Family Members in U. S. History (9): Italian Immigrants -2

Among John Cotter’s diverse European background there is also an Italian ancestor.  According to Frank Di Nardo’s death certificate in 1949, he was born in Italy in 1865. Alternative spellings and inconsistent information make it difficult to determine just when Frank arrived in the United States. It seems likely that it was in 1896 as indicated in the 1920 census for Philadelphia.  The same census shows that his wife Concetta Giordano arrived in 1902 and that both were naturalized in 1917.  Frank was working as an erector in a locomotive yard.  The couple lived in Eddystone, Delaware County near Philadelphia.  The oldest children listed that year are Nicholas (12) and Thomas (16).  There are three younger daughters.

There is an intriguing census in 1910 of a couple named Furin and Conjeta Dinardo which overlaps with this picture in many of the details.  Furin is working in a railroad yard and arrived in the United States in 1896. Their ages are 43 and 35 respectively, which fits in with the 1920 census.  They also have a 2 year old son named Nicholas and a newborn named Lorenzo as well; they’ve been married for 21 years.   But there are inconsistencies as well.   One is that Conjeta (or Concetta) put 1896 as her date of arrival.  Even more obvious though is the family configuration. She has given birth to 5 children, 6 of whom are living, but the oldest two, daughters Sabrina (17) and Maggie (16) were born in Italy and another Camille (5) was born in the United States.   Seeing the gap in ages between those born in Italy and those in the America, one wonders what happened that drove them to come here and what became of the older daughters.

By 1930 Concetta is back in Philadelphia, with four of her children. Thomas, now 25 is an inspector in a customs house and Nicholas (22) is a pocket maker in a tailor shop, so like many other immigrant families, the first generation born in  America seems to have risen to specific occupations rather than merely being listed as laborers . Two daughters, Lena and Florence (John’s grandmother), were in or recently finished with school.  Curiously, though, Frank is absent from the household. A “D” for divorce is listed but then crossed out and Concetta’s occupation is listed as “None.”  In 1940 Concetta and Julia are living in the house of Julia and Nicondro Sciarra where Concetta is listed as the grandmother and Florence is the aunt.  Curiously, Concetta’s marital status is listed as M for married.  It is quite possible that she and Frank had been separated but that, being Catholic, they either were not legally divorced or did not want it made public.  In any case, Frank died in 1949, and the 1950 census shows Concetta (now 75)  as a widow living with her daughter Florence, her husband, Maurice Steinbruck, and their family.

While John Cotter’s Italian ancestors were coming to Philadelphia, Brian Augelli’s were arriving across the river in Camden, New Jersey.  As with other non-English-speaking immigrants, the records for names in the Augelli family, both first and last, were frequently misspelled. Augelli shows up as Angelli and Angelo.  The first Augelli immigrant, Michael Augelli, turns up in 1910.  He was born in Italy in 1884 and had arrived in 1900, but there is no record of his arrival.  By 1905 he is a naturalized citizen and the same year married Josephine, a woman of Italian descent who had been born in Pennsylvania.  Mike, as he was known, lists his occupation as bartender in a saloon.  Living with them in 1910 was the couple’s 2-year old son Pasquale, Mike’s widowed mother,  and his sister Mary, 18. Living at the same address on Warren St. with them are 3 other families (8 people total) who are list as borders.  All are from Italy.

By 1915, however, the Augelli’s were renting their own place on S. 3^rd in a diverse neighborhood.  Michael is working as a carder and Josephine as a seamstress.   In addition to their son Pasquale, they now have a daughter, Minnie who appears to be named after Michael’s mother Filomena, now 71, who is still living with them . Michael’s sister, Mary is no longer in the household.

When Michael registers for the draft in 1918, he is described as being slender, of medium height with dark hair and eyes.  As of 1920 they were still living on 3^rd St and Mike had a job as a cutter in a manufacturing company.  Josephine was no longer working, but they do have another daughter, Nettie.  Their mother is now 78 and still with them where she will remain until her death in October 1925.  No date is ever listed for Filomena’s arrival and she appears never to have applied for citizenship, officially remaining an alien all of her life.

