Family Record · Compiled 7 July 2026
Eleven documented generations behind Benjamin S. Newton of Ankeny, Iowa — 286 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. Green-edged boxes are close kin — Ben’s brother and sister, both aunts, the Hair marriage, his grandfather’s sisters, and the Pollpeter cousins — stacked beneath their branch (dotted green line = marriage). 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 286 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 286 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.
Four centuries in motion
Each line is a real family’s route, drawn from the records — from the hills of Calabria and the Rhine valley to a pair of counties in Iowa. Blue routes feed the Newton side, brass the Celania side; the lone red road leads out — the Knotts family’s post-war move to Oregon. Tap replay to watch it again.
Immigration, documented
Everything the records actually say about each immigrant family’s arrival — and what the era tells us where the paper trail runs out. Ship manifests live behind paid archives (flagged in Still unknown); everything below is documented or clearly marked as era-context.
ANCHOR RECORD: ANTHONY SR. BORN CHICAGO, 1 SEP 1876
Louis Celania and Columbia Rosasco arrived decades before the great Italian wave — their son Anthony was born in Chicago on 1 September 1876, which proves the family was in America by the Grant administration. Their era means they landed at Castle Garden in lower Manhattan (Ellis Island didn’t open until 1892), when perhaps fifty thousand Italians lived in the entire country. Ligurians like them were the vanguard: Genoa’s merchant culture sent confectioners, fruit dealers and grocers up the Mississippi valley a full generation ahead of the southern-Italian millions. From Chicago the family followed that exact trade into Ottumwa. The Wapello County naturalization index (searched this pass) shows no Celania entry — but it barely reaches back before 1917; Louis died in 1888, and every one of his children was a citizen by birth. The one paper that would restore their crossing — a Castle Garden manifest from the late 1860s or early 1870s — is a paid-archive search away.
ANCHOR RECORDS: 1813 PATERNÒ CALABRO MARRIAGE ACT · 1910 DES MOINES MARRIAGE
Carmine Coppola and Rose Porto came with the flood — the post-1900 southern wave that carried two million Italians through Ellis Island in a decade. Steerage from Naples ran about $30 and twelve days. Carmine was in Des Moines by 1 October 1910 (his marriage record); Rose, already widowed from her first marriage to Mr. Fazio, had come in the same era. Carmine died in 1915 — five years after arriving, which means he almost certainly died still an Italian citizen: U.S. law required five years’ residence before naturalization, and no petition appears in any free index. And here the family’s own tree holds a jewel: the actual 1813 marriage act from Paternò Calabro (registry 5, act 6) — Filippo Coppola, son of the late Santo Coppola, married Maria Caputo, daughter of Bruno Caputo, on 9 May 1813. Two ancestors deeper into Calabria, courtesy of Napoleon’s civil registries — both now drawn on the chart above.
ANCHOR RECORDS: PHILIP RILEY B. CANADA 1824 · HUGHES/RILEY B. IRELAND 1835/1842
The tree’s two unrelated Irish lines took the two classic routes. The Rileys took the cheap one: passage to British Canada (where Philip was born in 1824), then over the border and west through Wisconsin — the pre-famine pattern. Patrick Hughes (b. 1835) and Lucy Riley (b. 1842) were famine-generation emigrants, the ones for whom the “American wake” was held: Lucy’s parents Hugh and Katherine, as far as any record shows, never left Ireland and never saw her again. Both lines converged on Iowa within a generation.
ANCHOR RECORDS: KIEFER MARRIAGE (GERMANY) · VILLAGE PHOTOS IN THE FAMILY TREE
Wave one: the Palatines — Johann Friedrich Kiefer (“Cooper”) left Baden-Württemberg for Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, when a sea crossing took ten weeks and emigrants sold years of labor to pay for it. The family’s own tree pins the German villages precisely: Winnenden (the Mayers), Oberacker near Karlsruhe (the Müllers), Michelbach in the Rhineland (the Mayer line’s far edge) — and preserves Friederich Kiefer & Anna Maria Scheüffelin’s German marriage record. Wave two: the 1850s — Charles Waltzer’s Prussians and John Pries’s Holsteiners, sailing into the post-1848 exodus and settling German Wisconsin and Davenport. Wave three, sort of: Anna from Bohemia (b. 1839), the Czech-born woman filed forever under the Irish name Riley.
