O Little Town of Omignano....

My last name, Jordan, is an Americanization of the original surname of my great grandfather: Giordano.  Francesco Giordano came to America in 1889 from the little town of Omignano, Salerno, Campania, Italy.  My father's family knew him as Frank Jordan.

In October 2013 I discovered that Family Search posted unindexed digital images of the collection "Italia, Salerno, Vallo della Lucania, Stato Civile (Tribunale), 1866-1929" on their web site, including Frank's birth record.  Using this image set, I traced back a few more generations, which led me to my first set of direct line kissing cousins.  A pair of first cousins once removed married, so one set of 4th great grandparents double as a set of 5th great grandparents. (Does that count as killing 4 birds with 2 stones?)

Given the small size of the town and the high likelihood of intermarrying, it occurred to me that I might be related to quite a lot of people in the town.  And so, an idea was born, The Great Omignano (OMG, no!) Indexing Project!!!  But it was just an idea, and like many ideas, it sat on the shelf for awhile.  There are gold mines of information in all that Italian text, but to get to them, you have to filter though all that Italian text, an endeavor both time consuming and fraught with bad handwriting.  I worked back a few generations, concentrating on the Giordano surname and not much else, but did not roll forward to closer generations that lead to living cousins.  And after that flurry of excitement on the Italian hometown breakthrough, I moved on to other things.

Fast forward two and a half years. I'm starting to see Italian line DNA matches on the various testing sites.  Trying to figure out where these 4th cousin and further out matches fit in is tricky when my tree is not fleshed out both forward and back.  I found myself creating private individual family trees on Ancestry for each DNA match so I could try to build out their trees to figure out how we connect.  After spending two weekends building trees for OTHER people, I finally remembered my epiphany from 2013 and decided to take action on that idea.  The Vallo della Lucania images include births, marriage banns, marriages and deaths starting in 1866.  In 1875, the Omignano record books were converted to fill-in-the-blank forms, but prior to that, the entire record is one big handwritten paragraph.

So the past few weekends, instead of building out yet another DNA match tree (no doubt more of those will happen later), I turned to building spreadsheets.  I started with death records, capturing a number of data elements for each record, including the URL to the image.  For the totally handwritten 1866-1874 records, I've only captured the year, order number, name and URL information for about 200 people - those will take more work to decipher than the form-based ones to complete the index.  I have recorded all the information from the 1875-1887 deaths, about 320 people.  Since I was not focusing solely on the name Giordano, I actually added several more dates and people to my tree just from those records!  I'll take that as a sign that I'm on the right track.  Already I recognize the common surnames of the town, and they are an immediate clue of a potential shared line in the trees of my DNA matches.

So we'll see how long this project stays at the top of the to do list - hopefully I'll be able to finish some record sets before something else jumps the line.  And then I'll be able to use this spreadsheet index as a tool for looking up potential ancestors of DNA matches! 

"Forever" Family Tree

Yesterday my copy of the TV series "Forever" arrived on DVD.  This means that I finally have the episodes I was missing when I created a timeline and family tree a year ago for the characters in the show.  If a TV show is going to spend an episode on genealogy, in this case with a finite set of research data to draw on, then I can start a research project on it, right?  And since the series only had one season (still really bummed about that!) I can actually finish it, too!  I already extracted data from 15 of the 22 episodes, so I'm more than halfway there.  I wish I had this much detail on many of my own ancestors and relatives!

Hello, (blogging) world!

Despite the intent of this blog as a genealogy adventure, a form of “Hello, world!” seems an appropriate starting post for this software professional.  I’ve recently returned from my 3rd RootsTech conference, where the tech-based Innovator Summit sessions hold as much interest for me as the genealogy specific ones.  And once again, everyone was talking about using blogs to record your research, share it, and of course, as cousin bait.  Since my main web site is still partying like it’s 1999 (that’s about when I first created it), I figured it wouldn’t hurt to play with some blogging software and see if I could do any better at keeping that up to date.

You may have noticed that there are a number of posts prior to this date, and wonder how I can have started a blog prior to starting a blog.  Is it magic?  Have I learned how to time travel?!?  How can this be?!?!?!?  Lacking a DeLorean, I fall back on what tech knowledge I do have - in this case, backups.  These blog sites provide a way to take a backup of all the posts, as well as a way of restoring that backup.  But what if you were to, say, tweak the backup files?  Maybe change the dates, change the titles...  Well, then you can create posts for earlier dates.  So I thought I might try to document my genealogy journey prior to this date as well, while keeping my discoveries in chronological order.  (My thought of documenting my ancestor's journeys using dates from their timelines was foiled by the blogging software not believing in blog posts dated prior to about 1970, and rejected them on restore. Bummer!)