By 1930 the situation has changed drastically. Although only 39 Josephine  is  now a widow and back to working, this time as a vest maker in a vest making company.  She  is living with her two daughters, Teresa (who on a previous census was listed as Minnie) and Nettie.  Her son Pasqualle, who now goes by Patrick, is no longer in the house.  However, he does turn up in the 1940 census.  As the son of an immigrant, it is interesting to see the way that he has worked his way up into American society.  While his father could not read or write Patrick has completed 1 year of college.  He still lives in Camden but has a job with the government as a district supervisor for census collection.  He is married to Anna Meyers and has two children of his own, Wilma and a son named Michael after his grandfather.

Like Brian’s and John Italian ancestors, Mary Beth’s also appear to have arrived in the first decade of the 1900’s.  A manifest of the ship LaBretagna, shows Margherita Chincarini arriving in New York on March 23, 1907 from Havre.  Margherita is 37 years old and is accompanied by her four children, the oldest being Caterina.  Unlike most Italian immigrants who were headed for the city, Margherita was returning to her husband Stefano who lived in rural Greencastle, Pennsylvania, just above the Maryland border.  The manifests tells us that she was originally from Verona and had been to the United States before.  Perhaps she was returning home to visit family.

In fact, Margherita’s explanation is supported by the fact the Stefano Chincarini, originally from Verona,  had come to the United States in 1891 traveling in steerage on the Noorland.  A subsequent ship manifest, this one on the La Touraine sailing from La Havre to New York in March 1904 has Stefano Chincarini aboard and returning home to Pittsburg where he states that he has lived from 1883 to 1903. He is a laborer and has $100 with him.  It is interesting to note that Stefano, who had been born in Melecine, Verona, Italy was label North Italian, where Lora’s Ventura and Varco ancestors coming from Sicily were labeled Southern Italian.  It is indicative of the institutional prejudice of Americans at that time since those from Southern Italy tended to be poorer and darker-complexioned than their northern counterparts.

If Stefano was actually here as early as 1893, that would make him the first of our family’s Italian ancestors to come to the United States.  However, there is a problem that creates a bit of a family mystery even in a time where records were not all that accurate.  Though, he is mentioned by Margherita has her husband in 1907, his name never appears again in the family records.  The next we hear of Margherita is in the 1910 census where she is living with her husband Christ Chincarini and has been married to him for 23 years.  This might seem like a coincidence of two families with similar names except that four of their children are the same (or Americanizations of) the four children who came over with Margherita in 1907.  There is also an older son, Frank, 19 born in Italy and arriving in 1892. This is confirmed in the fact that a ship record for the La Champagne lists Margherita at 23 years old traveling with 9 month old Francesco.  In 1910, Frank is now laborer like his father Christ who works for a brick works.  It appears that Christ Chincarini is Stefano Chincarini.  One of his sons is, in fact named Stefano/Steve. Subsequent records list Christ as Christie, Christi, and Christopher, but Stefano never appears again as the head of the family.

Life must have been difficult for them.  In 1910 they have a 1 year old son, Italo, but the census also reveals that Margherita has had 10 children born and only 6 survived.  This was only about to get worse. The census was conducted in early May.  In June of the same year, the death of their one month old child, Americo, who died of gastro enteritis is reported by the couple’s son Frank. Frank himself seems to have had something of a rambling life. From 1910-21 he lived in at least four different places in three different states, working at times on the railroad and for the three final months of 1918 in the army. The Chinarini family seems to have much more of interest to reveal, but for now, we can say that in 1910, Margharita’s oldest daughter Catherine, Mary Beth’s maternal great-grandmother was living with her family in rural Hempfield, Westmoreland County, PA ,  the daughter of Italian immigrants who would eventually marry Harry Phelps who was descended from one of New England’s oldest families.

Family Members in U. S. History (8): Italian Immigrants – 1

As the past few posts have illustrated, in the nineteenth century, the United States saw a huge influx of immigrants, most notably from Germany and Ireland.  It seems to have been the time when the words carved on the statue of liberty was becoming a reality.  Though it did not affect our immigrant ancestors directly, a counter trend was also occurring.  In 1882 the Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.  This meant that no more immigrants of Chinese origin would be allowed into the country and those who were here already were not allowed to apply for citizenship. It was in the wake of this act that the next group of our own ancestors entered the country, those coming from Italy.

Italian immigrants began to trickle in during the 1890’s and as the new century dawned, the population coming from Italy exploded.  By far, the greatest portion of our families’ immigrants were through Lora’s family, which was one hundred per cent Sicilian.  However, three other Northen spouses also have an Italian immigrant family in their history, John Cotter, Brian and Mary Beth.  Their ancestors will be discussed in the next post.

