Felice Michael Cresta
Felice Cresta was born in Italy about 1864, the son of Luigi Cresta and Maria Roberte, as his Boston marriage record of 1898 names them. A family account gives his name as Felice Michael Cresta and places his birth in the province of Avellino, in Campania, inland from Naples. It names his town as probably Castelfranci, the place of origin his older son Angelo later gave when he arrived in Boston.
The same account says Felice was a barber, and that he and his first wife, Maria Giuseppa Colucci, came to Boston about 1887. It says they left some older children in Italy, and that one son, Angelo Michael, born about 1882 and also a barber, followed them to Boston.
In Boston their son Luigi was born on 24 January 1890. The city's birth register names his parents as Felice Cresta and Maria. Luigi grew up as Louis Michael Cresta. Three more children followed: Nicolino, later Nicholas George, born in 1893; Maria; and Teresa, born in 1895. Felice was assessed for tax in Boston in 1897, 1898 and 1899.
Maria died in Boston on 27 September 1897. On 27 November 1898 Felice married again, in Boston, to Tresina Langone, who was 20. The marriage record gives his parents as Luigi Cresta and Maria Roberte. The marriage did not last a year. Felice died of tuberculosis on 2 July 1899 at Tewksbury, in the state hospital there, which took in the poor and the sick who had nowhere else to go. He was about 35. The family account says he was buried in an unmarked grave in the hospital's cemetery, and that his four youngest children were placed in an orphanage and then in foster homes. Louis was nine.
One photograph of him is known. It is a cabinet card from the Moloney studio at 22 Hanover Street, Boston, in the North End where the city's Italians lived. It shows a young man with thick dark hair and a full moustache, in a tweed jacket and a patterned tie.
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Cite: Heirology, "Felice Michael Cresta (1864-1899)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/felice-michael-cresta-1864-1899-5af27a.