I wouldn’t characterize my family as a tight-knit family, but I had always shared many hobbies and interests with my grandparents on my mother’s side when I was young. They kept many family photos and movies dating back to when photography was first possible, and they had large boxes of family letters. My grandfather, William Frank Sweany, was a novice photographer and filmmaker who knew how to put old films together well and who kept a large collection of his work. However, he was officially one of the top accountants for Weirton Steel Corporation.

My grandparents collected old art and postcards. One of his boxes of papers contained many travel postcards from various family members who ventured out into the world, and another box contained the letters we wrote to each other when we were away. My grandparents liked to read books in addition to the news. At one point, around 1990, my grandfather bought a book on Sweeney’s family tree, his own family. Still, the information in that book was nothing like what is found today in books that are now available online and on various websites. There is no question that if my grandfather had lived today, he would have subscribed to one of those websites that allows researchers to explore his family trees and DNA after submitting a test kit.

I remember the day we gathered around a giant poster board at the dining room table. I began to draw a tree with branches in pencil, as I would later trace it in ink. Then I put my grandparents’ names in the middle: William Frank Sweany (a variation of Sweeney) and Freda Agnes Craig. They were both ecstatic by my interest in our family history and pleased to share the last names they remembered. We managed to write about sixty names on the family tree. They wanted to give me all the information they could remember before they forgot it. Although they did not know everything that I know today, the exploration and storytelling process was extraordinary. Getting as much information as I could from my grandparents was really delicious. If only I could have shared with them what I know today!

Daniel Sweeney / Sweaney (1842-1931) of Ohio was one of the great patriarchs. All he knew was that he was of Irish descent and had fought in the Civil War in the 80th Infantry of Ohio B Company. With the power of Internet search engines, I later discovered newspapers that further revealed that he was a handsome war hero who married a beautiful socialite named Abbigail Lawrence Huber (1846-1916) from Pennsylvania. Daniel Sweeney will always be remembered for his love for the country and his willingness to give whatever it takes to hold the nation together. He was an old-fashioned Superman. Now there is a lot of information in the newspapers about this couple who had a total of 18 children. Likewise, their children had many offspring, but as the years passed, future generations had fewer offspring. My grandfather (who was Daniel’s grandson) only had a daughter named Jacquelyne Sweany, perhaps because they wanted to send her to an outstanding college or career school, which was part of the American dream in those days.

Freda Agnes Craig, my grandmother, told me about her brother Thomas Craig, a prominent musician who kept playing in Nashville, Tennessee. As a child, he filled the house with guitars, harpsichords, and other instruments. Many women thought Thomas was a handsome man, but none of the women I know captured his heart. I doubt that he will ever understand the songs he wrote and played in Nashville, but I think he must have been competent enough to make a living from his music. His parents were quite disappointed when he left Ohio for Nashville, as they did not understand the importance of an artist’s dedication to music. I only had the chance to meet Thomas once, shortly after we created the family tree on cardstock because I insisted on traveling to Tennessee to meet him and a few other relatives in Hohenwald.

When we got to Hohenwald, my grandfather took me through the nearby forest to see the ghost town of Riverside. There was nothing left but abandoned buildings in the forest. We walked into what might have been my great-grandfather’s old shop, which I can vaguely remember. It had been abandoned during the Great Depression of 1929 because it is said that my great-grandfather’s customers were no longer able to pay for their purchases. The store was quite different from the stores of today in that it was much smaller with everything inside the display cases or on the shelves behind the display cases. From the store, we passed an abandoned cemetery, probably from the early 19th century, where he pointed out the two graves of my great-great-grandparents (on my grandmother’s side) that lay side by side with no headstones. by your request. It was once a beautiful graveyard before the Depression drove everyone to move. Although I asked my grandfather to put a monument there and he had the means to do so, he had promised never to add one, a tradition that struck me as quite strange.

My grandparents did not live to know their genetic heritage, but years later, I opted to have a DNA test of my heritage. There had been rumors that we had some Native American blood running through our veins. These rumors weren’t so, according to my DNA test, which revealed that I was 47.9% English, 42.6% Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, 6.2% Italian, and 3.3% Eastern European. I tested my mother and found that she was also of Italian descent (2%), but was primarily Irish and English. Still, my father, Wallace Morgan Williams Jr, had a bit more Italian DNA than my mother, as his grandmother was found to be Fannie Lupo.

Fannie was a direct descendant of Ambrose Lupo, a famous composer and violinist born in Milan, Italy. He emigrated to England in the 16th century, leaving his wife and children in Venice to work as the king’s musician. It is said that he sent money to his wife and then his children followed him to play the violin for the king. How strange it was when I made this discovery, especially since my son Giovanni had asked to learn to play the violin as a child. I would not have expected to find another musician in my father’s family line, especially since I have no musical talent.

