Costante Dalpiaz 1901-1978

Here you see Costante Dalpiaz's application for a Social Security number. This document is interesting for a couple of different reasons. One of the most important to me is that it contains his signature. I like to "collect" ancestral signatures and this is a dandy example.

 

He indicates he was born in Austria. I recall Uncle Lou Albertini telling us stories about how these immigrants would identify themselves as Austrian or Italian and the two sides did not always see eye to eye at the time. Costante was Austrian. We can see his employer and his home address as well as his parents' names very clearly indicated. 

 

Most interesting to me is that this application was filled out in November 1936 meaning it was among the very first! From the Social Security Administration: Since the Social Security Board did not have a network of field offices in late 1936, it contracted with the U.S. Postal Service to distribute and assign the first batch of Social Security numbers through its 45,000 local post offices around the country. Of these 45,000 post offices, 1,074 were also designated as "typing centers" where the cards themselves were prepared. The procedure for issuing the first SSNs were that the SS-4 application forms were to be distributed by the post offices to employers beginning Monday, November 16, 1936. These forms asked the employers to indicate how many employees they had at their place of business. Using the data from the SS-4 forms, the post offices then supplied an SS-5 form for each employee and these forms (on which the assignment of an SSN was based) were to be distributed by the post offices beginning Tuesday, November 24, 1936. This one is dated Nov 28 1936. Who knew Costante was on the forefront of such history?