Our family's roots reach back to the Abruzzo region of central Italy — a rugged, mountainous country east of Rome, in the high valleys of the Apennines. The oldest names in the tree belong to a family of DiSantis born in the village of Rocca Pia, in the province of L'Aquila, in the first half of the 1800s:
| Name | Born | Place |
|---|---|---|
| Guistiniano DiSantis | 1833 | Rocca Pia, L'Aquila, Abruzzo |
| Maria Giuseppa DiSantis | 1835 | Rocca Pia, L'Aquila, Abruzzo |
| Lorenzo DiSantis | 1839 | Rocca Pia, L'Aquila, Abruzzo |
| Gemma DiSantis | 1841 | Rocca Pia, L'Aquila, Abruzzo |
| Francesco DiSantis | 1844 | Rocca Pia, L'Aquila, Abruzzo |
| Maria Antonia DiSantis | 1849 | Rocca Pia, L'Aquila, Abruzzo |
These are the deepest roots we have — brothers and sisters born nearly two centuries ago, in a stone village in the mountains.
Domenico DiSantis was born in 1850 in Cansano, a neighboring Abruzzo village, and it was his branch that carried the family across the Atlantic. Domenico died in 1915 in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, just south of Pittsburgh — so he lived to see the family established in the New World.
The generation that made America home came from the village of Lettopalena (written in the family papers as "Letta Palena"). Chief among them was Nicholas Thomas DiSantis, born September 2, 1884, in Lettopalena. His brothers and sisters made the journey too — Madeline, Mingarella, Frank, Dominic, Rose, and William — all born in Lettopalena.
The family remembered the crossing in vivid detail:
Somewhere in those early American years, the family set aside the Italian DiSantis (also written DeSantis) and took the English name Sunday. The tree preserves the moment of transition in the names themselves — Nicholas Thomas (DiSantis) Sunday and William (DeSantis) Sunday — men who carried both names at once, the old and the new.
Nicholas Thomas Sunday (1884–1953) married Agnes Elizabeth Meyer on September 17, 1908, in Pittsburgh. Agnes was herself an immigrant — born in 1884 in Oberhausen, Germany — so the Pittsburgh Sundays were, from the very first, a joining of Italy and Germany. Nicholas died in East Pittsburgh in 1953.
From this marriage came a large and lively generation of Pittsburgh-born Sundays.
The heart of the family is the generation of children born in Pittsburgh between 1910 and the 1930s — a big Catholic family remembered especially for its seven sisters. A photograph caption preserved in the tree names six of them together: "L to R: Jeanne, Ro, Bea, Honey, Elva, Esther" — with Aunt Til the seventh.
| Name | Born | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Josephine Marie Sunday | 1910 | d. 1986, Strabane, PA |
| Albert Francis Sunday | 1912 | d. 1994, West Palm Beach, FL |
| William Thomas Sunday | 1914 | b. Slovan, PA; d. 1978 |
| Matilda "Til" Louise Faith Sunday | 1916 | d. 2009, Ft. Myers, FL |
| Esther Yolanda Sunday | Apr 19, 1919 | twin of Elva |
| Elva Gwendolyn Sunday | Apr 19, 1919 | twin of Esther; d. 2013, Bethel Park |
| Adeline Elizabeth Sunday | 1921 | b. Raccoon, PA (Cherry Valley) |
| Nicholas Anthony Sunday | 1923 | |
| Beatrice "Bea" May Sunday | 1926 | b. Braddock area |
| Romaine "Ro" Betty Sunday | 1928 | |
| Claudette "Jeanne" Jean Sunday | 1936 | m. Ligonier (Holy Trinity R.C. Church) |
The twins. The family always said Esther and Elva were twins — and the tree proves it. Both are recorded as born on April 19, 1919, the very same day.
The Sundays were not a quiet family, and the tree keeps the good stories. Recorded right alongside the births and marriages:
The family spread out from Pittsburgh's South Hills across the country over the generations — to Florida, California, Idaho, Tennessee, Washington D.C. — but the Pittsburgh core held. Elva Gwendolyn Sunday married Francis "Doc" Dougherty and raised eight children in the South Hills. And the tree carries all the way down to the present, including the Morse family — down to Douglas Matthew Morse of Pittsburgh.
Beyond the Abruzzo villages of Rocca Pia, Cansano, and Lettopalena, the tree records the family living, marrying, and being buried across Western Pennsylvania and beyond:
Pittsburgh & South Hills: East Pittsburgh, Chalfant Borough, Forest Hills (St. Maurice R.C. Church), West Mifflin, Bethel Park, Broughton, Library, Braddock, North Hills, Trafford
Westmoreland County: Ligonier (Holy Trinity R.C. Church), Laughlintown, Latrobe, Greensburg, Irwin, Jeannette
Washington County: Canonsburg (St. Patrick's), McMurray (St. Benedict), Strabane, Slovan
Beyond Pennsylvania: West Palm Beach, Ft. Myers & Ft. Lauderdale (Florida); across California; Idaho Falls; Nashville; Washington, D.C.; and back across the sea to Germany (the Meyer line) and Ireland (the Dougherty line).
Note: dates in this history were decoded from the family's own tree records. A few later parent-to-child connections could not be fully confirmed from the file and would be worth verifying against family memory.
Four