The Genealogy of Capps

There are always opportunities for people to find out about their family histories. It is very surprising that more people do not. Everyone has bits of one story and pieces of another. My family is much the same. In fact, if not for the efforts and knowledge of my mother and my Aunt Katherine, I would most likely not have the full story today. If people were to delve into their personal family histories, more often than not, they will find out many interesting facts and tidbits they never knew. The case of my genealogy is no different. Some people outside the family may even find it somewhat intriguing.

I am one hundred percent, full-blooded Italian. There are absolutely no imperfections or cross-ethnicity in my blood. I am very proud of this, for not many people can say the same for themselves anymore. Three quarters of my ancestry can be traced back to Sicily, the island off the southern coast of Italy. The remaining twenty five percent hails from Calabria, the southern-most region of the Italian peninsula where my maternal grandfather’s family comes from. I will explore in greater detail the reasons why my family immigrated to the United States later on, but first they need to be introduced.

Illuminata “Nellie” Trubia was born in Colizana, Sicily in 1894. She was one of my paternal great grandmothers. Illuminata came to the U.S. when she was only four months old, and therefore had no memories of the Old Country. She was an only child, and her mother died when she was very young. Her father was a shoemaker who invested in land along the Bronx River. Unfortunately, he was talked into selling the land. One can only imagine how different our lives would have been had we still owned that lucrative stretch of property. At the age of fifteen, “Nellie” married Anthony Barbera who was twenty years her senior. He was born in Villa Franca, Provincia de Georgente, Sicily in 1874. While they were married, Anthony and Nellie had four children: Lilly, Vincent, my grandmother Rose, and Frank, whom they supported with Nellie working as a seamstress and Anthony as an ironworker. They remained married for eighteen years up until Anthony’s death due to heart disease in 1927. Nellie never remarried, stating that she didn’t want somebody else to raise her children.

My other paternal great grandmother was Mary Cucchiara. Not much information was available for her family, but she did marry Diego Capellino, a candy storeowner. When he came to the U.S., there were obvious problems at Ellis Island, which is why my last name is Cappeline and not Capellino. It is a shame to admit to the ignorant, and stereotypical, view of Sicilians, but there were mob ties in the family. Mary had two brothers, Petey and Mike, who were involved in the mafia spanning both Sicily and New York. Many years after coming to New York, Petey was shot to death in the street and Mike was murdered with a pickax. I find it quite odd how different distant relatives can be, just fifty years apart from one another. Regardless, Mary and Diego had three children: Francis, Anna, and my grandfather Daniel, who for some unknown reason was only known to everyone on earth as Jim. Mary and Diego divorced when my grandfather was twelve, which explains the lack of information.

The important offspring of the Barberas and Cappelines as it pertains to how I got here are Rose Barbera and Daniel Cappeline. Rose was born in New York on August 5, 1914, just four days after the outbreak of the First World War in Europe. Daniel was also born in New York on August 18, 1912. He was actually a twin, but his sister died shortly after birth. Neither of my grandparents graduated high school, but they were able to forge a decent life for their family nonetheless. They were married on January 25, 1942. Their first son, my Uncle Danny, was born three years later on May 14, 1945. Four years later my father, Gary, was born in the Bronx on July 22, 1949. My grandmother Rose worked the same job for twenty-five years, as a salesperson at Alexander’s Department Store on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Daniel was also in sales. He worked his way up the ranks in the sale of fur coats, eventually becoming a regional manager overseeing sales between Maine and Delaware. Later on in life he started his own home improvements business, which flourished for five years until his partner Erwin Kravitz disappeared with all the money, never to be seen or heard from again. After the failed venture, Daniel worked a series of sales jobs until he retired. He and Rose lived long lives. They were married for fifty-nine years until Daniel passed away in August of last year. Rose passed away shortly after, just nine days after this paper was written.

My mother’s side of the family is a very eclectic and interesting group of people. Antonio Vento, one of my maternal great grandfathers, came from a family that was surprisingly educated for Sicilians of their time. His father was an architect, as was one of his brothers. Another brother was a high-ranking officer in the Italian army, and his sister was a multi-lingual teacher. Antonio himself, born on March 24, 1886, was first clarinetist in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Antonio’s parents both died unusual deaths: his mother died when a hospital collapsed on top of her during a Sicilian earthquake. As if that weren’t enough, his architect father had built a church in Sicily, and upon attempting to place the Holy Crucifix atop his finished edifice, fell off the roof and died. Antonio survived his parents and went on to marry Margaret Cicero, who was born on December 7, 1899. Margaret, her mother, and thirteen siblings made and sold olive oil from the olive trees which grew in their yard while her father was establishing himself in America. The rest of the family eventually joined him when Margaret was fourteen. Once in America, Antonio and Margaret married and had two children: my nana Rose, born August 11, 1921, and her younger sister Francis. They were able to provide a comfortable life for Rose and Francis between Antonio’s music career and Margaret’s work as a seamstress.

