Happy 2023 – Return to Blogging – Maybe ???

It is hard for me to believe that it has been four and a half years since I last posted on this blog. If you look at my second to last post about Irene Veri – you’ll find a clue as to why my blogging stopped. Irene was my biggest fan (others may disagree but that is how I felt) and my reliable source. After she died, I felt like it didn’t matter anymore. Who really cares about all that ancient history. Whenever I talked to Irene, I knew she was happy to have someone interested in her family. That she enjoyed pouring out her memories to me. Plus, I could always count on her to set me straight if I got one Louis or Nick George linked to the wrong parents – easy to do when so many brothers named their first son after their father.

I know Irene would want me to keep this up, but for some reason I lost interest. It probably made me sad to keep blogging without her here to read what I wrote. All I know is that I’m very thankful for every minute I got to spend with Irene in person (once in 2013 and again in 2016) and even more grateful for our five years of correspondence about the Giorgio family.

One reason for stopping is that I’d already posted what I could easily find on the George family from family interviews, newspapers and online sources – so the work was getting harder. As I begin to think about retirement in the next few years, blogging and genealogy are at the top of the list of how I imagine I will spend my retirement days. I know that without blogging regularly, my WordPress skills, as primitive as they are, will completely disappear, so there’s another good reason to pick it up again.

Another reason I stopped blogging is that I struggled with finding the balance between writing what is factually documented and what I’d heard from people’s recollection of things. If I write the basic facts – it’s not that interesting. If I “interpret” what I think about a certain event, or what I extrapolate from a series of documented facts, I might get it wrong. I need to find a way to distinguish between what is fact and what is speculation, without using footnotes.

The final reason I think I stopped blogging is that the answer to the biggest mystery in my husband’s family -“WHAT HAPPENED TO ADRIANO GIORGIO/GEORGE?” – kept eluding me. He left Dunbar, Pennsylvania in May of 1912, almost 111 years ago. According to Irene, whose father Nick George was Adriano’s son from his first wife in Italy, Adriano returned to Italy. That story lines up with Italian records that show him getting married in Italy in 1913. Family stories suggest he may have gone to Argentina, before he returned to Italy.

My husband’s grandfather, Frederick William George, is the first son from Adriano’s marriage to Custode Iacobucci. They married in Pittsburgh in February 1899 and soon thereafter moved to Dunbar, Pennsylvania where their other children were born and raised. When Adriano left Pennsylvania, his oldest son was twelve and his youngest son, Victor Americus George was one. Another son was born later in 1912. When Adriano left, there were five sons and two daughters. Another daughter had died when she was six in 1909. I really want to know why Adriano left and where he went. Did he maintain contact or provide any support to his American family? Did his family in Italy know about his American family? So many unanswered questions.

So, I’m going to make a return to blogging for a while at least if for no other reason than because it is a lot easier to find things I’ve written on this blog than in my genealogy notes. Maybe the mystery that has eluded me for ten years will finally be resolved.

Happy Birthday Joseph Lloyd George

Joseph Lloyd George was Custode’s first summer baby. Her first two sons, Frederick and Luigino Anthony (Gene) were born in November and December. With the arrival of Joe on July 19, 1903, this young mother had three boys under the age of 4 – it was just the beginning.

Custode had brothers named Vincenzo, Giuseppe (Joseph), Louis and Anthony. If her second son was named after her brothers Louis and Anthony, it’s likely that Joseph was named after her older brother Joseph Iacobucci who lived in New Castle.

The young family grew quickly. In this picture of the Giorgio siblings, Joe is sitting on the stool with Fred’s hand on his shoulder. Guessing that the youngest girl in the picture is about seven to nine months old, and knowing that Lena was born in November 1906, I would guess this picture was taken in the summer of 1907.

