Dear Readers,
November Notes with an Italian connection. November comes from the Latin word novem, “nine” because this had been the ninth month of the early Roman Calendar.
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November begins with All Saints Day. Since this feast, which has its beginnings in the Christian churches of the fifth and sixth centuries, celebrates all those saints, canonized or not, who enjoy the happiness of the kingdom of heaven, let us celebrate all relatives and friends who once enriched our lives and of whom it was said “era una santa” or “santo.“
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All Souls Day is on November 2nd. The early Christians, like their pagan ancestors, remembered their dead on certain days of the year. The present date for our yearly commemoration of the dead was established in the tenth century.
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Veteran’s Day, November 11, reminds me that our United States Marine Corps was established on Nov 10, 1775. The Continental Congress established a marine corps as a special armed amphibious fighting group; the next year, they made their first landing in the Bahamas. Although disbanded after the Revolution, the Marine Corps was re-created as a military service in 1798. Marines have been among the first to fight in almost every major American conflict.
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First Lady Jill Jacobs Biden‘s Italian roots are in the village of Gesso, in the province of Messina, Sicily. Gaetano and Concetta Giacoppa arrived at Ellis Island in 1900: their great-granddaughter, Dr. Jill Tracy Jacobs would become the 46th First Lady of the United States. The family settled in Hammonton, New Jersey, reuniting with paesani from Gesso. Gaetano changed his surname to the anglicized Jacobs, as did so many Italians of the time in an attempt to integrate better. Dr. Biden’s grandfather eventually worked as a delivery man in New Jersey. Her father Donald later headed a Savings and Loan institution in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. The family then moved to Willow Grove, Pennsylvania where she and her four sisters spent their childhood. The First Lady recalled that, as a child, her father would drive the family to her grandparents’ home in New Jersey every Sunday.
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Name changes were often beneficial in boxing. Many Italian American champion prizefighters used Irish names from 1900 to 1955: Kid Murphy (Peter Fascella), Bushy Graham (Angelo Geraci), Young Corbett III (Raffaele Giordanno), Hugo Kelly (Ugo Micheli), Johnny Wilson (Giovanni Panico), and George Nichols (Phillip Nicolosi). Angelo Dundee, the Italian American legendary boxing trainer said, “In the early 1900s it wasn’t advantageous to have an Italian name.” Even Frank Sinatra’s father Anthony Martin Sinatra, who had arrived as a child from Agrigento, Sicily, first started out as an apprentice in a cobbler’s shop. He was known in his neighborhood, where everyone had a nickname, as “Tony the Shoemaker.” He took up prizefighting and, because it was better in those days to have an Irish name than an Italian one (the Irish politicians controlled Hoboken), he adopted his manager’s name and became known as Marty O’Brien.
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Prohibition Laws would soon be repealed thanks to the November 8, 1932 vote. Franklin Delano Roosevelt defeated sitting US president Herbert Hoover in the presidential elections and became our 32nd president. For Italian Americans, many of whom drank, made their own wine, or grew their own grapes, the end of Prohibition could not come soon enough. In force in the US since 1920, the end came in December 1933.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution forbade the manufacture, sale, or exchange of intoxicating liquors, and was ratified by 46 States out of 48. In 1933, the Prohibition or Volstead Act, which defined the term alcoholic beverage for purpose of the amendment, was finally finito!
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California vintners in the four decades leading up to Prohibition were abundantly Italian-Americans. The Mondavis, Gallos, Pedroncellis and Sebastianis did not just appear on the scene, pre-Volstead Act. Some came for the gold but stayed for the green fertile fields. The Seghesios, Simis, Sebastianis and Foppianos all started in the late 1800s and some are still operating today. Giuseppe Magliavacca’s Napa winery was by then a thriving business. Secondo Guasti established the Italian Vineyard Company, and Andrea Sbarbaro founded the Italian Swiss Colony. Countless other wineries appeared with Italian names on the door. By 1920, the Italian influence had already permeated the California wine scene. From 1919 to 1933 (Prohibition to Repeal), Italian-Americans in California kept their vines in the ground, waiting for the day when their adopted country would come to its senses. They were rewarded by Repeal but, more importantly, the families that had struggled to maintain their vineyards gave America a jump start when it tried to emerge from the dark days of Prohibition. Without the vineyards and the fully equipped – though idle – wineries, America would have had to rebuild the industry from scratch.
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