ANCHOR RECORD: THE SHIP WHALE, BOSTON, 26 MAY 1632
Nathaniel Merriman’s crossing is the only one in the family with a named ship and exact date: the WHALE, arriving Boston 26 May 1632 with the Plough Company — twelve years after the Mayflower, when the entire English population of New England fit inside today’s Kinnick Stadium. Every other colonial line — Studleys and Carlisles of Plymouth, Hulls and Prestons of New Haven, the Huguenot Mattoons — arrived in that same 1630s–50s window, mostly unrecorded: passenger lists were rare before 1820, which is why the deep colonial crossings survive only when a town history happened to write one down.
Generations one through five
Each couple in the first five generations, with every child the records can produce — the Ancestry file first, then census sheets, obituaries, death indexes, and the open web. Thirty-nine children are documented across these sixteen households: thirty-three from the file’s own records, six added by research. Where a roster is still open, the card says exactly which record would close it. Everyone here is also on the chart above — green-edged boxes.
GEN 2 · THE FILE
Three children: Bailee L (1997), Benjamin S. (2000), Joseph Steven (2002). Complete as recorded.
GEN 3 · THE FILE
Two children recorded: Deborah (m. Hair) and Steven Michael (1969). No further children appear in any record searched.
GEN 3 · THE FILE
Two children recorded: Kelly (1968) and Kristin M (1972). No further children appear in any record searched.
GEN 4 · FILE + 1950 CENSUS
Three children: Robert Lee II (1939), Jeanne (1942, m. Lawrence Joseph Pollpeter), Suzanne (abt 1947). Evelyn’s 30 Oct 2013 Des Moines Register obituary (GenealogyBank / Ancestry’s obituary index) would confirm the roster is complete.
GEN 4 · OPEN QUESTION
Only Lola M (1940) is recorded. Whether Lola had brothers or sisters is one of the two family rosters still unsettled — the household’s 1950 census sheet (on Ancestry) or Hubert’s 25 Feb 1988 Register obituary would settle it in one look.
GEN 4 · FILE + 1950 CENSUS + 2013 OBITUARY
Nine children — the file records seven: Rosemary (1938, m. Crowe), Frances L (1941), Margaret A (1941, m. Blumer), Anthony E Sr. (1942–2013, the Houston branch), Robert J (1944), William V (1945), Michael J (1948). Anthony’s 2013 Houston obituary adds two the file never had: Richard and Madelyn (m. Hall), and names a sister Louise (m. Potter) who may be Frances under a middle name. And Dorothy herself: long carried as maiden-name-unknown, the file’s own records hold her as Dorothy Frances Hughes, daughter of James Edward Hughes and Minnie Frances Rhoads — a brick wall that fell from the inside.
GEN 4 · FILE + 2015 OBITUARY
Two children of this marriage: Martin Dean (1942) and Diana (1948). Henning died in 1952; Lydia’s Gruwell marriage followed, with Terry Gruwell and Cynthia Faye (born and died 26 Sep 1953). The file once mislinked Cynthia under Henning — he died the year before her birth — corrected in the 8 July 2026 cleanup.
GEN 5 · PARTIAL
One child recorded: Robert Lee (1921). Earnest’s brother John LeRoy (1889–1965) shows the family had more going on than the file holds — Earnest and Vivian’s full household needs the 1930/1940 census sheets (Ancestry).
GEN 5 · CENSUS + DEATH INDEX — COMPLETE
Four daughters: Evelyn (1923–2013), Marjorie Ann (10–11 July 1927, one day), Shirley Mae (1929–2016), Mary Louise (1934–2003). Census sheets and the Polk County death index agree; treated as complete.
