Miniello, Iacobucci, Luccitiello, Sebastiano, Ramaglia, Iammarino
ITALIANS IN EVANSVILLE
MY FAMILY - THE
MINIELLI'S
Miniello, Iacobucci, Luccitiello, Sebastiano, Ramaglia, Iammarino
Our family came primarily from two small
villages - Ripalimosani and Busso (see pictures below) - in the mountains north of
Naples, near the city of Campobasso, region Molise. Some of our
remote ancestors came from Castel di Sangro, Ripabottoni, Baranello, and
Colle D' Anchise - all in the same area north of Naples in Molise.
My mother's maiden name is Mary Rose Minielli; she is at ID# 24 on the top
left side
of my home-made, graphical Family Tree
Page 1.
You can see the ancestral details of the
family at the FAMILY DETAILS or ROOTSWEB DATABASE links at the bottom of this page.
My mother's grandfather, Antonio
Miniello (changed to Minielli later), born 1845, was a rope maker from Ripalimosani. Both
of his parents died when he was a child and all of his siblings died as
infants. The Italian civil war had begun, and life for the common man was
difficult; family oral history says that, for a while, the Miniello family had
no place to live except the local church, and the only sustenance
available some days was wine intended for Mass. Antonio was sent to live with his paternal aunt Paolina who had
married Antonio's maternal uncle Antonio Mario Luccitiello. When he was 39
years old, Antonio married
Filomena Iacobucci from Busso in 1884 and (according to custom) moved to Busso.
Family oral history says that Antonio knew Filomena for almost 10 years before
they married - I guess Filomena was very cautious or demanding. Filomena's mother Maria Sebastiano had died in 1871 (Filomena was then 16 years
old) and family oral history says she went to live with her brother Giovanni,
even though her father Michele was alive until 1882.
Antonio immigrated to the USA in 1888 and ended up in Evansville, Indiana. Traveling with
him from Italy were others from Ripa and Busso, and other small villages in
Molise: Faciosano, Ruberto, Santangelo, Del Greco,
Sacco (Scacco), Pinto, Terranova, DiMiase, Taciafano, Papparozzi, Palmieri,
Albanese, Ziccardi. No one in the family knows what route he took from New
York to Evansville, but I would guess he traveled by train to Pittsburg and
Cleveland, then to Cincinnati and Evansville; it is possible he traveled by boat
on the Ohio River from either Pittsburgh or Cincinnati. Oral
history in the family says that the Mancini brothers, already in
Evansville by 1883, were cousins of Antonio's wife Filomena. Antonio made a
living by selling fruits
and vegetables - as did many of the Italians when they arrived -
and initially lived upstairs over the Mancini Fruit Store at 507 Main
Street. The two Mancini brothers Antonio and Michele were married to two
Giangiobbe sisters from Ripalimosani (Maria Lucia and Maria Giovanna), and they had a brother
Peter who lived at various times in Kentucky and Connersville, Indiana. One
wonders why two brothers stayed together, but the third moved on to other places.
More about these Mancini brothers in the OTHER ITALIANS section.
In 1890 Antonio Miniello returned to Italy and retrieved his wife Filomena and their daughter Maria (born 1885); they
had stayed behind in Busso while Antonio was in Evansville. (Family oral history
says that it took a while for Maria to get accustomed to her father Antonio,
since she was too young to remember him when he left in 1888). They
arrived in New York on July 8th, 1891; during the trip Filomena
was pregnant with their second child Luigi (my grandfather). Oral family history says that smallpox broke out on the ship, but Antonio and
family were not infected. They stayed for a while in New York
with friends; we don't know for sure the name of the friends, but they did
provide Antonio and Filomena with two pieces of furniture which are still in the family.
Some recent facts found in the 1900 Census and some immigration records indicate
that the family they stayed with might have been the Terranova family (mentioned
above as one of those who arrived with Antonio in 1988). By 1899 Antonio and
Filomena
had two more children - Lucius and Josephine - and somewhere along the way
Antonio bought a cart and sold fruits and vegetables on the street. He was still
pushing that cart many years later when my mother was old enough to remember
seeing him and the cart. At some point, in the 1920's, Antonio acquired a
stand at the fruit and vegetable market that existed on First Avenue and
Division, across the street from Willard library.
My mother's father Luigi Minielli went into the tombstone business about 1905,
at age 14, working at Denton's Marble & Granite Works on Market Street in the second block south of
Division Street (then Pennsylvania Avenue). In later years, Luigi started his
own tombstone business in a two-story garage in his back yard on Missouri Street
near Baker Avenue, a block from the old stockyards. His partner was a Mr. Deig, who owned a farm in Mars, just
outside Evansville near the current Southern Indiana University. Mr. Deig's
two sisters lived near the Minielli house on Missouri Street.
