Toritto, Gravina, Gioiosa Ionica

How to read this

Puglia · branch one

Toritto, 1877

Rocco Guarino and Rosa Casamassima married at the Toritto town hall at five past ten on the morning of 13 January 1877 — act № 1 of that year. Six children followed. Only Frank is known to have emigrated permanently.

Calabria · branch two

Gioiosa Ionica, 1904

Francesco Coluccio and Maria Teresa Schirripa married at San Rocco church in Gioiosa Ionica on 23 October 1904 and raised eleven children in Brooklyn. Two sons died in 1918; a daughter died in infancy and her name was given again.

Calabria · branch three

The Schirripa family

Maria Teresa's parents and her five siblings. This is the branch that matters for the Joseph Schirripa question further down the page.

New York · where the lines meet

Frank and Maria, 1914

Children shown in birth order. Everything to the right of them was born in America.

The register

Everyone currently known, oldest first, with every date and place I have been able to establish.

An open question, examined

Joseph Schirripa of Los Angeles

Patterns worth noticing

Sources

One verification attempt failed and is worth recording. The only Frank Colucci who died in Brooklyn in April 1946 had parents named Anthony and Josephine Recchia and was buried at St. John's — not our Francesco, whose parents were Diego and Anna Maria and who was buried at Holy Cross. So his death is not yet independently confirmed, even though his arrival now is.

Open questions

Things only the family can answer

Nine gaps that no archive will close. If you know any of these, or know who would, it goes straight into the record.

1. Artilla's husband — Wilson or John Schleicher? The archive records Wilson “Bill” Schleicher, an Emerson Radio engineer from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, married 13 September 1947. Family memory says John. Is John a second husband, or a misremembering of the same man?
2. Esther's dates, and did she have children? She married Mark McShurley of New Castle, Indiana, and later James Sheehy. No birth year, no death, no children recorded.
3. Vincent's second son. Vincenzo “Jimmy” Coluccio's son Vincent has sons; one is Dean. The other name is missing.
4. Birth years for Rocco, RoseMary, Madeline and Nicholas Guarino. Estimated at roughly 1915, 1917, 1919 and 1925 by working backwards from Michael's 1922 birth and the naming order. Any real date would replace an inference.
5. Martha Scali's brother. Said to have married an Anita, with a daughter possibly named Maria. He appears nowhere in the archive. A surname or a town would be enough to start.
6. Nicholas Guarino's four sons. Frank, Paul, Jack and Ernest. No dates or locations for any of them.
7. Georgiana, daughter of RoseMary and John Gag. Married name, dates, children — all unknown.
8. Photographs, papers, prayer cards. Anything with a date, a town or a ship name written on it. A naturalisation certificate or a passport would be worth more than a month of database work.
9. Is Joseph Schirripa of Los Angeles a relative? Set out in full above. The short version: it would have to run through one of Maria Teresa's brothers, not a sister, and Domenico “Mike” Schirripa's New Jersey line fits best. Asking him directly whether his family came from Gioiosa Ionica would settle it in one sentence.

What would move this furthest

1. The 1904 marriage act at Gioiosa Ionica. Gioiosa Ionica has 364 registers online at the Reggio Calabria state archive. The 1904 marriage volume is 66 images and its annual index sits at the back rather than the front. Finding the act number yields all four parents and would convert the whole Calabrian branch from compiled to documented in one stroke.
2. Felice Schirripa's army file. A named private in a named regiment who died in France on a known date is the easiest person here to document. U.S. Army burial files and the American Battle Monuments Commission are free, and either would confirm his parents and home address — anchoring the Schirripas in a primary record for the first time.
3. Maria Guarino's California death record. Mountain View, Santa Clara County, about 1981. The California index for 1940–1997 is free and carries the mother's maiden name, which would confirm Maddalena Posca from the American side.
4. Write to Norman Franke. He maintains the archive, lists an email address on it, and is a relative through Albert. He holds the unredacted records for the private branches — including the one that would settle the Joseph Schirripa question — and may have photographs.
5. A free FamilySearch account. Still the only free route to Frank Guarino's naturalisation petition, which states his ship and arrival date as sworn fact, and to five censuses that each ask an immigrant what year they arrived.