Family Record · Compiled 7 July 2026
Eleven documented generations behind Benjamin S. Newton of Ankeny, Iowa — 297 people across Calabria, Liguria, Ireland, the German Palatinate, colonial Connecticut, Appalachian Virginia, and five generations of Des Moines. Researched from obituaries, death certificates, county histories, and the Library of Congress newspaper archive. Every box on the chart opens to a written story.
The chart
Every direct ancestor in the file, plus the people this research discovered. Ben is at the left; each column is one generation back. Blue = Newton side, brass = Celania side. Dashed red boxes are new people found in research (not yet in your Ancestry tree); other dashed boxes are ancestors reconnected from the floating islands. Tap any box for the story. Scroll the chart sideways — it’s deep.
Pedigree
Blue cards are Ben’s father’s side (Newton), brass cards his mother’s side (Celania). Corrections found during this review are marked in red.
Everything below gen 8 came in by copying other members’ Ancestry trees. Several names still carry other researchers’ notes (“5th GGM”, asterisks, “Revolutionary War”). The broad picture is probably right; individual dates need sources before you treat them as fact.
Origins
Every branch of the tree arrives in Iowa between 1850 and 1923 — six countries funneling into Des Moines, Ottumwa, and Oskaloosa.
INDIANA 1837 → DES MOINES ~1880s → ANKENY
Ely Newton, born 1837 in Indiana, reached Des Moines by the 1880s. Then five straight generations in the city: Ely → George W. → Earnest Lee → Robert Lee → Robert Lee II. Railroad car inspector, chauffeur, bookkeeper — a working Des Moines family for a century before Steven moved the line to Ankeny in 1993.
PATERNÒ CALABRO & MANGONE, COSENZA → DES MOINES ~1900s
From hill towns south of Cosenza. Carmine Coppola arrived in Des Moines, married the young widow Rosa Porto in 1910, and died just five years later — the family’s Italian-Catholic anchor was St. Ambrose. His daughter Mary Louise married into the Morris family; her granddaughter is Ben’s grandmother Lola.
GENOA / GATTORNA → CHICAGO & OMAHA → OTTUMWA 1890s
Louis Celania and Colomba “Columbia” Rosasco came from the Genoa hills. Louis died in Omaha in 1888; Columbia resettled the family in Ottumwa, where four generations of Celanias followed — down to Ben’s mother Kristin.
IRELAND ~1840s → WISCONSIN & MAHASKA CO. → DES MOINES
Two unrelated Irish lines: the Rileys (via Canada and Dodge County, Wisconsin, to Des Moines) on the Newton side, and Patrick Hughes & Lucy Riley of Oskaloosa on the Celania side. Famine-era emigrants both.
HOLSTEIN & PRUSSIA 1850s → IOWA · BADEN 1600s → PENNSYLVANIA → VIRGINIA
Three German waves: the Pries family of Holstein to Davenport; the Waltzers of Prussia through Wisconsin; and — much older — the Kieffer/Niswonger Palatines who left Baden in the early 1700s for Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley.
GRAYSON & SMYTH CO., VA → OTTUMWA ~1940s
Blue Ridge families from the Virginia–North Carolina line: Chilhowie, Ashe County, the Holston valley. Lydia Edith Jones brought the thread to Ottumwa, where her daughter Diana married Michael Celania in 1965.
WALLINGFORD, CT 1660s → KENTUCKY → ILLINOIS → IOWA
The deepest well-documented root: Puritan Wallingford, Connecticut, through Kentucky and Sangamon County, Illinois, to Cordelia Merriman who died in Valley Junction (West Des Moines) in 1932. Ben is roughly the 10th generation from Caleb Merriman, born 1665.
Chronology
Selected, sourced moments — the whole tree runs to 297 people.
Hans Gall Keiffer born in Baden — the oldest solidly-dated ancestor.
Caleb Merriman born, New Haven Colony, Connecticut.
Johann Friedrich Kiefer “Cooper” dies in Somerset, Pennsylvania — the Palatine line is in America.
Reuben Debord born in the Virginia Blue Ridge; Revolutionary generation.
Ely Newton born in Indiana.
James C. Anderson marries in Grayson County, Virginia, 27 Oct.
George W. Newton marries Amanda Murphy in Des Moines, 17 Jul.
Louis Celania dies in Omaha at 45; Columbia moves the family to Ottumwa.
Carmine Coppola marries the widow Rosa (Porto) Fazio in Des Moines, 1 Oct. That February, Louise (Lagomarcino) Celania dies at 26, leaving newborn Anthony Jr.
Both Carmine Coppola (26 Sep) and Ely Newton (19 Feb) die in Des Moines.
Lola Marie (Mastin) Morris dies at 30 in Ringgold County — influenza-era; her name carries on.
Earnest Newton marries Vivian Riley, 3 Sep, Montezuma.
Henning & Lydia Rounceville lose infant son Martin Dean (19–22 Oct), Ottumwa.
