O Big Little Story of Immigrants. The Mattera Family, From Ischia to S.F.

The measles was an often fatal disease for children in the 1800s but for our three year old grandfather Francesco and his little sister Anna it was a godsend.
One July evening in 1883, Domenico Mattera, a sea-going wine merchant returned to Ischia after a long selling trip in the Marseilles area. Anxious to see his wife and three small children he rushed from the port to his home in Casamicciola (where today lies the Hotel Ibsen) but there he found only his wife and infant son.

Raffaella, his wife, explained that the two older children had gotten sick with the measles and to avoid infecting the baby she had sent them off to Ischia Ponte in her mother's care. They were better now and they could go and pick them up the next day. Domenico couldn't wait that long. On impulse he decides to hitch his carriage and fetch them.

By the time he reaches Ponte it is dark; the children are sleeping and his strong-willed mother-in-law adamently refuses to let them out into the damp night air. Despite his protests to the contrary, he senses defeat and tells the grandmother, "Have them ready tomorrow morning." He returned home without the children.

Once again in his house in Casamicciola, Domenico sits down on their bed and starts to slip off his boot. At that very moment, all hell breaks loose in the town of Casamicciola, in one of the most violent earthquakes of Italian history. Mother, father and baby perish, buried under the rubble. In Ischia Ponte, a little boy and girl sleep soundly, thanks to a stubborn old lady.

Immediately, a battle for the custody of the children ensues. Younger and more well-off relatives want to adopt the two but in an impassioned plea the grandma promises that despite her age and limited financial resources no one could love and guide them better than she. The judge, convinced, awards them to her.

Despite the best intentions, her health begins to decline and by the time "Ciccio" is eight years old, he has to quit school - despite excellent marks- and work as a ship-boy on local sailing vessels. At age 12, he signs on as a cook on a German ship. After spending his youthful years at sea, Francesco or Turchillo ("little Turk"- due to his short stature and dark complexion) as he is nicknamed by his shipmates, decides to settle in Ischia Ponte and opens up a general store.

One day while strolling "dietro le chiazze", he notices a pretty young "signorina" standing on her balcony. Struck by her porcelain-like skin and natural rosy cheeks, he immediately finds out who her father is and asks him for her hand in marriage. Maria DiScala, like most women of her time, accepts the men's decision.

From the outset, their personality differences were obvious: Maria was religious, cheerful and enhusiastic about life's little pleasures while Francesco was an atheist (after reading the Bible all the way through, he gave it a thumbs down), sharp-tongued and frugal. Despite this, they achieve a certain - if sometimes stormy- balance in their everyday life together. Maria justifies her husband's gruffness by the lack of affection suffered during his childhood.
After several childless years, their firstborn Domenico arrived in 1910.

Unfortunately the business wasn't going well and Francesco attributes this to his atheism. He claims that because of this, the parish priest and local bigots boycott his shop. Whatever the reason, the lack of commercial success leads to the decision to emigrate to America, a country he had seen several times during his seafaring years. They settled in Brooklyn where Maria had her sister Felicia who had married a Buonocore.

"Ciccio" soon found out that New York was a jungle. Irish immigrants who had come to America a generation earlier, in the wake of the potato famine, felt threatened on the job market by the newly arrived Italian workers. In fact, Granpa had been beaten more than once by Irish thugs in the course of looking for jobs.

Two daughters, Raffaella and Mary, were born in New York but Francesco decides to leave this place he's never really liked and try his luck in San Francisco which he's heard is full of opportunity. Sure enough, the Far West is more welcoming and, for the first time in his life, Francesco becomes a fisherman. After a bit he buys a boat and when he calls for his family to join him, he learns that little Raffaella has died of diphtheria. His wife is already expecting another Raffaella (aka Lilliana, my mother) and she will be the first one in the family to be born in California, followed by Johnny, Matteo and Amelia.

Francesco never learned to swim, even though he passed a lifetime at sea. On the waves of the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean he would fish (often alone) and catch the succulent crabs native to that area providing a good living for his family.

In San Francisco, in sharp contrast to San Pedro, there are very few families of Ischian origin. The most numerous groups are Lucchesi and Sicilian. In fact, little Dominic often played baseball with a kid named Joe, son of Sicilian friends, the DiMaggio family. The Mattera kids made friends with them all, immigrants from the North to the South of the "boot", learning a good bit of the regional dialects while playing on the streets of North Beach. In the afternoon, "altitalia" lessons were offered at the school and most parents forced their children to go.

In summer, Francesco takes the family to Mendocino on California's north coast where the fishing is great and the beaches and woods make it feel like a bonafide vacation.

After years of hard work, Francesco buys a couple of houses and further "rounds out" his income by producing and selling his homemade red wine during the Prohibition years. He reaches a modest economic tranquillity and gives up fishing to start selling fishing supplies out of his basement. His most sought-after specialty is the handmade crab pots or traps. He teaches Dominic this craft who continues making them as a hobby for the rest of his life.

When our grandfather finally retired he continued tending his vegetable garden and reading both "L'Italo-Americano" and the "San Francisco Examiner" newspapers everyday.

Grandma Maria passed away in 1954 and Granpa in 1971 at the age of 90.
In the most vivid memory I have of him, he is sitting at the table after dinner with a "toscano" in one hand and a glass of his own wine in the other. He is recounting anecdotes of a life spent on two continents. The irony and the absurdity of the people and the situations cause him to laugh, so hard that tears come to his eyes. I wish he were still around to tell those stories. Today I could fully appreciate them in a way I couldn't then.

Of my grandmother (who died when I was four) I always remember the music, Neapolitan music - either the classics or the "modern" hits from the 50's. I don't know that I enjoyed them that much then but it must have seeped into my blood because everytime I hear those notes my soul stirs and I feel their beauty, a beauty that's a part of me.

Today all of Maria and Francesco's children are gone: Domenico, a beloved figure of North Beach, successful entrepreneur and tireless world traveller - he's left us his wife, our beautiful and charismatic Aunty Carmel; our monumental Aunty Mary, instinctive and tenacious businesswoman, founder of one of America's largest independent pizzeria chains; Uncle Johnny, a soft-hearted boxing champ; Lilly my mother, a talented artist, freethinker, animal lover and defender of underdogs in general; Matteo, WWII hero, fleeting and impenetrable, adventurous and generous; and finally, Aunt Amelia, an organizational genius, specializing in hospitals and homes, she was also a perfectionist of the "good life".

Never having had children of her own she was a mother to us all.
With the demise of 2nd Mattera generation of San Francisco, our attachment to the island of Ischia could easily have weakened. Instead the love for Italy instilled in us by our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, nurtured by their stories, their music, their disagreements, their trips to the Old Country and the fragrance of garlic, tomatoes and basilico is indelible.

Last summer, 30 of us Matteras of the 3rd, 4th and 5th generations met in Ischia for the sheer pleasure of pleasure of being all together in the land of our ancestors. Here we celebrated a wedding, an anniversary, two birthdays and Italy's World Cup victory.
All this, thanks to the little story of two immigrants from Ischia.

Shirley Meals Lubrano

10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410