52 Ancestors, Week 1: Family Lore and Uncle Micky

petrini1

Jan 2

Mickey arrived at Ellis Island with his mother and older brother and sister on the S.S. Madonna.

My great-uncle Mickey, born in 1909, is the subject of a family story I have never been able to verify and no longer believe.

The rest of the family, including my grandfather, his younger brother Ralph, always said that Mickey, originally Michele, was born on the ship from Italy, when his mother immigrated to Ellis Island. What an evocative bit of family lore! I love imagining my great-grandmother shepherding two children, ages 12 and 2, on a crowded steerage deck while going into labor with her third. It makes a great story of immigrant hardship and perseverance.

Now that I have a few actual records at my disposal, I suspect that the story is not true, though I can see where it originated.

According to the manifest, the ship left Naples on 9 Oct. 1909. My great-grandmother and her three eldest children are listed there, including Michele. Of course, since the names would have been filled out before the ship left Italy, that would indicate that he must have been born in Naples. He is listed on the manifest as one month old. Strangely, a birthdate has been written in for him -- and it is 17 Oct, when the ship was already underway -- but that date has been crossed out. His naturalization records, filled out many years later, list his birthday as 25 Aug, 1909, which would mean he was born in Italy.

I believe the most likely scenario is that Mickey was born in Naples, like his mother and siblings. Before they left their home port, an official mistakenly recorded the wrong birthdate on the manifest. Later, that person or another official must have noticed the error and crossed it out. Perhaps my grandfather or another relative saw a copy of that manifest at one point and made an assumption about the crossed-out date that became family lore.

Though I no longer believe it's true, I still like to think of Michele/Micky being born in the steerage section of an immigrant ship, a symbol of a family's journey between worlds.