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Louisa's Last Letter

June 12, 1920

My Dear Joe,

I received your letter and you all got home all right and I was so glad to see Catello and Francie and all of you. I have been very sick all week. I have been suffering something terrible. I can hardly get my breath some days and my heart is very bad because my left lung is so bad. I am sorry to let you hear this bad news but I can not help it. I am tired of living and suffering the way I am suffering you can not blame my lungs and heart are getting weaker every day no sleep only cough.

If Papa comes up to see me Sunday tell him not to bring me nothing because it only gets bad on me it costs so much money. Only what would like a bottle of grape juice.

Best love and kisses to Grandma and feel awfully sorry that her legs are swellen again. I could cry my eyes blind but it won’t do me no good only worse.

Best love and kisses to poor Papa and my dear children.

Your loving Mother

L. Lanzaro

If you only knew how bad I feel writing this letter I have such pains.

Larry Notes:

Louisa died at the clinic on July 16, 1920, at the age of 35. She was buried in the family plot at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Keyport, NJ. Dad was 7 years old at the time, Toots was 8, Cat 12, Larry 13, Joe 15, Ciro 38, and Petronilla 76.

Millie LaMura and Charlie Mastellone were married on June 2, 1921.

Baby Frankie died at the Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan, NY, on September 15, 1921, about a year after his mother. He was 3 years old. Cause of death was bronchial pneumonia. How did he get from the farm in Morganville to a hospital in New York City? His death certificate lists his residence as 941 Newkirk Avenue, in Brooklyn. This was the home of his grandmother, Amelia Leier, Louisa’s mother. One can only conjecture that when it became obvious that Louisa would not be returning home any time soon, the families decided it would be better for the baby to be with his 54-year-old grandmother in Brooklyn than on a farm in the “sticks”. Unfortunately, poor little Frankie would last only a year. The death certificate shows he was sick for two months before he died. He was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Keyport with his two brothers Salvatore, and his mother. Petronilla would follow in 1934, and Ciro in 1944.

Besides Louisa, Tuberculosis took the lives of her sister Minnie in 1919, her brother Charles in 1926, her nieces Bertha and Dorothy Kazalski in 1931 and 1933, and her sister Birdie in 1941.

To view the actual letter written by Louisa, click here.

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LEIER/NOWASKY FAMILY WEBPAGE