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

DNA

Of course you still remember that Dawn called me at the end of June to announce that she is my brother Michael's daughter from 1967?

When we last spoke, Sandy and I were heading for Central Falls, RI, after the Ninigret Music Festival. We GPS'd it, pulled off 95 near the Pawtucket Red Sox's McCoy Stadium, drove down Summer Street into some ghetto, and came to Fuller Avenue. 9A Fuller Avenue in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is where my not-so-great-grandfather disappeared to, after abandoning his family of 7 in Adams in 1900. The 1910 and 1920 Rhode Island censuses place him in Central Falls with his second family. Well really, it was his first family. We find #8 and we find #13 but #9 turns out to be a PARKING LOT, fairly recently paved. Sandy takes my photo in the parking lot and we call it a day.

But Tuesday is another day. I know from the swimming pool business that when you fill in a pool, you let the town know, if for no other reason than you are paying taxes on a pool that you no longer own. I place a telephone call to the Central Falls Building Department. Eileen from the Assessors Office calls me the following day and tells me that a GARAGE, not a house, was torn down on this site in 2012. BUT she investigates further, and says that #9 Fuller Avenue and #73 Summer Street share the same address. It is on a corner lot. The Bachand apartment STILL STANDS. Sandy will be  so thrilled to go back with me to Central Falls RI.

So I finally received my DNA test back  Ancestry.com. I call Dawn and we are going to go through it step by step over the telephone. Everyone thinks that cell phones are awesome, but I still love the simple telephone. I don’t even own a Facebook. I am an amateur on the computer, but Dawn knows her stuff. She had her DNA tested -- and also her brother's. In July she sent me a side by side photo of my brother Michael and her brother. Wow! We think that her mother and my brother got together again to share the good old days . . . and produced brother Bruce.

Well … Bruce’s DNA comes back and it is NOT a match. So much for that theory. Bruce and Dawn had different fathers. But we -- Dawn and I -- are still related anyway.

We carry on. Ancestry screws my sample up and I have to do another test.

Finally it arrives. I call Dawn and we go through it together. I find it fascinating. I'm 60% European, and 0% Jewish. She gets kind of quiet. Then it dawns on me. (Dawn -- get it ?). Dawn and I are NOT related. My grandfather Frank Bacon used to say, “Hold your horses."

Are you kidding me? Instead of Jewish, I am 9% Irish. Dawn's DNA indicates she has 23% Jewish blood. Our DNAs do not match. We have enjoyed each other's company and shared family stories that Dawn is not connected to. Dawn has done a pile of research on the Bacon/Bachand family history. We even walked out to the Gurnet one morning. I think she loved the whole scene. If Dawn is not family, it is sort of like reminiscing with people that you don’t know.  But, but . . . our whole little Bacon family all feel such a strong connection. Sandy is convinced that Dawn looks like my mother, Nora. So what's up with that? 

Sandy says she has had plenty of clients for whom Ancestry has messed up. “Remember," she says, "They messed up the first DNA sample that you sent in.” She suggests that we try 23 & me. Marnie’s friend Kerry used Ancestry and did not like their answers. Tried 23 and Me and felt that they were more on target. We do 23 @ me and are currently waiting for the chromosome test results, and we are trying to hold our horses. But it ain’t easy.

October 3, 2017.  I am back. Just received my 23 & Me test results, and so did Dawn. She is still Jewish and I am still not. So we are NOT related. Are you kidding me? 

Dawn texts her mom again and mom sticks to her guns. She says Dawn is my brother Michael’s child, but Ancestry and 23 say nada, nyet, no way Jose.

23 and Me hooks me up with a second cousin. I e-mail someone named Julianna Menke. My father's sister Dorothy had a daughter named Greta. Greta married Curt Menke. Greta is my first cousin. I am in touch with her sister, Paula, who now lives in North Carolina. Greta is in Ten-ah-sea. Well, that is how she says it. ARE YOU FOLLOWING THIS? I don’t blame you.

I go back to my good friend Google, and come up with another Bachand -- Rebecca -- who owns a business in Rhode Island. Sandy and I leave for Sicily tomorrow, and hope to get a reply before then. Maybe I should have just quit at Fuller Avenue.

Married for 50 years and two days so far.  Not counting the fact that we met when we were 14 and 15. Looking good. Sandy’s father said, “I hope you know what you are doing." Her mom said, “You will never make it." Gramma Hattie Bacon said, “Ask her to marry you now."

su servidor and truth finder,
Roberto Francisco Tocino, Robert Bacon, Robert Francois Bachand, Bobby Baconi

I am very confused at this point, but we did solve the 117-year-old question of where Charles Frank Bacon/Bachand wandered off to. That has been my goal since 1976.

Our secrets for a long success full marriage I cannot share with you until I get to know you better.