The Problem with Italians

And probably with a lot of other ethnicities, too.

Imagine a family consisting of a widowed father and his 5 children: Domenico, Vincenzo, Rosa, Angelica, Maria, and Giovanna. The census taker can't spell their last name, D'Ingeo; the only time you've found them on a census, it's spelled Dengao.

Vincenzo, in that unusual trick of Americanizing the name Vincenzo, goes by James, or Jimmy.
Rosa can be Rosa or Rosie.
Angelica might go by the Italian nickname my grandfather pronounces "Yaneen" or "Aneen;" she may also take on an American nickname the way her siblings did, but I have yet to discover it.
Maria, of course, is sometimes Mary.
Giovanna is Giovannine in Italian; she's Jenny in English.
Their father, of course, could be Dominic, Dominick, Domenico, Dominico, Dom, etc.

They immigrated in 1909 (Jimmy), 1911 (Rosa) and 1917 (the rest of the family). Some portion of them should show up on the 1910 Census (I've found no one), the 1915 NYS Census (no one), the 1920 Census (I may have found Maria, grown-up and married to my great-grandfather), and the 1925 NYS Census (no one). They finally start showing up in 1930, grown-up and married, where I've found Jimmy with his family, Jenny with her family, Maria with her family, and Domenico with Jenny's family.

I simply can't figure out how to search for them more thoroughly. Usually I'd resort to exact-search functions and searching for the relationships between family members, but between the misspellings and the nicknames, the permutations are absolutely endless and I haven't had any luck.

Who has a tip who can get me back on track with these troublesome Italians?

Grandma Gatto's SS-5: Another piece of the puzzle

The family stories that my grandfather told always presented one view of his mother's immigration story. The paper trail says something a bit different. Hoping for a real answer, I ordered her Social Security Application.

My great-grandmother was Maria Stella D'Ingeo Gatto. Grandpa's version of the story says she was born in Italy, and after her mother died (in childbirth with her youngest sister), her father decided to move the family to America. On the way over, the immigration quota was fulfilled, and the ship was turned away. It went to Rio de Janiero, Brazil, and the family disembarked there. They stayed there for a number of years, during which time one of Maria's brothers was killed, run over by a wagon. They eventually continued their journey to America, and arrived in New York.

As I started researching this family line, though, I found documents that seemed to contradict this. The family's immigration papers showed them arriving in New York in 1917, which is prior to the imposition of the first European immigration quotas that I'm aware of, in 1924. They were also traveling directly from Italy - not from Brazil at all. Everyone in the family is listed as being Italian-born, though I can't for the life of me read the name of the town where they were born. (It should be Toritto. They're supposed to be from Toritto. But I don't think it says Toritto.)

Do you think this says Toritto?

And then I started finding American census records listing my great-grandmother and at least one of her sisters as having been born in Brazil.

1930 Census, giving South America as the birthplace for Maria D'Ingeo Gatto, as well as her parents

1940 Census giving Brazil as the birthplace for Maria D'Ingeo Gatto

1930 Census giving Brazil as the birthplace for Giovanna D'Ingeo DeGaetano, and Italy as the birthplace of her parents

Given their frequently misspelled Italian last names and their habit of taking on Americanized versions of their Italian birth names, these are the only census records I can find of the D'Ingeos as adults. Frustratingly, the 1940 Census for the Gatto family does not indicate who provided the information (this is omitted for all families on the page), so I don't know how reliable it is.

I ordered Grandma Gatto's (Maria D'Ingeo's) SS-5 a few months ago, in hopes of an answer to this question. Once more, the paper trail supports the born-in-Brazil hypothesis.

Maria D'Ingeo Gatto, SS-5

In this incompletely dated document (the last digit of the year is left off, leaving us to wonder "Nineteen fifty what?"), the information provided by my great-grandmother says that she was born on 27 September 1902 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sout Americia [sic]. She spells her maiden name and her mother's maiden name differently than I've ever seen them before, with D'Ingeo spelled as Di Gugeo and Page as Paich. (If it's true that her mother died when she was a young girl, of course, her mother's maiden name might have had little relevance in her life, and she may never have needed to know how to spell it "right.")

