1920 Ambruso Wedding Photograph

 

 

 

 

Isn’t this a great old photo?  Of course I’m a bit biased since it is the wedding photograph of my grandparents: Michael Ambruso (b. 1889, son of Rocco) and Vincenza “Jennie” Lammardo.  They were married in Mt. Virgin Church in Garfield, NJ on 15 Feb 1920.  The maid of honor was Michael’s sister, Felicia (front row, far left).  The best man was Felicia’s fiancé, Lorenzo Mancini (front row, far right).  They were married at Mt. Virgin Church two months later. 

I am almost certain that there is another Ambruso directly behind the bride.   It looks exactly like Michael Ambruso (b. 1891) son of Giuseppe, from Philadelphia.  He was the groom’s first cousin.  They grew up together as young boys in Salandra.  He traveled all the way to Garfield, NJ to be in his cousin’s wedding party.  I wonder how many other Ambruso’s from Philadelphia came with him for the wedding celebration.   Viva la familia!

If you have any old Ambruso wedding photos where you can identify Ambruso relatives, please send them to me via email (jmcast@rcn.com).  I'll be sure to post them.

 

 

Bocce!

The photo above shows Eugenio “John” Ambruso with his bocce playing friends.  The photo was sent in by his granddaughter Maryanne Jordan Warrick.  It was taken in 1960 and shows the bocce players at the recreation center at 16^th and Jackson Streets in South Philadelphia.  John was a bocce champ and had many trophies to prove it. 

My grandfather Michael Ambruso often told of playing bocce all Sunday afternoon in the side yard at his brother-in-law, Patsy Bonelli’s house in Garfield.  Probably drinking homemade wine from Patsy’s basement. 

Bocce was certainly a popular pastime with Italian-Americans in both South Philly and Garfield.  Can you share any memories of your Ambruso relatives playing bocce?  Were they good enough to win trophies like John Ambruso?

Featured Family Photo #3

This photo was taken on the front steps of Uncle Nick's house in Astoria, Queens in the late 1950's.  It shows, from left to right, my grandfather, Michael Anthony Ambruso, Angie Iula, Esther Iula, their Aunt Josephine, and Justine Ambruso Graziadei.  It is almost impossible to show old photos of my family from this period without at least one person being named Esther. 

Send your old family photos and I will post them so we can all share in the memories.

Italians in America and the Great War

Unidentified Italian soldiers in Austria during World War I

 

The following is the opening paragraph of a research paper published in Italian Americana in 1978 by Fiorello B. Ventresco.  The title of the paper is: Loyalty and Descent: Italian Reservists in America during World War I:

“In the summer of 1915, an angry mob of Italians in Philadelphia stormed the hall at Eighth and Christian Streets where a meeting was taking place and attacked several of the speakers.  The speakers were attempting to convince reservists not to return to Italy, where they would fight in the Great War. Such conflicts became common in various parts of America as the war continued.  The clash of opinions among Italians in the United States emerges as one of the most interesting and complex chapters in American history.” 

The entire 29 page article can be read at www.jstor.org .  The author goes into great detail about the reasons for and reactions to Italy’s reach to America to get its young men to come back home and help fight in the war it just entered.  The enormous exodus of young Italian men to the United States and other countries during the last decade of the 19^th century and the first decade of the 20^th century drastically depleted the number of able-bodied young men available to serve in the Italian Army.  The Italian government never thought that these young men were permanently lost.  They considered them Italian citizens working in a foreign country and reservists in the Italian Army.  They assumed that they could get about 100,000 young men to return to Italy from the United States.  At the outbreak of the war, the U.S. government was neutral and formally announced that no foreign born residents could be forced to join foreign armies as long as they remained in the United States.   The records show that by December 1915, about 41% of the Italian men in the United States returned to Italy to fight in the war.  A remarkably high percentage.

How did this situation affect our Ambruso ancestors?  Consider the fact that the angry mob assembled at Eighth and Christian was just two blocks down the street from where Frank Ambruso and his sons and their families were living at the time.  Were they part of the protest? 

 Frank Ambruso was 70 years old in 1915, and already a naturalized American citizen since 1900. His sons, Michael and Leonardo were also naturalized citizens and fully absorbed into the American culture.  There is no indication that they served in the U.S. military, however they did fill out the required WW1 draft registration cards in 1918. 

Also in Philadelphia in 1915, Frank’s brother Joseph had two sons old enough to serve in the Italian Army.  Michael was 24 and Eugenio was 23.  Michael was married with two children and lived just four blocks from the scene of the 1915 demonstration.  He submitted his application for naturalization before that, in January 1914 and was granted United States citizenship in May 1918.  Obviously, he had no intention of joining the Italian Army.  The same must have been true of his brother Eugenio who was granted U.S. Citizenship in 1923. 

My own grandfather, Michael, was in Garfield, NJ in 1915 when Italy entered the war.  He had already served in the Italian Army before he came to America.  In 1918, near the end of the war, enlisted in the U.S. Army and gained U.S. citizenship.  His brother-in-law, Lawrence Mancini married to Felicia Ambruso, enlisted with him.  Unlike many of their fellow Italian immigrants, my grandfather and his brother-in-law seemed to have cut ties with the old country and embrace the new one. 

We do know what one Ambruso ancestor did answer the call.  “Hartford Mike”, Michele Ambruso (b. 1890) was in the USA in 1915 when he decided to return to Italy to serve in his country by joining the Italian Army.  It also helped that his wife was still in Italy.  He was not alone.  When he eventually returned to the United States in 1923, the passenger manifest of the ship he was on shows scores of young men who must have done the same thing.  The record shows that they were in America until 1915 and then returned to Italy.  So it seems that Hartford Mike was the only Ambruso family member that answered the call from Italy and joined the Italian Army during the Great War…La Grande Guerra.