Henning Rounceville dies at 40; Lydia is widowed at 29 with Diana, age 4.
Robert Lee Newton II marries Lola Morris, 11 Apr.
Michael Celania marries Diana Rounceville, 24 Apr, Kirksville, Missouri.
Steven Michael Newton born 9 Jun, Garden City, Kansas.
Benjamin S. Newton born 26 Feb, Ames.
Lydia Edith McDaniel dies at 91 in Ottumwa — the last of gen 4.
By the numbers
Computed straight from the tree’s 297 people — every number below is counted from real records.
Where people were born vs. where they died — the tree’s biggest one-way moves:
Read as chapters: the Appalachian shuffle (NC→VA), the Knotts exodus to Oregon after WWII, the Yankee trail (Massachusetts→Vermont→Wisconsin→Iowa), and three immigrant streams all pointing at Iowa.
Ben’s birthday is the family’s rarest. February is the least common birth month in the whole tree (8 people) — October is the most common (19). Ben, born 26 February, is a statistical original.
The family founded two towns. Capt. Nathaniel Merriman co-founded Wallingford, Connecticut in 1670; Revolutionary soldier Aquilla Davis laid out Elkhart, Illinois in 1820 — later a famous Route 66 stop.
There are two completely unrelated Riley families in the tree. Irish-Canadian Rileys on the Newton side, Irish Rileys of Mahaska County on the Celania side — plus a Bohemian-born “Anna Riley” who probably wasn’t a Riley at all. Three Rileys, zero relation.
Stanley Knotts was born on his father’s birthday. Both Freddie and Stanley: 17 August. And John Wesley Nevins died on his own 56th birthday — 20 August 1821 to 20 August 1877.
The family ran a candy empire (locally speaking). Celania Bros.’ confectionery at 307 East Main, Ottumwa: ice cream parlors with live music, a $2,500 remodel in 1915, meals catered to the county jail, and a quote in a national Washington, D.C. peanut-machine ad. Joe Celania once took a business trip to Chicago and stayed for the 1911 Sox–Cubs City Series.
Three straight men named James Brook Ellis. Grandfather (1753), father (1775), son (1817) — a genealogist’s nightmare and the reason that branch tangled in Ancestry.
The tree may hold two 100-year-olds from the 1600s. German parish books credit Anna Catharina Koerner with 102 years (1603–1705) and Ludwig Leonhard Mayer with 100 — if the old registers are right, two centenarians born before the Mayflower generation died.
One name traveled 5,000 miles and 130 years. Lola Myrtle Mastin died in 1919 at 30; her grandson named his daughter Lola — Ben’s grandmother. Meanwhile the name Columbia sailed from Liguria to Iowa and resurfaced in Jowan Columbia Celania Freshwater a century after the matriarch died.
A Newton married into the family before the Newtons did. Eddie Newton RHOADS (b. 1865, Celania side) carried “Newton” as a middle name — pure coincidence, no relation, 135 years before Steven Newton married Kristin Celania and made it official.
Structure check
This file merges two trees — the Newton tree and the Celania tree. A full graph check confirms they never blend: zero people sit on both sides, and the only record connecting them is Steven & Kristin’s marriage. The name overlaps that look suspicious are coincidence: the Rileys on the Newton side (Wisconsin → Des Moines) are unrelated to Lucy Riley on the Celania side (Mahaska County), and the Italian Coppola line (Newton side, via grandma Lola) is separate from the Italian Celania line (Celania side).
But the merge left 65 people stranded. Eight “islands” float free of both trees, because the deep ancestry got attached to duplicate copies of people instead of the connected ones. Merging the duplicates re-attaches all 65:
Found in the records
Found in obituaries, death certificates, burial registers, newspapers, and documented lineages — none of them are in your Ancestry tree yet. Names in bold are blood relatives; the rest are spouses that complete a record.
SOURCE: ANTHONY E. CELANIA SR. OBITUARY, HOUSTON, 2013
Grandpa Michael’s full sibling roster is nine or more — the tree has seven. Missing entirely: Richard Celania and Madelyn (Celania) Hall. The obituary also supplies married names for the sisters already in the tree: Rosemary Crowe, and — preceding Anthony in death — Louise (Celania) Potter and Margaret (Celania) Blumer. And it opens a whole Houston branch: Anthony Sr.’s wife Shirley (53 years), children Mary Davila, Matt, Alan, Neil, Thomas, and the late Anthony Jr., plus twelve grandchildren — Ben’s second cousins.
SOURCE: WIKITREE COPPOLA-105 · ST. AMBROSE BURIAL REGISTER
Carmine & Rose had three children, not one: Mary Louise (in the tree), plus Louis Joseph Coppola (b. 22 Nov 1912, Des Moines) and Teresa (Coppola) Green. And Rose’s first husband — a Mr. Fazio, married before 1910 — is a person the tree never suspected. Bonus lead: a Coppola born 28 Nov 1855 in Belsito — Rose’s mother’s home village — died in Des Moines in 1918; possibly kin worth chasing.
