Immigrant Secrets: The Search for My Grandparents by John Mancini (2022)

That John Mancini is an experienced speaker in his professional life is apparent in the engaging presentation style of his writing. His entertaining introduction, with its references to the TV show The Wonder Years and Kevin Costner’s movie Field of Dreams, indicates his fondness for imaginative storytelling. 

All family historians and memoir writers must choose how best to relate the truth of their or their subjects’ experiences. The main section of the book is fictionalised (in the manner of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, for example). As Mancini explains:

“The facts that surround the story of Elizabeth and Frank are true, but the color and texture that surround those facts are my own creations to give them life.”

The imaginative approach used here may not appeal to all, but there is no question about the thoroughness of the genealogical research. Among the documents sourced from archives across the world are census entries, excerpts from church registers, death certificates, hospital records, ships’ passenger lists and immigration records. A selected bibliography is included at the end.

Mancini clearly enjoyed the family history experience, speaking positively of the community:

‘One of the great things of doing genealogy research is that folks are extraordinarily interested in helping each other solve their puzzles.’ 

Overall, the book is an insight into one man’s genealogical journey, and how he was changed by his discoveries, as much as it is a story of his ancestors. Although his Irish and Swedish immigrant forebears are introduced in the early chapters, the main focus is on his Italian grandparents (Elizabeth/Elisabetta and Frank/Francesco), their origins in Itri (a small agricultural centre in Lazio), and their new life in the United States. 

Throughout the fascinating story of immigrant life in mid-century New York, we are mindful of the mystery of Mancini’s grandparents’ deaths. Did they or did they not die in a fire in the 1930s, as family rumour suggested? It is well worth taking this narrative journey through the family’s immigrant history to find out.

What was your background before writing this book?

I spent over 35 years working in three major non-profit associations, 1) the Public Affairs Council, 2) the American Electronics Association, and 3) AIIM International. As the President of AIIM, I spent a lot of time with records managers, archivists, and content and process management executives. Personally, I am the grandfather of three, the father of three, and I have five siblings. I was a history major as an undergraduate, which I think helped create the foundation for my interest in family history and genealogy.

Why did you want to write about your immigrant ancestors? 

The story of the search itself is a rather typical family history journey, albeit one that revealed things I never could have imagined about our family. One thing I have found along this journey is that genealogy people are incredibly helpful. I spent a good portion of the last 20+ years of my career hanging about with records managers and archivists. I will admit that in the rush to embrace the latest and greatest technology shiny gadgets, I didn’t always understand or appreciate them. But I do now. Any errors in genealogy are not intentional. But they’re my fault.

The story of my Italian grandparents is in fact a story. But it is, as they say in movie previews, “based on a true story.” The facts that surround the story of Elizabeth and Frank are true, but obviously, the texture that surrounds those facts and the story incorporating the facts are my own creations to give them life. 

As Rachel Held Evans said, “Origin stories are rarely straightforward history. Over the years, they morph into a colourful amalgam of truth and myth, nostalgia and cautionary tale.”

Did you have any concerns about sharing private aspects of your family’s story?

My brother and I debated whether to raise all this secret history with my mom and ultimately decided that telling the story was the way to keep my father’s story alive. We thought for a while about what to ask my mom about all of this, and what she knew.

My father must have somehow coped with the complete disaster of his childhood by creating an enormous, sealed wall around it, never to be scaled or even discussed. Against a society that viewed – and continues to view – any sort of mental illness through a prism of shame, he and the rest of this extended family of immigrants just shut down the memory of Francesco and Elisabetta and completely erased them from history. Well, not quite.

 And my father kept all of this bottled up so that first HE could survive and protect his brother and then later protect his own family of eight. I imagine that over the years this pressure cooker of secrets ultimately contributed to his premature death. Ultimately we decided the best way to honour his memory was to tell his story.

Do you feel a strong connection to Italy? Has this deepened since working on the book?

I have been to Italy four or five times, and love it. A pre-COVID dream – and one I still hope to realize – was to spend an extended time in my grandparents’ home town. All of this deepened with the book and actually making connections with the Italian side of the family that we never knew existed.

What’s next for you? Any more books?

One of the things I realized after writing the book and talking to people about it is that EVERY family has a story. Many of these origin stories are not what we would have guessed – and many of them are frankly not pleasant – but they are all nonetheless precious.

I am currently researching my maternal grandfather’s story – John Oliver Manson. He was quite a character. He was born in Sweden – but always claimed to have been born in Australia. I believe he stowed away on a ship when he was a teenager. One medical report says he suffered a gunshot wound as a teenager in Rio. He was a leading ship captain in Miami prior to the Depression, lost most of what he had during the Depression, and dabbled in a silver mine in Nevada. And much more, I’ve started documenting his story on my blog – http://www.searchformygrandparents.com – so we’ll see where that goes.

