Sunday, December 27, 2009

Nicola Lanzillotto's WWI Draft Registration Card

Sometimes, technological errors are a blessing in disguise. Ancestry.com kept offering me Grandpa Lanzillotto's WWI Draft Registration Card as a "hint." However, the image wasn't correctly linked, and clicking the hint always brought me to some other guy instead. I'd seen the correct image before, but had failed to save it, and was always too daunted by the search process to go looking for it. But this evening, I started paging through the series to look for it. I found it, and in the process, I happened upon this draft registration card, too:


At first, it struck my interest for a couple reasons: he's an iceman named Lanzillotta! his name is Nicola! (Grandma has a brother Nick . . . )

Then I looked closer. Oh yeah, he also lives in the same house as Grandpa Lanz, who was presumably his brother. When I asked my mom, she said she remembered Grandpa Lanzillotto having a brother named Nicola, but couldn't volunteer the name until I mentioned it. I'm going to have to talk to Grandma to confirm that.

Like his brother Carmine, Nicola's address was 281 E 155th St., in the Bronx. He was born 9 May 1884, and was 34 in 1918, when he registered with the draft. He was white, Italian-born, alien, of medium height and build, and with brown hair and brown eyes. He was an iceman at 890 Morris Ave, which appears to be about a 20-minute walk from his home. He's married to Maria Lanzillotto.

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