Evidence is mounting that my great-grandmother was born in Brazil, but I don't know the first thing about Brazilian geography, history, or research. I keep hoping for the Brazilian collections on FamilySearch to be indexed, but most aren't so far, and the "Brazilian Catholic Church Records" set requires you to know the parish or be sentenced to search through every Catholic baptism in the city - in Portugese. Looks like I need to do some serious learning.

The DiGaetanos in 1930

Now who exactly are the DiGaetanos? I think that this is the family of Maria D'Ingeo Gatto's sister Giovanna/Giovanine/Jennie. The main reason I think this, of course, is Dominick DiGaetano's father-in-law, "Dominick Dingao."

The family is father Dominick, 27; mother Jennie, 25; children Frank, 6; Dominick, 5; Mary, 3; Adolf, 2; and father-in-law Dominick, 69. All the kids were born in NY, as was their father. Jennie says she was born in Brazil; Dominick-the-father-in-law was born in Italy. It does appear that the D'Ingeo sisters, in 1930, were telling people they were born in South America, as Maria did. Dominick DiGaetano is an operator in a factory. He married his wife when she was 18 and he was 20. Jennie and Dominick "Dingao" give 1917 as the year they immigrated, which, of course, exactly matches their actual immigration date.

The DiGaetanos lived at 400 4th Ave., just around the corner from their cousins the Gattos at 398 5th Ave:

View Larger Map

D'Ingeo Family Immigration

These are the immigration papers of Maria D'Ingeo (Grandma Gatto) and her family. The information was recorded across the two pages of an open book, so you have to follow the line numbers on one page and then the next. The family is listed near the bottom of the page, as Domenico D'Ingeo, 55; his wife Maria Lupo, 58; and his daughters Angelica, 17; Maria, 14; and Giovanna, 11.

Grandpa tells me he doesn't know who Maria Lupo is. According to the story we've been told of Grandma Gatto's life, by the time they imigrated, Domenico D'Ingeo's first wife had died and his second wife had been thrown out for the sake of his children. Either that is in some way mistaken, or there was, perhaps, a third wife? I don't know yet.

Both Domenico D'Ingeo and Maria Lupo, interestingly, are listed as housewives, and neither could read. The three daughters, however, are literate, and the elder two are servants. All are Southern Italians, and all are listed as having last lived in the town of Toritto. Their nearest relative in Italy is a "sister, Maria" in Toritto. It doesn't say whose sister, but it's probably safe to assume that Maria was the sister of the head of the family, Domenico.

On the next page, we see that they're heading to Brooklyn with $129. They're heading to meet Domenico and Maria's daughter, and Angelica, Maria, and Giovanna's sister, Rosa D'Ingeo, who appears to be living at 1628 Batte Ave. in Brooklyn. (Google Maps can't find this address.)

There's something written across the lines for Domenico and Maria in the next columns, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it says. Take a look at the records yourself (just click to enlarge the image) and see if you can make it out! Let me know what you think it says!

I assume that whatever it says has something to do with this next image, the record of the D'Ingeos being detained upon arrival.

They appear to spend about 3 days (the last column tells you how many meals they ate, because the ship's company had to pay those costs, and the 5 of them ate 15 breakfasts, 10 lunches, and 15 dinners) detained on Ellis Island because of concern that Domenico and Maria Lupo were "LPC" or "Likely Public Charges." The reason for this concern, given as "Cert," is, I think (don't take my word for this) that there was a suspected medical condition. I imagine that the notes on the passenger manifest might shed light on this, if legible. Maria the younger, Maria D'Ingeo, has "HOLD" noted next to her name. I haven't a clue what this means.

Returning for a moment to the original manifest, there are a handful more pieces of interesting information. Everyone's height is given: Domenico is 5'6", Maria is 5'4", Angelica is 5'1", Maria is 5', and Giovanna has no height listed, perhaps because she's so young. They all supposedly have a "regular" complexion with brown hair and brown eyes. So does everyone else on the page, though, so they may not have been making nuanced distinctions here. They also list a place of birth for everyone, and, for everyone, it's given as "Italy." The town doesn't look like it says Toritto, though it could. I'm more inclined to think it's two words, the first of which is "Cento." This would be evidence against my growing suspicion that the D'Ingeo children might have been born in Brazil. (See: 1930 Census). I'm still working on trying to figure that one out.