This is one of only two baby photos of my Dad that still exist today.  It’s funny because he has a striking resemblance to my oldest sister in this photo, though they looked nothing a like as adults.  He had the distinctive Lassalle ears right from the start…anyone who knows us would know what I am talking about.  LOL

This is one of the few baby photos of my Dad.  It was taken around 1928, Oakland, CA.

Enjoy these stories about my Dad:

My Dad, 1927-2010

Fatherless on Father’s Day

My Dad was a Korean Conflict Veteran

Remembering My Dad and His Baseball Hats

Was Chachy a common name in the 1940s and 1950s?

A Wild and Crazy Guy

The Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

Wishing all the Father’s a very Happy Father’s Day!

My genealogy fun involves Evernote.  Last week, I went back to working in the French Civil Records.  I’ve decided to see if my ancestors had relatives who came to America.  So, I’m working on 1840 to whatever the last records are.  I started with the death records since it would be good to know which people were dead so I don’t go looking for them elsewhere.

After working for a day or two, saving records by copying and pasting them to Paint, it dawned on me.  I have Evernote!  I wasn’t sure if it would work with these databases, but I was willing to give it a try.

I went back to the records I had already found.  I clicked on the elephant icon in my toolbar (which represents Evernote) and filled in the information.  I found that I couldn’t save a clipping of only the entry I wanted.  But, I could save the page.

With just a couple of clicks and some notations, I saved the documents to my Lassalle-Mazeres notebook.  I checked on them in Evernote to see what I had.  For some reason, it’s not working well on my Nook Color.  However, it’s beautiful on my PC.  The documents are easy to read and to identify.  What’s more is once I save them, I can open them up in photo gallery, rename them, and save a copy to my computer.

This is so much easier than dealing with Paint.  Plus they are organized in a way that I can refer back to them easily.

So, while this might not be your idea of fun, it is mine.    It saves me time and that makes more time for researching!  I’ve noted a couple of matches, added a few children previously unknown to me, and I’m filling in the blanks in my extended tree.  That sounds like genealogy fun to me!

When I first started this blog, it had a very different purpose.  The first few months I worked through research problems and showed how I solved them.  Eventually, I ran out of ideas that could easily be presented in this format.

I regrouped in June of 2006 with a new focus.  I decided to write about my research adventures on all my lines.  My post would teach readers how to work through problems, but it would also look for help from other researchers whose suggestions ofter lead me to resources I had not considered.

Eventually, I posted about resources in Hawaii, California, and the other areas that I research that I felt my readers might find useful.  I added Wedding Chapel Wednesday in November of 2009 which focuses on marriage records within my tree.  I added That’s Old News in 2011 which covers newspaper articles about my family or articles I’ve found interesting in old newspapers.

I participate regularly in Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.  And, sometimes when I remember, I submit something for a blog carnival.

It’s been fun putting this blog together.  Writing posts is a learning experience.  Often when I’ve put my material together about research I’ve done I’ll find something that my original analysis missed.  I’ve also connected with several new cousins mostly related to my Pacheco and de Braga lines.

Here’s hoping for many more years of blogging and learning!  Thanks for stopping by my blog and reading my posts all these years

Theodore Pacheco was born 31 Aug 1899, Kilauea, Kauai. He was the third child of Joao Pacheco and Joana Goncalves Cardoza–a family nicknamed “The Reds” because of their red hair. He grew up in Kilauea, but left home sometime after his father’s death and his mother’s second marriage (1906-1910). When he was about 16, he lived with an Uncle, possibly Antonio Pacheco, in California.

In 1918, too young to be drafted, he enlisted in the US Army. He was part of the 6th Engineers (later called the 3rd Division). After two months of training, he was sent overseas to France as a member of one of the combat regiment of engineers. He fought in the battles of St. Mihiel and Chateau Thierry. At Chateau Thierry, the regiment was sent in to relieve the marines. His regiment was attacked. Chemical weapons were used. Theodore was one of only a handful of men to survive.

After sustaining a leg wound, he was discharged. He reenlisted three months later. Soon after, he was sent to Honolulu. The day after his arrival the adverse affects of the chemical he was exposed to in combat began to wreak havoc on his body. He was hospitalized for a month.

Once he was feeling better, he was granted leave to visit relatives on Kauai. He was not able to enjoy the trip as he became ill soon after arriving.

Theodore died 18 Dec 1919, 8 months shy of his 21st birthday. The cause of death was hemorrhaging due to gassing. He was buried with fanfare at Kilauea Catholic Cemetery. He died a hero.

