Carmine De Risi

b. 1844

Born 1844

Children include Alfonso

Carmine De Risi lived at Monteforte Irpino, a hill town in the province of Avellino in Campania, a few miles west of the city of Avellino and about twenty five miles east of Naples. In the 1880s the province still went by its old name, Principato Ultra. He was born about 1844: he gave his age as thirty nine in December 1883 and forty in February 1885.

He was married to Vittoria Marinella, and they lived in the house at number 98 on strada Alvanella. In December 1883 the town clerk wrote Carmine down as an industriante, a man who lived by small trade, and Vittoria as a cucitrice, a seamstress. Fourteen months later he was a bettoliere, the keeper of a bettola, the plain wine shop and tavern of a southern Italian town.

On the morning of 14 December 1883 Vittoria gave birth to a son. Carmine went to the town hall the same day and registered him before the mayor, Tommaso Manfredi, who acted as the registrar. The boy was named Alfonso. He lived three months. He died in the house on strada Alvanella at five past six in the evening on 1 March 1884, and two neighbours, Fortunato and Raffaele Criscitiello, both farm workers, reported the death the next morning.

Less than a year later Vittoria had another son. He was born at half past five in the morning on 13 February 1885, and on the 14th Carmine registered him before the same mayor, with the same two witnesses: Vincenzo Valentino, thirty six, a servant of the town hall, and Baldassare Gesualdo, fifty four, a landowner. They named this boy Alfonso too, after the brother who had died. The act was read aloud and signed by everyone except Carmine, who told the mayor he could not write.

That second Alfonso grew up and left. In October 1900, at sixteen, he sailed from Naples on the Hesperia and landed at Ellis Island on the 26th. The passenger list gives his home as Monteforte and names the man he was going to, his brother Vincenzo, another of Carmine's sons who had already made the crossing. Alfonso settled in Hudson County, New Jersey, married there about 1906, and became a tailor and then a manufacturer of ladies' shirts in Jersey City. He died in 1974. A sister, Francesca, married into the Fusco family, a name common in Monteforte, and died at Jersey City in 1966.

There was a second Carmine De Risi in Monteforte at the same time, a farm worker about fifteen years younger, married to Maria Carmina Pascale. The registers tell the two men apart by their wives.

Children

Alfonso De Risi 1885-1974

Sources

Archivio di Stato di Avellino, Stato civile italiano, Monteforte Irpino, Nati 1885, act 19; Antenati, ark:/12657/an_ua553184, image 10.

Archivio di Stato di Avellino, Stato civile italiano, Monteforte Irpino, Morti 1884, act 19; Antenati, ark:/12657/an_ua553103, image 7.

Archivio di Stato di Avellino, Stato civile italiano, Monteforte Irpino, Nati 1883, act 165; Antenati, ark:/12657/an_ua553182, image 67.

New York, Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1925, Hesperia, 26 October 1900, page 123; NARA T715, roll 156; FamilySearch ark 1:1:JX85-LNT.

Monteforte Irpino civil registers, Archivio di Stato di Avellino: births 1883, act 165 (Antenati ark:/12657/an_ua553182); deaths 1884, act 19 (an_ua553103); births 1885, act 19 (an_ua553184, image 10). New York passenger list, Hesperia, 26 October 1900 (FamilySearch ark 1:1:JX85-LNT).

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Cite: Heirology, "Carmine De Risi (b. 1844)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/carmine-de-risi-1844-f90c0c.