Every week, genealogist Amy Johnson Crow encourages participants in the 2024 "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" project to explore family history through the lens of a weekly theme. This week, the theme is Boats.
This recovered figurehead was thought to be from the ship Waesland, which sunk in 1902. My ancestor Emilio Gavazzi was not on that voyage, but he did immigrate on the Waesland in 1890.
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that my ancestors immigrated to the U.S. from Italy. Seven of my eight great-grandparents were born in southern and central Italy and came through Ellis Island to the U.S.
My other great-grandparent, my mother's maternal grandmother, was born in the U.S. to Italian-immigrant parents.
I have not yet found information on the journeys every one of those nine Italian ancestors endured to arrive here, but I know a little about some of them. (And yes, they immigrated on ships, not boats, but I am choosing to interpret the theme loosely.)
My Father's Side
The S.S. Germania, Lombardia, Smolensk, and Chicago.
My great-grandfather Francesco Petrini lived in Umbria, but immigrated from Naples on the ship S.S. Germania. The ship left on 30 December 1903 and arrived at Ellis Island on 18 January 1904. So the journey took between two and three weeks, which was typical for the times. The double-masted steamship carried 54 first-class passengers and 1,400 third-class passengers, including Francesco. He was 29 years old and traveled alone.
My great-grandmother, Maria Timi, followed him nearly ten months later, traveling first from Umbria to Naples with her infant daughter Assunta, and embarking on the steamship S.S. Lombardia. They departed on 9 October 1905 and reached Ellis Island on 3 November. She had $20 in cash with her. It must have been a harrowing journey, traveling in a cramped steerage compartment at age 23, alone except for a baby to care for who was not yet a year old.
Fortunato Piccioli, my paternal grandmother's father, arrived at Ellis Island in 1907 on a Russian-registered ship, the S.S. Smolensk. He was from the Marche region of Italy. Strangely, he arrived from Rotterdam, and I still don't know why he was there, though the most likely reason is that there was a temporary job for him in the Netherlands.
While he was in the Netherlands, his wife Francesca Pierini was living in Le Havre, France and working as a wet nurse. As far as I can tell, she moved there with her two sons, Stefano and Mario, and a daughter, Anna Rosa. I imagine the family traveled there together from Italy, and Fortunato moved on to Netherlands, where he had a job waiting, while his wife and children stayed in Le Havre. Tragically, Anna Rosa passed away in France, and another daughter, my aunt Pierina, was born there. In April 1909, Francesca and her three children left her daughter's grave behind and embarked from Havre, France, on the S.S. Chicago, eventually meeting up with her husband in the U.S.
My Mother's Side
The S.S. Madonna, Moltke, Westernland, Bolivia, and Waesland.
My mother's family's immigration stories are more dramatic -- and more elusive. Her paternal grandfather, Giovanni DeRiggi, traveled on many immigrant ships on his nine trips across the ocean, returning to his hometown of Naples each year to bring money home and visit his wife and children. Family lore -- still unverified -- says his last voyage before moving to the U.S. for good resulted in near-disaster, when the ship broke down, stranding the passengers on an island for six weeks. Back in Italy, his family thought he was dead until the ship was repaired and he unexpectedly showed up at home, very much alive.
After that, his wife put her foot down and said that was the last time. She insisted that they would all emigrate to the U.S., ending the back-and-forth travel and lengthy separations. Supposedly, he emigrated for good in 1908, according to census data, but I don't know which ship he traveled on.
The following year, his wife Rosalina Ambrosini joined him. She traveled on the S.S. Madonna from their hometown of Naples, with their three children -- Giuseppi, age 12; Filomena, age 2; and newborn Michele (called Mickey) -- arriving at Ellis Island in November 1909.
My mom's maternal grandfather Antonio Tomassoni came from the mountains of Abruzzo, but he departed Italy out of Naples in August 1907. The ship was a German ocean liner, the S.S. Moltke. This was a larger ship than some of the others, accommodating 333 first-class passengers, as well as 169 in second class and 1,600 in steerage, including Antonio, a single 20-year-old who traveled alone, into a new life.
Eventually, he would marry my great-grandmother Mary Bartocci in Pennsylvania. She was the U.S. born daughter of immigrant parents Felice Bartocci and Angelina Gavazzi. Arriving a generation earlier than my other Italian-born ancestors, Felice and Angelina's ship voyages would have been much more difficult. Felice, 18 years old, arrived in 1890 on the Westernland. Ships of the 19th century were much slower than the ones my other ancestors immigrated on. It could have taken Felice up to three months to make the voyage, in terribly uncomfortable conditions.
Five years later, in 1895, Felice's father, Giuseppi Bartocci, joined him in the U.S., arriving on the S.S. Bolivia. I am not certain if my third great-grandmother Maria Gigiarelli accompanied him in 1895, but I know she and Giuseppi both died in 1900 in Pennsylvania.
Felice's wife Angelina, my great-great-grandmother is still a mystery. I believe she was born in Umbria and, most likely, immigrated in 1892 at the age of 15, probably with her mother. So far I have found no records to prove it. Her father, Emilio, my third great-grandfather, had come two years earlier, in 1890, accompanied by his brothers Aurelio and Abrami. They emigrated on the Waesland, a ship that is mostly known today for an incident twelve years later. In March 1902, the Waesland collided with a British ship off the coast of Wales. The ship sunk, but the passengers and crew escaped in ten lifeboats; all survived.
The Steerage, by photographer Alfred Stieglitz, shows a 1907 ocean voyage, with middle-class passengers above looking down at those traveling in steerage on the deck below.
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