In 1920, Joe joined the Navy and served for just over a year. From the record below, it appears he used his brother Gene’s identity when he enlisted. I don’t know how ages and identities were verified before social security cards and birth certificates but I would guess Joe needed to use his older brother’s name because Joe was only 16 years old on May 26, 1920. He wouldn’t turn 17 until July 19th. Interestingly he used his birth date, but Gene’s birth year.

Dickerson Run, PA is an unincorporated area in Fayette County beside the Youghiogheny River, about seven miles northwest of Dunbar. I wonder if Custode and Adriano ever lived in Dickerson Run and if not, why Joe listed it this as his birth place on his enlistment record. Yet another George family mystery.

Here’s a picture of a very young looking Joe in his navy uniform.

Adding to the mystery is the fact that in the 1920 census for Dunbar, a 17-year old son named Joseph is listed as living in Dunbar in the home of his mother and working as a laborer in a silk mill. Two older brothers are also listed in that census. Fred was working as a druggist’s helper and Gene was working as a laborer on the railroad. This just gets more and more curious as I write it.

In 1930, Joe was still living with Custode in Dunbar, was single and was working in a wire plant. I don’t know when or how he met his wife Olive Basinger, although in the 1920 census Olive was 9 years old and living with her mother, a widow, in Bullskin Township, Fayette County, which is about 20 miles northeast of Dunbar. Since they both grew up in Fayette County, maybe Joe and Olive met before they moved to Beaver County. In the 1930 census Olive Basinger was working at the Tuberculosis Sanitorium in Center Township, Beaver County as an attendant. There were about 55 patients and 15 staff at the sanitorium. The campus of Penn State Beaver is located where the sanitorium once stood. You can read more about it here.

Although I haven’t found their marriage record, I do know that Olive and Joe were married by 1936 because of this clip in the Connellsville Courier on December 28, 1936, announcing the holiday guests in the home of Mrs. Adrian George of Dunbar. We also see that Frank was married and that he and his wife lived in Beaver and that Hubert was bringing home the girl he would later marry – Grace Halliday of Pittsburgh. Does anyone know who Anna Gallagher of Butler is? Maybe a chaperone for Grace?

By the 1940 census, Joe and Olive were living in Ohio Township, Beaver County and Joe was working as a roller at a steel mill. Interestingly, the town of Midland originated as a planned community for Crucible Steel, which is where Joe worked for the rest of his life. Also interesting that Midland was the location of George’s drugstore, which suggests that even the Giorgio brothers who left Dunbar, stayed close to each other throughout their adult lives. The exceptions seem to be Hubert, who moved to New York and Frank, who lived in Beaver for awhile but moved to California at some point in the 1960s.

It’s hard to find as much information about Joe as some of his brothers because much of what I’ve found about the other Georges is because of the digitized versions of the New Castle News and Connellsville Courier. Most of what I know about Joe comes from information his daughters Elaine and Chris have shared with me over the past few years.

His family came first and by all accounts, he was devoted father and husband. His nieces, Carole Ann and Lynnette remember Sunday dinners at Uncle Joe’s house and cookouts in his backyard. The family home must have held a lot of great memories because his daughter Elaine now owns it even though she lives in California. Here’s a good picture with the house in the background.

From left to right: Chris, Nancy and Lainie

Lainie shared a story of a time when Custode came to take care of the girls while Joe and Olive went on a vacation. Apparently, the girls were not as well behaved as Custode thought they should be so at some point early on in her stay, Custode packed her bags and was ready to go home. I think she kept threatening to leave and the girls called her bluff by saying they didn’t care if she left (thinking she wouldn’t or maybe hoping she would) so she decided to go.  I think the crisis was averted by Uncle Victor convincing his mother to stay and bribing the girls to be on their best behavior.

Here is a picture of Joe and Olive around the time of that vacation.

And one from their early days together, probably soon after moving into the house in Fairview that Joe helped build.

And one of my favorite photos of Joe (on the right) with his older brother Gene.

Happy 115th Birthday – Joseph Lloyd George!

