The Mystery of the Missing Pagano Child

I have been tracking the Pagano family for several years now. The family line originates in Ventimiglia, Sicily and the patriarch, Salvatore, immigrated to the United States around 1892. It is believed that, like many Sicilians, Salvatore Pagano immigrated to the port at New Orleans and then headed north to New York City. The only American document I have for Salvatore is his death certificate, stating he passed on December 3, 1899 in a tenament at 224 Chrystie Street in New York City. I have found a ship manifest for a Salvatore Pagano, age 42, and Filippo Pagano, age 12, for a ship landing in New Orleans in 1892. The ages fit and the location fits with the family story, but I am not positive that this is my Salvatore.

Salvatore and Filippo Pagano's possible arrival, 7 November 1892, Ship name: Trinacria, Port of Departure: Palermo, Italy, Port of Arrival: New Orleans

While Salvatore has been the bane of my existence, his wife Maria Rosa, has been a little more easy to track. I have found her on the 1910 and 1920 census and I have her death certificate, dated 1928. She was born in Ventimiglia, married Salvatore there in 1878 and sometime prior to 1900 immigrated to New York City. According to the 1910 census, Mary (as she was called in America) had six children, five were living at the time. Six? I only know of four...where and who are the other two children?

Through the Family History Library I was able to view civil registration films from Ventimiglia. I found birth records for four Pagano children: Filippo, Giovanni, Guiseppe and Guiseppa. Guiseppe was new to me. He was born in 1886, which means I should have seen him with his family on the 1910 census. On a whim I decided to look at the death records for 1886 and 1887. There was Guiseppe, dead at just one-year-old. On the 1910 census, there is a Mary, born 1899 in New York City. I have found no birth record for her, but the census makes it look like Salvatore and Maria Rosa are her parents. So that is the fifth child. What of baby number 6?

Pagano Family on 1910 census. Living at 422 West 35th Street in Manhattan.

I was unable to find any other children for Salvatore and Maria Rosa in the records from Ventimiglia. My next step was to try to track when Mary and the other children came to America. Her eldest son, Filippo, came around 1892. The above census states that Giovanni, or John, arrived in 1896. It also states that Maria Rosa and daughter Josephine arrived in the United States in 1897. I'm not positive that the dates are correct, but I have found a ship manifest for Maria and Josephine that may fit. The date was 1896.

Possible Maria and Josephine Pagano arrival, dated: 24 August 1896, arriving to the port of New York on the ship Bolivia

This manifest lists Salvatore Pagano, age 46; Coucetta, age 7; Guiseppa, age 5. Below this family on the manifest is a Maria R. Cassata, age 41. Women were often listed by their maiden names on ship manifests and low and behold Maria's maiden name is Cassata. It is very possible that Salvatore returned to Italy to get his "girls" and come back to America. But who is Coucetta? If this is indeed the line I am searching for, this is the first time I have seen her. But I do know that Salvatore's mother's name was also Coucetta. Coincidence or fantastic research? It is hard to say. Coucetta could be the missing child. She is not listed on the 1910 census with the family, but it is very possible that she would have been married and out of the house by then. Or she could have died. Now begins the work of try to locate Coucetta, the only possible lead I have for the missing Pagano child.

Mildred and Ruth Burnett - Wordless Wednesday

"5 weeks old (July 1917); 3610 Prospect, Kansas City, Missouri"

This photo is of Ruth Butler Burnett and her first child Mildred Burnett. I love the "newness" of this photo. The new family, new baby, new neighborhood. Unfortunately, the beautiful houses are now run down and dilapidated; I love that this photo shows their glory days.

Inserting Spreadsheet Screen Shots in your Blog - Tuesday's Tip

I wrote here about an ancestor county tracking log I created to provide a quick sheet for determining which of my ancestors was from each county in Virginia. The document was invaluable to my research at The Virginia Room at the Roanoke City, Virginia library. A reader asked how I was able to provide a view of my Excel spreadsheet, so I will provide it here. I will first state that I am not an IT wizard...I am more a "Wizard of Doing Something with the Stuff You Have." I am positive there is a better way, but I have found this to work just fine.

These steps are for Blogger users on a PC, but I imagine that the process on a MAC would be similar.

The first step is to open the Excel document you want to feature. Once you have your spreadsheet completed and to the point you want to display it on your blog, navigate to the Print Preview and click on it.

