The Final Story on Joe Venuti’s Birth Place
TO BE WRITTEN.
Social Security Application for Account Number
I found 27 Joseph Venutis in the Social Security Death Index. Three were of the right age. One of them had died in Seattle, WA, the known location of Joe Venuti’s death. The SSDI gave a social security number. With the number at hand, I requested from the Social Security Administration a copy of Joseph Venuti’s application. Here is a scan of the copy I received.
The names of the father and mother are given as James and Rose Macchio, respectively. Note in two places the weird way Joe Venuti writes the capital letter J; whoever received the application wrote a normal J above Joe’s bizarre J. Note also that Joe Venuti was born in Philadelphia -neither in Italy nor on a ship in the middle of the high seas- on September 16, 1903. Finally, note that Joe anglicized the names of father and mother. His father was born Giacomo and his mother Rose. The translation of Rosa into Rose is obvious. That of Giacomo into James is not so obvious. To make sure, I went to a website that gives equivalence between Italian and English-given names.
http://www.daddezio.com/genealogy/italian/names.html – NOT WORKING
Indeed James is Giacomo and viceversa. A couple of additional remarks.
True to his Italian heritage, Joe Venuti was living in a “Villa Italia” and was working at the Frank Sebastian Cotton Club. Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller also made appearances at the West Coast Cotton Club.
Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910-Population
You may remember that I found in the Ellis Island Records a Giovanni (Joseph) Venuti born in Italy.
This Joseph Venuti was six years old when he arrived in New York with his mother Maria Costa on December 22, 1906, with a destination at her sister’s home at 840 Christian Street, Philadelphia, PA.
From the office of the registrar of births in Spafadora, Enrico obtained a copy of the birth certificate of Joseph (Giovanni) Venuti.
He was born in Spafadora, Sicily on August 26, 1900, with his father Antonino, mother Maria Costa. (I believe Joseph Venuti died in Los Angeles in 1976). I obtained the records of the 1910 US Census for Philadelphia for Christian Street. Here is a scan of the pertinent portion. Sorry about the quality. It is a scan of a printout of a microfilm!
Several observations. First, there were no Venutis living at 840 Christian Street in 1910. My guess is that Giuseppe Venuti and his mother stayed with Giuseppe’s aunt for a while and eventually moved in with the head of the family, Antonino. However, I got a huge bonus by looking at the microfilm. It turns out that in 1910, Joe Venuti was living at 832 Christian Street, Philadelphia, PA with his very large family.
It consisted of the following (ages in 1910):
- Giacomo, father, age 46, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1895.
- Rosa, mother, age 46, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1900.
- Carmelo, brother, age 21, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1900.
- Fradio, brother, age 19, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1900.
- Concetta, sister age 17, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1900.
- Andrew, brother, age 15, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1900.
- Giovannina, sister, age 9, born in Philadelphia, PA.
- Joseph, himself, age 6, born in Philadelphia.
Another find in the census
- It turns out that there was another Venuti family living at 838 Christian Street: that family consisted of father Domenico Venuti(age 38, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1880), wife Rosa (age, 30, born in Italy, arrived in the US in 1895), daughter Domenica (age 6, born in Philadelphia), son Joseph (age 8, born in Philadelphia) and son Pasquale (age 2, born in Philadelphia);
- It turns out then that in 1906, there were three Joseph Venutis ages 2, 3, and 5 (really two Josephs and one Giuseppe) living respectively at 832, 838 and 840 Christian Street, Philadelphia, PA. THE Joe Venuti was born in 1903 in Philadelphia, PA, and was living at 832 Christian Street, Philadelphia, PA.