Family Village - Part 1

Between about 1895 and 1905 people from southern Italy emigrated to the US in large numbers to escape generations of severe poverty. It was common for the male head of household or another male family member to make the trip first, work for a period and go back and forth once or twice before or while bringing other family members over.

Among the immigrants during that period were members of my paternal grandmother’s family from the Calabria Region (tip of the toe) and my paternal grandfather’s family from Sicily. Rubbas had lived almost exclusively in the small Sicilian village of Gesso, located on top of a mountain about six miles northwest of Messina, for more than a dozen generations. Gesso means "chalk" and for years a chalk quarry apparently was the local industry.

Emigration to the US for the promise of a better life is a common story. The unusual aspect of the emigration from Gesso to the US around the turn of the 20th century is that a very high percentage settled in the town of Hammonton in southern New Jersey. The influx eventually transformed the town from a mainly English and German community to the one with the largest percentage of its population being of Italian heritage.

From incomplete genealogical records, it appears that my great-grandfather, Placido Rubba (1860-1932), first came to the US in the early 1890s, returning to Gesso at least once before his wife, Nunziata Cappuccio (1861-1938), came over in 1896 with five of their eventual seven children. Their fifth child, my grandfather Antonino Rubba (1895-1956), apparently came over as an infant in 1896. He returned to Gesso at some point - probably as a 16 year old to accompany other family members (e.g., aunt, uncle, cousin) across the Atlantic - returning to the US permanently in 1913. Three years later he married Caterina Ciliberti (1891-1974) and purchased 20 acres in Hammonton for $2,000 with his brother-in-law John Scaffidi. Placido became a naturalize citizen in 1905, which by law made his children US citizens.

Knowing about my family’s connection to Gesso, Sue and I started a 2015 tour of northern Italy (see prior Blog posts: 2/8/18 - Street Art; 3/8/18 - A Different Slant; 3/21/18 - Venice- City of Canals; 3/22/18 - Venice – City of Alleyways and Bridges; 4/1/18 - An Easter Post; 4/28/18 - Evolving Tower; 6/30/18 - Orvieto; 7/4/18 - A Moving Experience; 8/15/18 - Cygnus Swan;) by heading south from Rome.

Getting to Gesso involved a six-hour train ride from Rome to Messina, including the train being carried across the Strait of Messina on a ship (see Blog entry 7/24/18 - Train on a Boat), and a 45 minute ride on a down-sized bus (top photo) up a mountain on a narrow switched-back road. According to a sign as you enter Gesso the population is 250, though we saw very few people during the day we were there and those were mainly of retirement age. The village is centered around a small piazza in front of the Church of St. Antonio Abate, a post office, a tobacco shop that sold tobacco and a few snack items, well-kept but small rowhouses on centuries old narrow streets and alleys, and a cemetery on the hillside.

The view to the northwest from Gesso is of a deep blue Tyrrhenian Sea and to the south a distant (60 miles) snowcapped Mt. Etna. The most famous former inhabitant was Giuseppe Garibaldi who led the revolution that unified Italy in the 1860s. His former house is marked with a plaque (see the gray stucco house with the red shutter doors in the second photo above).