My wife’s family goes all the way back to the 1700s in Virginia, fought on the wrong side in the US Civil War, and has LOTS of untold stories. So many stories, so little time.

John Mancini was the long-time President of AIIM, the world’s leading information management association. He is a well-known author, speaker, and advisor on genealogy, digital transformation, information governance, and intelligent automation. He is the author of Immigrant Secrets, writes about family history topics at http://www.searchformygrandparents.com, and is the author of more than 30 eBooks on a variety of topics. He can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

As part of DNA Day 2018 on 25 April, 23andMe offered AncestryDNA users the chance to upload their raw DNA for free.

23andMe is the only major genetic genealogy testing company with which I haven’t tested. When I saw a tweet from @AtcherleyONS saying the offer was about to run out, I jumped at the chance.

After a couple of false starts and a complaint email to 23andMe, I was able to upload the DNA. I received my four free reports a short time later.

23andMe is unique for being the only major family history DNA testing company that offers health reports. My free reports included two Wellness Reports and two Ancestry Reports. Of the latter, the first comprised ethnic origins and the second focused on cousin matching.

23andMe estimate my Ancestry Composition as follows:

• European 99.5%
  • British & Irish 49.1%
  • Ashkenazi Jewish 11.2%
  • French & German 4.0%
  • Scandinavian 3.1%
  • Eastern European 0.4%
  • Iberian Less than 0.1%
  • Broadly Northwestern European 28.4%
  • Broadly Southern European 0.3%
  • Broadly European 3.1%
• East Asian & Native American 0.4%
  • Broadly East Asian 0.4%
• Western Asian & North African 0.2%
  • North African & Arabian 0.2%
  • Broadly Western Asian & North African Less than 0.1%
• Unassigned Less than 0.1%

Although this corresponds broadly with the results of my AncestryDNA test, it does not match exactly.

Wellness Reports

These indicated that I have a Muscle Composition which is uncommon in elite power athletes. As I’m not particularly athletic, this is not surprising.

And my Sleep Movement is of likely average or less movement, which seems reasonable.

My favourite part of this, and something that seems unique among the main testing companies, is that 23andMe provides “Your Ancestry Composition Chromosome Painting”. Specific ancestry and that shared with others is clearly visible. My Ashkenazi ancestry, for example, is clearly defined. 23andMe describes the feature as follows:

These are your chromosomes; we’ve painted them with your Ancestry Composition results. The first 22 are called autosomes and come in pairs of two, each represented by one of the colored horizontal lines in the graphic below. Chromosomes have different lengths, and are named 1 through 22, when sorted by size (scientists are not very creative). Lastly, we also look at ancestry on your X chromosome: two copies like the autosomes if you are female, and only one copy if you’re male (that you got from mom).

The “Your DNA Family” section of the report tells me I have 1093 DNA Relatives in the 23andMe database. This only gives an overview of my matches (1 Close Family to Second Cousins; 727 Third to Fourth Cousins; Many Fifth to Distant Cousins). In order to see the full DNA Relatives list of individual cousins, I need to pay for a kit.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2020

In October 2019, I paid for a kit and upgraded to the full 23andMe experience.

As well as the ancestry information to which I already had access, I was delighted to learn that my maternal haplogroup is T2b, described by 23andMe as:

As our ancestors ventured out of eastern Africa, they branched off in diverse groups that crossed and recrossed the globe over tens of thousands of years. Some of their migrations can be traced through haplogroups, families of lineages that descend from a common ancestor. Your maternal haplogroup can reveal the path followed by the women of your maternal line.

As a woman, I have no Y-DNA. I know of my paternal DNA through a test taken by my grandfather for FTDNA some years ago. Male 23andMe customers would learn both their maternal and paternal haplogroups through this test. This is more than offered through an Ancestry test, for example.

I now have access to 66 health reports. None of these has made a significant difference to my approach to health. I am fortunate that no major problems have been identified.

My 34 traits are of variable certainty, but the earwax type and eye colour are precise. For hair texture, the results predict I have a 39% chance of slightly wavy hair – which I do have. In the weird and wonderful section, though, the prediction about hair thickness is wrong. On a positive note, my toe length ratio of the big toe is longer than others is also accurate.

Paying for access has opened up contact with DNA relatives. I currently have 1372 cousins on the database. Some of these cousins I know already through other tests, such as Ancestry and MyHeritage. We know exactly how are related. My closest relative at present is a 2nd cousin. There is an option to connect with cousins in order to share further information.

