More on Great Aunt Adelia

After sharing passport applications for my great aunt Adelia McAlpin Pyle, I wondered if she ever returned to the United States after meeting Padre Pio and converting to Catholicism. One of my readers shared the following:

You wanted to know if she returned to the US after going to San Giovanni Rotondo.  The answer is yes. In 1948 one of her aunts was dying of cancer. Adelia (Mary) went to the US to be with her.  This aunt (I don't know her name) left her an inheritance which Mary in turn used to complete the construction of the monastery in Pietrelcina. Mary stayed in the US for 4 months and while she was here she went to speak at many Padre Pio Prayer Groups.  They already existed in 1948. 21 years before Padre Pio or Mary died.  To my knowledge and research, she never returned to the US  before or after 1948.

I looked at her family tree to see who this might have been, and I am venturing a guess that this would be Sara Pyle McAlpin (1863 - 1949), her father's sister and wife of Charles Williston McAlpin (1865 - 1942), who was her mother's brother. Uncle Charles McAlpin is the family she references in the February 1923 "Affidavit to Explain Protracted Foreign Residence and to Overcome Presumption of Expatriation" referenced in the earlier post.

I then looked for a passenger list with Adelia on it and found the following at Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com. New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 [database online]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Year: 1948; Arrival: 15 May 1948; Microfilm Roll: T715_7596;
Page: 81; Line: 24; Record for Adelia McAlpin Pyle

The S.S. Vulcania sailed from Naples, Italy on May 5, 1948, arriving in New York on May 15, 1948.

60-year-old Adelia McAlpin Pyle is listed on this "List of United States Citizens" as Female and Married (obvious error there) and with the birth date and birth place I expect (April 17, 1888, in New York).

The next column refers to naturalization papers or passport information. Where most passengers on this list had their passports issued from Washington, D.C., it looks like in January 1947, Great Aunt Adelia renewed her passport at the American Consulate in Naples. In the last column, her address in the United States is listed as 216 E. 61st Street, New York City.

Checking for McAlpins and Pyles in a 1946 New York City Directory on Ancestry.com, I find that a sister-in-law lives at 216 East 61st Street. (Zene Montgomery Pyle was the widow of Gordon McAlpin Pyle, the youngest of James and Adelaide's six children.)

Adelia's widowed Aunt Sara lived at 720 Park Avenue, less than a mile away.

Sara Pyle McAlpin (Mrs. Chas. W. McAlpin) died on May 14, 1949, leaving two nephews and three nieces.