One of the ironies I’ve encountered in researching my family’s genealogy has been that I have had more success compiling factual information about ancestors dating back to the 17th century than I have for my grandparents’ and parents’ generation. After years of searching with little success uncovering any significant information regarding my family’s recent history, I happened upon clues that revealed a cache of facts about my ancestors in the 17th and 18th centuries. My theory about this dearth of information concerning more contemporary generations is that once immigrants arrived here, they wanted to blend in, to be as unobtrusive as possible in order not to draw undue attention to themselves. This tactic was apparently popular with my Sicilian ancestors. The Irish and German branches of the family tree on the other hand remain virtually untraceable until they emigrated. The Coadys arrived in America just prior to the Civil War, probably in the mid 1850’s; the Freehs arrived from Baden, Germany a few decades earlier; and, my paternal grandfather, Georg Johann Braun ventured from Blumendorf, Germany in 1903 and left even fewer clues relating to the origins of his own family.
While it is a generalization to conclude that the behavior of all immigrants followed a pattern of anonymity once they arrived in America, there is considerable evidence to support that claim as it apples to my ancestors, particularly those who came from Sicily. There are a number of possible scenarios which may explain this phenomenon. The essential quality of the peasant farmer’s life in Sicily was geared toward overcoming adversity so that he could eke out a living for his family. Land ownership was a marker which signified one was in a different and better social class. I don’t believe my grandfather enjoyed any such luxury although he and his family owned the house in which they lived when he left Sicily in 1906. Work was often drudgery and difficult to find if it existed at all. Men had to travel out into the country in search of work while their families remained behind and did what they could until the men returned. This migratory practice figured prominently in my grandfather’s life when he left Sicily and came to this country. A letter I found written in Italian from one of his friends while the family was living in Philadelphia indicated that many Italians including my grandfather–and probably his sons when they were old enough–commuted to South Jersey to work as a day laborers and field hands on one of the local farms. The processes involved in this migrant workforce was not unlike that which plays out in immigrant communities today, only the ethnicity of the laborers has changed. Another letter I have describes an incident in which my grandfather had been directed to pay a fee to a certain man, probably the American equivalent of the padrone in Sicily, for the work that he and his sons had been given. As a child, I do not recall my grandfather speaking English so it is all the more plausible that his ability to secure work depended on either employers who spoke Italian–and Sicilian dialects were not familiar to all Italians which made communication among fellow Italians difficult as well–or relied upon the skills of an interlocutor who could speak for him to an employer, for a fee, of course.
Another factor may have figured prominently in the relative secrecy which appears to have shrouded some of the family subsequent to their arrival in this country. I recall anecdotes from different sources that hinted that my grandfather wanted to distance himself from the mafia which was apparently active in his native Sicily particularly in Belmonte Mezzagno–his birthplace–and San Giuseppe Jato–my grandmother’s birthplace. My grandfather was also leery of similar influences lurking in the teeming streets of south Philadelphia during the first quarter of the 20th century. It is an eery coincidence that known mafiosi from Belmonte Mezzagno and San Giuseppe Jato share a few ancestral surnames: Spera, Martorana, for example. I can add two personal accounts from my childhood that contribute to the mafia mistique. Although my father isn’t Italian he seemed to be the designated driver who chauffeured my grandmother and other family members–as children we were brought along despite our protestations to do something more interesting–from South Jersey into south Philadelphia to visit family and relatives ranging from my grandmother’s mother to her brothers and sisters and their children. It happened on one of those trips to visit an aunt who lived in one of the multitude of row houses bunched together like a line of old men while young men gathered in noisy pockets to shoot craps on a nearby street corner. My cousin Tommy–I think everybody was a cousin back then, even if they weren’t–with his slick hair do, black and shiny, sitting regally behind the wheel of his car motions for us to come over and have a look. The interior of that automobile was fine; however, everything about that car would have dissolved with age had my cousin not exposed the contents of the special compartment he had built into the console of his car. As we leaned in through the rolled down windows for a closer look, Tommy opened that compartment with a flourish and revealed a cache of weapons, one of which I believe to this day was a Thompson submachine gun. One Sunday morning as she was reading the Philadelphia Bulletin my mother called out in surprise that one of her uncles was on the cover of the Parade section. When I asked her what she meant she pointed out a man in the photograph standing on a street corner in Philadelphia. The caption read that the photograph was taken as part of an investigation of organized crime activity and the man on the corner was arrested as a numbers runner. A fertile imagination might account for the speculative nature of these incidents had it not been for all the times we’d stop by a bootlegging operation in a large brick factory building in south Philadelphia to buy Dago Red in gallon jugs before we’d slip back to Jersey over the Ben Franklin Bridge were much too gritty only to be the rambling dreams that a tired kid has nestled in the backseat of an old sedan between his grandmom and his siblings.