A passenger manifest for the Algeria shows the arrival of Loreta Aina (Lora’s paternal grandmother) and her daughter Nunzia Ventura in New York on June 10, 1905.  She is headed to meet her husband Vincenzo Ventura in Rochester, New York.  Subsequent censuses show that Nunzia was a year old at the time and that Vincenzo had arrive in the United States a year earlier.  The manifest also indicates that Loreta could not read or write.  Shortly after arriving, they appear to have anglicized their names on all of their subsequent census forms and other documents.  Loreta became Laura, Nunzia became Mary and Vincenzo became James.

Although subsequent censuses list Mary as having been born in Italy, family lore tells that she was born in North Africa on the way over to America.  Indeed, there is some basis for this story in the manifest of the Algeria because though it arrived in New York in June 1905, it left Palermo in October 190X (sic).  Assuming the missing number is a 4, that would still make this a nine month trip – a long trip even by the standards of the day.

The next we hear of the family, they are living in Falconer in Chautauqua County, New York.  Both James and Laura are 37 years old. James is working as a laborer in a woolen mill; Laura has now had five of the ten children they will eventually have.  In 1917 both become naturalized citizens and in 1918 James has to register for the WWI draft.  By 1920, their daughter Mary is now 16 and working as a spinner in the woolen mill.  The 1930 census gives a couple of interesting details.   During the next decade, Mary is married, widowed, back living with her parents in 1930. The 1930 census adds one other bit of information, that they were both married at age 19, so James and Laura  would have been married in Sicily in 1897.

The first of Lora’s relatives to come from Sicily to the United States was her great-grandfather Salvatore Varco.  Born in Sicily in 1861, Salvatore arrived aboard the Iniziata on April 2, 1892 coming from Palermo to New York. His ultimate destination was listed as Buffalo. Indeed, by  1900 Salvatore was working in Buffalo as a day laborer and married to Crucifissa Manzella.  Crucifissa had arrived just a year earlier as is 16 years younger than her husband. They have been married for less than a year and one wonders if she simply married quickly upon reaching the United States or if the marriage had been pre-arranged.

In 1905, Crucifissa and Salvatore had two daughters, Frances and Antonina, known as Lena – Lora’s maternal grandmother, but by 1908 Crucifissa is dead.  Family stories tell how, as a widower, Salvatore could not take care of the children and also work full time and take care of the children, so he put them in an orphanage, visiting them on weekends.  This story is back up by an entry in the 1910 Census for the German Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in Buffalo. Three children Frances Varco (9), Antonina Varco (6) and Gaetana Varco (3) are listed as orphans living there.  

(In an aside about name changes, the family remembers a third sister named Tina, but not Gaetana.  The English equivalent of Gaetana is Christina and Christina was shortened to Tina. To make matters even more confusing. after marrying Salvatore Camita later in life Tina began calling herself Ida.  So the person who began life as Gaetana Varco is listed as Ida Comita on her death certificate.)

According to Gaetana-Tina-Ida’s death certificate, she was born March 14, 1907 so it is possible that her mother died in childbirth.  At any rate, in 1912 Salvatore was remarried, this time to Tomassa LaRocca who by all accounts fulfilled the role of the wicked stepmother.  By 1918, however, Salvatore was once more a widower.  He was working as a laborer in a steel mill and living with his daughters Lena and Tina.

The final Italian immigrant to enter Lora’s side of the family was Giuseppe Albanese, known as Joseph. In the 1930 census he lists his date of arrival as 1909 but there is no further documentation of this and it contradicts family stories that he left an orphanage in Palermo when he was considered old enough to live on his own. Having been born in 1905, this seems unlikely.  However, in 1925 he married Salvatore Varco’s daughter Lena in Buffalo and found work as a laborer in a rubber plant.  As with those German and Irish immigrants who arrived in Buffalo during the previous century, Joseph and his family were living in an ethnic neighborhood.  Every family listed on his page of the census was from Italy.

Family Members in U.S. History (7): The 20th Century Begins

After the Civil War, immigrants continued to come to the United States, but as the twentieth century approached,  the places that they came from began to change.  Immigrants still continued to come in from Ireland from the next twenty years.  It is during this time that Dan’s earliest American ancestors arrived.  Patrick Joseph Madden and his wife Sarah Concannon arrived in New York on September 7, 1907.  Patrick was 30 and Sarah, 20.  They were originally from Galway, Ireland where Patrick’s father John still lived and came on the Celtic, leaving from Cobh, which at the time was known as Queenstown.  Not much is known about his life prior to arriving in the United States, but according to the Ireland Prison Register, ten years earlier on Oct. 7, he had been sentence to seven days in jail in Galway for being drunk. 