Good Night Irene (Irene Rose George Veri: 1935-2018)

Conventional wisdom in genealogical circles is to start with your oldest living relative. Ask questions, draw charts, see what they remember about their grandparents.

What conventional wisdom doesn’t tell you is that you might be lucky enough to find a relative like Irene Veri. Irene was my portal to the past and I was her grateful padawan.

Irene Rose George Veri passed on June 17, 2018. She was 83. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Irene for almost 5 years. Soon after my husband took a DNA test to learn more about his Italian ancestors who he never knew, a match led us to Irene. Her father, Nick George (born Nicola Vitus Giorgio in 1896 in Castel di Sangro, Italy) was the first-born son of my husband’s grandfather – Adriano Giorgio. Technically this makes her my husband’s cousin once-removed – but in reality she was the living memory that only a few genealogists are lucky enough to find. Most of all – she was my friend – and I will miss her.

I keep a notebook of all my emails with relatives as I try to reconstruct my husband’s family tree that his father abandoned at an early age when his parents divorced. No surprise that the tab behind Irene’s page is the largest – by far.

People say that timing is everything. Very true. I met Irene at a time when it was convenient for her to share what she knew about her family and I was the grateful recipient of her vast stores of knowledge. The timing was right.

For anyone without Italian relatives let me just say that without a living relative who knew “la famiglia” you will have a very hard time determining which Nick is the son of your direct line of the family. If four Italian sons all name their first-born son after their father, as is the Italian naming convention, you will find four Nick’s about the same age, living in the same location and you will have a hard time knowing which Nick goes with which father. But if you are lucky enough to have someone like Irene to help you sort it out, you will know that the Nick on Hazen Street was the son of Romualdo and Dorinda and the Nick on Mill Street was the son of Pasquale and Filomena. And if you’ve done any genealogy at all, you will appreciate how much this stuff matters.

So yes, timing is everything, but now, the timing is all wrong. Because the cancer that consumed Irene’s body took her away much too soon and all I am left with are the volumes of information she shared and a big empty hole in my heart.

Here is what I am most grateful for about Irene.

1. Top of the list, without a doubt, is her razor sharp mind. Irene had a memory beyond compare. She grew up with the people I’m researching. Names on a page to me became the living people she knew. This one was “good looking,” that one was probably demented, this one never married because the girl from Italy brought over for him in an arranged marriage found out that New Castle, Pennsylvania was a far cry from New York, New York – so she went home and he remained single for the rest of his life. I could go on and on with the personal details that Irene shared with me. Thank you Irene.

2. She loved her family. She was without a doubt a “Daddy’s girl” and it will always make me happy to think that the reunion with her father in heaven occurred on Father’s Day. She loved her father and knew so many details about his life. She was glad to have someone interested in hearing those details and she would always correct me if I got it wrong, for which I am grateful. She also loved to tell me about her daughters and her grandchildren. I think Irene was one of those people, like my own mother, who may not have always done the best job of letting the people who mattered most to her know how much they mattered – but I can honestly say that she cherished her children and grandchildren beyond measure.

3. She was a straight shooter. She was honest, open and opinionated. You have to understand that she was telling things from her perspective, but as far as she was concerned it was the only perspective that mattered. And as far as I was concerned, it was the best way for me to learn about people I never knew and never would have known, without her willingness to share her memories. So what if there were minor discrepancies between the “official” records and Irene’s memory of things. It doesn’t really matter whether her parents were married in October or November of 1915. It matters so much more that her father loved to sing, that he wrote lyrics for songs and tried to get them published and that she was his secretary who mailed the post cards with the lyrics so that there would be a postmark to establish a copyright, that he made wine in his basement, that he took her downtown every Thursday night when she was in junior high school and bought her a milk shake at the soda shop while he went next door to the bar. Yes –those are the memories and stories that will always mean so much more than anything I can find on any official genealogical records.

There will be many, many reasons why I will miss Irene. But there will so many more where I will be thankful for the many gifts she shared with me over the past five years.

