Throwback Thursday - Finding Millie

 

Millie (left), Ma (right), Ida

In a conversation I had with Ma, I had told her she should go through the old photographs and label them so we (The Brother and I) would know who was in them. Her answer to me was "we" (Dad and Ma) know.

This photograph was one example. On the back Millie, Mary, Ida in Newark, New Jersey July 1936. When I was young I had asked Ma why she was in New Jersey and she said her father let them (I'm assuming she meant her mother, sister, and youngest brother) go on vacation. In 1936, Ma was 18 years old.

Sometime later my comment must have jolted her to action as written in pencil on the back: Millie looks like me. She's my cousin. The other girl is a girlfriend. And the 64 million dollar question: Millie who? 

This week, I fell down the genealogy rabbit hole. I stumbled onto a site that had birth, marriage, death records from Ariano Puglia (now Ariano Irpino) where my mother's parents were from. This was an unbelievable gold mine.

I knew very little about my mother's side of the family.  I pulled two all nighters searching records. My grandmother went from being a child with a brother to  having 4 sisters and 3 brothers! I knew she had a brother because I have a photograph of her and him (I don't know which brother) taken when she went back to Italy for a visit in 1963.

I found siblings for her parents. And spouses for her aunts and uncles, And cousins! Grandma's maternal aunt turns out to be Millie's mother and my great-grand aunt. The great- grand aunt also has the same first name as my mother.  Millie and I are first cousins twice removed. Millie's mother is a great aunt to Ma, and Millie and Ma are first cousins once removed. I think that's how  the theory of relativity goes.

When one mystery is solved another mystery pops up. Off to find another cousin of my grandmother.