Pizzone, 1865

Pizzone, photo courtesy of Alfonso Notardonato

Maria Cristina Di Benedetto, my great-grandmother and the mother of Emiddio, was born April 4, 1865, in Pizzone, a tenth-century village surrounded by the Mainarde and Meta mountains in Molise, the small, mountainous region of Italy about one-hundred miles southeast of Rome.

Her birth was registered in the Stato Civile office in Pizzone, which recorded that she was presented by her father, Pasquale, and that her paternal grandmother, Francesca Di Vito, was the witness. The Sindaco, the mayor at the time, then signed the document. More than ten years before, from 1854 to 1856, Cristina’s father had been Sindaco. During his first year as mayor, his son Antonio was born. On the Atto di Nascita, the civil Act of Birth, Pasquale is listed as un proprietario, a land owner. However, by the time Cristina was born, some misfortune had reduced his circumstances. He was now un contadino, a farmer who rented land, a peasant. The unification of Italy, which began in 1861, resulted in difficult economic times in southern Italy. This might have been the cause of Pasquale’s reversal. Many southern Italians lost their land during this time.

And there were other troubles. The child Antonio would not survive. Pasquale and his wife Felicita Di Iorio (Italian women did not take the surname of their husbands) lost their first three children. Infant mortality was high in this part of Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century. It was common for women of this time to bear children every other year or so for twenty years. To lose three children was not unusual. The unfortunate infant would often be laid out in his or her christening gown. The tiny coffin would be carried on a draped board or tabletop during the procession to the cemetery, the pallbearers at each corner. Sometimes, the coffin was carried just by the mother, balanced on her head.

The campanile of San Nicola

Perhaps, because of this frequency of death, it was customary that infants were baptized quickly. Cristina was baptized the day after her birth in the Church of San Nicola. Built in the year 1318, San Nicola had been La Madre Chiesa for the Pizzonesi for more than five centuries. The pages of the baptismal record of San Nicola for 1865 still had the seal of Terra di Lavoro, the old province name from before unification when Pizzone was a part of the Regno delle Due Sicilie, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Terra di Lavoro, Land of Work, is an apt description of this rugged country in which Cristina would grow up. But for now, being held before Archbishop Santucci of San Nicola in the arms of her father, her mother at his side, and her mother’s younger sister Angelamaria with her husband Giovanni Di Vito there as Cristina’s padrini, her godparents, that was all still ahead of her.

Going Home

At 9:00 o’clock on the morning of June 14, 1902, after an Atlantic crossing of six and a half days, my grandfather Emiddio Tobia Di Julio arrived in New York harbor. Eighteen years old and with ten dollars and change in his pocket and a ticket for the train, he was on his way to Chicago. His ship had sailed from Southampton, but probably Emiddio embarked at Cherbourg, since he had been living in France and Cherbourg was a common port of call for west-bound liners. “Going home,” he had said in English to the ship’s chief officer who interviewed him, and this was duly recorded on the ship’s manifest. Upon arrival in New York, an Ellis Island official added the notation “99 E. Indiana St.” as Emiddio’s destination in Chicago, an address in an area of the city nicknamed “Little Sicily,” or sometimes “Little Hell.”


The SS Philadelphia prior to World War I.

The ship that had carried Emiddio to the New World was younger than he. Launched in 1888 as the SS City of Paris four years after Emiddio’s birth in 1884, it would serve as a liner for first the Inman and then the American Lines. In 1898 it was armed and commissioned as the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Yale, and it was under this name that it served in Cuban waters during the Spanish-American War. The following year, the ship was disarmed and returned to commercial service as the SS Philadelphia. It was as the Philadelphia during the week of February 22, 1902, that the ship played a historic role in satisfying the skeptics that the wireless telegraph of the young inventor Guglielmo Marconi was indeed capable of transmitting and receiving messages across the Atlantic.

The SS Philadelphia with Marconi's radio masts.

