Looking for Leganders, Logandros & LoCantos.?

Question

We are all from one family that came from Sicily in the 1910s. The names were changed from Ellis Island people who couldnt understand our family when they said 'LoCanto'. Most settled in the Philadelphia and New Jersey areas back then, but today many are in almost every state and Canada.

Answer 1

Hey Bee,

Did you check the Ellis Island site for the origin of the ships they came over on, and for the manifests? They use a Soundex algorithm when searching for names, unless you specify exact. So does Family Search, the LDS site. So, if you put in LoCanto WITHOUT exact - you should see what other possibilities come up. I find 25 Exact matches to LoCanto, and 91 close matches.

The cities in Italy that I see them coming from are: Matera, Salandia Potenza, Montereagliosi, Pizlicei, and some others.

The spellings look like:LoCanto; Locanto; Locantore; Locantoro

The date range is from 1895 to 1920.

If there are a lot of you in the US, perhaps you could have known relatives take a DNA Test, and compare to suspected relatives and unknown. Family Tree DNA does such analysis - just a thought.

Family Search comes up with 18, here is one:
1. Arcangela Locanto Noce - International Genealogical Index / SE
Gender: Female Birth: 09 FEB 1842 Spezzano Grande, Cosenza, Italy

In this search, I found 2 Pedigree files (ancestry files), at Family Search. One by Joseph Locanto and is available on CD from the LDS Family Search. The other from Tommasina Locanto, they have submitter addresses on the search site. You should definately check this out!

Finally, to assist with record in Italy, the last sites are how to get records in Italy.