Generations of Hope, Triumph, Laughter and Love
I’ve spent the past months hyper-focused on two things: designing and sewing custom-made products to sell, and researching my family tree. An unexpected bridge developed between these two preoccupations when I discovered that both sides of my father’s family were interwoven together with the textile industry. Perhaps the allure of working with fabric is stitched…
The fact that I even exist, depended on the loves and lives of countless humans before me, living their stories that culminate in my 71-year-old self being here today. We can’t go all the way back to those origin stories, so here we will begin in the early 1900s, when 48-year-old Giuseppa Milazzo DiMartino sat…
Giuseppa listed the names of three sons on the SS Citta di Napoli passenger list as relatives she would be joining in the US. Giuseppe was the first of his family to arrive on June 19, 1902 on the SS Hohenzollern (it is impossible to decipher who he was meeting). Giovani arrived on April 14,…
American newspapers in 1905 warned that reduced steerage rates would incite an invasion of the least desirable aliens – the physically and mentally deficient, destitute, and morally depraved. Giuseppa had seized a window of opportunity just before politicians would make immigration more difficult. By 1910, there were nearly 8,000 Italians immigrants—mostly unskilled laborers from southern…
I seldom thought that when I said “See ya!” to dear friends, when I moved to another place or changed jobs, that it was unlikely I actually would ever see them again. Even with phones and email, this is just what happens when we move, even just a few miles away. Life is busy. Travel…
by Jeeni Criscenzo, April 28, 1915 Needed an excuse to sit in the sun,put my feet up and breathe. Opened an envelope of lettuce seed buds I’d saved last fall,splitting each tiny pod with my thumbnail,pulling out the parachute tufts with a seed at their end,letting them fall into another envelope propped open on my…
1874–1956 When Antonina (Nina, Annie) DiMartino was born in 1874 in Santa CroceCamerina, Ragusa, Italy, her father, Gaetano, was 19, and her mother, Giuseppa, was 14. She married Giovanni (John) Zisa in 1895 in her hometown. They had ten children in 17 years, . She died on November 29, 1956, in Paterson, New Jersey, at…