Let the grand adventure begin!

Finding Grandma

Today's primary mission: Finding Grandma! My father's mother, Margaret Carroll Jordan, passed away when my father was a young boy. Dad never knew where she was buried, and his father didn't want to talk about it. Dad knew that his older sister had attempted to find their mother's gravestone many years before with no luck. So how was I to accomplish this mission that the previous generation could not?

Well, back in 2011, I requested a copy of my grandmother's death certificate from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (acquiring this document was another adventure!). The certificate stated that she was buried on June 1, 1949 at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, NJ, so that's where I headed. Since I did not know what plot I was looking for, my first stop when I reached the cemetery was the cemetery office.

The woman behind the desk was super helpful when I indicated I was trying to find my grandmother, and quickly located the burial card for the last name and burial date - which was not for Margaret Jordan, but Mary Jordan! But now I had a location: Section F, Lot 49, Grave 4. To my surprise and delight, I was also provided with the original burial book to view, where the information was first recorded.

Original Burial Book

Again, she was listed as Mary, but the address of 145 Springfield Ave was correct for 1949 - although the book listed it as Jersey City instead of Rutherford - but this was still a confirming bit of evidence. And a new piece of information was provided, one that had been purposefully blanked out of the death certificate (part of that other adventure) - my grandmother's cause of death, heart disease.

I asked who else was buried in the plot, in search of more clues. My grandfather had three wives, and my father knows he is buried in St. Mary of the Lake Cemetery in Lakewood, NJ, and not with my grandmother, his first wife. The card for Section F, Lot 49 was produced...and contained three names I'd never heard of, all with the last name Kelly! Were these more family members to hunt down?

Burial Card for Section F, Lot 49, Graves 3 and 4

A mystery to pursue at a later time, as now I had a grave site to visit. My hostess gave me a map of the cemetery and directed me to Section F.

I proceeded on to Section F, and about an hour later, another mystery was solved. Now I know why my aunt could not find my grandmother in the cemetery when she searched - THERE IS NO HEADSTONE. Not for my grandmother, or any of the Kellys she is buried with. Section F may contain many graves, but it is rather lacking in markers.

Section F

This evening I returned home to my parents' house, where I presented all my findings of the day to my father: where his mother was buried, what she died of, why his sister could never find her grave. And he was able to shed light on one of the new mysteries - he knew who the Kellys were. Getrude Kelly, the other person buried in grave 4 with my grandmother, was my grandmother's best friend, who passed away in 1976. Grave 3 contained her parents - Gertrude's father had died in 1946, which is why the family had the plot. Best friends together forever!

Gertrude Kelly and Margaret (Carroll) Jordan

Ancestry Member Connect Cousin Bait

I think I found another 3rd cousin on Ancestry, copying stuff outta my tree. :)

This is why I have a public tree and use Member Connect on Ancestry - when someone starts pulling data from my tree, I get notified, and after all, what are public trees for? Cousin bait, of course! If you're poking around in my tree enough to want to snag stuff from it, I probably want to talk to you.

I sent a message to say hi - hopefully he will respond!

Update 3/12/2015: He replied!!!!! He's just starting and trying to figure out how to deal with Ancestry. And I have a newly found third cousin from my Buhlert line!

Helping with Homework

Ah, the homework assignment Aunt Kim LOVES to help with!!!!

Nephew's Homework Assignment

Hopefully I did not overwhelm the nephew with information overload.  :)  With any luck, this will peak some interest in genealogy from the next generation. <fingers crossed>

I took some pity on him - I limited it to 3x great grandparents and the one set of 4th great grandparents who immigrated to the US, and did not get as far as the 10th and 12th cousins I know!

Of course, I did have to include a separate chart showing his cousinship to Buzz Aldrin. I didn't have that last year for the older nephew. Who knows what more I will learn before the niece has her turn?!?

A Famous Swedish Cousin

My new found 10th cousin 2x removed tells me that I have another "Swedish" cousin: astronaut Buzz Aldrin!! A 5th cousin 2x removed, if I've done the math correctly. And that's just the closest of something like 5 relationships....how cool is that?!?! 

I'll be checking that out shortly. And I am totally wearing my NASA shirt today.  (Yes, I have a NASA shirt.  Doesn't everyone?!?)

My NASA Shirt

 
Update 3/19/2014: I've found records that connect the Spångberg line of smiths that I already had to a line of Aldrin smiths. Now I need to trace that line forward and see where it leads!

Update 3/20/2014: Success! A Swedish 4th cousin found the book 24 Famous Swedish Americans and their Ancestors published in 1996 by The Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies.  It contains a list of Buzz's ancestors, and it matches the paper trail I've found. Buzz Aldrin is our 5th cousin 2x removed!