Carolina (Di Matteo) Parisi

Carolina Di Matteo was born in 1896 in the town of Roccaromano in Italy’s Caserta Province, Campania Region, a thriving agricultural area to the north of Naples. She was the daughter of Luigi Di Matteo and Rose (Di Georgio) Di Matteo and had at least three older sisters: Maria Josephine was born in 1883, Giovannina (“Jennie”) was born in 1884, and Domenica Marie (“Mary”) was born in 1886.

The region of southern Italy was rampant with extreme poverty and the lack of opportunity made things worse. The first mass migration of Italians began in the late 1870’s, when many uneducated rural peasants from southern Italy (initially from around the city of Naples and then from the island of Sicily) began immigrating to the United States to seek improved economic conditions. Carolina’s sisters Maria, Jennie, and Mary all made their way to western Pennsylvania between 1903 and 1907. Carolina never followed in their footsteps and remained behind in Italy.

She was later married to Giacomo Parisi, who was also born in Roccaromano in 1896, and they had two daughters named Josephine and Maria and a son named Sabatino (born in October 1920). I am not sure when the girls were born. Josephine later settled in Milan, Maria remained in Roccaromano, and Sabatino eventually settled in Schenectady, New York. Carolina and her husband Giacomo spent their whole lives in Roccaromano. He died in 1968, while she passed away in 1975 at the age of about seventy-nine.

Their only son Sabatino was married in Roccaromano on January 25, 1948, to the former Mary Casillo, the daughter of Terenziano and Anna (Melillo) Casillo. Sabatino, who served with the Italian Army during World War II, and his wife had a son named Giacomo (“Jack”) born in May 1949. Sometime after this they made their way to New York where they later had another son named Joseph in October 1967. Sabatino was employed as a crew chief with the city sewer department. He passed away of pancreatic cancer at the age of seventy on April 15, 1991, and was interred in the Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery in Schenectady. Some of his descendants still reside in the Schenectady area.