What a great pair of questions Skip Gates posed to Tom Colicchio, one of three chefs profiled in the Oct. 21 episode of “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” on MPBN.
Which ancestor would you choose to cook for? What would you cook?
Colicchio chose his grandfather, Francescantonio Colicchio, who immigrated to America from Italy a total of four times, beginning in 1901, traveling in no-frills steerage. What would he prepare? Whatever the passengers in first-class accommodations were eating while his grandfather made do with more basic fare.
Because I’m not much of a cook, I asked my husband what he would serve an ancestor, if he could have that meal prepared by his mother, Rosette Saucier. Rosette was the longtime cook and co-owner, with her husband, Willard Saucier, of Frenchville’s Roadside Diner, which has since been renamed Rosette’s Restaurant.
“Cake,” he responded easily, thinking of the countless wedding and anniversary cakes she made during her retirement for families in the St. John Valley. Anniversary cakes for couples with several children were truly special, often featuring pictures of the couple’s children inserted in the opening of small bells placed sideways on the ascending tiers of the cake and pictures of Mom and Dad on top.
The ancestor he would have Rosette cook for would be his great-grandfather, Antoine Saucier, who used to come visit for a few weeks at a time when my husband was a child. His second choice would be his mother’s entire Chamberland family, she being one of 12 children of Belone and Edith (Chasse) Chamberland of St. Agatha.
I would ask Rosette to cook fried chicken for the same ancestors, or perhaps her pizza, which seemed to have a special bit of sweetness in addition to its spices and savory toppings.
Hip-hop artist Nas, artist Angela Barrett and presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett will learn about their ancestry on “Finding Your Roots” at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28, on MPBN.
The willingness of major networks to produce programs on genealogy is, I believe, evidence of the topic’s immense popularity among the public.
Many of us have enjoyed several seasons of NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” Ancestry.com has been a major factor in this program, which also has proved popular with its other editions in Canada and the U.K.
Ancestry also provides genealogy research and DNA study for “Finding Your Roots,” with profile subjects this season that include CNN journalist Anderson Cooper. The program did not emphasize Cooper’s Vanderbilt roots, which are certainly well-known, but the southern ancestry of his father, writer Wyatt Cooper of Mississippi.
This same lineage was featured on “Roots: Our Journeys Home,” a series of journalist profiles on CNN that was compiled for a two-hour special and longer versions available online. Among the news people profiled were Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Jake Tapper, Erin Burnett and several others. Wolf Blitzer is the son of Holocaust survivors, and he had grandparents who died at Auschwitz.
The company is best-known for its growing number of online databases, which are available by monthly or yearly subscription.
But the databases also are available for use by everyone on computers at public libraries that have the library edition of Ancestry — including libraries in Maine. Keep in mind, patrons must share these computers so everyone has an opportunity to use them.
My point is not so much Ancestry but the continued popularity of genealogy locally, nationwide and worldwide.
A free online database, familysearch.org, is maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which also has family history centers, such as the one at the corner of Grandview Avenue and Essex Street in Bangor. The Bangor center offers a variety of free classes, as well, not to mention user-friendly computers and low-cost rental of microfilm through its main facility in Salt Lake City.
For information on researching family history in Maine, see Genealogy Resources under Family Ties at bangordailynews.com/browse/family-ties. Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402, or email familyti@bangordailynews.com.