Finding the Print Preview option in Excel. Click to enlarge.

Opening the document in Print Preview allows you an unobstructed view of the document, minus the grid pattern in normal view, and shows any headers or footers you might have added. Ensure that your Excel document looks the way that you want it to look in your blog and make sure that you do not have the "show margins" box checked as this will show the margin lines on your final product. When you have the print preview showing what you want to highlight from your spreadsheet, hit the Print Screen button, shown as the "PrtScn" key on your keyboard, found in the upper right hand corner.

This key will take a "capture" of whatever is on your computer screen at the time. You are essentially "copying" your screen to "paste" it in another program from your Clipboard. Now, open any program on your computer that allows you to save documents in an image format. PC computers come loaded with the Paint program, found in the Accessories folder on your computer. Paint is a very, very basic image editing program, but works great for this purpose. You can also use Microsoft PowerPoint, as you can save a slide as a JPG file. Open your program of choice and use the "paste" command.

Spreadsheet "PrtScn" image as "pasted" in to the Paint program. Click to enlarge.

You'll note that your pasted image contains everything that was on your screen at the time. Crop the image to the area you want to show on your blog and save the file as a JPG file. You can choose other image file formats, GIF works particularly well on the Internet because of its small file size, but we want a semi-large format image so that viewers will be able to see our details, so JPG it is.

Next, insert the image where desired on your Blogger page. After you insert the image, you can highlight the image by clicking on it. It will show size options for the image. You can choose small, medium, large, x-large or original size. 

Blogger image size, placement and caption options. Click to enlarge.

Your choice for image size will correspond to the layout of your Blogger template. For my blog, the main text area is fairly narrow, so image size must be fairly small. I originally chose x-large as my image size for this post, but the right-hand side was cut off and the image border inherent to my template is lost as well. So I downsized to large. This does make the details a little harder to see, but no fear! Blogger "downsized" the view of the image for placement within the blog template, but it is still the same size as the original file you saved. When a viewer clicks on the image, it will open at the original file size, so that viewers will be able to see the details of your spreadsheet. I also added a caption to my Blogger image insert to indicate that viewers should "click to enlarge."

Next week I will cover how to edit the HTML code of your blog so images and links open in a new browser window.

Value of military records - Military Monday

A few days ago I was browsing through some genealogy blogs and came across a comment that I found interesting. I can't remember now where I read it, as I follow quite a few blogs, but the comment really stuck in my mind. A researcher had noted that they did not research military files; they were not a big fan of today's military. I can't say whether they were just inexperienced in researching military records or chose not to utilize them based on their feelings toward today's military. I am a big fan of today's military, it's service members and all the veterans that have come before us, but that is not really what made the comment stick in my mind. I kept returning to my disbelief that this researcher was missing the wealth of information that comes with military records.

Being in the military myself, I can perfectly understand the long standing military tradition of paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork. If it is not in writing it cannot possibly be true. I have written a plethora of genealogy narratives just by filling out standard military forms. And this is not a new process. The military has always been adept at tracking genealogical details. Most often it is so there is a record of next of kin. As gruesome as that thought is, it leaves a veritable gold mine for descendants.

Case in point #1: Last week I received a copy of the bounty land warrant for the widow of David Reed, Mary Reed. I had found many websites that had given her maiden name as Bryan, but I had no source documentation for that information. I was able to determine that she had applied for a widow's land warrant as her husband was a veteran of the War of 1812. As I flipped through the packet I came across sworn affidavits attesting to Mary's marriage to David written by her mother, Elizabeth Bryan, and sister, Esther Morris. On one page I learned her maiden name, the county and date of her marriage, her mother's name and a sibling with married name. In one fell swoop I had obtained the source documentation I needed and I knew it to be fact as it was legally attested to (of course someone could have fibbed, but in this case I doubt it). There are not many records that provide this kind of information on women and I was very pleased with my find.

Case in point #2: I wrote here about finding the casualty file for a distant cousin, James S. Trabue. I had been able to find some information on his family through census records, but after his death I was not aware of what happened to his family. A document in his casualty file lists his wife and son, parents and siblings and each of their addresses at the time. The purpose of the document was to provide contact information for the disposition of his remains. A list of six to eight family members with their addresses? Seriously, that is genealogical money.

