One of the enduring mysteries so far (without any access to the Hudson Observer which is STILL not OCR scanned), is what happened to Giuseppe Pantoliano and Maria Rosa Totaro.

They appear, living with their children Anthony and Frank in the 1910 Census but disappear after that.  They don’t show up in the 1920 census, nor in the 1915 New Jersey State Census.  I’d been working under the assumption that they died between 1910 and 1915.  But then I realized the 1915 census is simply missing records:  Pasquale’s family, for example, is missing but is listed in the Hoboken white pages….

Somewhere I saw it noted that they died in Italy — as it was apparently, not uncommon, for the first wave of immigrants to go back and forth.

On a whim I started doing broad searches of the Holy Name Cemetery database hoping to find some sort of further egregious misspelling of Pantoliano.  Scrolling through hundreds of records, I caught site of Guiseppe Pandoliano — good, but without context it could be anybody.

His grave marker was Blk-F Sec-156 Gr-5 1C  — which means that there are at least two people already in that plot.  Because the service doesn’t let you search by plot, I had to keep coming up with permutations of Pantoliano to find the other people in the grave.

Bingo! Maria C and Vincenzo “Pandohario” (which is perhaps the worst yet misspelling) in graves 1A and 1E (meaning there are at least 5 people in the plot now)

But damn.   Giuseppe’s wife is Maria Rosa not Maria C, and he had no children named Vincenzo. I could have stopped right there by my Family Tree OCD wouldn’t let me give it up and so I kept at it.

I found Giovanni Pandolino in 1B and Maria R Pondoliano in 1D.

Wait. Maria R?  Died in 1918 with Giuseppe in 1916?  That fits but the other three I’ve got nothing for. It sounded right. It felt right but I couldn’t commit to it.

So I am driving home from work inexplicably running it through my mind again — how do Maria C, Vincenzo and Giovanni fit?   Ok.  Giovanni is “John”.  Vincenzo is Vincent.  No, wait is is ALSO JAMES.  Pasquale had 2 kids named John and James for whom I have no death info.

Pulse starts racing.  What about Maria C?  Pasquale’s last child without death info is Mamie #1.  But Mamie #2’s name wasn’t Mamie, it was Domenica.  Maybe Mamie#1 is a nickname for…..Maria?

I got home and checked the dates and it all works.

Giuseppe died Jan 1916
Maria died Mar 1918
Giovanni died Jun 1910
Mamie/Maria died Apr 1910
James died Aug 1920

Whew.

Now onto the Calvary Cemetery in Brooklyn for some of the “lost”….