Hitler’s Forgotten Children: the shocking true story of the Nazi kidnapping conspiracy by Ingrid von Oelhafen & Tim Tate (Elliott & Thompson, 2017)

Hitler’s Forgotten Children is a powerful, personal history of the Nazi Lebensborn programme and its long-lasting effects.

Next year marks 80 years from the beginning of the Second World War. This book highlights just one of many aspects of that conflict that are yet to enter mainstream historiography.

As we move further from the end of the war, more secrets of the conflict are being revealed. Ingrid von Oelhafen was born in 1942 as ‘Erika’. Although Yugoslavian, she was forcibly adopted into a Nazi family and given a new identity as part of the Lebensborn programme. This was created in 1935 by the SS, under the charge of Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945).

. . . the older I became, the more I wondered about my personal history. I am not alone in this: it is part of the human condition to revisit the past as the years slip away.

Von Oelhafen’s story, told here with the help of filmmaker and author Tim Tate, covers not only her wartime struggles in Nazi Germany but what happened after she discovered she was adopted and her attempts to understand the truth. These enquiries would reveal the full scale of the Lebensborn scheme, including the kidnapping of half a million babies and the deliberate murder of children born into the programme who were deemed ‘substandard’.

Van Oelhafen wrote, ‘All those I have met – whether born into the Lebensborn program or kidnapped to strengthen it – have been scarred by their experience.’ Not all history stays in the past. This book raises many questions, not just about the war, but also of the subsequent division of Germany, and the manner in which Europe recovered from the conflict – often leaving truths hidden and crimes unsolved. The troubled history of Eastern Europe is something about which many of us in the West still do not know enough. This is not just a story of the tragedy of war, but of the suffering that continued long after it. Many families were ripped apart forever, as the conflict left a dark legacy for decades ahead.

With the current climate of tension across Europe, and as extremist parties are again on the rise, personal testimonies such as this make an essential contribution to a period many today are yet to fully understand. Von Oelhafen dedicates the book to, ‘all the victims of Nazi Germany – men, women and, above all, children – and to those throughout the world today who suffer from the persisting evil which teaches that one race, creed or colour is superior to another.’

. . . the Lebensborn experiment had been based on the Nazi’s belief in blood as the determining factor of human worth. Himmler’s obsession with blood and bloodlines was the reason I had been plucked from my family – whoever they were – in Yugoslavia and reborn as a German child.

A thought-provoking book about identity, which is a subject close to the hearts of all family historians. Although much work is being done in genetic genealogy to combat false beliefs, sadly the Nazi’s pseudo-scientific concept of racial purity has not fully been destroyed. Roma, amongst others, remain persecuted in the 21st century.

The book ends in hope, illustrating how von Oelhafen has been able to move forward with her life. The survivors of Lebensborn have created an organisation, the Fount of Life, to help with their understanding and recovery. Members chose the following quotation from French activist and philosopher, Simone Weil, to head their articles of association. Its words will resonate with anyone who has thought about investigating their family history.

Uprootedness is by far the most dangerous disease to which human society is exposed.                                           Whoever is uprooted, uproots others.                                                                                                                                          Who is rooted, himself doesn’t uproot others,                                                                                                                                 To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.

Recently I was contacted by Rebecca Meekings, who works on behalf of Explore The Past (the Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service).

Several members of my maternal grandmother’s family are from Worcestershire. My 3x great grandmother, Elizabeth Hannah Mould (1825-1904) was born in Smethwick, Staffordshire. She lived in the area of Smethwick all her life, but moved into the neighbouring area of Oldbury – which is in Staffordshire. Afte the early death of her first husband (my 3x great grandfather, Henry Harrison (1834-64), Elizabeth married George Hall Dearn (1845-1913), a man 20 years her junior, and settled in Warley, Worcestershire. Unlike nearby Oldbury, Warley remained an area of rural farmland until after the First World War. Elizabeth came from a line of dairy farmers and Warley seems to have been the perfect place in this part of Worcestershire for her to continue her family’s rural practices.

The West Midlands generally can be a difficult area for family historians to research as boundaries often changed over the years. Researching family who lived within a ten mile radius can require visits to four or five different record offices. Anything that makes family history research clearer for those of us with ancestors in this part of the world, therefore, is something to be celebrated.

Thus I was delighted to learn that Explore The Past has created a comprehensive 70-page guide designed to provide advice for people getting started with exploring their family history in the Worcestershire area. The team say, “It doesn’t matter where in the world they are researching, this guide covers general support for everyone, as the team at Explore The Past understand that it can be difficult knowing where to start.”

As I often find West Midlands geography confusing, my favourite section of the guide is that of maps and plans. This gives tips on exploring places relating to my ancestor’s homes and their surroundings.