GEN 5 · OPEN QUESTION
Only Hubert Andrew (1914) is recorded — but the March 1919 newspaper coverage of Lola’s death spoke of small children, plural. The household’s 1920 census sheet (St. Joseph, Missouri — on Ancestry) would name the others, and may also open Andrew’s road to Baton Rouge.
GEN 5 · FILE + WIKITREE + BURIAL REGISTER
Three children in five years: Mary Louise (1911) in the file, plus Louis Joseph (22 Nov 1912) and Teresa (abt Jun 1914, m. Green) from the open web — neither yet in the Ancestry file. Rose’s first marriage (Fazio) has no recorded children.
GEN 5 · PARTIAL
One child in the file: Anthony J (1910). Research adds Paul, in Ottumwa school lists of 1912, who died young. Louise died in 1910 — “leakage of the heart,” the Courier said — so the household closed early; whether there were other children needs Wapello County records.
GEN 5 · PARTIAL
One child recorded: Dorothy Frances (1917), Kristin’s grandmother. The Hughes household beyond her is unexplored — fresh ground.
GEN 5 · PARTIAL
One child recorded: Henning W (1911–1952). The Rounsavell line is deeply documented backward (to the 1658 immigrant) but this household’s own children beyond Henning are unrecorded.
GEN 5 · PARTIAL
One child recorded: Lydia Edith (1923–2015). Lydia’s obituary references siblings; the full list needs the Courier text (GenealogyBank).
KIN HOUSEHOLD · ONE NAME SHORT
Jeanne is Ben’s great-aunt (Robert II’s sister), so these are cousins, not ancestors — but the household belongs here: five children, four named in the file’s records — Barbara Ann (1963, m. Feeney), Kevin (1968, m. Lam Chung), Dean (1972, m. Amy Pogge), Bryan — and a fifth not yet named anywhere in the file or the free record sets. Lawrence and Jeanne appear to be living; no obituary exists to read the roster from.
Every name, written out
Three registers in one place. First, the Morris and Coppola lines written in full — census sheets, marriage registers, a cathedral burial book. Then every other relative in the file, person by person. And last, the people this research found who aren’t in the Ancestry tree yet.
RECORDS: ST. AMBROSE BURIAL REGISTER · 1910 CENSUS · 1910 MARRIAGE REGISTER · 1813 PATERNÒ ACT
Born 21 Feb 1867 in Paternò Calabro, Cosenza, Calabria — son of Luigi Coppola (b. 22 Oct 1822, Paternò) and Maria Rosa Bilotti (b. 3 Sep 1825 in Mangone, the next hill town over; her father Diego died at Santo Stefano di Rogliano in 1854). Carmine’s great-grandparents Santo Coppola and Bruno Caputo are named in the family’s 1813 marriage act. He crossed in the Ellis Island wave and by April 1910 the census finds him in Des Moines, Ward 3 (enumeration district 119, sheet 3A, family 48) — “Charles Coppolla,” in the south-side Italian colony. On 1 October 1910 he married the young widow Rosa (Porto) Fazio; the register shaved his age to 39. Three children came fast: Mary Louise (1911), Louis Joseph (22 Nov 1912), Teresa (c. June 1914). He died 26 September 1915, his American life five years long, and was buried from St. Ambrose — the cathedral parish’s burial register reads, verbatim: “77StAmbr100 — Carmine Capola, 45 years, 1915.” St. Ambrose Cemetery still exists in Des Moines; the register photocopies are held at the Glendale Cemetery office. Having arrived only about five years before his death, he almost certainly died still an Italian citizen.
RECORDS: 1910 MARRIAGE REGISTER · POLK COUNTY DEATH DATE
Born in Calabria about 1883 (the 1910 marriage register gives her age as 27; the tree says 1886), daughter of Michele Porto and Teresa Benincasa — their names survive because a Des Moines county clerk wrote them down as “Mik Porto and Theressa Vienecasa.” She emigrated young, married a Mr. Fazio, and was already a widow when she wed Carmine in October 1910 — perhaps 27 years old and starting over. Five years and three babies later she was widowed again: 1915, roughly age 32, with a four-year-old, a three-year-old, and an infant, in a country whose language she may barely have spoken. She remarried into the DiBlasio family — the practical arithmetic of immigrant survival — and raised her children on the south side. She died 19 April 1936 in Des Moines, about fifty-three.
