A Tampa, Florida, Midwife’s Deliveries — 1908-1939

I just read one of the most interesting “records” stories I’ve ever seen. John Barry, a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times did a column that posted at Tampabay.com on August 1, 2010. Barry reports the story of Sicilian midwife Maria Messina Greco, who seems to have begun delivering babies in Tampa, Florida as early as 1907 (the 1907 date is mentioned in the article, although the books are said to start in 1908). She kept a records of the births in tiny notebooks, all of which are still intact. The records were filmed by the LDS, and are available on microfilm on Family History Library reels 1597958 Item 2 (1908-1922), and 1597959 Item 1 (1922-1939).

Written in Sicilian, the records have been difficult for most to read. Transcription projects have started, then been set aside – then started again. It is said that the latest transcription project was completed in the Spring, and we can expect to see the data on the Internet in the near future.

Maria Messina Greco seems to have brought 6,734 children into this world.

“One day in 1958, 18 years after delivering her last baby, Maria Messina Greco wrote a goodbye letter to her daughter. She then filled her apron pockets with rocks and crossed to the beach. The woman who brought thousands of Tampa babies into the world walked into the waves.”

What a story…

Following is just a snippet:

Angelo Lorenzo spread out 62 small notebooks, rubber-banded in packs, untouched for decades, freshly unearthed from a clothes closet. • Lorenzo wore white cotton gloves. He flipped the brittle pages with a letter opener. Each one recorded a birth in Tampa. Page one was Maria Ficarotta, born May 10, 1907. • He translated the page — handwritten in Sicilian a century ago by a Tampa midwife. The baby’s parents were Antonio and Guiseppina, the midwife wrote in pencil. She was 23, he was 25. They lived on Main Street in West Tampa. • The translator had another 6,733 births to go.

The prolific midwife had birthed up to six babies a day from 1907 to 1939. On each page, she documented who the parents were, where they came from, how many other children they had, where they lived and how they earned their living.

As Lorenzo translated, the history of immigration and assimilation in Tampa — the first enclaves, the first meager jobs, then the intermarriages and new jobs and bigger homes — unfolded before him. He could almost hear the cry of a newborn Tampa.

Lorenzo and three helpers took two years to translate all 6,734 births, only finishing in the spring. Lorenzo was uniquely qualified. He had worked for Social Security in Tampa for 35 years. One of his jobs was translating Italian birth records.

He got to know the midwife by her notations. Her name was Maria Messina Greco. She began birthing Tampa babies when she was 25, fresh off a boat from Santo Stefano Quisquina, Sicily. She wrote mostly in pencil. She spelled English names in phonetic Italian. She spelled Chestnut Street Cesinut and Highland Avenue Ailand.

Read the full column at the St. Petersburg Times website.