It is not for me to discuss political or military stances or views. A major purpose of our military is to help provide opportunities for individuals to carry and express their own views. But to overlook a type of document because of a political stance seems to be a missed opportunity. I appreciate values, but I would highly suggest doing research on the ultimate value of military records before dismissing them.

Ancestor county tracking - Sorting Saturday

My family's roots are very deeply seeded in the state of Virginia. I have always been drawn there and our family took numerous vacations to the area when I was younger. Two years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Virginia Room, a collection of genealogy resources for the state of Virginia and the Roanoke Valley. Located in the Roanoke City Library, the Virginia Room is smack in the middle of where many of my ancestors came from.

I currently live three states away from Virginia and I was only afforded several hours to research, so my visit needed to be organized. I was also aware of the limitations my genealogy ADD would set for me; my visit would be akin to a kid in a candy store...so many great resources, so little time. And to top it all off I have numerous random family lines throughout the state. In order to get prepared I created a spreadsheet of all of my Virginia lines to take with me. That way, if I found a great resource that may pertain to one or more lines, I had a quick sheet that would help me remember which families lived where.

Click to enlarge

The spreadsheet includes a column for the county name, surname, dates of residence in said county, notes, the surname chain and notes on the county itself. The surname chain is a way for me to remember the links between myself and the particular surname.

I still had a massive research high while at the Virginia Room, but once I was able to come down I found this sheet very helpful. I started researching my particularly difficult line, the Whites, but when I could find so solid leads I moved on to other lines. This has also been helpful when digging through GenWeb or historical/genealogical society web sites.

Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Around closing time on March 25, 1911, a fire started at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on 23-29 Washington Street in Manhattan. Eighteen minutes later 146 people were dead. It was soon discovered that one of the exit doors in the factory was locked and that the fire escape was more for looks than use.

The victims of the fire were mostly women immigrants working under ridiculously strenuous conditions, and more often than not, the sole providers for their families in the old country and here in their new homeland.

Recently, historian and amateur genealogist, Michael Hirsch, tracked down the names of six previously unknown victims through historical and genealogical research. Hirsch also produced the HBO documentary "Triangle: Remembering the Fire."

There were many contributing factors to the fire, most of which could have been prevented. The tragedy sparked massive reforms in both labor and safety laws at the time. The Triangle fire is an interesting insight into factory conditions at the turn of the century, not just of the clothing industry, but industry in general.

Below are some resources to learn more about this pivotal moment in labor and workplace safety history:

100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire is Complete, New York Times

Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire, a website presented by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University

Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Memorial

Uncovering the History of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, Smithsonian Magazine, by David Von Drehle author of "Triangle: The Fire That Changed America."

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial, detailed site explaining the trial that followed the fire

Triangle Fire, American Experience documentary on PBS

A pattern for shirtwaist embroidery from the Iowa State Register and Farmer, 1909

Cure for genealogy ADD?

I am writing today to admit that I have a full-blown case of genealogy attention deficit disorder. I do not mean to make fun of the actual disorder, but I can come up with no other way to accurately describe my research methods other than to say: Look, a squirrel!

Here is a typical day in the land of genealogy ADD:

Today I think I will conduct a search on the civil war service record of Philip Kuhn. Hmm, nothing on Footnote.com. Why doesn't Ohio have civil war service records on Footnote? While I'm here I better look for Isaac Riffe's service record. What unit was he in? (opens family tree to check) That's right 4th Missouri Infantry. Oh look (distracting ad catches eye)! New Revolutionary War records! I wonder if they have anything on James McGuire (opens family tree to check service dates). Maybe I should write a blog post on Ohio civil war records. Oh, but today isn't military Monday...

As you can see I have a lot of sweet ideas on any given day, but don't really get much accomplished. I could blame Sesame Street. I mean, I did grow up watching that show every day. A show which is designed to entertain short attention spans, but I believe that it helped me to keep the attention span of a four-year-old. Of course, it isn't fair to blame a TV show. I think it comes down to loving the hunt. I am on the constant hunt not for more ancestors to add to my tree, but more "meat." Meaning, I am always looking for stories, photos, etc. that will better highlight who these people were in their lifetimes. I am more interested in ensuring that the history of each individual is well-rounded, than finding a link to the Queen. Although, that would add some terrific history. It is this craving to fill in the blanks that drives me to genealogy ADD.

I'm not sure there is a cure. I have a research model in place, I even created a checklist to follow when researching someone, but I don't use it. The tools are only as good as the artist and this artist sees another squirrel.