Mystery Great Grandma

                   I would love to know more about her but I don't even know her real name.

She went by a few different names and I don't know which is correct.  On her daughter's marriage license her name is Frieda Wiegla. She has been Felixa Rakiecz, Pauline Pacowski and Felicia Pacowski. If that isn't enough there are so many ways that Rakiecz and Pacowski are spelled.  My uncle joked that maybe she was an international spy. All I know is that she is my great grandmother and she must have been a strong women.

I never met her even though I was 10 years old when she died. She didn't even live far away. I just never knew she existed. It's strange how families are. I wish I could go back in time to when I was seven years old and go ask questions.

I'll call her Felicia. Felicia was born in 1889 in Lithuania. According to the 1930 Federal census she immigrated in 1910. I have not found any other records about that. I know this picture of her is from her marriage to Charles Rakiecz and it was taken in Pittsburgh. I know her son, my grandfather, Charles Rakiecz, was born in 1910 in Indiana County, Pennsylvania. Did she travel here, get married and have her son all in the same year? I suppose it's possible.

They had two more children, Anna and Mary.

Mary, Anna and Charles

In 1916, these three cutie pies lost their father in a mine collapse in Indiana County, PA. In 1918 Felicia had to put the children in an orphanage in Pittsburgh for a short time.  I don't know much about what happened in between. My mother was told that the youngest daughter started a fire in the home when the children were by themselves. She tried to melt the frost off the window with a candle and it caught the curtains on fire. This is why my mom was told her father and his sisters had been placed in the orphanage. I found some records from their stay at the Orphan Asylum of the Holy Family in Emsworth, PA. The records stated that the children had a stepfather and that he had deserted the family. My mother, aunt and uncle had never been told about this man.

That means Felicia lost her husband and was deserted by another man all within two years. The records from the orphanage had a Pittsburgh address for the family but there was a note that the mother was taking the children back to the mining town after their 7 week stay at the orphanage. I haven't found the family in the 1920 census but I do find her going by the name Pauline with her new husband, John Pacowski, and her three children in Pittsburgh in the 1930 census. When I started doing family research my mother told me her grandmother's name was Pauline. When I found the holy card from her funeral it said her name was Felicia. I thought my mom was confused about Pauline but she must have remembered that from when she was young because that is how I found her.

Felicia with daughters Anna and Mary

My mother always says she is thankful that her ancestors came to the United States so that she could be born here. So I'll add my thanks to Felicia...I mean Pauline....er... Frieda.  I have more work to do!

Felicia's crochet

Anna

I'm excited to start a blog to share my research and the stories of my family. I've wanted to start this for a while but didn't know where to begin. When I heard March was National Women's History Month I decided this would be a great way to start.
The first woman I would like you to meet is my great grandmother, Anna Vitagliano.

Anna was born in Italy in 1873. She came to the United States in June of 1907 with her oldest son, Francesco. According to the passenger list, Francesco was only 7 months old at the time. Anna traveled with a brother also. Anna's husband, Michele Ingagliato, was already in Brooklyn, NY.  He arrived in New York one year earlier so likely hadn't met his son till Anna's arrival. They had come from a town called Rocca Cilento in the Campania region of Southern Italy.

I wonder what it was like to travel to an unknown country without your husband and with a small baby. I'm glad she had the company of her brother and maybe she even knew others that were leaving Italy for the USA.  It took me a while to find Anna on a passenger list. I couldn't find her with her married name, Ingagliato, and then I heard that Italian women traveled using their maiden name. Even that didn't work at first because I thought the last name was Vitaliano. One day my mother and I were looking through a box of crocheted items that her other grandmother made and there was a large sheet at the bottom of the box. We pulled it out and opened it up and found this beauty.

Isn't it gorgeous? The stitches are so tiny! I folded up the crochet border so you could see that also.


Now that I had the correct spelling for her last name I found her passenger list right away.
She sailed from Naples on the S.S. Virginia and arrived in New York on 4 June 1907. This is the trunk she brought on her trip.

I was told it belonged to Anna's mother. I wish it could tell its story.  My mother, Anna's granddaughter, tells me that when her mom, Eva, heard the song, "Come Back to Sorrento," Eva would tear up thinking about her mother. In Italian the song is titled "Torna a Surriento" and was written several years before Anna left her home in Italy. She must have missed her home and I think she was very brave for moving to New York. My grandmother, Eva, was born in New York in 1912. I found one record of the birth of Anna's oldest daughter in New York but otherwise have not found anything from their years there.

Sometime between 1912 and 1918 the family moved to Pittsburgh, PA. There may have been a stay in Ohio in between. Michele worked in the steel mills in Pittsburgh. My mom remembers Anna making her own pasta and she referred to Anna as "skinny grandma" when she talked to her sister. Anna didn't speak very good English, according to my mom, but she said Anna worked hard to take care of her family. Mom also remembers her being sickly. Anna died during surgery to have her gall bladder removed in March of 1941.