Remembering: Michael Anthony Ambruso (1889-1976), Part 2 – USA



the "Mayor of Wallington"

When my grandfather Michael got to Garfield, NJ in 1913, he started working as a laborer in the woolen mills like so many other immigrants. The loud noises and harsh smells of an industrial textile plant must have been a shocking change from riding a horse in the fresh air of the Italian countryside, the life he was used to.  He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1918, near the end of World War 1, and was honorably discharged six months later.  His military career was short, but enough to gain him U.S. Citizenship. 

 

In 1920 he married Jennie Lammard, my grandmother.  Jennie was Italian-American with the emphasis on the “American”.  She was born in Brooklyn, not Italy.  She refused to let Italian be spoken in the house.  As a result, Michael spoke very little Italian except for some slang and funny expressions.  He taught me a few phrases and how to count in Italian.  I now wish I would have learned more Italian from him.  My grandfather was an emotional man.  Jennie died in 1956, but I remember seeing him shed tears for his Jennie every year, on the date of their anniversary and the date of her death.

 

Life was not always easy for Michael.  He and Jennie had a nice house in Garfield, but they were forced to sell it during the Great Depression.  They moved to a rental apartment in Wallington.  After his wife died, my mother cooked dinner for my grandfather every night, so he spent a lot of time at our house.   I’m happy to say that I got to know him pretty well.

From the 1940’s until he retired, Michael worked at Midwest Pipe Company.  He mentioned that he worked at the “bending table”, but it did not mean anything to me at the time.  By total coincidence, I got a summer job at the same plant just after I graduated from high school, after my grandfather had already retired.  I mostly did helper jobs like painting, cleaning or loading trucks, but there was a two week stretch when an employee was on vacation that they asked me to work on the bending table.  The bending table was used to bend large diameter pipes to a certain angle.  The pipe was filled with sand and heated in a furnace until it was red hot.  The pipe was bent using blocks and tackle and heavy ropes, but there was a lot of crashing sledge hammers and clanging metal next to a red hot metal pipe.  This was before OSHA.  One slip and a person could be badly burned.  It was hot, dangerous, dirty, backbreaking labor.  It was the hardest two weeks of work I ever experienced in my life.  I was glad when it was over.  I am amazed when I think that my grandfather Michael worked at that same horrible bending table every day for over 15 years!  He was small in stature but very strong.  I remember him swinging a sledge hammer to help break up the old sidewalk in front of our house.   He was about 70 years old at the time.

Of course, he took off his suit jacket before he swung that sledge hammer.  He was always dressed as a gentleman, in a suit, a nice tie and a hat.   People called him the "Mayor of Wallington”.  He would smile and say hello to everyone.  Almost every day, he would walk over the Market Street Bridge into Passaic.  He would stop and talk to all the Jewish merchants in the shops along the way.  Often he would come to dinner at our house with a new hat or watch and brag about the bargain he got. 

He would start his day with a large healthy breakfast.  It would always include an egg, some cereal and “prumma juice”.  It would also include a shot of sweet vermouth.  Probably because of the good breakfast  and the daily 2 to 3 mile walk, Michael remained very healthy until he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1976, at the age of 86. 

My grandfather was physically strong, hardworking and honest.  He was dedicated to his wife and family.  He knew when to laugh and when to cry.  He was always willing to help a person in need.  I have inherited many of his attributes.  I am proud to be Michael Ambruso’s grandson.

Remembering: Michael Anthony Ambruso (1889-1976), Part 1 – Italy

Michele Antonio Ambruso was the oldest son of Rocco Vincenzo Ambruso.  He was born in Salandra on 4 June 1889.  He was my grandfather.  His father owned horses, so Michele learned to ride at an early age.  It has been said that Rocco was the postmaster in Salandra and that Michele helped him deliver the mail on horseback to the outlying rural areas. 

Michele’s sisters often told me stories of his mischievous adventures as a young man.  One story described an incident where the parish priest was sitting in the pew of an empty church talking with an attractive woman of the village.  They were apparently sitting very close together.  When the people started coming in to church for the service, they quickly moved apart, but, to their embarrassment, the woman’s dress and the priest’s cassock were connected by a safety pin which Michele had attached by crawling under the pew.  There is also the legend that Michele had bought seven inexpensive rings and was engaged to seven girls at once.  Family legends: probably not exactly factual…but not totally fabricated either.  Details get changed as they are passed from one generation to the next, but there is always some grain of truth in any of these legends.

 

Because he was an experienced horseman, he served his two years of military service (1910 to 1912) with the Italian Cavalry and was discharged with the rank of Corporal Major. 

In 1909, his older sister Maria followed her husband, Pasquale Bonelli, to Garfield, New Jersey in the United States.  Michele and two of his sisters decided to follow Maria to Garfield.  The three siblings arrived at Ellis Island two days before Christmas, 1913.  They didn't speak a word of English.  Their instructions were to go by train to Passaic.  I can visualize them holding a piece of paper with the word “Passaic” written on it, and carefully comparing it to the name of each station stop.  That is probably why they mistakenly, got off at Passaic Park, one stop before Passaic.  They had to take a taxi cab to Garfield.  This must have been quite an experience for them since there were probably no taxi cabs in southern Italy in 1913.  They eventually got to Harrison Avenue in Garfield.  The cab driver held up three fingers, indicating a three dollar fare.  My grandfather said: “Si, one…two…three” pointing to himself and his two sisters.