User:Mgnbll82

I come from a diverse background, with my ancestors coming from many different cultures. Some of these include German, Italian, Scottish, English, and Irish. My uncle, after doing some research, has just discovered that our last name, Bell, is Scottish. However, my Scottish relatives have been living in the United States since the 1700s.

One thing that all of my family does have in common is our religious background. My family’s history is strong in Catholicism. My paternal grandmother is Italian and her family was all Catholics and when she married my grandfather he converted to the religion also. On my maternal side, both of my grandparents practiced Catholicism and they passed that onto their children as well. My aunts and uncles do not practice Catholicism anymore however. My mother and fathers’ brothers married women that practice other religions. My father’s sister never grew up in the church because she is much younger and by the time the family moved to Florida my grandmother stopped going to church. No one is quite sure why, she blames it on the fact that a priest of the church that she attended in Ohio was nasty to her, but my father and uncle do not believe that to be true.

Both of my parents decided to raise my sisters and I Catholic. My religion is important to me, I spent nine years of my life in Catholic school and when I wasn’t attending a Catholic school I was taking CCD classes at my church. Until the time my parents got divorced we all attended church together, now my sister, my mom, and I are the only ones to practice. My other sister is married and is going to a Christian church with her husband and my dad is now going to a non-denominational church with my step-mom.

From what I have learned about Catholicism in the United States, was that it was brought over by the Spanish with the conquest of South America in the 16th century. It was during the great tide of immigration that really increased the population of Catholics. There were 35,000 Catholics in the United States in 1790, but that quickly grew to 195,000 in 1820, 1.6 million in 1860, 12 million in 1900, and today the population is about 63.6 million. For some of my family history I’ll start on my paternal side. My paternal grandmother is Italian. Her father, Cyro Stropoli, came over from Sicily and arrived at Ellis Island in 1906. He left Sicily because at that time the Mafia was a huge threat to everyone, and many people were being killed. His mother, my great great grandmother owned a broom shop and the Mafia was making her pay for their protection, because without it the family would be under a threat. So he decided to come to the United States, and soon after he arrived he wrote home to have his parents pick out a bride for him. His parents chose a woman whose parents had recently died and she came over with my great grandfather’s parents and they were then married in New York. Right after they were married they moved to Ohio where they had seven children, my grandmother being the fourth child.

When my great grandfather moved to Ohio he was interviewing for jobs and he spoke only Italian so he was given a job in a steel mill. His brother noticed that everyone called him Jimmy, and asked him why. It turns out that when they asked him name, he didn’t understand what they wanted to know so everyone just came up with that name for him. This was common at the time when immigrants were pouring into the United States and it was not an odd thing for someone to not speak the native language. The working conditions were horrible in the steel mills, and like many people who were stuck working in them, my great grandfather died of the black lung.

During the time that my great grandparents came to the United States they were just a few of the 484,027 that immigrated here in the early 1900s. Due to the large wave of Italian immigrant at the time, Italian became a very popular language. However, the decrease of the language is said to be because of WWII and the government pressures to “not speak the enemies language”. Although my great grandfather had a hard laborious job, in the 1900s about two-thirds of the Italian-American population had white-collar jobs.

Growing up in Ohio, my grandmother lived in a small town. The family had their own farm and grew their own vegetables. During the Depression the family did not have anything, but they never went hungry. My grandmother, Teresa, was in charge of canning the tomatoes so they had enough of that to last them and they ate pasta pretty much every day. It was tough, but the neighborhood all looked out for each other. As far as her education went, she only stayed in school until she was sixteen years old. When she dropped out she moved with her sisters into the city of Akron, Ohio to work in a factory building plane parts that were used for World War II.

The most interesting part of my family history I believe comes from my paternal grandfather’s side. My uncle has done a lot of research here and has gone back all the way to my great great great great great grandparents. I have found that my great great and my great great great grandfathers both have the middle name Crawford. My uncle spoke with his aunts, my great aunts, and found out that they were most likely named after Colonel William Crawford who was born in Virginia in 1732. The Bells and the Crawfords are believed to have immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1600s and my family believes, although it has not been proven, that we have relatives that served in the Revolutionary War. When I looked up Col. William Crawford online I found that he was a friend and contemporary of George Washington, a famous soldier, and an Indian fighter. My family was also involved in the Civil War.

My great great great grandfather, Samuel Elder Bell, was a private in Company “F” of the 135th Pennsylvania Volunteers. His brother also fought in the war and they both survived. The Bell family lived in Pennsylvania until the late 1800s when they moved to Ohio where most of them still remain. In Ohio, my great great grandfather was a part of the Ku Klux Klan. My father explained to me that during that time it was not about killing people or burning crosses, but it was more of a social group that brought them together. My family was Anglo and against all minorities, my grandfather was instilled with these beliefs and made comments occasionally but was never demeaning. My grandparents raised my father to treat everyone as equal, so even though a history of hate is in our past, it was erased as the family grew and times changed.