Luigi's younger brother Lucius,
the photographer of the family, also got into the tombstone
business (A.B. Sode), and he worked on the Coliseum building in 1916-1917. He moved to St. Louis in 1925 to make his
mark in the business, but returned to Evansville in 1928. In 1951 Lucius made the front page of the Evansville Press
when he purchased a new Nash Rambler using the stamp collection
started by his father Antonio. I found out recently (from a Iacobucci cousin in Ohio) that Lucius probably purchased this car to make a trip to Cleveland to
visit the Iacobucci's there; several of the Cleveland Iacobucci's had traveled
to Evansville to visit
Lucius and his sisters in 1949 just after Filomena's sister-in-law Maria
Notartomaso died. The oldest sister, Mary, worked at Kruckenmeyer & Cohn for many years. Sister Josephine
began working at Rose Miller's Dress Shop on the northwest corner
of Cherry and 2nd Street. When I was a child, I remember hearing
that Josephine made trips to New York City to buy clothes for some of
their clients; I wondered where New York was. Eventually
Josephine took over the business when Rose Miller died in the 1940's.
After moving to various places in the early years, Antonio and
Filomena moved to 427 3rd Avenue (a half block south of Division
Street) in 1908 and the family stayed
there until 1938. According to my mother, Antonio never did learn to speak
English very well. One of my mother's strongest memories of her grandfather
Antonio is his worry that one of the grandchildren, running and playing in the
house, would step on his feet. Apparently they were always sore from the walking
with his pushcart. Antonio died in 1928. Filomena lived on until 1943.
Filomena
Iacobucci's brother Giovanni, along with his oldest son Angelo Michele, came to America in the year
1899. He stayed in New
York until at least 1901 and lived for a while with the Terranova family
mentioned above. His wife Maria Notartomaso and four of their other six
children arrived in 1903, by which time Giovanni had moved to Cleveland. The
arrival date of Giovanni's oldest child Josephine has not yet been definitely determined; her
husband Lorenzo Palmieri arrived in 1901. Family oral history had said
that Lorenzo and
Josephine lived in New York until 1912 when Josephine died from complications of
childbirth, but recent information says that she died in the Bronx in 1915. Josephine's
children were sent to live with her brothers and sisters.
No one in the family knows why Filomena and brother Giovanni decided to live
in two different cities. One would think that, after leaving all family behind
and traveling to a strange new place, the two would stay together. As far as I
know, Filomena and Giovanni did not see each other after they arrived in the
U.S. There were a few postcards from the old country (Busso) - one a
Christmas card (of which I have a copy) from a Giuseppina DePaola. We do know that two of
Giovanni's
children in Cleveland changed their surname - Michele Iacobucci to Johns, Umberto Iacobucci
to Humbert.
Some of the Cleveland Iacobucci children made several visits to Evansville to
see their aunt Filomena and their cousins in the late 1920's and
early 1930's. Those making the trips included Angelina and her
husband Joseph DiZinno; my mother (about 10-11 years old then) remembers
names of two of the children - Hugo and Joseph - but she doesn't remember any
adult names. She does remember that there were 3-4 children and 4-5 adults that
made the trip from Cleveland. During World War II (early 1944) Hugo stopped in
Evansville on his way to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He left his wife, Maria Mandalfino, in Evansville with Filomena's children (Antonio and Filomena were already
deceased) while he found a place to live near the Army base. There are some
pictures in the family album from this visit. There were also several
visits from one of Clorinda Iacobucci's daughters named Edith (married Victor
Mandley) in the late 1930's.
Filomena, who learned to speak English fairly well, apparently learned building skills from her
brother Giovanni who was in the house-building business in Busso. Family history
says Filomena repaired their roof at the house on 3rd Avenue and installed the
block patio in the back yard. Around the corner on Bond Street lived the
Ramaglia's (210), LaRocca's (228), and later the Datillo's and LaMantia's. Living a block
away were the cousins Luccitielli (Market Street) and the Laurienzo family (Clark Street).
