52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2024 Week 3 - Favorite Photo

 The prompt for Week 3 of the 2024 52 Ancestors challenge is “Favorite Photo”. This is a re-run. The prompt has appeared in previous years of this challenge. You can see my previous entries here and here. But I have lots of photos and many are among my ‘favorites’, so this prompt never gets old.

This year I am sharing a photo of Mary Julia Parker. I don’t know the story behind the photo. I don’t even know who Mary Julia is. But this is one of my favorite photos anyway!

I’m assuming that Mary Julia as a friend of my grandmother’s when she was a young woman. There is no indication of the date or place where the photo was taken. I found the photo among my grandmother’s things, along with other photos. One of the photos is of my grandmother in a similar dress style in the same location. She is standing next to the water fountain and you can see the Camel billboard in the background. There is another photo of Grandma wearing the same dress that she has dated 1920. This photo was probably taken about the same time, before my grandmother married in 1923. My guess is that the location of the photo is St. Louis where my grandma lived at the time.

I’ve tried to find out who Mary Julia was, but I’ve had no luck at all tracking her down.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2024 Week 2 - Origins

It’s week 2 of the 2024 52 Ancestors challenge. The prompt this week is “Origins”. Today I want to talk about the origins of the DeBee branch of my family. How did the DeBees came to be in America? 

Sylvanus Henry DeBee was my mother-in-law’s grandfather. The story she told is that DeBee is a French surname and that Sylvanus came to the United States from France. She also explained that original spelling was DeBoe or DuBois. The story is that Sylvanus changed the spelling when he came to America.

Is this a true story? There is probably at least a grain of truth to this story. DeBee probably does have French origins. After a couple of decades of genealogy research, I have not found an ancestor that came over from France. It definitely was NOT my mother-in-law’s grandfather, Sylvanus H. DeBee. His death certificate states that Sylvanus was born in Warren County, Pennsylvania. Census information corroborates this

It’s possible that his father, Lewis/Louis (Henry?) Debee was the original French ancestor, but that is not clear. Louis’s birth place is listed as France on the death certificates of his daughter Lucy. Pennsylvania is listed as the birthplace on the death certificates of his sons. The 1880 and 1900 censuses both state that the father of Sylvanus DeBee was born in France. My mother-in-law believed her grandfather was French. Was this because that is what her father told her?

Yet the 1910 census states that the father of Sylvanus was born in Canada (Fr). It’s possible that Louis was French Canadian by birth. It’s also possible that Louis was the first in the DeBee line to come to the United States. But it’s not clear whether he came way of Canada. Did he come from France, or was he descended from someone who came to Canada from France.

At this point, I can only conclude that the Debee family likely does have origins in France. I can’t confirm the original spelling of the name. I also can’t confirm who the first ancestor to come over from France was, or whether they stopped off in Canada. That leaves me a lot to research!

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 1 - Family Lore

 It’s time for another year of 52 Ancestors. This year I plan to ‘think different’ about the challenge. In past years I’ve started out strong and then fizzled out after a few weeks. It seems that once I miss a week or two, I lose my momentum and just give up. One of the reasons that I give up is that sometimes I am not comfortable sharing what I want to write about. It feels too private to include on a public blog, because living people appear in the post. Sometimes there is sensitive information that could hurt people still living. So this year, I am going to try to write from each week’s prompt, but I may not be sharing online. I will keep my entries in Scrivener so that I can print them out at the end of the year. I will only blog the entries I am comfortable sharing.

The first prompt for 2024 is “Family Lore”. Family lore is part of the body of knowledge about the family. This is information that has been passed down through the generations. These stories that may or may not be true. Part of our Petrini family lore includes stories about my great-aunt China.

China was the daughter of Umberto Petrini and Eufrosina Pineschi. She was born about 1899 in Capannori, Italy. According to ‘family lore’ Ida was born China, pronounced ‘kee-na’. She went by Ida once the family came to the United States in 1907. I’ve not been able to find her birth record from Capannori, so I cannot verify her birth name. Every record I’ve found for her in the U.S. gives her name as Ida, pronounced ‘ee-duh’.

Ida married to Daniel Orsolini sometime between 1920 and 1928. She died at a young age. According to ‘family lore’ Ida died in New Orleans after being poisoned by her husband. Her family believed that Danieal was jealous about her affair with Rudolf Valentino. Yes, THAT Rudolph Valentino, the famous Italian-born star of silent films!

Rudolph Valentino See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

Is any of this true? I don’t know, but I’m doubtful that much of it is true. I was told that Ida and Valentino were from the same area of Italy. However, Ida came over from Tuscany, a province in northern Italy. Rudolph Valentino was born in Apulia, in southern Italy. Also, Valentino died in 1926, two years before the death of Ida in 1928. If her husband poisoned her because he was jealous, he nursed that grudge for a long time!

