6/52 - My Dad, After His Parents Were Committed and Before the Navy
After my grandmother (Elisabetta deFabritus) was institutionalized in 1938, my father and his brother Vinnie were originally placed in the custody of my grandmother’s sister, Theresa (b. 1887). Theresa came to the United States in 1904 about the same time as some of the other members of the deFabritus clan and was married to Frank Ruggiero in 1913. With Frank she had at least four children -- Alex (1915), Josephine (1917), Rose (1918), Mafalda(1920) and lived at 55 St. Mark’s Place in Lower Manhattan. A fifth child, Mary, was born in 1923 and appears on the 1930 Census, but seems to have disappeared by 1940.
Note: The Census taker got my Dad (Joseph) and his brother (Vincent) flip-flopped in the record.
This was a hard-working crew at 55 St. Mark’s Place in Lower Manhattan. The Census notes that Frank worked 52 hours the week prior to the taking of the Census at a candy store that he owned. Son Alex worked as a shipping clerk at a wholesale company whose name I can’t decipher in the Census, and Josephine, Rose, and Mafalda all worked full-time as machine operators in a lady’s garment factory (corset manufacturing was big in lower Manhattan at the time). Together, the four kids earned $3,116 in 1940. At the conversion rate of $1 in 1940 = $21.49 today, that translates into a household income of nearly $67,000 in current dollars. Not bad, and that doesn’t include income from the candy store.
Next door to Theresa was her older sister, Adrianna, and her husband Leonardo Mancini (no apparent relation, although it sure makes the genealogy game more challenging!). This was also a prolific pairing. Two children -- Loreto (1906) and Guiseppe (1908) -- did not survive infancy. An older daughter, Maria (1909) was out of the house and likely married by 1940. And it was also another hard-working bunch. Leonardo owned a shoe repair shop. Eddie was looking for work as a “truckman helper.” Josephine also worked as a machine operator at a lady’s garment factory and Molly worked as a machine operator in a shoe lace factory. The baby of the bunch, Johnny, has just entered the workforce.
Note: The Census taker got Adrianna’s age wrong; she was 56 in 1940
Even though there was a virtual deFabritus village in the same building, adding my father and his brother to this group was likely no small challenge.
Sometime after the 1940 Census and prior to my father’s enlistment in the Navy in 1944, something happened to change these living arrangements. When he enlisted in the Navy in 1944, my father listed the wife (Elizabeth) of his mother’s brother (Dominick) as his guardian and point of contact. I do know that my father worked in Dominick’s fruit and vegetable stand as a teenager, and the only time I recall him mentioning his teenage years, it was to say that his uncle was a difficult taskmaster. My siblings believe there was also some tension/jealousy (at least on the part of my father) because he went to a public school (Central Commercial High School), while Dominick’s son John/Jack went to a private high school.
Of course, as I talk about in Immigrant Secrets, my family knew nothing about any of these people.
-----
This is part of a series of posts designed to keep me busy and off the street. Hopefully some of these musings will contribute to a successor to Immigrant Secrets (https://www.amazon.com/Immigrant-Secrets-Search-My-Grandparents/dp/B0B45GTTPP).
You can get the posts directly HERE (https://www.searchformygrandparents.com/subscribe) or use the subscribe button on this page (https://authory.com/johnmancini).
