Here she is pictured on her wedding day in 1952 to Iowa farmer Robert Stratton.  It is one of my first memories of her.  

When Lola died in 1974 she left behind a trunk filled with memorabilia not only from her own life, but the lives of her siblings, parents, and grandparents.  

In her full story we learn that with her birth two family lines from the earliest colonial settlements – the Bishops in Virginia and the Cummings in Massachusetts – are joined and passed on.  We also learn of the impact of early family tragedies which ultimately led to her painful first marriage – without which none of us would be here today.

This glowing portrait of her was taken during Lola’s 12 happy years with Robert on his Iowa farm before his death in 1964.

The contents of Lola’s trunk – letters, photos, marriage and birth certificates, and news clippings – hinted at a rich collection of compelling stories, which inspired my mother to get to know the family which for many years and many reasons she had chosen to distance herself from.

Her enthusiastic curiosity was infectious and I happily joined in on what would become a fascinating genealogical treasure hunt, infusing all of our future get-togethers with an exciting sense of mission and purpose.

Here’s Mom with 93-year-old Victoria Meyers who was the post mistress in Sauk Center during our family’s final years there.  Our astonishing luck at meeting her was only topped by her astonishing knowledge of the reasons our family left. 

And here we are with Bud Harvey –
Mom’s second cousin and the son of Lola’s first cousin,
Alma Bishop.  It is because of Bud’s extensive research
that we have access to the genealogies for both the
Bishop and Cummings lines. 

Bud, his wife and their two gorgeous pups welcomed us warmly into their Minneapolis home and presented Mom
with an unexpected surprise – a loving cup that Bud’s grandparents had given to Mom’s grandparents for their wedding more than a century before.  It had recently found its way to him and he was happy to see it to its rightful owner, Mom.  

Isaac Cummings, born in 1601, traveled with his family to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 where he served variously as Church Deacon, Constable and Grand Juryman in Topsfield.  And John Bishop, born in 1590, traveled three years later, in 1638, to the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, with a land grant to establish a tobacco plantation.

Though both were British and close in age, their reasons for traveling to the New World couldn’t have been different. Cummings was a Puritan escaping the religious and civil persecution of the British Crown.  While Bishop had come with the Crowns’ blessing to make money.

We have few details of their lives or of those that followed until we reach the late 18th century.  But we can know a great deal about both of these early American colonies.  And so their histories are well worth reviewing not only as preparation to better understand the ancestors whose stories we do know well, but also because of their significance in understanding a large part of who we are as Americans.

The Cummings and Bishop lines proceed unbroken from the the late 13th Century to the late 19th and early 20th Centuries so it is no surprise that Mom and then I focused almost exclusively on those two names, never thinking to follow any of the wives or daughters.  But this is what we found when you do!  (Read right before continuing down.)

We actually did know about Mary, and the Witch Trials but I’d forgotten about Col. Josiah Smith until recently when I unearthed these images of Mom at his grave, which means she knew about him.   But I’m developing a theme here: “FOLLOW THE WOMEN” so I’ve taken a bit of creative liberty which will be appreciated when I reveal our remarkable connection to several Mayflower passengers, as well as astonishing lineages when you follow the women in the Dodge and Thomas lines.

Anyway. . .  When Mom and I had unearthed everything we could find about her roots, I turned my still enthusiastic genealogical energies towards my father’s Italian and Portuguese heritage.

And here I found radically different but equally fascinating stories.

More importantly these stories belong as much to my brothers, Don and Dick Dodge, and their families – all of whom, despite not sharing Ferrari or Thomas DNA, shared just about everything else!  The good, the bad and no small amount of . . .

They grew up with my father (their step-father) Larry, his mother – our Grandma Alice – and the extended Thomas and Botelho clans . . and, in the end, probably spent more time and shared more experiences with them than I, who was forever on the run, was able to do.

Below is a taste of all the stories I’ll explore on subsequent pages in excruciating detail.

Lizzy chased down these magnificent photos of her great grandfather, my brothers’ father, Donald Everett Dodge, Sr. – first as a young merchant marine on R and R in Egypt during WWII, and then 20 years later as a charming and successful businessman – a dashing Bing Crosby look alike.

Little was known about Don Senior’s father and so –  newly emboldened by my seemingly magical genealogical search site, I traced Don Senior’s lineage back to the 1661 immigration of British couple Tristram and Anne Dodge to Rhode Island, where they were among the first families to settle tiny Block Island, 9 miles off the coast of CT and RI

This places them in the first American colony to break away from the stranglehold of Puritan dogma, and to promote both religious freedom and the separation of Church and State.

Subsequent Dodge generations would settle in Connecticut, upstate New York, Nebraska (where Don, Sr. was born) and finally Southern California, where he met and married, first, our mother, Bernice, and then Lizzy’s grandmother… 

The first one shows my sister-in-law Ginny Dodge’s maternal grandmother, Vitina Amaro, on her wedding day in Sicily with her new husband Mateo Gentile. They are accompanied by Vitina’s sister, Ninata, as matron of honour, with her husband, Tony – Mateo’s brother 🤣!  All of them would soon settle in St. Louis, Missouri.

The second photo is a hauntingly beautiful portrait of Ginny’s paternal grandmother, Vincenza D’Leberto. Born in Sicily, she traveled to Illinois in the early 20th century with her husband, Carlo Virgadamo, who worked there in the coal mines.

Vicenza died tragically at only 21 giving birth to her second child, who also died, leaving Ginny’s one-year-old father, Michael, motherless and forcing his father to return to Sicily with his infant son.  Michael then returned to the States alone at only 17 – already a skilled tailor and proud of his American citizenship – and made his way to St. Louis where he met and married Vitina’s daughter, Lena, who blessed us with Ginny!

Harold Leonard, our Grandma Lola’s first husband – and our maternal grandfather – represents a full quarter of the DNA that makes up Don, Dick and me.  And yet we know very little about him – only that he was an auto mechanic from Kansas City, and that he served as an ambulance driver during WWI.  

This may be what the ambulance he drove and the uniform he wore looked like.  Sadly we have no photos of him.  But we only have to consider Mom’s beauty, and her great love of fun to know that he must have been something!