Home | Site Map | Search | Iacovelli Family History - Photographs and Documents - Giuseppantonio Iacovelli and Giuseppe Iacovelli in Camden, New Jersey

Giuseppe Iacovelli (1895-1929) of Gambatesa and Giuseppe Iacovelli (1891-1940) of Sant'Elia a Pianisi

Giuseppe Iacovelli (left) of Gambatesa arrived in America in 1912, at Ellis Island. Giuseppe Iacovelli (right) was from Sant'Elia a Pianisi. [Provincial map showing Sant'Elia (CB) and Gambatesa]

Giuseppantonio Iacovelli of Gambatesa and Giuseppe Iacovelli of Sant'Elia a Pianisi, 43 KB


About Giuseppe Iacovelli (1891-1940) of Sant'Elia a Pianisi

From his son, "Cousin" John Iacovelli (6 April 1999)

Marriage to Grace Fanelli

Giuseppe Iacovelli was married to Grazia FANELLI (1899-1996) of Riccia (CB). They are buried in Calvary Cemetery, Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Family Connection to Nunziata and Pasqualina DiRenzo

Domenico IACOVELLI -- who was the husband of Zi' Nigol' and the second witness to Giovanni Valente's Petition for Naturalization (1922) -- was the brother of Giovanni IACOVELLI of Sant'Elia. Giovanni was the father of the Giuseppe Iacovelli in the photograph.

Giovanni and Domenico Iacovelli were the only sons in their family. (Cousin John Iacovelli, his parents' first and only child, was named after his father's father, following the custom in Italy.)

Both Giuseppe Iacovelli of Sant'Elia a Pianisi and Giovanni Valente's wife Nunziata DiRenzo of Gambatesa, called Domenico Iacovelli zio ("uncle"). There is said to have been a "blood relationship" there, but no one remembers what it was. The one who would have known what the relationship was was Nunziata DiRenzo (1897-1983).

Maria Vittoria d'ALESSANDRO's Nickname

Cousin John Iacovelli's story about Maria Vittoria d'Alessandro (1874-1955), Nunziata DiRenzo's mother. People used to call her retacipa (something pronounced like this) because as a little orphan girl in Gambatesa she used to gather firewood twigs or sticks for people, for example when people were going to bake bread. The name meant (something like) "one who picks up sticks".

The Boarding House at 210 Mickle Street

Zi' Nigol' (Zia Nicoletta) ran the boarding house at 210 Mickle Street, Camden, where Giovanni Valente and his future wife Nunziata and her father Giuseppe DiRenzo lived when they first came to America. Nunziata DiRenzo used to cook the spaghetti for the boarders. The boarders slept in shifts: when one man got up to go to work, another took his bed to go to sleep.

The Ship Passenger Arrival Manifest for Giuseppe DiRenzo (Philadelphia, 21 July 1913) states that Giuseppe was going to join his "brother Domenico Iacovelli, 210 Mickel Street, Camden, New Jersey".
 

Giuseppantonio Iacovelli and Giovanni Valente

Giuseppe Iacovelli of Gambatesa had red hair. And his wife, Pasqualina DiRenzo, wanted a child with red hair, but she got all blonde children instead. Pasqualina herself was also fair -- indeed, of the four sisters, only Nunziata was dark. (About forty percent of southern Italians are fair.)

Giuseppe Iacovelli was the best man at Giovanni Valente's wedding (12 September 1914), and they opened an Italian-bread bakery on Stevens Street in Camden, New Jersey, together. Giovanni lost everything, "but he did learn how to make bread," Nunziata said, which was what he did for the rest of his life, always working for other bakers, however.

Giuseppe Iacovelli died on 16 September 1929 in Manhattan, New York City, when a ditch he was examining collapsed on him. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with his wife Pasqualina.

*

Photograph Source: the photographs on this page were lent to me by Giuseppantonio Iacovelli's daughter Filomena in December 1995; they had belonged to her mother Pasqualina DiRenzo (1902-1981).


John Iacovelli of Camden, New Jersey, during WW2, 36 KB

John Iacovelli of Camden, New Jersey
1924 - 2003


The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/iacovelli/giuseppi.html
Last revised: 23 September 2003 : 2003-09-23
Last revised: 15 March 2007 : 2007-03-15 by Robert [Wesley] Angelo.

Back to top of page

Home | Site Map | Site Search | Iacovelli Family History - More Photographs and Documents