Good Night Irene, Good Night Irene

obituaries.ncnewsonline.com/obituary/irene-veri-1935-2018-106470782

Irene and Brother Anthony George

Irene George – At home in New Castle PA

Irene George on left – cousin Eleanor George on right

Irene Rose George

Love is in the Air

How romantic to get married on Valentine’s Day. The date is shared by at least two couples in the George line that I know of – Custode Iacobucci and Adriano George and Elaine (Lainey) George and Richard McGreevy. Thankfully Lainey and Rick have had a much longer run than Custode and Adriano. Happy 47th anniversary Lainey and Rick!

Custode and Adriano married in Pittsburgh on February 14, 1899 and parted ways sometime around May 20, 1912. I’ve never found any indication that they ever got a divorce. According to Custode’s testimony in a lawsuit in the summer of 1912, May 20th was the last time she saw her husband and she didn’t think he was ever coming back. It looks like her hunch was correct – I’ve found nothing to suggest that Adriano ever returned to America.

None of their children are alive to shed any light on what happened or how their father’s absence affected them. Most of Custode and Adriano’s grandchildren say that their family never talked much about Adriano.  The leading theory of why he left, which was the only thing Joseph George told his daughters, is that the Black Hand was coming in the front door (of the grocery store) while Adriano was going out the back.

Another theory, shared among some of the grandchildren is that Grandmother might have had an affair with a boarder, which prompted Adriano’s sudden departure and apparent attempt to leave her, and their eight children, without support. We’re not likely to prove that theory without DNA testing but it could be done. We know that Frank, the last child born to Custode, was born sometime in 1912 or 1913. If Adriano were his father, he and any of his male descendants would have the same Y chromosome as  any other male descendants of Adriano and his sons. We know that Frank George had a son named Gerald George, born in Pittsburgh (I think) on September 16, 1937. If that son, or any of his sons, were willing to take a DNA test, we might know the answer to the mystery of whether or not Custode was unfaithful to Adriano. Of course, that wouldn’t prove that was the reason for his departure, but it would be interesting.

It’s still a mystery as to where Adriano went when he left Pennsylvania. In her testimony Custode speculated he may have gone out west or to South America. Some of his grandchildren remember hearing from their parents that he went to Argentina. If he did go to South America, Argentina’s a good guess because during the peak of Italian emigration, from the late 1800s to 1930s, Argentina was second only to America as the destination for Italian emigrants. From 1857 to 1958, 46% of all immigrants to Argentina were from Italy.

I’ve searched for Adriano Giorgio and Andy George in immigration records to Argentina without success but I do know there were quite a number of emigrants from Castel di Sangro – Custode’s home town – who settled in Argentina – beginning as early as 1857. I’m creating a spreadsheet to see if I can make a connection in Italy between those immigrants and the Giorgio or Iacobucci families. It’s taking awhile but it might help identify known relatives in Argentina.

But back to the more romantic facts about this day. Here is the marriage license application filed by Custode and Adriano in Alleghany County, which is the source for the date of their marriage. The April date at the bottom of the document is the date the marriage return was sent back to the county courthouse from the officiant performing the marriage ceremony.

And here’s an excerpt of Custode’s testimony in the summer of 1912

Custode George (the orator in the complaint) is a resident of Fayette County, Pennsylvania and resides in Dunbar. The defendant, Andy George, was, until on or about May 20, 1912, a resident of Dunbar, but that his present residence is unknown to Custode.

Custode avers (says) that she and Andy George, were married on February 13, 1899, at Pittsburg, PA and that from that day until May 20, 1912, lived and cohabited together in the relationship of husband and wife. They have resided in Dunbar for the past eleven years and that there has been born to them eight children, the oldest of which is now twelve years old, the youngest one year, all of whom are still living.

For the past seven years Custode and Andy have been in the grocery business in Dunbar and during that time they devoted their time and attention to that business, by reason of which they have acquired considerable real estate and earned a good living for themselves and their family.

