Personal Ancestor Research Project Guidelines

Own Ancestor Research Projects

Students will have the chance to conduct genealogical research on one of their own long-ago family members with this upcoming project. 

An assignment sheet will be distributed in class and students need to turn in topics the next class. The blog posts will be due the class after Spring Break.  During this class, each student will bring up his or her ancestor blog post and briefly discuss it and the person written about. 

Dates:  Topic Submission- Feb. 24 
             Posts and Presentations:  March 23

See this post for additional information on this assignment and examples of past student ancestor research. 

Ancestor Research Project/Post Guidelines

Angela Capobianco- My Great-Grandmother with Mob Ties and Sauce

From left to right: My grandmother Estelle, my great great grandmother Angela, and my great aunt Marina.

For the personal ancestor project, I chose my great great grandmother Angela Capobianco. The reason I chose her is because I know for a fact she had an extremely interesting life and was dedicated to her family. I did not know much detail before, but I learned about her childhood, her love for sauce, and her ties to the Italian mob which is another main reason I selected her.

Angela was born around 1898 in Italy. When she was 14, she came to America, Ellis Island specifically, on a boat with her mother and two sisters and was sent back to Italy alone because they said her vision was not good enough. 

When she ended up coming back to America, she lived in New York for a while before moving to Baltimore, MD. Angela passed away in her 90's, when my mom was in college, simply from old age in Baltimore and was buried there. She is buried in New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore, and her gravestone is a yard marker.

I got the opportunity to call my great grandmother's best friend Marie Elena who lived with her for over 30 years to find out close to all of my information on her. "She was the sweetest, most caring woman I ever knew. Her ability to put her family before herself was something I admired about her the most". 

My mom told me that my great great grandmother had a second kitchen in her basement, where she would make her own sauce and dough, and that she even considered starting her own sauce company. "She would make the best sauce from scratch in her basement. She loved doing it so much that she would have jars and jars of sauce shelved up".

Marie Elena also, surprisingly, gave me the inside scoop on her ties with the Italian Mob. She told me that my Uncle Mikey and Tommy lived above a pizza shop with her in New York. "Your great grandmother told me that she would clean the money for the Italian mob up in New York." She told me details that my grandmother had given her about how men would always be coming in and out of her place with guns. I thought this part of my great-grandmothers life was super interesting and the main reason I chose her. Thank you Mom and Marie Elena especially for taking me back and letting me get to know my great-grandmother better!

Antonio Millo: A Simple Man with a Big Heart

Hey bloggers! My name is Kevin and I would like to invite you all to come check out my newest blog post where I talked about my great-grandfather, Antonio Millo.

Antonio on his 92nd Birthday- the year he died. 

My great-grandfather died when I was eleven years old and I barely knew him.

 I remember going to visit him in NJ when I was little and I remember just how much of a sweet old man he was.

Antonio was a very simple man, who worked as a doorman in Manhattan for most of his life.

 He was very healthy and always watched what he ate, which is why he lived to be 92.

In order to find details about him, I used ancestry.com and I also talked to my mother Michelle and grandmother Nicoletta to find details about his life.

I was surprised to find out that he was born in Naples, Italy and came to America through Ellis Island when he was 8 years old.

Ellis Island Naturalization Papers 

 I also found out that before he truly retired, he worked in his 80's as a golf-cart driver in Las Vegas airports.

Antonio died in 2011 from pneumonia from a heart condition called A-FIB. He is buried in St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx, and shares a headstone with his ex-wife Irene.

If you are interested in reading more about this wonderful man, make sure to check out my blog post!

The Interesting Life of Thaddeus Haskell Shull

Click here to see what a son returning home to his funeral, a letter from a former senator, and cows traded for college tuition all have in common.

Meet Megan Wright's Great Grandfather!

Check it out here!