By: John Cavallone
The Beginning
My journey started in the Fall of 2002 when my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, brought home a new history project from school. The assignment: “Find out which ancestors came to America and Why.”
I knew a little bit about my father’s paternal side, but not much. By the time I was born, our family was 100% Americanized, though both of my parents were 100% Italian blood. The language was not passed down nor many of the traditions. For the families of both my parents, assimilating to the American culture was of high importance.
We visited my Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Rosario di Miele. Uncle Rosario was born in Sassano, Italy, migrated to Venezuela in the 1950s then came to Chicago in the ’60s. Aunt Rosemary is the family historian; she knew all about her grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and she was happy to pass the information to my daughter and I.
The first memento she pulled out was a photo of her grandparents’ 50th wedding Anniversary with all of their children sitting around them. She named them off Vincenzo, Dora, Francesco “Thethen Cheek” Cavallone (my great-grandfather), Mama Rosa (my great-grandmother), Caterina, Michele, and standing behind them was the oldest son Joseph and youngest child John (my grandfather).
She told us of the neighborhood Francesco Cavallone and Mama Rosa moved to in Chicago — 48th and Federal Street. The houses were falling apart, but still it was an improvement over the living conditions they escaped from in Southern Italy.
She shared many pictures from her photo albums. She also gave me contact information for many of her first cousins, who I contacted immediately. At least one member of each of my great-grandparent’s children invited me to their home and they shared their stories and even more treasured photos.
I was even invited to visit Mama Rosa’s nephew’s widow, Antoinette Petrizzo Libretti. I learned Antoinette and her late husband, Daniel, lived down the block from my childhood home. All that time ago and I never knew I had family living so close.
As my daughter’s project wound to a close, my research was only just beginning. One family of cousins suggested we create a family reunion, which we did. The reunion took place in June 2003 only nine months after I started talking to my “new” found cousins. Over 150 attended, many who had not seen one another in 40 years! While the planning of the reunion was underway, I dove into my ancestors’ history.
The Brick Wall
As a novice genealogist in 2002/2003, I collected what I could locally: death certificates, census data from 1900-1930 and cemetery visits. I attended various local genealogy conferences and the monthly POINTers In Person Meetings. But I was stuck.
I hired Italian Genealogist Joe DeSimone to obtain what he could of the Cavallone family. He unearthed some information on my great-grandmother, Mama Rosa Libretti, but the Civil Marriage record of January 1899 did not contain an accurate birth location for my great-grandfather, Francesco. In 2003 we were at a standstill.
A Discovery
In late 2017, I found that familysearch.org had the civil records of Italian towns online but Francesco’s record remained elusive, so I decided to Google “Sassano Genealogy” hoping I wasn’t the only one researching this small, southern Italian town. To my surprise I came across Peter Barbella’s “Sassano Project” where he was in the process of indexing not only the civil records but also the church records back to the mid-1600s!
I began to correspond with Peter, asking him to see the images of the church records that Mama Rosa’s family included. One day I asked him how to find Francesco. I knew of Francesco’s parents through his Chicago death certificate. His mother, Maria Giuseppa Furiati, was the clue Peter needed to share with his network of genealogist and Italian friends, and within a couple days he located the online record from Vibonati, a town about 30 miles southeast of Sassano!
The Contribution
Peter saw my passion and soon asked me if I wanted to help him and fellow Italian genealogist Pasquale Cirullo index scores of historical images. I immediately replied “YES!” He soon shared thousands of images from the archives of San Giovanni Battista, the mother church of Sassano. (Peter had met Michele Cartusciello of “Museo del Cognome” when he visited Italy with his wife several years prior. Peter worked with Michele to obtain photographs of the church records.)
I quickly learned the Latin and Italian key words necessary to read enough of the church and civil documents to index with respectable accuracy!
As I set goals of completing a certain set of records a day, I set aside time to go back in time adding to my family tree. Marriage records of 1819, 1787, 1753, 1714 and finally 1672 built out the Cavallone family as far back as records would allow.
As I was indexing the records, I noticed names of others that lived on Federal Street at the same time of my great-grandparents. I also was aware of other Cavallone families buried in local cemeteries as I researched “my” Cavallone family. Were they all connected? Over time I determined the pedigree of all of the Sassano families living on Federal Street from 1900-1940, and each soul that lived there is a cousin to each other!
Sassano, a small town located in the province of Salerno in the Campania region, only had 1,555 residents or around 300 families in 1714. While developing the “Sassano Family Tree” I discovered there were many 2nd, 3rd and 4th cousin marriages that took place in the town, intertwining the various families to the degree that if your ancestors have an original surname pre-1900, there is a 90%+ chance that you are a distant cousin of any other Sassanese descendant.