Ambrose (Ambrogio) Lupo had a significant impact on the music scene in England. Information about him can be found in many books. Much of the story is speculation, but it is said that he was the longest-serving violinist for the king and that he was a great composer. Although many doubt Ambrose Lupo’s Italian origins, his many descendants discover that they do have Italian DNA.

My father’s mother had always been a mystery. Fannie Lupo (1884-1937, Walker County, Georgia) died suddenly of a medical condition at the young age of 53. All memories of her were erased after her husband Carl C Williams (1882-1954), another of my great grandparents, married a second wife. To my knowledge, I had only had one son, Wallace M Williams Sr., who was my great-grandfather on my father’s side. No one knew that she was descended from the talented Ambrose Lupo, whose progeny remained in England and migrated to both Australia and the United States, where they landed in Maryland. This forgotten woman, whose name was never spoken by anyone in my presence, was descended from a very talented family that had lived in England during the Renaissance. There were quite a few Protestant preachers in his family line, and that would be another interesting story. I can only imagine that they loved to read, learn, communicate and give advice to people in the ‘new’ colonies after their immigration.

In my father’s family (Wallace Morgan Williams Jr), there were three ship captains from the British Isles. Captain John James Corker (1565-1657, Wiltshire, England) was the father of William Corker (1584-1677). John James Corker died in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1657. His descendant, Sarah Branch (1660-1713) married James Lupo (1655-1713) during the 17th century, when the new nation was still a colony. It was the Lupo family that had several influential Protestant preachers in their line. For example, Laban Lupo (1750-1806) lived on the Isle of Wight in Virginia. He and Catherine Price had five children who eventually moved to Robeson, North Carolina, in the early 1800s.

Discovering explorers like my family’s ship captains was a surprise! It has also been a pleasure to know that there were some learned men. There is less information about women from the past, but I hope that people will find more information about women in the future. Some of them were teachers, while others were housewives. They seem to have many children to raise, although some of them had small families. There is not much evidence that the women in my family focused on their careers. However, my maternal great-grandmother (William F. Sweany’s mother) raised 13 children alone with her laundry services after her husband died during the Spanish flu pandemic. My grandmother, Freda Agnes Craig, had to quit her job after getting married because my grandfather wanted her to take care of the house and her daughter.

My father’s part of the family was quite interesting: my paternal grandmother, Zelda Crane, was a quiet, soft-spoken woman from a religious family. Her silence and inability to express emotions could have been mistaken for her not caring, but now I understand that she simply had a hard time expressing affection. She had always assured other family members that we were related to Stephen Crane, the renowned American writer, and I had my doubts when I first received this news, just as I had doubts before about being a Native American. To my surprise, my family tree intersected with Stephen Crane’s family tree, so I think there is a good chance that she was right.

Some cranes migrated from the British Isles to New Jersey. A man named Henry Crane (b. England) had a son named Stephen Crane in England in 1620. This son was not the famous American writer. However, he married Esther Norris in Monmouth, New Jersey, between 1663 and 1700. This Stephen died in Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey in 1709. Their son Nathaniel Crane was born in Elizabethtown, Essex, New Jersey, in 1702. Likewise William Crane (1716-1784), son of Nathaniel, lived with his wife Mary Wheeler (1721-1788) in Cranetown, Essex, New Jersey. This William Crane had a son named William Crane Jr (1742-1826). William and Elizabeth Gregory (b. 1780) had a son named William Crane III (1785-1850) who married Ophelia Arphie Suggs (1791-1881). They had a huge family, in addition to John Jackson Crane (1824-1894), who would be one of my great-grandparents.

It is not easy to prove that writer Stephen Crane is one of my distant cousins ​​without obtaining more DNA samples from the Crane family. To my knowledge, Stephen Crane left no children because he died of tuberculosis in Germany at the young age of 28. My grandmother’s claims are compelling because Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was born in Newark, New Jersey. After the death of his father, Jonathan Townley Crane, Stephen Crane’s mother left him with his uncle Edmund Crane in Sussex, New Jersey. Stephen also had a grandfather named William Crane from Elizabeth (Union County), New Jersey. His great-grandfather Joseph Crane was also from Elizabethtown, while his great-great-grandfather Stephen Crane, a participant in the American Revolution, was born in 1709 in Elizabethtown, New Jersey.

It is unlikely that he will ever learn the full truth about the Crane or other members of the family. However, a heritage expedition is a journey that teaches the way. Others are welcome to add to the knowledge base, expanding treasure discoveries. Inquisitive future generations are likely to fill in the missing gaps, to find even more treasure, while sharing DNA knowledge and historical records with others to grow the branches of the tree. I enjoyed the trip, so I wish that at some point you would take your own flight through the generational branches of the ever-growing tree that connects humanity.

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