I have just returned from a two-week trip to Italy, during which I was able to visit my mother's family's hometowns. We rented a car at the airport in Rome and drove south to Caserta for our first night. The next day, after touring the royal palace at Caserta, we drove to Nola and spent the night. Nola is a town of no apparent distinction, other than bordering on Casamarciano, the town where my grandmother Anna Castaldo was from. (I guess Nola does have a distinction: it has a hotel, and Casamarciano does not.)
It just so happened that we were in Casamarciano on Easter Sunday, so there were lots of dressed-up families making their way to the church, Parrocchia San Clemente I. An ancient policeman was directing traffic away from the small square, and lots of men were idling around outside the church. San Clemente is located in Piazza Umberto I -- Italy must have hundreds of Piazza Umberto I's. Where we stayed in Poggiardo was on Piazza Umberto I. Umberto was evidently quite popular in Italy in the late 19th century, although it's hard to see why from a historical perspective; he was instrumental in aligning Italy with Germany and Austria, and that didn't turn out so well for Italy. He was assassinated in 1900 during the general unrest following imposition of martial law. Martial law was imposed as a result of general unrest following the economic collapse in Italy, which was especially hard on southern Italy and I suspect played a major role in the huge emigration from Campania and Calabria, not only to the United States, but to a lesser degree to South America as well. I have been told that my mother's father and his brother and/or cousin first emigrated to Argentina but didn't like it or couldn't find work, but for whatever reason they came back to Italy and then emigrated to the U.S.
In Casamarciano on Easter, at least, it appears to be the custom that women and children go to church and the men stand outside and talk. Reminds me of Bavaria when I lived there, except in Bavaria there was usually a pension nearby where one could congregate and have a beer while waiting. On the outskirts of town (four blocks from the church) was a vacated 12th century church and monastery,
Santa Maria and Badia Virginiana, which was boarded up and inaccessible. Google map search for: Piazza Umberto I, Casamarciano, Naples, Italy, do a street view, and you will see the church and the small square. The hill behind the city is where the monastery is. The monastery is on Via Santa Maria about 350 meters from the square, right where Via Santa Maria makes a 90-degree left turn. Google has pictures. This site has pictures of both
San Clemente and Santa Maria.
Besides the church and possibly a few houses close to the church, the monastery is the only building I'm sure was there when my grandmother was there as a child. I wonder if she enjoyed it as I did, or it was just so much a part of the landscape that she barely noticed it. Castaldos still live there; I saw some business signs which contain the name. Casamarciano is flat, and located at the eastern edge of the valley plain which extends eastward from Naples for about twenty miles before the mountains begin.
After Casamarciano we drove down to Pompeii and visited. It's interesting as an archeological site, of course, but also Vesuvius is interesting as a human site: houses are being built up the side of the mountain, as if the eruption of 2000 years ago was the last that would ever occur. Hope they're correct. Naples is about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Casamarciano; Mr. Vesuvius about the same, Pompeii just the other side of Mr. Vesuvius.
From Naples we drove south into Calabria, our first stop being Catanzaro. Then to Crotone, and then to Cotronei. My mother used to say she had relatives from Catanzaro, but if so I have no idea who they were. My grandfather, Rocco Maccarrone, came from Cotronei, Crotone Province. I used to think they were the same place, just a mispelling, maybe a famous Ellis Island error, but they are two separate and distinct places, albeit 40 miles apart. Crotone is an old (Greek) city on the sea, and Cotronei is about 30 miles north, upriver from the coast, and built on the side of a mountain. It's not a true Italian hill top village, since it's on the side, but once inside it feels the same. Upon entering the town on SP31 there is a large building with a big sign "Maccarrone Arreda" which means furniture. We drove around and found a parking place and walked around the town; the streets are steep, to say the least. Nothing much seemed to be going on, and nothing much seemed to be open. We were there for a few hours, mid-morning to early afternoon, and didn't see much activity. I'm assuming that with the modern highway system that many residents commute to jobs in Crotone and other more industrial centers along the coast. I'm sure if we had still been there at Passeggiata time we would have seen many more people.
All in all I guess my main impression was, imagining what it was like in the years immediately prior to World War I when southern Italy was in dire economic condition, I can understand why both left. My grandmother was about 15 when she left with her mother, brothers and sister, so I doubt she had a lot of say-so in the matter, but my grandfather was in his early 20s, so it was his choice; he came to the U.S. with his brother, leaving one other brother in Cotronei.
Both grandparents came to Chicago and settled in what was then a thriving Little Italy and no doubt met there and got married. Through connections in the Italian community, I assume, Rocco got a job at a generating plant run by Consolidated Edison, the electric utility in Chicago. He died in the mid-'20s in an industrial accident of some sort, I've been told, but because he had joined a local lodge of the International Order of Oddfellows, my mother and her three brothers were able to go to the orphanage run by the IOOF in Lincoln, Illinois. They all spoke Italian when they arrived in Lincoln, and none of them did when they left a few years later. When they went to the Home (as they all called it) my Uncle Mac was 8, my mom was 5, her brother Frank was 4 and Sam was 2.
As an aside, my mother's brother Sam met his future wife in Seattle and married in the '50s. Aunt Alba's family had emigrated to Seattle from Mirabella Eclano, which is only about 35 miles east of Casamarciano, but on the other side of the mountains. Now there is an autostrada that passes by both so they're less than an hour apart.
Due to an minor industrial accident of my own, i.e., washing and drying the memory card from the camera prior to downloading, I have no pictures of the trip from the beginning until the day before we left Poggiardo, which is why I have resorted to web links.
