So I am helping my husband research his Italian grandparents to determine if he is eligible for Italian citizenship thru descent.
Apparently they both emigrated from Naples Italy. I am running into dead ends, because most of the family is either not in communication or is deceased. My husband's mother just passed this last summer and dementia had already taken its toll, plus she was in the dark for many years on what happened with her family.
Here is what we do know:
mother is Louisa Tuliucci [sic] born July 24, 1933 in Jersey City, county of Hudson at 109 Wales Avenue, Jersey City NJ to the parents Alex Tuliucci [sic] and Raffale Coelcocci (??)
on December 2, 1937 an article appeared in the Jersey Journal reporting on a tragedy that had befallen the Tulucci (note the spelling) family of 94 DeKalb Ave. in which 6 year old Charles Tulucci was hit and killed in a hit and run. The family was already destitute at that time. It stated that Alex, Antoinette, Anthony and 5 other sisters were survivors…one of which was my husband’s mother Louisa. We recognize Mary and Josephine as well, but not the other two and apparently there is a brother Michael missing? We know this because Mary passed away in 2013 and he is buried with her as: Michele Tuluicci (yes, another spelling, this time on a granite marker!)
I was only able to find a WWII draft reg card for Alex Tulucci who was living with a Mary who was employed…it matches up I think with who the GF could be. It states his BP as Aerolo Italy on July 2 1896…which would make him capable of fathering these children.
My MIL was put into a Catholic orphanage at age 5 and picked up at age 16 by her sister Mary. She has no idea what happened to her parents. She claimed she was a twin and her sister died at birth along with her mother? But then how to explain the Mrs. Tulucci in the newspaper articles?? There were a lot of blanks in her life for obvious reasons. Apparently no one was very fond of older sister Mary except for Michael.
Anyhow we don’t know name of Catholic orphanage, no birth certs for any of the children of Alex, no death certs except Mary’s obit, no Ellis island or other immigration info or naturalization info although from my research the Catholic Church Alex attended was created specifically for Italians that could not speak English and I think that was an issue for him…from the many articles I read about the family tragedy. I have no idea where he got married, where or when he was born or the GM was born. I have looked and looked on ancestor.com, familysearch.com and my heritage.com.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I will try to attach files in another post.
