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- According to the 1900 and 1910 censuses, he immigrated in 1896. I cannot find the original immigration record.
Wedding record (digest): Vincent Taormina, born in Italy on 31 Dec. 1878, residing at 4431 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, occupation stovemaker [an error for "shoemaker"]; and Maria DiVittorio, born in Italy 25 Jan. 1882, residing at 236 Edmund St., Pittsburgh. Consent of Salvator DiVittorio, living at 236 Edmund St. Married 27 May 1900 by Rev. B. Riscopo.
In 1900 a James & Mary Taormina are living at 4431 Penn Ave.; he was born Dec. 1878, she born Apr. 1882. He's a shoemaker. Despite the date variations, this must be them, with Vincent as James.
He traveled home, and arrived back in the US on the S.S. Carpathia on 16 Oct. 1908 in New York with his son Antonio. The record says that he's going to visit his wife Maria DiVittorio at 7808 Tioga St. in Pittsburg [the city was spelled that way at the time], so they had moved by then. Place of birth for Vincenzo is Trabia, Palermo, and he said his closest relation at home was his father Mr. Antonio Taormina in Trabia. Antonio his son was aged 7, a U.S. citizen; his place of birth was Pittsburg, PA. Tioga is off of N. Braddock on the Pittsburgh east side—at the time, this was more in the country. This also matches Vincent's address on the 1910 census.
In the 1910 census, a John & Mary Haas are living at 7808 Tioga, so the Taorminas had left by then.
On 6 Dec. 1911 his two youngest sisters and his mother arrived on the Cretic, bound directly from Brockville, Ontario. The family had settled there by 1911. What had happened is that both Anthony and Sam, another brother, had gotten sick—and Sam died—and a Dr. told them to move somewhere with cleaner air.
On the Cretic as well was a Vincenzo Taormina, aged 16 (b. abt. 1895), from Palermo bound for Pittsburgh. He was also born in Trabia. His closest relative back home is his father Filippo Taormina. He's going to find his uncle Filippo Campisi at 7808 Tioga St. (Either he's mistaken, or confused, or the Haas family was renting, or moved). In any event, other related Taorminas, then, seem to have immigrated, and others appear in the censuses in and around Pittsburgh in 1900 and later.
By about 1910, then, the family had moved to Canada. He took the Oath of Allegiance to Canada on 27 June 1922. His son Vincent Ignatius also recalled that the family moved to Brockville abt. 1909-10.
Naturalization papers were completed in Brockville on 20 June 1922; at that point he gives his last name as Thormin.
There was a findagrave record that placed him in Oakland Cemetery, Brockville, Ontario, Canada, but it is gone now.
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