RECORDS: POLK DEATH INDEX (SON) · TREE RECORDS · WIKITREE FAMILY LINKS
Born 1911 in Des Moines (some records say 1912 — her record sits split across three duplicates in the Ancestry tree, one of the audit’s merge items), first child of Carmine and Rose. Her father died when she was four; her stepfather was a DiBlasio; her little brother Louis Joseph and sister Teresa completed the household. Her mother died in 1936, when Mary Louise was about 25. She married Hubert Andrew Morris, and in March 1938 they lost a one-day-old son, Hubert Jr. — the death certificate spells her maiden name “Cappola.” Daughter Lola arrived 22 July 1940. Mary Louise died in 1971, about sixty. Her sister Teresa’s line is still active in genealogy today (see the cousin note below).
RECORDS: DES MOINES REGISTER, 25 FEB 1988 · POLK DEATH INDEX (SON) · 1940 RESIDENCE
Born about 1914 in Missouri — and orphaned of his mother at five, when Lola Myrtle (Mastin) Morris died in March 1919. (Who raised him through the 1920s — his father, or Mastin or Morris kin — is a genuinely open question; the 1920 and 1930 censuses would answer it.) He came to Des Moines, married the Italian grocer’s daughter Mary Louise Coppola, and was living there by 1940. He buried a one-day-old son in 1938, raised Lola — named for the mother he’d lost — and worked a Des Moines working-man’s life. He died in February 1988: a Des Moines Register item of 25 February 1988 is attached to the family’s own tree (the clipping lives behind the newspapers.com paywall — almost certainly his obituary, and the single best next record for his story). His given name is misspelled “Andew” in the tree — one of the audit’s fixes.
RECORDS: TREE VITALS · 1876-ERA FAMILY RECORDS OF BUCHANAN CO., MISSOURI
Born 27 December 1888 in St. Joseph, Missouri (Andrew County side), son of David Andrew Morris (1855, Logan County, Ohio – 1916, St. Joseph) and Mary Josephine Morris (born at Agency, Buchanan County, 1857 — a Morris who married a Morris, two unrelated families). He married Lola Myrtle Mastin and was widowed at thirty, in March 1919, with small children including five-year-old Hubert. He was of exact WWI draft age — his 1917–18 registration card exists in the National Archives (paid index) and would give his occupation, address, and physical description. Then he did something the records don’t yet explain: he ended up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dying there 16 December 1981 at ninety-two — sixty-two years after Lola, having outlived his son’s wife and very nearly everyone in this story. What carried him from Missouri to the Gulf is still not documented — but the search has narrowed. The East Baton Rouge Parish Library’s official newspaper index shows his obituary ran in both Baton Rouge dailies the day after he died — the Morning Advocate and the State-Times, 17 December 1981 (index entries 74068 and 74070) — the mark of a resident with local next of kin, not a visitor. And a sweep of the 1950 census name index for East Baton Rouge Parish does not find him, so he most likely arrived late in life. Since his only child in the tree, Hubert, stayed in Des Moines, the family he joined on the Gulf points to a second marriage or to children of his not yet in the tree — the 1919 newspaper coverage of Lola’s death spoke of small children, plural, and only Hubert is recorded. The two 17 December 1981 obituaries — on microfilm at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, which answers lookup requests — would name his survivors and settle it.