The couple did not head for Seattle right away but first settled in  Nebraska where their oldest child, Della was born on Jan. 16, 1908.  Why they went to Nebraska first is unclear, one might speculate that because Sarah was pregnant at the time of arrival they were not able to make it all the way to the west coast. In any case, by 1910 when their second daughter Mary was born they were living in Washington. Their son John (Dan’s father) was born in 1913 and a year later they became naturalized citizens. Like other immigrants coming to the United States, Patrick had to give up allegiance to his prior country. In his case, though, despite coming from Ireland, the allegiance he had to renounce was his British citizenship.  As with most of the other men in our family tree who came from Ireland, Patrick listed himself as a laborer, taking various jobs.

As Patrick and Sarah were arriving in the country, immigrants from countries other than the British Isles and Germany were beginning to trickle in.  In 1908, two of John Cotter’s great grandparents, John Tyszka and Marianna Miercjewski were making their way with their one year old daughter Winnie from Poland to Philadelphia.  John’s application for citizenship in May of 1924 suggests that the trip was a long one.  It says that he sailed from Liverpool to New York, but no mention is made of either how they got to Liverpool or how and when they finally arrived in Philadelphia.  Moreover, John’s application notes “No record of his arrival could be found.”  By 1920, though, they had two more children and were living on Ridge Ave. in Philadelphia.  He was employed as a shoemaker.

John seems to have been successful.  In 1940, he is running his own shoe making business and living on Pechin St. in what is now the Manayunk section of Philadelphia.  Unlike most of our other  urban immigrant ancestors, he did not live in an ethnic neighborhood. His neighbors had all been born in Pennsylvania.  Perhaps this is why his oldest daughter whose name was anglicized to Matilda, did not marry another Polish immigrant, but the American-born son of an Irish immigrant – John Robert Cotter, Jr.  Incredibly, in 1942, at the age of 59, John Tyszka had to register for the draft.  He is described as being 5’ 7” tall, with brown hair, grey eyes and a light brown complexion. One final note on John’s family.  Polish names are notorious for being mispronounced and misspelled when translated into English.  Some actually shortened their names to make things easier.  John’s family’s last name is spelled at least half a dozen different ways in the records.

Another of pair of John Cotter’s  great-grandparents – these from the maternal side – arrived in the United States in 1911, sailing on the Kron Princess Cecilia from Bremen, Germany.  They were interesting couple because although Arthur Emil Steinbruck was a citizen of “the German Empire,” having  been born in Heide, Germany, his wife 19 year old Augusta Aubert had been born in France, as had her parents, and Augusta still spoke French.  There are no clues as to how they met.   Though they came into the country through the port of New York they seemed to have come to Philadelphia almost immediately, where Arthur took a job as a waiter in a hotel.  It is a career that, for the most part, he continued throughout his life. In  1917 he filed for citizenship and was granted naturalization in 1923.  This must have been a difficult time for immigrants from Germany since World War I was taking place and, though the United States did not enter it until the year that Arthur applied for citizenship, the prejudice against German immigrants was running high in this country.  Almost immediately after filing for citizenship in 1917, Arthur also had to register for the World War I draft.  He is listed as being of medium height and weight with grey eyes and black hair.

Curiously, though, Arthur returned to Germany briefly. In 1923 he is listed as employed on the USS Roosevelt as a scullion (i.e. a kitchen helper) on a trip to Bremen, Germany. Another tantalizing fact is that on his naturalization application, as with John Tyszka it notes the no paper work for his entry can be found; however, in Arthur Steinbruck’s case they add the note “deserting seaman.”   Also, like Tyszka, Arthur had to register for the World War II draft even though at 52 he was too old to fight.  He was still a waiter, but by now, apparently a bald one, weighing 170 pounds.

John’s Polish and French speaking ancestors, and even Dan Madden’s grandfather from Ireland made up a relatively small portion of the new immigrants coming into the country at the beginning of the twentieth. By far, the largest group of immigrants among our ancestors to arrive on the East Coast at that time were coming from Italy.  It’s the family’s Italian immigrants that the next Northen History blog will focus on.