In 1938 the Minielli's moved to Fares
Avenue a half block south of Lincoln Avenue (in order to get away from the
deteriorating High Street area - only a few blocks away). This is the house that
I remember as a child - holiday visits with spaghetti, braciole,
Neapolitan-style pizza (although it wasn't called that), chocolate mints,
cashews, Uncle Lucius playing Italian music (three large boxes of records are
still in the family) on an old 78 Victrola, and a big
empty lot behind the back yard and across railroad tracks, where all of us kids could play. In 1957, when preparations were
being made for the Lloyd's Expressway to replace Division Street, the 3rd Avenue
house was demolished. When the new Highway 41 road work began, the house on
Fares Avenue was also demolished; by that time only the youngest child Josephine
was still alive. The houses that were directly across the street (on Fares
Avenue) from the
Minielli house are still there, and amazingly I still remember them!
A family of cousins on Antonio Miniello's side of the family -
Luccitiello - also came to Evansville in the 1890's. Giovanni Luccitiello arrived in April 1891 (Family Tree
Page 2). Giovanni's wife - Maria Giuseppa Ramaglia, born
Ripabottoni - along with their daughter (Paolina, age 21) and son (Antonio, age 5) - arrived in December 1894. By 1920 the Luccitielli's were
living at 322 Market Street, after living previously on E. Illinois, Upper 7th,
Upper 6th, and Lower 3rd streets. Maria Giuseppa Ramaglia's
brother Antonio
Ramaglia (born Ripabottoni), and his
wife Maria Carmela Palermo (born Ripalimosani), also came to
Evansville - Antonio sometime in the late 1880's and Maria and
the children in August 1892. Antonio's daughter Maria Rosa
Ramaglia would later marry Antonio Miniello's third child Lucius
Minielli (my great uncle). Their child - Joseph - would later be
the first Minielli to attend college. He graduated from Indiana
University in 1958 with a Master's Degree in Chemistry. He joined
Mead Johnson in Evansville and worked there for 40 years. One of cousin Joe's
hobbies was telescopes. I spent many hours in his basement watching him grind
his own mirrors for the telescopes that he built.
One final link in this chain - Maria Carmela Palermo's sister
Maddelena Palermo married Antonio Iammarino (another cousin of Antonio Miniello). Antonio
Iammarino immigrated in June 1887, Maddelena in June 1888. Antonio did not arrive
in Evansville until 1889; I don't know where he and Maddelena lived until they
reached Evansville. The Iammarino family left Evansville about
1900 (one of the children remained in Evansville) and moved to Washington, Indiana. They returned in
1912 (City Directory, 1913), stayed in Evansville
until 1916, then moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana where one of their daughters,
Rosa, married a James Barile. Antonio Iammarino died there in 1939 and Maddelena in 1936.
Starting in the 1960's, the Minielli grandchildren (most without the Minielli
surname) began to spread throughout the United States - Arkansas, Arizona,
Illinois, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Minnesota. There are still some family members
left in Evansville. All of them are a long way from the tiny Italian villages -
Ripalimosani and Busso -in
the mountains north of Naples where, in the late 1880's, life was hard -
unbearable - and quite a few families must have been discussing the impossible -
leaving their homes where family had lived for many generations, traveling down
from the mountains, getting on a ship, and traveling to a foreign country they
had heard about from neighbors . No pictures, no brochures, just stories. Word
must have gotten back to Ripa and Busso from the Mancini's (who had left in the
early 1880's) that Evansville, Indiana was a place they could start a new life.
And so they took that chance and made that fantastic journey. None of us can
imagine what it was like to get on a boat in Naples, step off a ship in New
York, and wonder what to do next. Not speaking the language, how did they ever find Evansville?
RIPALIMOSANI: PICTURE 1
PICTURE 2 PICTURE 3
RIPALIMOSANI: ARTICLE 1
ARTICLE 2 ARTICLE
3
ARTICLE 4 ARTICLE 5 ARTICLE
6
BUSSO:
PICTURE 1 PICTURE 2 PICTURE
3
EVANSVILLE
PICTURES: FAMILY AT
WILLARD LIBRARY
FAMILY HOUSE RIVERSIDE DRIVE
CHILD NEXT DOOR ( Gilbert Sartore)
SYRACUSE, NY: IACOBUCCI AND NOTARTOMASO FAMILIES
FAMILY DETAILS: Summary of
Family information in tabular form, including Birth, Death, Immigration dates going back to the
1750's in Italy. A more complete and searchable view of FAMILY
DETAILS including Birth,
Death, Immigration, Children, Baptisms, Marriage Dates, Other Notes,
Naturalization Data is available at GenCircles. Return to this Web Site by clicking on the
BACK button. This data is also available at the Rootsweb database. Return to
this web site by clicking the hyperlink
ITALIANS IN EVANSVILLE at the bottom of each Rootsweb
page.
09/18/2006