Introduction
In 1936, my great-great-grandfather Emmanuele de Bonis, shot the town sheriff in the village of Miglionico. And so, in 1936, my great-great-grandfather Emmanuele de Bonis, along with his son (my great-grandfather), Michelangelo de Bonis (who was only 12 years old at the time, and will hereout be referred to as the anglicized ‘Michael’), left Italy on a ship to America.
According to Ravenstein’s laws of migration, the de Bonis family’s motivations for leaving Italy, although unorthodox, would be categorized as push forces. Although the Italian countryside at this time was still quite the wild-west, the legal repercussion for shooting the town sheriff was likely the death penalty; Emmanuele was left with a choice: hang, or escape to somewhere where the actions would be forgotten.
Yet, looking back at my ancestor’s decision, I can only believe that other forces were at work, too. Why would Emmanuele cross the entire Atlantic, when foreign land masses circumlocated him on any and every side of the Mediterranian? I can only assume that something drew him to America: maybe a siphon stream had been created by mass Italian migration; maybe friends or fellow paesani had left Italy before him; or maybe the allure of opportunity had been kindled, and this crime was just the spark that lit the flame. Regardless, the first of the de Bonis family had left Italy, and we never looked back.
From my understanding, until this point the de Bonis family had resided in Southern Italy since sometime during (or before) the Roman Empire, and, despite profound language evolutions, the family name had retained its original form. My surname, DeBonis, is the anglicized form of the Latin cognomen ‘de Bonis’ (etym: “de”: “of”; “bonis”: “good“); this translation likely occurred when Emmanuele and Michael passed through Ellis Island, but, as Carnevale notes, this (along with other anglicization) was a common occurrence (85). 1 When they left Italy, neither of them had any formal education in the Italian language, and so they spoke only an Italian dialect–a relative of a vulgar latin. 2
Miglionico is a small village in the province of Matera, Italy (in the Basilicata region). It is situated smack-dab in the middle of the countryside, between Bari and Calibri; in other words, it’s just about where the heel meets the toe of the boot.
Before Emmanuele had shot the town sheriff and fled to America, he and his wife, Isabella Cancelliere de Bonis (my great-great grandmother), had four children: Michael, Carmela, Angela, and Pietroantonio. 3 In the decade before the boys left to America, Carmela, Angela, and Pietroantonio were afflicted by disease, and they all passed away at a young age, 4 leaving only Michael. When Emanuele and Michael left Italy, they left Isabella (my great-great grandmother), as well as infant Carmela [the second] to live in Miglionico until strong roots had been founded in America.
It was likely that Emmannuelle had some inclination as to where they were headed far before they ever stepped foot on a boat. Ravenstein claimed migration often takes place in “well-defined streams,” and Daniels extrapolates that “migration often follows more precise patterns, often from a particular region, city, or village in the sending country to specific regions, cities, or even specific city blocks in the receiving nation” (19). It was not coincidence that Emmannuelle and Michael ended up in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood on Manhattan’s lower west side that was dominated by southern-Italian immigrants.
In fact, it could be seen that, for immigrants like my grandfathers, migrating to an area where others from the same village resided was actually a vitality. When they left Italy, neither of them had any formal education in the Italian language, and they didn’t know a lick of English; they spoke only an Italian dialect–a distant relative of vulgar latin. The linguistic unification of modern-day Italy had only been declared in 1877—just 50 years earlier—and still, in 1931, a mere 15% of Italians had likely received enough education to acquire fluency over the Italian language (Carnevale 25-26). Moreover, there were profound differences between the dialects of different regions—sometimes even between villages. 5 Some regional dialects could even be as distinct as two Romance languages (Carnevale 32). This combination of factors denotes that, during this time period, being an immigrant of Italy was not inherently synonymous with being able to communicate with other Italian immigrants. Thus, upon arriving in Italy, Emmanuele and Michael could likely only communicate with Southern-Italian immigrants from similar geographical regions. Language and communication play an essential role of starting a life in a new place, because it is required to find vitality such as work, housing, and schooling. It was in Greenwich village that they found these fellow southern-Italians, and it was in Greenwich village that they found the resources to begin their new life.
Greenwich village
When they arrived in Greenwich village they moved into a cold-water flat on Carmine St. Emanuele found work for a paper product company. He spent all day carrying a giant metal hook that he used to pull palettes of paper and cardboard around the docks. He was “a very strong man, with fists like clubs” (DeBonis). Michael, on the other hand, began his grade school education.
After they were well settled in America, Emmanuele and Michael called for Isabella, who was still in Italy. Isabella was pregnant when she sailed to New York, and, soon after arriving, she gave birth to a son, who they named Pietroantonio de Bonis (anglicized: Peter-Anthony DeBonis), after the first who had passed away in Italy. They would go on to name their final daughter Angela, after the daughter who had died in Italy.
To many, the idea that the children were named after their preceding (and deceased) siblings may seem strange. However, the de Bonis family had maintained a relatively strict nomenclature for generations. 6 The rule-of-thumb for Italian naming practices was as follows: the first son was named after the paternal grandfather; in the case of Emanuele and Isabella, this was Michael. The second son was named after the maternal grandfather; hence, Pietro Antonio. The first daughter was named after her paternal grandmother–hence, Carmela. And the second daughter was named after her maternal grandmother–hence, Angela. (Any children beyond this would often be named after the father/mother or close relatives.) But, in the case that any child(ren) died, any subsequent child(ren) would still be named according to the aforementioned rules/regulations, respective of which name was lost with the death of the child (Italian Genealogy). Thus, because Carmela, Pietro Antonio, and Angela had died in Italy, their names were regranted to the new Carmela, Pietro Antonio, and Angela.
