I was actually looking for something else when I found a link to the 1940s census page. You've probably heard on the news that the 1940 census report has been released to the public and put on line. Sadly, you can't search by name, but if you know on which street a person lived in 1940, you can find them with patience.

I knew my mother lived on either Belknap Street or Carpenter Street back at that time, and I believed Belknap was the proper one, so I searched on that. Luckily there was only one set of records to look through, and on page 24, there they were, Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, and Uncle Sammy, Uncles Tommy, Nicky, and Ernest and Auntie Terry already being married and out of the house. There's mom's profession, a gluer—not sure if she was at Coro or Trifari at this point.

Dad was harder to find because all the records of the streets in Silver Lake were higglety-pigglety mixed in with each other. But I'm not "Quarchinese" for nothing. :-) Here everyone was still living at home, except for my Uncle Brandy. Dad is highlighted; he was already polishing jewelry by then. Two years later he would be polishing off Nazis.

If I'm reading this correctly, Mom was making about $240 a year (yes, that's a year), and Dad was making about $800. Note Grandpa Lanzi's employer is "public utilities"—he dug ditches for the Providence Gas Company.

I have been unsuccessful in finding my godmother, which puzzles me. She told me they lived in that house from the 20s, and she was a member of one of the first classes at Hugh B. Bain Junior High. However, I did find a couple of other familiar names.

Here are the DiLorenzos, who ran our local drugstore. You can see Albert's profession is already listed as drugstore owner. Anthony and Peter later worked in the store. I'm not sure Albert was actually a pharmacist, but Anthony was.

And on another street altogether, Princess Avenue, I found four familiar names: the DePretes. Mary and Joe later moved the family to the big house on Fiat Avenue, almost on the corner of Gansett. Mary and my mom were best friends from when my parents moved in the neighborhood in the 50s to 1974 when Mary died.

Labels: family, friends, history, nostalgia

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:28:00 PM

Comments:

Linda, I'm curious: there is a Carcina and a Corchiano in Italy, but no Quarchina to my knowledge. Where is it that your father's family emigrated from?

# posted by  Tina : 6:37:00 AM

 

Tina, I am wondering that, too. I have seen the name "Quarchina" written somewhere else only once, in a Providence Journal article about a woman who was also from that area. It's totally possible that it is misspelled. The only other clue I have is that my mom told me Dad's family came from "near Rome."

# posted by  Linda : 12:16:00 PM

 

So frustrating when the family records are scanty, isn't it? Both sides of my dad's family emigrated from eastern Europe but there's absolutely no extant documentation.

# posted by  Tina : 4:31:00 AM

 

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