Family History Update

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The Facts:

Dawn Biagini Valenti leaves a message on our home phone at the end of June 2017.  “When I was 16, my mother told me that your brother, Michael, was my father.” Today Dawn lives in Pittsfield MA and is 50 years old.

I leave her a message saying you are half Polish and Half French. She replies "You are Jewish also."

To Dawn, I relate a SOLID family story. Alexandra Zaik, my maternal Polish grandmother, walks for two days to Gdansk while pregnant with my Aunt Blanche, to catch the steamship to Ellis Island. Her husband is in the Russian Army and deserts when he knows his wife is safe in the USA.

Dawn says NYET! She was not married. She traveled with her sister, Mary. Ellis Island wrote sideways on their entrance form, “SISTERS.” They came by way of Antwerp in Belgium. She shows me the proof.

I take a Ancestry.com DNA test.  

They screw it up.

I take a second Ancestry.com DNA test.

In her extensive research, Dawn finds that the not-so-great Great Grandfather who I have been looking for since 1976 was married to Rosalie in Can-ah-da before he married my Great Grandmother in South Hadley, MA. I never found proof that the Bacons ever married. Two families at once. How did he manage that?

1900 – Not-so-great Great Grandfather deserts a family of seven on Brown Street in Adams. Never to be heard from again. The youngest child is six months old, and the oldest is fifteen. One of the children was a tremendous source of family history. His name was George Washington Bacon. I saved all his handwritten correspondence. In 1976, I could not afford a computer. I worked hard on the family history for two years. Proof is in my four 4-inch thick books, and a chart that goes back to Paris 1668.

2012 - I ask Barbara Sylvester to please check her Ancestry account in Rhode Island to find Charles Frank Bacon or Charles Francois Bachand -- his real name. I have not a shred of evidence that he was living there. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. She finds Charles Francois and his wife Rosalie. 117-year mystery solved. Proof is in the 1900 and 1920 census.

2017, Labor Day - Sandy and I drive to Central Falls RI, near McCoy Stadium, to 9A Fuller Avenue. Today # 9 is an empty parking lot.

Test results are back. Dawn is not my brother’s child. Dawn is devastated.

Sandy says try 23 & Me. We do.

I dig deeper in RI. 9A was a garage that was torn down in 2012. # 9A and 73 Summer Street share the same address. The Bachand house still stands, and Sandy cannot wait to go back and check it out.

23 & me test results come back.    

I am still not Jewish and I am still not Dawn’s uncle.

Now it is clear that a Jewish Adams, Massachusetts-area man is. Dawn’s mom insists that Michael is the father. Dawn’s mom’s sister says, in her younger days, Mom was a bit of a tart, to put it bluntly.

In 1968, Dawn’s mom invites my brother to her house in Cheshire, Massachusetts where she is living with her mom. Michael goes, but asks if he can bring his wife. Dawn’s mom goes into the back room and brings out the infant Dawn -- the same age as Michael and his wife’s son. Mikes wife faints.    

Today  - Dawn continues her research.      

please file under YCMTS up  

     

- Robert Francois Bachand      

Friend to the fatherless          

October 29,  2017