With the profits they made and by their thrift and energy, Custode and Andy acquired certain real estate in Dunbar, defined as follows: three separate lots with improvements each of which was originally conveyed to Andy and Custode, jointly.

On February 24, 1912, at Andy’s suggestion and request, Custode signed over her interest in the property to him. This was done by a deed, which legally vested title to the property (all three lots) to Andy.

Since May 20, 1912, Andy has willfully, maliciously and without reasonable or just cause, deserted Custode and their children and since that date has neglected and refused to provide for suitable maintenance for his wife and children even though he has sufficient means and ability to.

Notice that in her testimony, Custode cites as their marriage date as February 13th, which doesn’t quite match the official records.

We find evidence of Adriano’s return to Italy in the margin note of his birth record copied below. The note indicates he contracted to marry Maria Flamminio on June 1, 1913.  Unfortunately, the marriage records for San Vito Chietino for 1913 are not available on line and the margin note is hard to read so I can’t actually determine whether or not the second date is the date of their actual marriage or something else.  It is certainly possible that Adriano could have returned to Italy and never told anyone about his marriage to Custode in America but how sad to not have any contact with their eight (or perhaps nine) children.

Before ending this post I want to wish a belated happy anniversary to Carole Ann George and Glenn P. Johnson who were married on February 8, 1964. This picture is from the local paper published shortly after the wedding. Congratulations on 54 years of marriage!

Happy Birthday Irene!

I woke up this morning with this song running through my head but with slightly different lyrics. Not the sad blues version first recorded in 1933 by Louisiana bluesman Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter

and popularized by the Weavers  in the late 1940s –

but a happy birthday version for cousin Irene Rose George Veri. Happy Birthday Irene!

When I met her I asked Irene if she knew where her name came from. I think she said she didn’t (I always hesitate to recount what Irene told me about things because her memory is better than mine, but I’m pretty sure she said she didn’t know who she was named for other than her middle name Rose.)  Her middle name might be from her father’s Italian family – specifically Custode’s sister Rosallia. Rosaria is another form of that name and was the name of Nick George’s aunt, Rosaria who was married to Ciro Giorgio, Adriano Giorgio’s older brother. Ciro died in 1926, but Rosaria Giorgio and her children, including Josephine Bucci, lived in New Castle, PA near Irene’s family. Several girls in the George family have Rose in their name, usually as a middle name, so I think there is a family connection for Irene’s middle name.

What Irene did tell me is that her father often wrote songs and she was his secretary. They preserved the copyright for the songs Nick wrote by mailing them back to themselves so they’d have an “official” date (the postmark) of when they first created the lyrics.

My hunch about Irene’s name is that it came from the song Leadbelly Ledbetter sang at every show he performed. It became his “signature” song and you can read more about it here . His music was discovered in the early 1930s when John Lomax from the Library of Congress was sent to record American folk/blues music, specifically “Negro” songs of the South. He visited Southern prisons because he reasoned that the folk music he was after was going to be in songs by people who’d had a hard life. He recorded Huddie Ledbetter’s music in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1933.

Nick and Mary George followed the Italian naming convention for their children – first son after the paternal grandfather, first daughter after the paternal grandmother, but by the time Irene, their last child came along, I think they chose a name just because they liked it. I realize it’s probably more likely they knew someone with that name but I like to make up fun theories to explain family history, and given Nick’s love of music (and my love of this song, which I can remember my grandmother singing to me) I’m sticking with my theory that Nick’s love of music influenced Irene’s name.

Be sure to check out this version by Ry Cooder, which has all the gruesome lyrics of love gone wrong. I linked it because of the accordion – when was the last time you heard an accordion in a band?

Whatever the reason for your name, I’m sure glad you were born and wish you many happy returns of the day!

Irene George and her brother Anthony

Irene George on left, cousin Eleanor George (daughter of Fred and Betty) on right.