Santa Maria Incoronata, Chicago
The two boys who survived.
Both baptism entries survive in the parish register, giving exact birth dates that match the family tree precisely.
Michele Libretti, Francesco Cavallone, and his brother Vincenzo — known in America as James — settled Federal Street together, possibly as early as 1893. One of their lines went quiet for nearly a century before a Facebook message brought it back.
Michele Libretti (1857–1920), Francesco Antonio Michele Cavallone (1875–1953), and his brother Vincenzo Antonio Cavallone (1877–1911) settled on Federal Street together, possibly around 1893 — the year the tree records Michele's own immigration. All three filed their naturalization papers at the same time, in October 1900. Francesco had married Michele's daughter Rosa Libretti back in Sassano the year before, on 22 Jan 1899 — a marriage documented elsewhere on this site as a first-cousin-once-removed match, and the same Francesco whose long-sought birth record is described on the About page.
Vincenzo — James — is the one whose story took the longest to finish telling.
"They all filed their naturalization papers at the same time, October 1900."
Vincenzo — James, as he went by in Chicago — married twice, and buried a wife and two infant sons before his own death at 35.
Both baptism entries survive in the parish register, giving exact birth dates that match the family tree precisely.
James was killed on 19 Oct 1911, struck by a C&EI Railroad passenger train on the elevated tracks opposite 48th Place — a few blocks from the family's home on Armour Avenue. He was 35. The informant on his death certificate is his brother, Frank Cavallone, of 4725 Armour Ave — Francesco, still going by his Americanized name, reporting his younger brother's death. James was buried at Mount Olivet on 22 Oct 1911.
John was nine months old. Joseph was three.
"Shock & injuries received by being struck by C&EI RR passenger train on elevated tracks opposite 48th Place."
After James's death, Filomena took their two surviving sons back to Sassano. Both boys grew up there through their early teens. In January 1924, Filomena's brother Giuseppe — going by Joseph in the passport paperwork, then age 16 — applied for a U.S. passport in Naples to bring himself and his younger brother Giovanni (John) back to the United States, to resume the citizenship they'd been born into on Federal Street. The application lists their reference in America: their uncle, Salvatore Larosa, of 234 Bright Street, Jersey City — Filomena's brother, who took the boys in.
The passport paperwork itself is a small archive in its own right: it cites their birth certificates from the Parrocchia di S. Maria Incoronata at 212 Alexander St, Chicago, and a joint photograph of both brothers submitted for identification, alongside a State Department letter asking a Mr. Bannerman to verify Giuseppe's American birth and confirm the photograph against those references before the passport could be issued.
"Applicant parents were residing at the time of birth at Federal St. Chicago Ill."
After 1924, the trail on John's branch of the family went cold for a couple of years. Then came a connection with John's own granddaughter, Dana, on Facebook. Dana and her sisters were trying to find information on their great-grandfather Vincenzo — James — at the very same time this project was trying to find his descendants. Neither side knew the other was looking.
Dana generously shared a photograph from the family's own collection: her grandfather John and his bride, Susan, on their wedding day — the same John who was nine months old when his father was killed on the elevated tracks, and thirteen when he crossed the Atlantic to come home to the country he'd been born in.
"Dana and her sisters were trying to find info on her great-grandfather Vincenzo, and I was trying to find Vincenzo's descendants."
