My Great Uncle, Joe Lumia

My grandfather, Peter Lumia came to America about 1891.  Actually, there are several Peter Lumias who arrived about the same time and the Ellis Island database provides no help to differentiate them.  Several of his first cousins also emigrated and mostly settled in NYC.   However, only his older brother, Joe came to America.  He apparently arrived in 1901.  In 1907, he married a widow, Marietta Riggi in NYC.  Marietta had 3 children who lived to adulthood.  They were Rosaria who died in Niagara Falls in 1963, Ignazio who died in the Bronx in 1975 and Maria who died in Trenton in 1990.  After Joe and Marietta married they had 2 more daughters:  Frances (b1907) and Catherine (b1909).

Joe and his family lived on Miller Street for most of their lives.  Their house was around the corner from Aunt Sarah and near the Church of Saint Paul.  However, their relationships with Peter and his family and even with Marietta’s children were bizarre.  My aunts only referred to Joe as “The Uncle.”  The phrase and their intonation reflected distance and dislike. He was never Uncle Joe and I do not ever remember them speaking of visiting him, etc.  Aunt Frances remembered the 2 daughters, Frances and Catherine but did not know what happened to them.  Joe and Marietta died in the middle 1940’s and are buried next to Peter and Margarita in Holy Sepulcher Cemetery.

The daughters Frances and Catherine are mentioned in the Census records for 1920 and 1930 as living in the house at 122 Miller Street.  One sister is mentioned in the 1940 census.  Also living with Joe and Marietta in 1940 on Miller Street were Marietta’s daughter Maria, her husband Quintilio Casciani and their several children.

I had the opportunity to get to know Maria Casciani and her daughters when one of them had surgery at DHLC.  Maria lived in Chambersburg at some point and my mother always referred to her as my father's cousin.  At some point I asked Maria’s daughters Marie, and Jean if they remembered their aunts Frances and Catherine, since they lived with at least one of them in 1940 along with their grandparents.  They had no memory of their aunts and little memory of their grandparents.

Later, through Ancestry, I learned of the existence of Ignazio and his family in New York.  They did not know about Maria and Quintilio Casciani and her family.  Yet Ignazio and Maria apparently came to America in 1907, arriving in September to go to Joe Lumia on Philips Avenue in Trenton.

I have tried to ask cousins about this Lumia Uncle, but no one knows anything or even remembers them.  My brother who had a poor memory for family trivia remembered nothing about this great-aunt and uncle.  Recently I ask Stefano Immordino, who grew up on Nassau Street around the corner from Joe and Marietta.  He remembered nothing also. (Technically, he was not related to Joe Lumia.  His mother was a Mastrosimone and not a Lumia.)   I can only assume that there was a major argument when Peter died in 1926 that separated the families for the rest of their lives.  How Maria and her brother became estranged is a separate unknowable issue.