My great grandfather was an auto mechanic and did not make very much money. During the Depression the family had nothing, there were nine children in my grandfathers family so it was difficult to support them and they ate beans for every meal. However, no one had anything at the time so they never really felt like they missed out on much. After my grandfather graduated high school he enlisted in the Army and drove a tank during WWII. When he returned he was hanging out at the Eagle’s Club dance, the Eagle’s Club was just a social hall where they gathered, and my grandfather met my grandmother.

It was very difficult for my grandmother to become accepted into my grandfather’s family because as I said before, they were against all minorities and did not want my grandfather around an Italian immigrant. Nevertheless, they began dating. In the Italian culture you did not go out on dates alone until you were married, so my great great grandmother accompanied them along on all of their dates. They were married in September of 1948 in St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Once they were married they moved into a small house near my grandfather’s father’s garage. When they had my uncle they moved to a different house but were having trouble affording it so they moved into a small house that my grandma’s grandfather built behind the house that my great grandfather lived in. My grandma’s sister and her husband and their two girls lived in the house with my great grandfather so the family was all very close.

My dad came from a large Italian family and they were always getting together when he was a child. Where he grew up everyone knew each other and there was no crime. However, they did not last long there. My grandfather was an auto mechanic like his father and was not making very much money and he knew someone that worked in a shop in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. So, in 1963 when my father was nine, his brother was twelve, and his sister was three, they packed up and moved to Florida without ever having even visited it previously.

My dad’s childhood in Florida was a nice one he says. He was very close with the neighborhood kids. They never had a lot of money, but they had enough to get by. My grandfather made friends with the people he worked with, but my grandmother never had many friends. My grandparents lived in the house that my father grew up in until 1999, when my grandmother moved into a condo.

My grandfather died in 1996 of cancer. He was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years before and had a mastectomy and they thought that it was gone, but it came back and eventually killed him. I was very close with my grandfather and even though I was only nine when he did, I remember being very upset over it. My relationship with my grandmother was close when I was younger, but once my parents were divorced my sisters and I did not see her very much anymore. That lead to her becoming very angry with us and she asked us to never contact her again. She lives five minutes away from my house in Ft. Lauderdale but I have not seen her in over three years. My father still sees her on occasion, but she wants nothing to do with my sisters and me.

The information that I have on my maternal side is not quite as thorough as the information on my paternal side because when it comes to family issues my mother and her father do not like to talk about a lot of things. My grandfather told me where we came from and stuff, but the personal information I have gathered was either from what my dad has learned over the years or what I know from other relatives.

On my maternal grandfather’s side they were mostly all from Ireland. They left Ireland in 1838 and were headed to New York, but they somehow ended up in New Brunswick, Canada. The reason for this is unclear because my great great grandmother was only six at the time so my grandfather said no one knows. Once they arrived, they settled in New Castle and encountered hostile Indians, which caused their first winter in North America to be very rough. They eventually formed their own settlement and became farmers and loggers.

My great great grandmother, Julia Goggin married John McCarthy and they had six children. My grandfather says that he remembers meeting her one time when he was little and can still picture her spinning wool and churning butter. She lived a very long life, dying at the age of ninety-six. The family eventually made their way to Massachusetts because my great great grandmother’s sister was a nurse and traveled by stage coach and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. My great grandmother and her sisters followed her soon after, traveling by train to reach the city. New Bedford is a whaling city and is the place that the story Moby Dick takes place.

My great grandmother was home schooled, and my grandfather explained that it was a way of life back then. She became a pioneer telephone operator and married the cousin of her sister’s husband, Frank McAloon. My great grandfather’s family also came from Ireland. The ship that brought them over landed in Boston in 1841. It was the great potato famine that brought them, as well as so many other Irish over at the time. When they arrived they settled in Taunton, Massachusettes, which was then the textile capital of the world so immigrants were more than welcome in this area. My great great grandfather was a tradesman, but my great grandfather was a railroad conductor.

The Irish Potato Famine was the cause of death for at least 500,000 people in Ireland. The causes of this are believed to be the British economic policy, destructive farming methods, and the appearance of potato fungus, which wiped out the major source of food at the time. By 1854, between 1.5 and 2 million left the country. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population of the cities of Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

My grandfather said that his father never spoke much of his childhood, which I guess is where the rest of them get it from, but he received a lot of information from his mother. My great grandfather and great grandmother were married and decided to reside in Taunton. They had four children, my grandfather being the third in line. He said that he remembers the hardships that people faced in the Great Depression, but he enjoyed his childhood years. His father kept his job because he worked for the railroad so they had a good enough income coming because he was able to work a couple of days a week and they also owned their own house, which many did not at that time. My grandfather had a good education and graduated from high school in 1939. He decided to wait to go to college, because he wanted to enlist in the army. He spent many years fighting in WWII, he was a Cryptographer and traveled the Pacific and fought in places like the Philippines and Japan. After he returned he did several things before opening a restaurant, which is where he met my grandmother.

My grandfather’s parents both came from very close families. His father had ten brothers and six sisters who all lived in the same town and they saw each other quite often. On his mothers side it was a little different because they were more spread out. However, they did keep in touch through letters and things like that. My grandfather made it a point to say that all of his family was devout Catholics and ardent Democrats.