SOURCE: OTTUMWA DAILY COURIER, 14 JAN 2015
Two husbands missing: a Mr. Gruwell (father of her son Terry Gruwell, who floats unlinked in the tree, and of infant Cynthia Fay) and a Mr. McDaniel, whose name she carried to the end. Her sister Eliza’s husband was a Mr. Canny. And at Calvary Cemetery, Ottumwa: Jowan Columbia Celania Freshwater (1930–2014), middle-named for matriarch Columbia Rosasco — almost certainly family, branch unknown.
SOURCE: WIKITREE MERRIMAN-9 · GENI · FIND A GRAVE 13684545
Nathaniel Merriman (1613, London – 1694, Wallingford) is the father of Caleb (already in your tree) and is solidly documented: sailed from England at 19 aboard the ship Whale, arriving in Boston 26 May 1632; signed the Wallingford settlement compact in 1669; captained the town militia. Ben is his 11th-great-grandson — a direct line to a New England founder, one click away from adding in Ancestry.
SOURCE: GOODSPEED HISTORIES · WIKITREE ROUNSAVELL-23
Your Richard Rounsavell (b. 1765, Amwell NJ) belongs to a documented line: probable parents Richard Rounsavell Jr. (1734–1777) & Rachel Stout, grandparents Richard Sr. (c. 1695–1775) & Rebekah Bogart, and the immigrant Richard Rounsavell (1658–bef. 1704). The name comes from Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees — “valley of thorns.” If the Stout link holds, the line touches New Jersey’s legendary Penelope Stout. Confirm against Richard Rounsavell & His Descendants, Vol. II (2002).
SOURCE: POLK COUNTY DEATH CERTIFICATE INDEX, 1917–1939
Two babies the family tree never knew. Marjorie Ann Knotts — born 10 July 1927, died 11 July 1927, mother’s maiden name Ellis — a daughter of Stanley & Florence, and great-grandma Evelyn’s baby sister. And Hubert A. Morris Jr. — born 4 March 1938, died 5 March 1938, mother’s maiden name Cappola — a son of Hubert & Mary Louise (Coppola) Morris, grandma Lola’s brother. Each lived one day; each exists now only in the county index.
SOURCE: OTTUMWA COURIER, 26 FEB 1910 & 24 DEC 1912
Louise (Lagomarcino) Celania’s 1910 obituary says she left two sons — printed as “Carl and Anthony” — and the Courier’s 1912 Irving School Christmas lists show Paul Celania and Anthony Celania side by side. Great-great-grandpa Anthony had a brother, probably Paul (“Carl” being a typesetter’s slip), who is nowhere in the tree. The same obituary dates Tony & Louise’s wedding — Burlington, 2 March 1905 — and names her scattered siblings: Rose in Seattle, a sister married to Charles Stott in Cedar Rapids, brother Paul in Burlington.
SOURCE: OTTUMWA COURIER 1905–1918 · EVENING STAR (WASH. D.C.) 1909
The Library of Congress newspaper archive holds the whole arc. Matriarch Columbia ran the store herself for sixteen years after Louis died in 1888 — her 1905 obituary calls her “a well known business woman of this city.” Her sons’ Celania Bros. confectionery at 307 East Main sold candy, fruit, and ice cream (“music while you drink,” 1910), catered meals to the county jail and poor farm, got quoted in a national peanut-machine ad in Washington, D.C. (1909), and in 1915 spent $2,500 — a house’s worth — on a remodel the Courier said made it “one of the most complete stores in the state.” Joe Celania rode the Burlington to Chicago for the National Ice Cream Manufacturers convention (1912), stayed for the Sox–Cubs City Series (1911), and in 1918 was elected president of Ottumwa’s wartime food-administration association. Jobs, money, vacations, civic office — all of it in ink.
SOURCE: POLK COUNTY DEATH CERTIFICATE INDEX
Freddie’s parents have been a brick wall. His death certificate cracks it: mother’s maiden name METZEL. (The certificate also corrects his death to 28 Oct 1934 — not 1936 — and indexes him as “Joeseph Frederick.”) The other Knotts men his age in the Polk index all show mother “DeMoss” — cousins, not brothers. Search Clarke County for a Knotts–Metzel marriage circa 1870 and the wall comes down.
RECORDS LOCATED IN THIS RESEARCH
The 1910 Des Moines marriage register names Rose’s parents “Mik Porto and Theressa Vienecasa” — your Michele Porto & Teresa Benincasa, verified. Frank Edward Riley’s parents confirmed as Philip Riley & Elizabeth Waltzer. The Celania surname itself: ultra-rare (roughly 1 in 78 million people), a variant of Celani, pointing to Celano in Abruzzo — from Latin caelum, “sky.”
The audit
Everything flagged in this review, ranked: outright errors first, then duplicates, then new facts discovered outside the tree.
Open questions