Ancestors

Nicholas Rocca

Nicholas Rocca was born on 20 December 1895 at Alcamo, a town in the province of Trapani in western Sicily. His parents were Vito Rocca and Anna Stellino. He gave their names himself when he applied for Social Security.

He sailed from Naples on 14 October 1920 aboard the Duca d'Aosta and landed at New York on 28 October 1920. He was twenty-four. His last home in Italy had been Alcamo.

On 1 May 1924 he declared his intention to become a citizen, in the federal court in Manhattan. The declaration describes him. He was a foreign exchange trader, white, of fair complexion, 5 feet 4 inches tall and 142 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. He lived at 23 West 48th Street and was not married.

On 7 September 1927 he married Marjorie Krewer, a Brooklyn woman born on 7 November 1897, at Our Lady of Victory Church. Mr. and Mrs. P. Rocca stood as best man and matron of honor. The couple honeymooned for two weeks at Lake Mohonk, a mountain resort in Ulster County, New York, and came home to an apartment at 734 Ocean Avenue in Flatbush. Five months later, on 8 February 1928, he filed his petition for naturalization in the federal court at Brooklyn. He gave his occupation as broker and his home as 734 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn. Marjorie swore as one of his two witnesses, and her sister Elsie Reinhard was the other. He renounced his allegiance to Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, and the court admitted him a citizen on 26 June 1928.

Their first child, Vito, named for Nicholas's father, was born on 26 May 1930 and died in Manhattan on 2 June, a week old. Three daughters followed: Anna Marjorie, called Nina, on 25 June 1934; Adriana Sarina on 8 April 1936; and Victoria, called Vicky, about 1939.

Marjorie came back into New York from abroad in 1931 on the Italian liner Saturnia, and Nicholas made crossings of his own in 1932 and 1947.

In April 1940 the family rented an apartment at 612 Argyle Road in Flatbush for $85 a month. Nicholas, forty-four, had four years of college. He worked a forty hour week on Wall Street as a customer's man, the broker's salesman who handled clients' accounts, and had earned $3,000 the year before. He registered for the draft of older men in 1942 and named himself as his employer.

Marjorie died in the 1950s. Nicholas married again, to Iolanda, and their son Pietro Vito Rocca was born in Manhattan on 13 June 1962. He carried the name of his grandfather Vito. He became a rheumatologist and practiced for twenty-eight years.

Nicholas Rocca lived his last years in Manhattan and died on 5 February 1989, aged ninety-three. He is buried at Saint John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.

If Nicholas Rocca is in your family, start your own tree.

Researched October 2026. Cite: Heirology, "Nicholas Rocca (1895-1989)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/nicholas-rocca-1895-1989-3ad0df.