He never married and had no children. There are no known photographs of Theodore. His tombstone stands as the only reminder of a life too brief given for his country.

There were others connected to my Portuguese Hawaiian roots who also fought in World War I. Most from the town of Kilauea. Let’s honor their memories now: Jose Pacheco (aka Joe P. Smith), John Correia, Albert Figg, Gabriel Medeiros, Jose Medeiros, and Theodore A. Pacheco (first cousin of the Theodore in this story).

Source:
1. The Garden Island Newspaper, Lihue, Kauai, Territory of Hawaii, Front Page, 23 Dec 1919.
2. Death certificate of Theodore Pacheco.

I thought it would be easier to do each side separate.  Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of any of the residences from this era.  I’m only going to include those who I have a specific death date for even if it is reasonable that they would be alive at the time.

My Dad’s side…

Augustin Lassalle (1789-1865), my 3rd great grandfather, lived in Ogeu les bains, France.

Jean Lassalle (1825-1898) and Marie Anne Loustanau (????-1862), my 2nd great grandparents, lived in Ogeu les bains, France.  Their son, Jean Lassalle lived with them.  My great grandfather, Pierre Lassalle, was born two months later.

Elisabeth (Tiret) Segalas (1794-1868), my 3rd great grandparents, lived in Ogeu les bains, France.

Elizabeth (Segalas) Lassalle (1857-1938), my great grandmother, lived in Ogeu les bains, France.  While I know that Elizabeth lived there, I do not know who with.  I don’t have a death date for her father and her mother died in 1860.

Jean Pierre dit Salanave (1824-1893) and Marie Anne Lacrouts (1835-1891), my 2nd great grandparents, live in Ogeu les bains, France.  With them are their children Marie and Madeleine.

Jean Breil (1812-1874), my 3rd great grandfather, lived in Castet, France.  It’s unclear if his wife was alive at the time.

Jean Breilh (1845-1821) and Mathilde Laplagne Maucor (1848-1910), my 2nd great grandparents, lived in Castet, France.  They were not married until 1866, so most likely were living with their parents or other relatives.

That wraps up my Dad’s side of the tree.

My Mom’s side…

Jacintha Rosa (Ferreira) Pacheco (1795-1874), my 3rd great grandmother, lived in Fenais da Vera Cruz, Sao Miguel Island, Azores.

Jose Francisco de Mello (1797-1872) and Rosa Pimentel (1800-1864), my 3rd great grandparents, lived in Achada, Sao Miguel Island, Azores.

Jacintho Pacheco (1830-1876) and Anna Jacinta de Mello (1835-1902), my 2nd great grandparents, lived in Achada, Sao Miguel Island, Azores.  I have yet to find their marriage record, but I assume that they were married around 1860.

Jozimas de Braga (1849-1922) and Maria da Conceicao de Mello (1845-ca 1898), my 2nd great grandparents, lived in Maia, Sao Miguel Island, Azores.  Jozimas and Maria most likely lived with their parents since they didn’t marry until 1871.  As I have not accessed the death records for this line yet, I didn’t include their parents.

John Joseph Jones (1816-1877) and Mary Jane Haywards (1811-1891), my 2nd great grandparents, were living in San Francisco, California.  My great grandfather, Thomas Jones, was living with them.

Martin J. Kelly (ca. 1825-1899) and Catherine Dolan (ca. 1828-1872), my 2nd great grandparents, were living in San Francisco, CA.  My great grandmother, Margaret (Kelly) Jones, was living with them, as were her siblings Catherine, Michael, John, Mary Ann, Winifred, and Mathew.

Those are all my ancestors known to be alive on 1 June 1863.  Only the Kelly’s and Jones had made their way to America by that time.  All my other relatives were still in their native country.

There should be a caveat next to the lines in Maia.  I did not have access to those death records when I originally researched them at the local Family History Center, so I wasn’t able to fill in that information.  The records are slowly becoming available online and I hope that I’ll be able to fill in the blanks sometime in the near future.

The escort carrier, Liscome Bay, arrived at Pearl Harbor in October of 1943. It would take part in the invasion of the Gilbert Islands and the liberation of two other islands: Tarawa and Makin. On board were 914 men. One of them was a 19 year old from Oakland, California. He was my Uncle, Charles Lassalle.

The invasion of the Gilbert Islands began on November 20th. It took seven days of air raids to capture the islands. During the invasion, the Liscome Bay was sent on to aid the capture of Tarawa and Makin Islands. This was one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific theatre as 991 men died on the beaches of Tarawa.