I also know that Ida did NOT die in New Orleans. I found a certificate for her death in Cook County, Illinois on 5 Jul 1928. The cause of death is listed as ‘Bilateral Pleurisy With Effusion’. There was a coroner’s certificate of death and an autopsy was held. It’s possible that the death was considered suspicious, leading the family to believe Ida was poisoned.

12 Months of Photos: March - Sports

March is coming to a close. My family has always been into sports, both as participants and as spectators. This month has been a busy one for spectating. We had March Madness watch party earlier this month. Coming up this week is our annual Home Opener watch party to mark the opening of Baseball Season! So there is a good reason that I almost forgot to post for the  12 Months of Photos challenge at WikiTree. The prompt this month is “Sports”. 

For as long as I can remember, sports and games have been an important part of our family gatherings. Almost every gathering included a game of wiffle ball or croquet or a wallyball tournament in the pool. If we were stuck indoors due to the weather we played a game of charades or trivial pursuit. 

The pictures below are of my Dad and his work buddy, Big John. They are playing an impromptu game of softball. My parents and Big John and his wife got together frequently to play pinochle. Meanwhile we kids played games or watched movies. We gathered often enough that when I was little, I thought Big John's kids were my cousins! 

These particular pictures are from a Labor Day celebration at Beaver Dam State Park in Illinois. It was a park my family visited often when I was growing up.

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 10 - Translation

 It’s Week 10 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The prompt this week is “Translation”.
Most of the ancestors on father’s side of the family tree came spoke German. Most of my mother’s ancestors spoke Italian. Now throw in a little Dutch, a little Latin, and a little Slavic. I’ve gotten very good at asking for translation help! I’ve even gotten pretty good at translating a basic vital record from German or Italian to English! The hardest part isn’t translating one language into another; it is reading the handwriting!
But sometimes it is even harder to interpret a document that is written in English, my native language. Words written 100 years ago didn’t mean then what they mean today. And sometimes those words are obscure. One example is figuring out what people did for a living. Sometimes it is are. Many of my ancestors listed their occupation as ‘farmer’ or ‘laborer’. Other times it is not so easy. What is a ‘roller tender’. The death certificate of my great-uncle Harry Kolk lists his occupation as ‘roller tender’ in a flour mill. Googling has taught me that flour can be made by a rolling process, where the grain is crushed between rollers. And apparently someone had to tend to those rollers to make sure everything was proceeding as it should.
Many of my Ohio ancestors were involved in the pottery industry.

• The death certificate for William Anthony Brown lists his occupation as ‘Batterout’ for a china company.
• The 1920 census lists Eddie DeBee as a ‘Mold Runner’ in a pottery factory.
• James A DeBee was listed as a “Batter Out’ and later as a ‘Jiggerman’ in various censuses.
• Louis H DeBee was also a ‘Jiggerman’.
• I feel like I’m reading a foreign language. I need a ‘Pottery-to-English’ dictionary similar to the ‘German-to-English’ dictionary I used in high school!

Luckily for me—I found one! Or at least a good substitute. The Pottery Jobs Index. This is actually a site about pottery in England, but I’m assuming the job titles were the same in Ohio.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 9 - Gone Too Soon

It’s time for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. This week the prompt is “Gone Too Soon”. That brings to mind my cousin Maureen.

Maureen Elizabeth Malloy was born April 27, 1950 in Evergreen Park, Illinois. She was the second child of Clarence Malloy and Ruth Petrini. Maureen shared her middle name with her mother.

Maureen was a happy baby. She had sparkly eyes and dark curly hair. She brought joy to her parents, her grandparents, and her aunts. Sadly, just before her first birthday, Maureen became ill with what was probably a common cold. Within days Maureen was hospitalized with pneumonia. Sadly, Maureen passed away the day after her first birthday.

Maureen had an older sister at the time of her death. She had three additional siblings as well as many cousins. None of us ever got to meet Maureen because she was ‘gone too soon’.

12 Months of Photos: February - Homes

February is almost over and I haven’t yet shared a photo for the 12 Months of Photos challenge at WikiTree. The prompt this month is “Homes”. This month I am sharing a photo of the Hixon house in Michigan City, Indiana. This is a photo of Ella Herrold Hixon and her son, Julian Verne Hixon. They are standing in front of their house at 113 S Woodland Ave. Verne appears to be about 6 in this photo. The photo must have been taken about 1918.

 I found a street view of the house on Google Maps. This image was made in 2017. 

 

The house looks very much the same. The porch that spanned the front of the house is gone, but other features are still present. The leaded glass at the top of the front 1st floor window is still there. You can still see the double windows at the front on the 2nd floor. You can even make out the small round window at the side of the house. It’s amazing to me to see this house still standing 100 years later. I hope that someday I will have the chance to drive by the house.