Verified by Captain A.R. Mills of the Philadelphia and Chief Officer C. Marsden, several messages were received and transmitted between the ship and Marconi’s station at Poldhu, Cornwall, England, including one from the morning of February 25th which was endorsed by Officer Marsden: “Received on SS Philadelphia lat 45.15 N. Long 38.05 W from Poldhu (Cornwall) over a distance of 1,551.5 (one thousand five hundred and fifty-one and a half) statue miles. C. Marsden, Chief Officer.”

The confirmation by Officer Marsden that the transmission of February 25, 1902, had been received.

The New York Times covered Marconi’s arrival in New York. Referring to the young Marconi, a native of Bologna, as “William,” they reported on his achievement on March 2nd with the headlines, “MARCONI’S TRIUMPH IN MID-OCEAN,” “2,000 Miles from Cornwall He Receives a Signal,” and “Full Messages, Plain, and Attested by the Philadelphia’s Chief Officers, Received Over 1,500 Miles from Poldhu Station.”

Four months later, after Marconi had startled the crew of the Philadelphia and the world, Officer Marsden would interview Emiddio. Marsden dutifully asked the questions on the form: He asked whether Emiddio had ever been in prison or an almshouse or supported by charity. He asked if he were a polygamist. He evaluated his physical and mental health. Satisfied, Marsden then signed the affidavit at the bottom of page “G” of the ship’s manifest:

I, C. Marsden, Chief Officer of the “Philadelphia” from Southampton, do solemnly, sincerely, and truly swear that I have made a personal examination of each and all of the passengers, 30 in number, named on the foregoing List or Manifest, and that I have caused the Surgeon of said vessel, sailing therewith, or the Surgeon employed by the Owners thereof, to make a physical examination of each of said passengers, and that from my personal inspection and the report of said Surgeon, I believe that no one of said passengers is an idiot or insane person, or a pauper, or likely to become a public charge, or suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease, or a person who has been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, or a polygamist, or under a contract or agreement, express or implied, to perform labor in the United States, except such as are expressly excepted under the law. And that also, according to the best of my knowledge and belief, the information in said list or manifest, concerning each of said passengers named thereon, is correct and true.

Detail from the ship manifest of the affidavit signed by Officer Marsden.

La Fontaine Bartholdi in Lyon

This was Emiddio’s second west-bound Atlantic crossing. The Statue of Liberty welcomed him to L’America a second time. The skin of Bartholdi's great colossus was a dull copper the last time Emiddio had seen it, but now a green patina had begun to spread that would cover it completely in a few years. Perhaps, after living in France, Emiddio knew its French name: La Liberté éclairant le monde, Liberty Enlightening the World. Perhaps, he had even visited Lyon, not a great distance from his village and there had been family there, and seen another of Bartholdi’s sculptures, the magnificent fountain in the Place des Terreaux – Marianne, the allegorical figure of France, riding a chariot pulled by four barely controlled horses, the four great rivers of France: the Seine, the Loire, the Rhône, and the Garonne.

Perhaps, upon entering New York harbor, Emiddio thought of France, which he had just left behind, of Provence, where he had been living. Years later, he would publish a book of poems in Avignon, poems which celebrate Provence. “The Serenade of Our Village Near Avignon” (“La sérénade de notre village près d’Avignon”) begins

O brillant ciel étoilé de notre village !
Animé par le beau clair de la lune.
La sérénade d’amour est de notre propre langage,
Le chant est pour la rouge, la blonde ou brune.

“Oh, shining starry sky of our village, charged by the beautiful light of the moon. The serenade of love is our own language. The song is for the red-haired, the blonde or brunette . . .” Emiddio was sixty-eight when this poem was published. But this was the poem of a young man. Or of an old man recounting the emotion of his youth. It was this young man who would pass through Ellis Island and board the train for Chicago. No doubt, on his long journey across the American heartland, he would think of the family he left behind, the redheads, the blondes, the brunettes, but also he would consider this new America, which he would now face alone.