The Bigger Picture
I decided to take my research to the next level. I wanted to learn about the families that settled in this half-mile stretch along Federal Street in Chicago that no one knew much about. There is more to one’s life apart from birth, marriage and death. Much happens between the brackets. If I was going to go beyond my direct line, I wanted to record as much as I could. I wanted to have each soul’s life remembered. I wanteddd to capture where they lived, what they did for a living and where they moved to after Federal Street.
There is a history about this area of Federal Street that encompasses not only the Italians but also the African American community. As a young adult in the 1980s I used to commute to downtown Chicago via Metra railway and passed the Chicago Housing Authority community, “The Robert Taylor Homes”, daily.
In the late 1950s the CHA purchased the homes along Federal Street to build the largest public housing project in the Chicago area. In the early 1900s when the Sassanese settled the area, census records illustrated that it was a mixed community from 1900 – 1940 of Italians and African Americans. In my continuous research I located a 1924 dissertation by Alice Quan Rood entitled “Social Conditions among the Negroes on Federal Street between 45th and 53rd Street.” I was determined to obtain a copy to learn about the housing conditions my ancestors lived in. As my aunt mentioned, the houses were “skeshod.”
As noted in Quan’s dissertation, “…references to dangerous back stairs, leaking roofs, and plastering in bad condition. …water has not been running in toilet since last Winter, back stairs in very dangerous condition, can see daylight through outer walls. …In an Italian house, for example, a child’s bedroom was heavily hung with drying herbs and vegetables which filled the room with a rank odor.” This is just some of the details in Quan’s writings.
The families that settled in Chicago started out as junk dealers and later became restaurateurs, real estate investors, saloon owners, grocery store proprietors and city of Chicago employees. One set of brothers in particular formed “Club De Lisa” on 55th and State Street, two blocks east of Federal Street and five blocks farther south. The Club was home to Red Saunders, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Sun Ra,Johnny Pate, Joe Williams, LaVaughn Robinson, George Kirby, Sonny Cohn, Earl Washington, Leon Washington, Albert Ammons and LaVern Baker.
The Next Chapter
I am currently working with Kim Stankiewicz of chicagoancestry.com to obtain many Torrens of the properties on Federal Street (formerly Armour Ave., prior to 1909) which will lead to acquiring Warranty Deeds of when the Sassano immigrants bought the properties.
I believe this to be very important research as the census data, only reported every 10 years, misses much information since the Sassano Italian population grew continuously in this area from just before 1900 to the purchases of the properties in the late 1950s by the Chicago Housing Authority.
Connecting with Family Around the Country
Though my research focuses on the Federal Street Italians, I have found the work has expanded to Hartford Connecticut, the New Jersey/New York City area, and Colorado. A couple of personal goals I had were to locate descendants of my great-grandfather’s brother’s family. Vincenzo Cavallone died at age 34 after being hit by a train. His wife moved back to Italy after his death with their two surviving children. In 1924 the young boys returned to the States, settling in New Jersey. Last year I found my third cousins, still residing in New Jersey. Patrice, Jamie and Dana were exploring their family history and were stuck going back through time, I was going forward, and with a little detective work, we met through Facebook.
My great grandfather’s older sister, Francesca, also born in Vibonati in 1866, stayed behind, but some of her children found their way to Chicago and Hartford, Connecticut. I discovered their descendants through Ancestry DNA and we connected.
Others from around the country who have found me either from using the Sassano Project indexes, my ancestry.com tree, DNA results or other methods have contacted me for information on their family roots. It is highly likely if you have Sassano roots we are distant cousins.
One of the most interesting revelations was finding out one of my best childhood friends growing up in the Ashburn neighborhood of Chicago, Don Casey, through his mother’s side, is a Sassano 7th cousin of mine!
“Sassano to Chicago” is an ongoing research project found at www.sassanochicago.org, where you can find information and tools to locate additional family information. If your heritage brings you back to Sassano, Italy, or, if you are adventurous enough, you can use these tools to discover your Italian roots. As of this writing there are over 16,000 individuals of Italian ancestry in my online tree located at http://sites.rootsmagic.com/Sassano-Chicago/.
Other researchers I have come in contact with have launched other archive indexing projects that build out Italian village trees. Jason Beals’ Monte San Giacomo Project (https://monte-san-giacomo.com/). Anthony Vanzino has been working with me indexing the Bompietro, Sicily records. I would love to see others with a passion to capture their Italian heritage get involved with similar indexing and research projects.
I can be reached at sassanochicago@gmail.com if you are interested in pursuing your family history.