Michael grew up speaking Italian dialect at-home and among the community and English in-school. A 12 year old boy when arriving in America, he was still at the threshold of the age where it was not too late for him to acquire English fluently. Thus, he was the first bilingual of the DeBonis family. After he graduated High School he went off to the military. Then, when he returned from his deployment, he learned that a woman (Leona Sparks) he had hooked-up with had his baby “out of wedlock” (DeBonis). She had named the baby Michael Wayne Sparks, for she did not know whether Michael would return. Michael immediately brought Leona and the baby to the courthouse, where he married Leona, then renamed the baby (the first born son) Emmanuel Michael-Wayne DeBonis, assuring to follow the aforementioned nomenclature. 7
Michael, Leona, and baby Emmanuel moved back to New York City, where they moved into the apartment next-door to Emmanuele and Isabella. Michael found work at a trucking company, then eventually bought a hero-restaurant/deli that he worked with his brother Peter-Anthony. After he owned the deli, he brought over all of his mother’s (Isabella’s) relatives from Italy (the Cancellieres), sponsoring them and assuring them jobs and a place to live.
Traditions Carried for Generations in the United States
The Italian nomenclature is only one of many traditions that the DeBonis family brought from Italy; although the DeBonis family was now in America, many of their Latin/Roman/Italian customs and traditions were retained and practiced. The most prevalent of these retentions were food practices, the largest of these being the Sunday-afternoon dinner:
Every Sunday, after everyone had returned home from church, the family would gather at one member’s house or, more likely during this time in this place, apartment, to feast on a large Italian meal. The meal would be served around 1-2 p.m. The centerpiece of this meal was generally “la salsa,” or, its Italian-American counterpart, “the gravy.” The salsa is a tomato-based sauce, much like marinara, that is then simmered in a large pot for hours (or sometimes days) with an array of meat: lamb shanks, spare ribs, braggiol 8, pancetta, meatballs, sausage, and so on. 9 The sauce can then be cooked/served with/on a variety of dishes–most of which are pastas–like gavatiiel 10, manigott 11, (11) spaghetti, ravioli, eggplant parmesan, chicken parmesan, and so on. The sauce would also be served with other foods like bread, riggot 12, spinach with garlic, dried and flash-fried Italian long hot peppers, salad, and table wine. This practice, above all others, is still to this day practiced by most of the surviving family in America, from the second all the way to the third/fourth surviving generations.
Despite this retention, many of the other remnants of the south-Italian immigration followed the three-generation shift, a classic paradigm where many of the habits, customs, and traditions are all but lost by the third-generation of immigrants. The three-generation shift is generally applied to language, but it can also be seen with aspects like religious practices, holiday celebrations, and family values.
In the end, it can not be deduced whether the DeBonis family immigration experience was ‘typical’ or ‘atypical,’ because, as is displayed here, even one family’s immigration can have so many layers. Emmanuele de Bonis was pushed out of Italy for very unorthodox reasons, yet his immigration path could have likely been predicted and pinned down to a single Manhattan neighborhood due to the stream of south-Italian immigration before him. Regardless, it is clear that many family values and cultural practices have been retained, even down to me, the 4th generation (from Michaelangelo). I by no means speak fluent dialect, but I grew up learning a lot of words and phrases, specifically related to food and drink. I learned many recipes from my father, grandfather, and great aunts (the second Carmela and Angela), and we still cook Sunday night gravy. As Ravenstein points out, every immigrant brought “with him a deep rooted tradition, a system of culture and tastes and habits–a point of view which is as ancient as his national experience and which has been engendered in him by his race and his environment” (qtd. in Daniels 102), and the roots of the DeBonis family still stretch back to the South-Italian countryside.
Notes
(1) From now on the name will be spelled as the anglicized ‘DeBonis’
(2) I wish to note that ‘dialect’ generally denotes a deviation from the ‘standard’ language, whereas in the case of Italian, the ‘Italian dialects’ are actually the thousands of deviations from vulgar Latin that were developed over two millennia and are still retained in families and villages to this day.
(3) Born: 26 March 1922; 10 August 1924; 02 August 1926; and 06 December 1920, respectively.
(4) Died: 18 June 1927; 15 April 1927; and 06 August 1922; respectively.
(5) There is an old Italian joke/adage that says an Italian could walk just a few blocks from their front porch, knock on a door, and find a family that speaks a completely unintelligible dialect. This statement is obviously hyperbolic, but it rightfully portrays the vast differences between these languages.As Carnevale explains, a good rule of thumb is: “the greater the geographical distance between different dialect speakers, the more likely they are to have trouble communicating, although there can be sharp differences in pronunciation even between adjacent towns, especially in the mountainous regions” (Carnevale 32). Had an uneducated Tuscan encountered an uneducated Calabrese during this time, they likely would have struggled to communicate.
(6) How these naming traditions may have derived from Latin/Roman naming conventions is beyond the scope of this paper; however, some parallels could be drawn between the nomen, cognomen, and familia used in the Late Roman Empire and the Italian nomenclature presented above.
(7) Emmanuel Michael-Wayne DeBonis: born 23 April 1945
(8) Dialect of bracciole
(9) This is likely where the name ‘gravy’ originates
(10) Dialect of cavatelli
(11) Dialect of manicoti
(12) Dialect of ricotta
References
Carnevale, N. C. (2009). A new language, a new world: Italian immigrants in the United States, 1890–1945. University of Illinois Press.
Daniels, R. (1991). Overseas migration from Europe. oming to America: A Historyof Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. HarperPerrenial.
DeBonis, Emmanuel. (2019). Personal Communication.
Italian Genealogy. “Italian Naming Traditions and their Ramifications.” italiangenealogy.com, https://www.italiangenealogy.com/articles/italian-culture-traditions/italian-naming-traditions-and-their-ramifications