The other half of my mother’s side of the family was not nearly as well off. Gitano Pennini and his wife Lucrezia Graziadio only had elementary school educations. Gitano was a stonemason and Lucrezia did not work. Instead, she took care of their nine children. Their names in descending order by age were: Angelo, Tessie, Frank, Vivian, Fay, Millie, Lucy, Pat, and my poppy Salvatore. These children were born between 1898 and January 26, 1917, Sal’s birthday. Not much is known about this family, however, since Gitano died when Sal was just seventeen. Lucrezia was a changed woman after this. She was so distraught by the death of her husband that she commit suicide not very long afterwards by jumping off the roof of their building. The siblings took care of one another after that. With such a large age disparity between oldest and youngest siblings, Angelo and Tessie became more like father and mother to Sal.

Rose Vento married Salvatore Pennini on June 30, 1946. The result of their marriage yielded two children: Salvatore Jr. and my mother Linda, born in the Bronx December 13, 1952. Rose was able to finish high school, and Sal completed tenth grade. Despite this fact, he was still able to find work as an electronics technician for an alarm system company. Rose worked as seamstress, and like my other grandmother, worked at Alexander’s Department Store, this time on 59th Street. In his earlier days, Sal was quite a dancer as well as a minor league baseball player. This ended when he broke his hip while working in his brother Frank’s liquor store. It was in that same liquor store that he was held up at gunpoint on three separate occasions. Sal and Rose were married for forty-eight years when Rose passed away in 1994. Sal followed less than two years later in 1996.

My parents, Gary Cappeline and Linda Pennini, were married on September 9, 1972. My father and both uncles, Danny and Sal, became the first in the family to receive college degrees. My father also received his Masters degree in chemical engineering in 1978 from the City College of New York. My mother, who was accepted into many of the top colleges in the country after high school, was unable to attend due to financial restraints. My parents’ generation was also the first to move away from extended family. Before, the entire family had lived together in the Bronx and Manhattan. My parents, as well as my Uncle Danny’s family, moved to New Jersey. Uncle Sal and his family moved north to the Poughkeepsie area of New York State. My parents have had two children. I was born on May 1, 1981. My younger brother, Jared, was born on January 21, 1988.

Unlike in past generations, my family has gotten increasingly smaller. Each of my parents only had one sibling. I only have one brother. My Uncle Danny had two kids, Jessica and Daniel. And my Uncle Sal has one daughter, Lauren. We are certainly not the family we used to be, like the Cicero’s who had fourteen kids, or Gitano Pennini’s family of nine. It is not size that makes the family; it is the bond shared between loved ones. In that respect, we are more of a family than some triple the size.

In studying the genealogy of a family, it is easy to neglect the fact that these were real people, alive to witness and take part in migrations, wars, and depressions. Salvatore Pennini was in the Army Air Force during World War II on Tinian Island in the South Pacific loading bombs onto planes. His nephew Joe was a Marine in World War II. Vincent Barbera served in North Africa at the same time. Both my uncles were in Vietnam; Danny saw major action as first lieutenant from 1968 – 1970. All four of my grandparents witnessed the hardships of the Great Depression as young adults. In addition, many of these people mentioned throughout this genealogy lived through cultural changes in migrating to a new country. Of course there is no way to document exactly why people came to the United States. For my father’s side of the family who was poor and lower class, coming to America must have offered attractive immigration opportunities and a chance at a new and better life. The same must have gone for the Cicero’s on my mother’s side. What about the educated and talented Ventos? Why would they leave a country that had presumably done so well for them? There is no way to tell for sure, but like so many others, America no doubt seemed like some magical land where anyone could become John D. Rockefeller. It is easy for people not to look at things in this way. I never had until I wrote this. Now I am able to see my ancestors as people, rather than just as historical figures that I had heard about in passing stories. It is true what they say, if one were to simply take the time to find out about their family histories, they will take away a lifetime’s worth of information to be valued throughout the generations.