Immigrant Secrets (ePub)

The only thing my father ever said about his Italian immigrant family was that his parents died in the 1930s, shortly after arriving at Ellis Island. Except they didn't. Once I began the search for my grandparents, I mostly ran into dead-ends. Until the 1940 Census. My grandparents magically appear, but as inmates at the Rockland Insane Asylum. What happened? Why all the secrecy? And how did I use genealogy to unravel the mystery?

Like many of their greatest generation compadres, my parents, Joseph and Sallyann, quickly headed from New York City to the suburbs in the 1950s shortly after they were married. They arrived in New Jersey, and began their own personal population explosion, having six kids-John, June, Joseph, Jennifer, Jeffrey, and Jeanne-within an eleven-year span. Yes, all Js.

But there was one thing unusual about our family. My father had no "backstory." My father never mentioned his family. Never. We only knew - or thought we knew - that his parents died in the 1930s. Unless you knew my father -- the consummate family man -- you will have no idea how weird this was.

And therein are the seeds of my quest to unravel our family history mystery.

In a pair of ship manifests, I discovered my father's parents, a pair of Italian immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in the early 1920s, intent on grabbing their share of the American dream. In the 1930 Census, I found a family of four - my grandparents, my father and his brother -- with a tenuous foothold on that dream, operating a small fruit stand in Manhattan. After that, I had mostly frustrating dead-ends -- until the release of the 1940 Census.

This is a story about my efforts to use genealogy to discover the truth about our family and a reflection on the impact of secrets on our lives. It is also the story of what it means to be an immigrant - and the impact that "otherness" and mental illness can have on the vulnerable. And lastly, it is my attempt to think through the "why" and "how" of my father, 34 years after his death.