The guide also helps researchers learn more about the types of resources most commonly used to research family history, as well as providing guidance on how to gain access to original documents, maps, photographs. Overall, it is intended to help family historians understand more about what kind of records & services will help them on their journey of discovery.

Full details on the guide are online at the Explore the Past website: www.explorethepast.co.uk/discover-your-past/

The Chicago Stones: A Genealogy of Acquisition, Influence & Scandal by Darcie Hind Posz (Darcie M. Posz, 2017) 
Price: $14.99 (U.S. Dollars)

Darcie Hind Posz wrote The Chicago Stones as part of her studies as a professional genealogist. This extensive and engaging romp through one hundred years of Stone and Yager family history originates in 1835 with one man who bought land, which would go on to fund three generations. Family historians – and others keen to explore further – will appreciate the transcriptions of original records, pre- and post-1871 Chicago fire records and discussions, a Register style of the Yager genealogy, and recommended listening (my favourite part). As an Englishwoman, I savoured the tales of upper-class US society and the history of the rapid growth of American cities, alongside the later depiction of the early transatlantic social scene. Prince Harry and Megan Markle are perhaps the most recent couple to follow this long line of transatlantic couples from the upper echelons of society.

In order to find out more about this family and family history research across the pond, I interviewed Darcie about the book and her inspirations.

What first drew you to the Stone family?

They lived in an interesting time in American history and they had so much, but a majority of the recorded moments in their lives were of great unhappiness: deaths, divorces, escapist travels. It was so dissimilar to my ancestry; I just had to discover more about these people.

It was an opportunity to broach subjects that have been mentioned too briefly in genealogical publications.

I used the deaths of minors to explore dimensions of the major characters. A biographer once mentioned to me that she really felt like the deaths of children (who do not live past infancy) really do impact a subject’s timeline, let alone their psyche, but people tend to leave out those events because the children did not live past a certain age. If it impacts us now, why would it not have impacted our ancestors? I wanted to show all of the little ones in Horatio I’s generation.

I also discussed contraception, uterine issues, and miscarried and terminated pregnancies in all three generations, because this is something that our female ancestors would have been aware of or in contact with. Elizabeth’s uterus is mentioned by way of a lawsuit in Part 1, contraception in the form of “Dr. LeFevre’s French Regulators” are considered in Part 2, and Dorothea’s stressful pregnancies are broached in Part 3. Our ancestresses deserve more practical consideration, rather than accoutrement.

I was fascinated by the dramatic rise in wealth of Horatio Stone juxtaposed with the growth of Chicago where he made his fortune. For UK readers who may not be familiar with the history of cities in the USA, what do you find most interesting about this period?

In the UK, you either inherited land or worked on it. At that time in the US, you could practically go out and take it. Just by squatting on the land and filing the right paperwork (if you even did that) you could make a multigenerational investment. Sometimes it became a generationally burdensome responsibility.  In this case, Horatio saw the potential in a muddy piece of land that became the epicenter of Chicago daily business and life. Similar stories can be seen all over America during the 1800s as the people of the east migrated west and found pockets to invest in.

Your genealogy of the Stones is extensive. Do you have a favourite member of the family?

I have a soft spot for Frank A. Parker. He was a collateral family member and not directly of the biological line of the Stone family, but he really did make an impact on their timeline. He kicked a morphine habit in the 1890s and went on to live a clean life, eventually ending up in Florida, fishing and running a restaurant.

Younger members of the Stone family travelled and lived all over Europe, and some even married UK citizens. Did you enjoy researching European records?

I did enjoy researching European records! There were so many courses and lectures I had attended regarding UK and European genealogical research that I was able to apply to this book.

One character that I found particularly intriguing was Mabel Rapp – a woman on the fringes of the family. Do you feel that the full truth of her life has been discovered or is there more to find?

I have a case study on Mabel that will be published in The American Genealogist (https://americangenealogist.com/) in the future. Since she was on the fringes I didn’t want her to dominate this story, but the outsiders really did steal the show in the book. What the book taught me is that, although you may want to focus on the direct line or a specific surname, in genealogies those outsiders can breathe life into these pedigrees. They showcase context, shake up the system, and keep the descent going.

What’s next?

Several projects. One that will last several years is on my Hind and Blakiston ancestors in counties Northumberland and Durham. It will take several trips abroad to firmly settle that story and lineage, but I am up to it.

Darcie Hind Posz, CG, lives in Washington, D.C. Her work has been published in The Genealogist, The American Genealogist, and the National Genealogical Society Quarterly. For a complete list of her works, please visit darcieposz.weebly.com