Ancestors

Stephen M. Lastinec

Stephen Michael Lastinec was born on 1 March 1903 in Austria-Hungary, the empire that until 1918 ruled the lands that became Czechoslovakia. His parents were Stephan Lastinec and Julia Lastinec, both born there too. American clerks wrote his birthplace as Austria in 1920 and 1940 and as Hungary in 1950. All three are the same place under different names: the Slovak counties of the Kingdom of Hungary, inside the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father later gave his own birthplace as Czechoslovakia.

Stephen came to America as a baby in 1903, the same year as both his parents. His brother Joseph, born about 1905, and sister Mary, born about 1907, were born in Pennsylvania. His sister Helen was born in Austria-Hungary.

By 1918 the family lived at 1613 Wayne Avenue in Camden, New Jersey, and they were still there in 1920. Stephen was 17 and already at work as an operator in a woolen mill. His father was a blacksmith in a shipyard. Slovak was the language of the house, and his mother spoke no English. Stephen could read, write and speak English, and he had his own first papers toward citizenship.

He married Catherine M. Welsh. They had four children, all born at Camden: Stephen Jr. on 14 July 1929, Robert about 1930, Richard Thomas on 4 January 1932 and Lillian Catherine on 28 March 1933. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1935 Stephen was living in Camden. By April 1940 he owned his own house, number 111 on Nicholson Road at Gloucester Heights, in Gloucester Township just south of Camden, worth $1,500. He was 37 and divorced, and all four children lived with him: Stephen Jr., 10, Robert, 9, Richard, 8, and Lillian, 7. He worked forty hours a week as a machinist at the Navy Yard and had worked all 52 weeks of 1939, earning $1,560. He had gone as far as the fifth grade in school.

Later in 1940 he married a woman named Rose, who appears in that year's New Jersey marriages under both Regan and Roberts. Nothing more is known of that marriage. In 1943 he married Margaret O'Brien, an Irish-born woman eight years younger. They had three more children: Eileen M., Alice M. and John S., born on 1 March 1949, Stephen's own forty-sixth birthday. On 15 April 1950 the census taker found the family in the same house, 111 Nicholson Road, with the same neighbors on either side as ten years before. Stephen, 47, worked forty hours a week as a laborer in a metal factory and was a naturalized citizen. Margaret kept house. At home were Lillian, 17, from his first marriage, and Eileen, Alice, 2, and John, 1.

Stephen died in November 1963, aged 60. When his eldest son died in 2016, the obituary named him as the son of the late Stephen M. Sr. and Catherine M. (Welsh), and the stepson of the late Daisy, a name long used as a nickname for Margaret.

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Cite: Heirology, "Stephen M. Lastinec (1903-1963)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/stephen-m-lastinec-1903-1963-65cb79.