The Liscome Bay was one of five escort carriers used for air support at Tarawa. 3 Battleships, 21 Destroyers, and other vessels were also on hand. They were all under the command of Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill. Hill ordered three of the escort carriers, including the Liscome Bay, to Butaritari Island. There they were placed under the command of Rear Admiral Robert M. Griffin.

Unbeknownst to them all, another vessel was sitting off the shores of Butaritari. It was a Japanese submarine commandeered by Lt. Commander, Sunao Tabata.

November 24th started out a calm day. There was barely a breeze and the waters were still. At 4:30 am, the flight crews began their daily prepartions. 5 minutes later, a slight disturbance–a light– was seen on the water’s surface. Griffin ordered the destroyer, The Hull, to investigate.

The absence of the Hull lead to the demise of the Liscome Bay. The Japanese commander saw his chance as the shifting defenses of the American ships were in disarray. Before they could reposition, someone yelled “Christ, here comes a torpedo!” It was too late. At 5:13 am, the Liscome Bay was hit.

The torpedo tore threw the ship into it’s bomb stowage area and exploded. Oranges flames shot into the air. Then the bombs on board exploded. Debris showered the neighboring ships. Flames engulfed the Liscome Bay and 23 minutes later, it began to sink.

Those who were not killed in the explosion found themselves in another horror. The water gushed with burning oil. They also had to avoid being sucked down along with the sinking ship. Some clung to whatever debris floated by, then swam as far away from the ship as they could. Crew members of surrounding ships risks their lives diving into the water to pull out survivors.

On that ill fated day, rescuers pulled 55 officers and 217 enlisted men to safety. Fireman Second Class, Charles Lassalle, was not one of them.

The family found out soon after that Charles was missing. Newspaper headlines blared the sinking of the Liscome Bay. Jean and Anna had lost their oldest son.

His body was never recovered. Charles was presumed dead on November 24, 1943. You can find his name among the many listed on the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu, HI.

Wikipedia has a photograph of the Liscome Bay and more information:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liscome_Bay_%28CVE-56%29

HistoryNet has a detailed history of the Liscome Bay:  http://www.historynet.com/uss-liscome-bay-hit-by-a-torpedo-near-makin-atoll-during-world-war-ii.htm

The Navy website has a clipping from a newspaper article showing some of the survivors when they returned home.  It is hard to believe anyone survived.  http://www.navsource.org/archives/03/0305603.jpg

Read more about this offer at the MyHeritage.com blog.

Start your search on their search page.

As I’ve been working on Madeline (Mazeres) Menaud this week, I thought I’d try her husband, Romain Menaud.  The surname is uncommon enough that I should get something targeted if he is in there.

In my first search, I did name only without the boxes checked.  My results: 625!  Okay, that’s too many.  And, from what I can see at a glance no Menauds.

I checked the box next to the surname Menaud and got only one entry.  A California Death Index entry for someone whose mother’s maiden name is Menaud.  Clicking on the entry offers this information:

The name doesn’t look familiar, but since Menaud is an uncommon surname, I checked it to my database.

Sure enough, it’s a match.  Camille is Camille (LaFortune) Rosenbleuth, the daughter of Leona (Menaud) LaFortune.  She is the granddaughter of Romain Menaud and his first wife, Ambrosine ???.

Although this person is connected to my tree, it’s not who I was looking for.  I tried a different search:  Menaud with the box checked and location as California.  This gave me zero results.  Okay, I see why.  This location box only goes by country.  Not really helpful in this case.  I don’t need to see all the Menaud’s in the world, just the ones in California.

I modified my search to use California in the Residence box.  This is what came up:

This is from the 1900 census.  It is my family, only the enumerator got all the names wrong.  I blogged about it in this post “The 1900 Census got the Menauds all wrong“.

My next search with Menaud and the box unchecked with Fresno as the residence didn’t do much better.  Only 4 results were returned, the three above, plus a Japanese man going by the surname Munida.

My next attempt was Menaud with the box checked and no locality at all.  I wanted to see if a wider search did any better.  Maybe I’d catch some misspellings.  The results:  125 entries total.  Most of the names on the first page weren’t close, so I didn’t bother on looking at the subsequent ones.

My last attempt was to take a different tack.  Romain Menaud was a native of France.  This time I tried Menaud without the box checked and France in the birth box.  This search gave me 94 results and they were targeted better than my previous searches.

