Francis Sims Morozzi

An Italian New Yorker named Angelo Morozzi met and married an Irish Philadelphian, Emma Robertson, on August 30, 1863 when he was 36 years old and she was 30. She had been living with her widowed mother at 540 Washington Avenue, and that’s where the couple lived the rest of their lives and raised their six children over the next dozen years. “Frank” was their middle child. 

Angelo was a carpenter until he died in 1897 but five of the six adult children, including Frank, were still living at that address with their mother when the 1900 census was taken. Two of them had married in the past two years and were living there with their spouses.

Frank had been a clerk in his twenties, but found a more exciting life as a fireman after the turn of the century. He was single until December 18, 1908, two weeks before his 40th birthday. His bride was a widow his same age. They lived at 1240 South 7th Street, so Frank could walk a few blocks north to his fire house at 7th and Carpenter Streets.

This news story describes how his life ended on an early Autumn morning in 1926. Firefighters in those days knew nothing about cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, so he died on the way to the hospital. He was buried in the Morozzi plot with his parents and two siblings.