Monday, April 8, 2002
I found Laura’s great-great grandfather Vincenzo Pantano on the Ellis Island site. They had misspelled his name "Pontano". When Melissa e-mailed us, I went back and looked at the city directories for Pantanos in Paterson, and noticed that there was a Vincenzo in the 1914, 1915, and 1916 directories, with an entry in the 1917 directory stating that he had returned to Italy in 1916. Having recently discovered that Sisto Pantano’s father’s name was Vincenzo, this rang a bell that it hadn’t when I had originally seen the city directories many months ago. So I decided to have a look, but Vincenzo wasn’t there under "Pantano". So then I searched under likely misspellings in the transcription process. It seemed likely to me that an "a" could be misinterpreted as an "o". Sure enough, there he was. If you look at the actual scanned record, it says that he was going to stay with his son Sisto in Paterson, NJ. It also said that he had left behind his wife, Flavia Bricca, which was the name Sisto’s death record gave for his mother. One other very interesting item here: the following line on the shipping record is for Vincenzo’s daughter, Giovanna Pantano, who I was previously unaware of.
The shipping record gives Vincenzo’s age as 54 on the date of his arrival in America, 21 Oct 1913. That would place his birth date as roughly 1858-59.
Now I just have to see if I can find records for Sisto’s brother Leone. I already found his brother Tito, which was apparently what led Melissa to find us.
Posted at 1:59:44 PM
