Guiseppe (Joseph) Disabto 1920-1943

Marguerite (Innocencia) Coffarelli, your grandfather James' oldest sister, married Marco Disabto (or Disabato) and they lived for a time with her father John.  Marco died around 1924 leaving her with 8 children.  I continue to work on her story especially trying to determine when she died and where she is buried.  She may have died around 1950, but I don't have that confirmed yet. 

This afternoon I decided to take this task on just to see what came up, and--boy, did it pay off with a very interesting story I found using FultonHistory.com (an absolutely great resource)

This soldier is a cousin to your mother and her brother Uncle Johnny.  After he died and was awarded a Purple Heart and Silver Star, his mother waited FIVE long years before he was returned to native soil.

This article makes it seem as though this was kind of normal procedure although today it seems pretty appalling and cruel.  But I think that reflects the cultural attitude of the mid forties during wartime.  The papers are full of enthusiastic articles such as this one (which kind of breaks my 2014 heart)

These articles are full of tidbits of information I think I might be able to use to round out the story of this Disabto family. I re-learned (the hard way) that many times these families were born with Italian first names which were used in some cases, but used the more Americanized names in other cases.  This Joseph Disabto also has records listed under Guiseppe Disabato.  This family is very challenging for the number of ways the surname is spelled or misspelled.  In addition, first names can be somewhat loosey-goosey as well.  Most of the time, the Italian version of Joseph is spelled Giuseppe but in this case, appears in the records as Guiseppe.  No small wonder I'm having trouble with this family.  I feel certain there are many more gems waiting to be discovered about this group of cousins.