52 Ancestors Week 17: War

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17

The theme for Week 17 is "War." One would be hard pressed to find someone whose family history was not touched by war. This week, consider someone in your family tree who was affected by war, whether as a soldier or a civilian

What's it good for? If you ask me absolutely nothing.

    War. War never changes. A soldier comes home from war forever changed and from that point on nothing is ever quite the same. It's not hyperbole to say that war changes a person. In fact, both of my grandfathers never really talked about their experiences during World War II. Sure they'd say where they were stationed, what they did and everything. However, there was never anything more than that. They never glorified their experiences and in my grandfather Robert's case I never saw the World War II era photographs he took until his wake in 2017. He never wanted anyone to see those photographs.

    I think we can all agree that war changes a person in many ways. However, war can sometimes change the destiny of many lives in an instant. The events of a war can actually lead many people to become United States citizens. That was very much the case for my great-grandfather, Vincenzo Ferraiolo.

Bit grainy, huh? Kinda like a
newsreel.

    Vincenzo was drafted into the service on April 30th, 1919 when he was just twenty-three years old and living on Grove Street in Haverhill. At the time he was working as a street laborer and was considered an alien by the United States government. On his draft card you would find that he still considered himself to be a citizen of Italy.

    I'm not sure if he put that on the record because he intended to go back to Italy some day. He eventually did go back in 1920 and married Maria Tedesco in January of 1921.

    Upon his return, he very likely saw a very different Italy than the one he remembered. Italy in the early 1900s was not the land of wine and vespas it is today--Especially in the south where he came from! Due to policies that favored the north, poverty was common in the south. Italy was neutral at the start of the first world war and eventually joined the Triple Entente aka the Allies side in 1915.

    During the course of the war, 460,000 Italians lost their lives and nearly a million soldiers were wounded in action. In the end victory seemed just as bitter as defeat.

    You can clearly see why there was a massive immigration to America during this time. So many families had to deal with a loss of a loved one during the war and that's compounded by the abject poverty throughout the southern provinces. Yeah. It was not a happy time. Why do you think they called it "La Miseria"? Things were pretty grim in the boot and Uncle Sam was more than happy to enlist the aid of any Italians out there including my great-grandfather.

    Once Vincenzo returned to Italy, he likely saw how the war effected his hometown of San Pietro a Maida. I'm not one hundred percent sure how many soldiers came from San Pietro. However, you can bet that some members of my family died in the war. One of my friends on WikiTree once linked me to a site where you could look up the casualties and I found a few Ferraiolos and other people from San Pietro who sadly lost their lives in the conflict.

    People were likely demoralized at the time and eventually people would get even MORE demoralized once relatives packed up their belongings and left for parts unknown. Truthfully, I wonder if the families encouraged other family members to leave and make a better life for themselves as long as they send some of that money back home. They surely weren't going to get it from the Italian government at that time!

    Seeing his town reeling from the war likely changed Vincenzo forever. It couldn't have been easy knowing some of the people he grew up with were now gone. The shock alone had to have been devestating! Thankfully, San Pietro pressed on and there are memorials dedicated to those men who were lost in combat.

I think I'm going to go back to that site at some point and write the names of the fallen from San Pietro down and create profiles for them on WikiTree. 

    I think I can see why Vincenzo stuck around San Pietro for so long after he got married. Not only did he want to start a family with Maria. He likely wanted to make sure his parents Marco Ferraiolo and Caterina Coppola were okay despite all the craziness going on. In fact, he probably served as a middleman relaying information from America to Italy since his aunt Concetta and uncle Paolo were still living in Haverhill. Speaking of Paolo, he had two World War I draft cards for some strange reason. I never figured out why that happened. That'll have to be a topic for another blog.

Vincenzo and Maria

    Anyway, Vincenzo went back to America some time after his son Marco was born in 1925 and by then things were more or less the same in San Pietro. People were still leaving Italy in droves at that point despite the US government insitutioning caps on immigration. It was a tough time for everyone and Vincenzo ended up going back to Haverhill without his wife and children.

    Not long afterward, he applied for American citizenship knowing that he had a substationally better life in America than in Italy. That doesn't mean he swore off the friends and family there! Make no mistake! Vincenzo still traveled back and forth quite extensively throughout his life. 

    When he returned to America in the 1920s, he made the decision to work and help get his immediate family out of Italy and by 1929 he succeded. In November of 1929, Maria and the children arrived in New York and eventually they made their way to Haverhill. And the rest as they say is history....FAMILY history that is. =D

    War definitely changes a person regardless of how involved in the actual fighting someone is. You can be on the front line or on the National Guard and still feel the impact of the war. Many Italians likely returned to their homes in the towns they grew up or heard of the destruction. The news likely strengthened their resolve to find a better life for themselves in their families. If anything I'd wager that the first world war expediated Vincenzo's need to become an American citizen. When he was drafted, he was an alien. When he returned to America, he decided to finally become an American citizen because he wanted a better life for his family. That makes a lot of sense.

    I have a feeling that immigrants all across the board have a similar story. Lives were forever changed by the first world war and by the time the second one rolled around things REALLY changed for Italy and not for the better. Italy had its share of conflicts and I think seeing San Pietro in the state it was in after the war really drove home the need to change his family's lives. Things were bad and he wanted to do his part to make a better tomorrow for everyone.

See ya next time!

P.S. Here's the site which lists the Italian casualties during World War I: https://www.cadutigrandeguerra.it/CercaNome.aspx