Along with hundreds of thousands of other Italian immigrants, John Toscano’s mother and father made the arduous and dangerous journey across the ocean to America. Settling with their friends and families in the Bedford- Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York where his parents, Luigi Toscano and Mary Cosentino, would meet.

In 1917 they would marry and over the next 10 years they would have five children: Concetta, Peter, Rose, Carlo, and last being John, in 1927. John would be doted upon by his older siblings, especially his sisters Concetta and Rose.