate to America came from Germany, and the first Weller to live in South Palmyra township was Thomas Jefferson Weller.  Born May 1, 1808 in Kentucky, he married Eliza Ann Conlee October 13, 1831.  Family history states  the young couple walked into S Palmyra township with packs on their backs and proceeded to hew a home out of the wilderness.  The story is told that they built a log cabin on the South side of the road somewhere between present-day Concord Church and the East corner of it.  Their thirteenth child was also named Thomas Jefferson, and (I am) his direct descendant.  He lived his entire life less than a mile from his birthplace, and the home he built is now occupied by his great-grandson (my grandfather) Lawrence." -A Brief History of the Ancestors of Ralph Weller Almost all the way up until my grandparent's children, most of my Weller family has been on the same adjoining plots of land since it was purchased ...

I'm going to try and do a better job with the #52in52 this year, I think I wrote maybe a dozen last year, but we had some good ones, and hey, quality over quantity, right? Anywho, this year's first theme is "Fresh Start."  I actually wasn't sure who I was going to write about this week, until I opened ancestry just a little bit ago, followed a few leaves, and opened my 1st cousin 2x removed, Hilda Ida Berkel.  I actually thought the record hints I was viewing were incorrect at first, but after a few verification checks, I saw what an amazing life Hilda eventually lived.  Not only that, but she absolutely fits the Fresh Start theme for this week: Born to first generation German American parents (and a bit of a scandalous father) Hilda moved from poor rural Midwest to New York, only to marry very rich and live out the rest of her days in luxury.  A fresh start, indeed. My second great-grandparents, Benedict and Pauline Heigert, emigrated from Waldulm, Baden-Wurt...