1. Domenico VELARDI (also spelled VILARDI or VILARDO) was born about 1845 in Calabria, Italy.
Domenico married Maria Antonia MANCUSO. Maria was probably also born in Calabria, Italy. Maria was the mother of Nicola, who was the "baby" of the family, but it is not known for certain if she was the mother of the older siblings (Domenico might have married more than once). Giuseppe, for example, was about 23 years older than Nicola -- old enough to be his father.
They had the following children:
2 M i Giuseppe VELARDI was born about 1865 in Jonadi, Catanzaro Province, Calabria, Italy. He was reportedly still alive in the 1930s in upstate New York. 3 M ii Raffaele VELARDI was born between 1869 and 1875 in Jonadi, Catanzaro Province, Calabria, Italy. Raffaele married Rosaria. 4 F iii Seraphina VELARDI was born in Jonadi, Catanzaro Province, Calabria, Italy. Seraphina married CURRA. + 5 M iv Nicola VELARDI was born on 22 Feb 1888 in Jonadi, Catanzaro Province, Calabria, Italy. He died on 1 May 1969.. Possibly other children.
GIUSEPPE and RAFFAELE - Joseph and Ralph
Most likely the first of Domenico Velardi's children to come to the United States was Giuseppe Velardi. He stated he was in America during the period 1892-1898, though no record of his first passage has yet been found. A somewhat later arrival is reported, however, in the records of Ellis Island. On May 21, 1901, a Giuseppe VILARDO from "Fonade" disembarked from the ship Bolivia out of Naples onto American soil. He was 36 years old, married, could read and write, and gave his occupation as "laborer". He had $10 in his pocket. His immediate destination was 113 Mulberry St., an address in "Little Italy" where Italian immigrants rendezvoused with family, friends or employers. His traveling companions were fellow jonadesi, Raffaele Tropeano and Francesco Bertuccio (possibly a cousin).
Giuseppe paid for the passages of his younger brothers Raffaele in 1902 and 1912 , and Nicola in 1906 and 1911. By 1906, he was working in Westchester County. According to Nicola's 1906 passenger record, Giuseppe lived at 37 Evlon Ave in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow). In 1911, his address was 18 Central Ave, White Plains. Giuseppe was still in America in December 1912, when Raffaele returned on the Stampalia to meet him at Box 67, White Plains. The same ship carried Marianna Bertuccio, whose destination was Box 67, 26 Brookfield St, White Plains, to meet her husband Nicola VILARDI. Evidently, the brothers stayed close together.
Nicola must have held Giuseppe in the highest esteem. He named first child after him, and his third son (Joseph) as well. Giuseppe was about 23 years his senior, and may have been a father figure to him It's possible Nicola would never have made it to America without his older brother's sponsorship.
Another brother, Raffaele Velardi, came to America seeking work as early as 1897/1898. The first certain record we have of him is Raffaele VILARDO, on May 5, 1902 on the ship Tarter Prince out of Naples. From "Jono" Italy, he was 27 years old, married, and could not read or write. He intended to meet his brother Giuseppe downtown at 107 Mulberry Street. He stayed about 2 years, returning to America on Dec 12, 1912. Again as Raffale VILARDO, he traveled on the Stampalia out of Naples.. His age his recorded as 43. He named his wife Rosaria in Italy as his next of kin. He was going to White Plains, Westchester County, to join his brother Giuseppe again. On the 1912 ship's manifest, Raffaele is described as 4'11" in height with chestnut hair..
We have no records of Giuseppe and Raffaele after their reunion with Nicola in 1912. Raffaele, like countless other Italian immigrant workers, probably returned to Italy and his wife Rosaria. Guiseppe, according to John Santora Sr., was living in a nursing home in upstate New York in the 1930s. Sara (Velardi) Santora recalled visiting him there when she was young. Though long gone now, Giuseppe and Raffale are still remembered in the American names Joseph and Ralph.
ABOUT JONADI
Jonadi (pronounced Yo-nah-di) was the birthplace of Nicola Velardi and his siblings and perhaps his parents as well. The official website, www.jonadi.it employs two different spellings: "Jonadi" for the town (comune) and "Ionadi" for the smaller village (frazione) of the same name within the town. The official coat of arms also spells it "Jonadi" but elsewhere the two forms seem to be used interchangeably. Sources disagree about its meaning as well.. Some say it means "field of violets" while others maintain it was named for an early landowner named Jona (Jonah). A scholarly contingent claims it derives from the Greek word Ionades, meaning Ionians, one of the three Hellenic tribes of ancient Greece. There's no question that Greeks were amongst the earliest foreign settlers of area that became Jonadi. The ancient Greek colonies of Hipponion and Medma stood nearby
Jonadi is situated between the toe and the arch of "the boot" in the Vibo Valentia province of Calabria, a mountainous region of rugged beauty (it was part of Catanzaro province until 1992). The town is about 3.4 sq. miles in size -- a tad smaller than the village of Valley Stream NY. Even today, it is sparsely populated -- in 2007, Jonadi contained an estimated 3,229 inhabitants (data from Istat). Besides Ionadi, the villages of the town of Jonadi are Nao, Vena, Barraconi and (according to Wikipedia at least) Case Sparse.
Like the rest of Calabria, which is sometimes derisively referred to as "The Deep South" of mainland Italy because of its geographic isolation, poverty and stubbornly Old World culture, Jonadi and its sisters towns are historically an impoverished agricultural economy, beset for centuries by piracy, malaria, violent earthquakes and mass-scale emigration to other lands. However, the new (1992) provincial government of Vibo Valentia has introduced modern manufacturing and is attracting more tourist dollars to Tyrrhenian Sea coastal destinations like Capo Vaticano and Tropea. It's still poor compared to the cosmopolitan areas of Italy, but apparently there's cause for optimism. Hopefully, any progress that is made will not be at the expense of the severe natural beauty of the terrain or the celebrated warmth of its people
Nicola Velardi in Italy, tending a grape trellis
THE JONADESIThe people of Jonadi are called jonadesi as well as calabrese. Ethnically, it's long been a melting pot as diverse as any in the Western hemisphere. Over the millennia Jonadi and the surrounding region, which was settled by indigenous Italic tribes in prehistoric times, became home to Greeks, Romans and Lombards (a Germanic tribe that overran most of Italy in the Dark Ages), a significant population of Jews, and other ethnic groups.. Unlike Sicily, Calabria didn't fall under the control of Arabs, but was ruled by the Christian Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, Turkey. In the 11th century, when the Norman crusader Roger de Hauteville (1031-1101) took control of Calabria as a launching point for his "liberation" of Sicily from the Saracens, Jonadi was designated the winter camp of his army. The seat of Roger's court was a mere 2 miles away in Mileto, where he lived until his death.. Conceivably, some of Roger's soldiers and court attendants also settled in the area, and intermarried with the local population. The Spanish, Austrians, French and even Napolean's brother laid claim to Calabria in the centuries afterwards. It wasn't until 1861 that the region joined a politically unified Italy and became truly Italian.
Also mingling in the jonadesi gene pool along with with the native Italic peoples, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Lombards, Franco-Germanic Normans, Spaniards, etc, were groups from southeastern Europe (e.g., Albanians) and possibly also Asia Minor (e.g., Turks and other Anatolian peoples). Surprisingly, the surname Velardi/Vilardi/Vilardo, although it sounds Latinate to our ears, may in fact be Germanic in origin, but that's a topic for a future article.