My maternal grandmother’s side also has Irish in it. Her mother was from Ireland and came to Boston as an indentured servant and had to work to pay off her travel from Ireland to the United States. She was the only one to come to the U.S., the rest of her family settled in England. Now, her father’s family, the Schottmillers, came over from Germany in the later 1800s, but my grandfather did not know much information about them. He said that their family was very close also and they were also Catholics and Democrats. My grandmother’s father lived with my mother’s family until he died in 1962.

My maternal grandfather and grandmother met because she was a customer at my grandfather’s restaurant. They lived in Burlington, Massachusetts where they had three children, Matthew, then my mother Marjorie, then Mark. Now, the information about their childhood is not very clear because none of them, including my grandfather really talk about things. I know that my grandmother was an alcoholic and that my grandfather was very strict on the kids. My father went to visit one of my mother’s aunts a couple of years ago and she told him how she always felt bad for my mother and her brothers because their father always made them sit on the couch with their hands folded when they came over to visit while all of the other children were outside playing.

On one occasion, my grandmother was drunk and had the three kids in the car when she ran into the back of a police car. No one was seriously injured, my uncle needed stitches, but my grandfather was very embarrassed by the situation and it was at this time that he decided to move to Florida. His brother lived in south Florida already and he thought that the change of environment might be healthy for my grandmother so they made the move in the early 60s, when my mother was seven, to Ft. Lauderdale.

The move did not fix my grandmothers alcohol problem, and this caused my mother to have to take on the household duties. She used to make her own clothes, cook, and clean. My grandmother still did do work around the house, but many times she was in bed and things had to be taken care of by my mother. Growing up, my mom had a lot of neighborhood friends and many of her friends from high school she still talks to today. It was in high school that my parents met. My father was a year older than my mother, but they shared mutual friends and my mother ended up asking my father to her prom.

My dad told me that even though my grandmother was drinking a lot, my mom still brought him over to the house and that my grandmother liked him very much. She would be in bed most of the time and my dad cannot remember my grandfather saying much of anything during the time they were dating. After high school, my mom attended the community college for a year until my father proposed and then she stopped her education to get married. My dad believes that part of the reason that she married him was that she was dying to get out of the house. It was three months after my parents were married in 1975 that my grandmother died of cirrhosis of the liver.

After my parents married, they lived in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. They had my oldest sister Kate in 1979, followed by my sister Beth two years later in 1981. I was born much later in 1986. We lived close to both sets of grandparents, and my dad’s sister was the only one that did not live in our city. My grandfather remarried in 1985 to a woman named Pauline, she was the only grandmother I knew from that side of my family so I thought a lot of her. However, she died of a heart attack when I was in eighth grade.

Growing up, I was the typical youngest child. With the big age difference, it was easy for my sisters to leave me out of things, but I always managed to tell on them when they did and get them in trouble. I went to a Catholic elementary school, then switched to the public school across the street from my house in fifth grade, and also went to a public middle school. For high school, my sisters and I all went to the same Catholic school.

I never remember my parents fighting ever, so when my parents told us that they were getting a divorce when I was in seventh grade my sister and I were shocked. However, from then on they sure knew how to fight! It was a pretty nasty divorce, my mother, who was the one that wanted the divorce, became very angry all of the time. My parents has joint custody of me, so I was constantly moving back and forth. My oldest sister was away at college and the other sister was a senior in high school and only had to live through the divorce for one year. It was mostly me who got to hear my mother always talking badly about my dad and she even came into some bad financial times. My sophomore year of high school she had to move in with my grandfather because of money and my relationship with her just continued to get worse and worse, so that year I moved in with my father.

My father had a rocky start after the divorce. He moved into an apartment and struggled financially for a little bit, but with a great new job and a great new wife he got through it. My dad and step-mom were married in 2002, and when I moved in with my father, I moved in with a new family. She has two children, a daughter two years older than I am and a son one year younger. I am not close with them at all, but we manage to get along. Her daughter is extremely conservative and spends most of her time at bible study or lobbying for some cause, so we do not have much in common at all. Tony, my stepbrother, is just a very quiet kid. I am closer with him than I am with his sister only because we lived in the same house longer. He stays home all of the time and loves his video games, so I don’t have much in common with him either.

As for me, I decided to attend the University of Florida only after I visited a lot of out of state schools and did not find one that I loved. I figured with the 100% Bright Futures scholarship and my Florida Prepaid money, it did not make much sense to go out of state. I am a very outgoing person, and I love being around people, so it only seems fit that my degree is going to be in Event Management. I would love to work for a huge company and be in charge of planning their meetings and things like that, as opposed to being a wedding planner; which is what everyone assumes when I tell them my major. I am in my second year here now, and plan on studying abroad spring 2007, I hope to go to Australia, and then when I come back I would like to work on my Masters in Business.

My family still remains very close. My relationship with my mother has greatly improved since I have been away at school. I still call my father all the time for everyday ridiculous things, so I can tell I’m still not quite ready to be on my own. My sister Beth and I are extremely close, and my oldest sister, Katie, and I have a good relationship, but she was married earlier in the year so she just has different priorities. I love being in Gainesville and am looking forward to whatever I have coming to me in the next couple of years.