RECORDS: MOUNT AYR RECORD-NEWS OBITUARY (MAR 1919) · MASTIN FAMILY RECORDS
Born March 1889 in Buchanan County, Missouri, daughter of Jonathan P. Mastin and Sarah O. Bennett — whose marriage later ended in a divorce the family tree still holds the filing for. She married Andrew Noah Morris and died 6 March 1919 in Ringgold County, Iowa at thirty, as the influenza pandemic’s third wave crossed the state (her cause of death awaits the county certificate). Her obituary ran in the Mount Ayr Record-News in mid-March 1919 under her full name — Lola Myrtle Mastin Morris. Twenty-one years later her son named his newborn daughter Lola. The name has now crossed three centuries.
SOURCE: WIKITREE PROFILE COPPOLA-105 (PUBLIC)
Carmine’s WikiTree profile is publicly maintained by Teri (Green) McIntire — daughter of Teresa (Coppola) Green, which makes her Mary Louise’s niece — a first cousin on the Coppola side. She posted a family memory there in 2017: her mother Teresa said “her father died when she was 15 months old.” She has DNA results linked and was last active on the profile in 2025. WikiTree’s own page invites contact with the profile manager — a direct line to the other branch of Carmine’s descendants, and possibly to photographs and stories the Iowa side has never seen.
Everybody else in the family’s Ancestry file — aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, step-kin — written out person by person: how each one connects to the direct line, who they married, their children, every census that caught them, the notes in the family file, and the paper trail behind it all. Alphabetical by surname. (The file’s duplicate copies of chart ancestors — its known merge problem — are folded into their chart entries rather than repeated here.)
People this research turned up in obituaries, death certificates, burial registers, newspapers, and documented lineages — none of them are in the 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 · THE FAMILY’S OWN TREE NOTES
Three babies, three fates in the records. Marjorie Ann Knotts (10–11 July 1927) — the tree knew her all along, with the family’s own note: “blue baby syndrome... born with a hole in her heart”; the county death index confirms her single day. Hubert A. Morris Jr. (4–5 March 1938, mother’s maiden name “Cappola”) — Lola Morris’s brother, genuinely absent from the tree, existing only in the index. And Martin Dean Rounceville (1942) — in the tree three times over, one of the duplicates to merge. Each lived one day.
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.
SOURCE: ANNOTATED 1870 GRAYSON CO. CENSUS, NEW RIVER NOTES
The mystery bride’s real name was Member A. Lovelace — “Memler” was a misreading. The 1870 census annotation reads: “Member A. Lovelace Md. James C. Anderson, s/o Wesley & Peggy Anderson, 10/27/1870.” That one line delivers her parents — William B. Lovelace (b. c. 1821, Tennessee) and Rachel Weiss — seven siblings (George, Caroline, Malissa, Victoria, William W., Troy, Rachel V.), a probable grandfather (James Lovelace of Tennessee), and it confirms James C. Anderson’s parents as Wesley & Peggy (Margaret Hash) Anderson. One record, one new branch.
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.”
Test the table
Ten questions, all answered somewhere on this page. Play it out loud at dinner — tap an answer to see how you did.
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 Lola Morris) is separate from the Italian Celania line (Celania side).
The original export also had a structural bug — 65 people in eight disconnected “islands,” stranded by duplicate records. That was fixed on 8 July 2026 by merging the duplicates: the file now reads 286 of 286 people connected. Nine leftover duplicate records remain worth merging in Ancestry (they no longer strand anyone, but they fragment households and block the Debord line from climbing on Ancestry itself): the two Lawrence Pollpeters, the two Jeannes (Newton/Pollpeter), Barbara Ann Pollpeter, Stephen Feeney, James C. Anderson, John H. Jones (three copies), Malinda Smith, Rhilda Anderson, and William Deboard — plus two name fixes: “Memler” → Member A. Lovelace, and Vivian’s maiden surname Riley.
The audit
Everything flagged in this review, ranked: outright errors first, then duplicates, then new facts discovered outside the tree.
The brick walls
Every open question from this research was hunted through the free record sets — newspaper archives, census transcriptions, county indexes, grave registers. Two have fallen — Member A. Lovelace (above), and Dorothy’s maiden name, which turned out to be hiding in the file’s own records: Hughes. These five survive. Each names the paid or offline source that would crack it.