I ignored the first person because she lived in New York.  The next three were from the census results listed above.  The fifth entry was for someone in New Orleans.  But, then things got better at number 6.

The first entry is for Romain Menaud’s first wife.  Looks like she remarried within weeks of her divorce to Romain being final.  This is new information for me.

The next five entries are my guy.  Ramon was a common misspelling for Romain.  These are all from the Great Registers (voting records).  This is also new information for me.

I am curious as to why the four entries did not come up in any other search, especially the one I did for Menaud with Fresno as the residence.  I wonder if it’s because instead of “residence”  Fresno is in the “other” field on this entry?  Perhaps the search engine does not know these are the same since “other” could be anything.

I’m a glutton for punishment, so I did one more search.  I decided to see what would come up with Ramon (first name) Menaud (last name) with no boxes checked and no localities attached.  I got the same five results as above, plus some other people who were obviously Latino.

So, my scavenger hunt took quite a bit of scavenging before I found something interesting.  I did pull up a death record on a descendant, a marriage record for Romain’s first wife, and a couple of entries in the Great Registers–all information that I didn’t have before.  It took some finagling of the search boxes but I did eventually get something useful.

The Menaud surname is rare in California in 1900.  Even more so in Fresno where my Menaud’s live.  They are the only ones.

This census snapshot gives an idea of how far off the enumerator was:

The names aren’t even close.  Robrot (or Robert?) should be Romain.  M. unk should be Madeleine.  Mary Lacazype or whatever it is should be Mary Lacazette.  The only one that is correct is Romain’s daughter, Leona Menaud.

If I hadn’t done extensive research on this family to learn that both Romain and Madeleine were divorce and had children from those marriages, I might not have found the census record.  The indexes were of no help until I unearthed Leona Menaud in a newspaper article about Romain’s divorce.  If I didn’t have that bit of information, I would have had to go through the Fresno census page by page.  A task I have done before and don’t relish doing again.

It makes me wonder who gave the information.  It couldn’t have been Romain, Madeleine, Mary, or Leona.  They should have known their own names.  Romain and Madeleine had been married only a couple of months prior to the census.  She was from San Francisco.  It’s possible that she was unknown around town and maybe even to her neighbors.  That would explain her being identified as “M. Unk.”  But what about Romain?  He had lived in Fresno since 1872.  He was one of the early settlers of the city.  He was an investor and in 1900 census is listed as a Capitalist.  He should have been well known anywhere he went in area.  Yet, whoever gave the information seemed to think his name was Robert.  I have no other information showing that he was was called by that name.  Raymond was the only other name he was referred to.

This is another example of how indexes can fail us and why we must collect as many sources as possible about the people we are researching.  Not only do we fill in the family’s story but we learn clues to help us with future searches.

1439 First known letter to document the existence of the Azores Islands (mentioning only seven islands not nine)

1439 First settlers come from the Algarve and other regions of Portugal

1443-44 The Portuguese discover the Island of Sao Miguel. Portuguese colonists inhabit the island.

1444 Volcanic explosion of large mountain at west end of Sao Miguel leaving a crater which today is the Sete Cidades

1450 Henry of Portugal grants the island of Terceira to Jacome de Bruges, a member of one of the richest families in Bruges

1452 Diogo and Joao de Teive discover the Islands of Flores and Corvo

1453 Afonso V gives Corvo to Afonso, Duke of Braganca

1462 Maria de Vilhena inherits Corvo and asks Willem Van Der Hagen for settlers to be sent to her island. However, settlers are taken to Flores instead.

1466 Afonso V gives the Azores to Duchess Isabella of Burgundy as a gift

1468 Joos van Huerter names Captain-Donatary of Faial

1473-74 Afonso V reoganizes the islands’ adminitration to block Charles, Duke of Burgundy’s take over

1473-74 Rui Goncalves da Camara becomes the first official Captain-Donatary of Sao Miguel and Terceira is taken from the de Bruges family

1482 Formal administration is set up in Pico

1504 Flores and Corvo are sold to Joao de Fonseca

1522 Major earthquake destroys Vila Franco do Campo former capital of Sao Miguel killing 5000 people. Capital is relocated to Ponta Delgada.

1580-1640 Azores are occupied by Spain and become a staging base for the Spanish Fleets

1684 Count of Ribeira Grande marries Constance de Rohan, Princess of Soubise

[This article was first published in 1998 at YourIslandRoutes.com.  It was compiled by John Vasconcellos and Melody Lassalle.]