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Maria 'Mary' Lanza was baptized at the
Church of St. Adrian in De Lancey (formerly
Adrian) Pennsylvania, on
the first of June, 1913. The Church of St. Adrian still
exists as a building, but the parish no longer exists, and the
building is now a Mission of the Ss. Cosmas and Damian Church of
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
Contacted in 2015, 'Jean' from
that church's office provided me with a photocopy of the register
containing the baptismal record. That record is shown below.
Some explanation is necessary. The record was written in Latin
by a Polish priest. |
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The given names are in Latin,
while the surnames appear to have been written phonetically, with
Polish spelling. 'Maria' is the same name in both Latin and
Italian, and also in Polish ('Mary ' in English). Later
copiers of the record evidently assumed the original name was Mary.
Since her mother and father, and godparents, were all Sicilian with
little proficiency in English, it's virtually certain that they gave
the priest the infant's name as Maria. It can be
seen that both her father's and godfather's given names were
originally written as 'Samuel', then written over as Salvatore, or
vice versa. Paolina Bellanca's given name was also spelled in
the Latin form, 'Paulina'.
Below the record is a
transcription of the information just as it was written in
Latin/Polish, and below that are the entries as they should have
been. 'Junii' is Latin for 'of June'. The
variations in the names are examples of how names may be misspelled
and modified after repeated copies are made. |
