There is one common thread that weaves through any immigration story, and that is solitude, and it does not matter whether you are the one who departed, or if you are the one that stayed behind, there is always that void space alongside you.
This week’s post is about two of my third great-grandparents, Giovanni Cupolillo and Maria Rosaria Orlando, and their sons who left Italy for Brazil. My Cupolillo branch is well explored on a previous post (in Portuguese), and it is a family who has long roots tied to the city of Paola in Calabria. They had seven sons, one of whom died as a child. All others emigrated and established themselves in Rio de Janeiro; one of them may have returned to Italy, I could not track him back as we still do not have the 1910-1920 civil registry records publicly released yet. Even if Giambattista came back, Giovanni and Maria Rosaria went from having a full home to a much quieter one with five sons overseas, and they probably never met the majority of their grandchildren.
They certainly met my great-grandmother Norina because she was born in Paola, moving as an infant with her mother to Brazil to be reunited with her father. The family returned to Italy after the birth of the second child, my second great-uncle Alfredo, in Rio in 1905; the youngest child, Waldemira – registered as Baldimira – was born in 1907 in Paola. According to Uncle Alfredo’s memories, they lived in Italy for eight years, so the return to Brazil would have been around 1913. I do not know exactly when their grandfather Giovanni died, but I can place the date between 1910 and 1914, so not too long before or after Nicola and the family returned to Brazil, leaving Maria Rosaria alone, or possibly with Giambattista.
Maria Rosaria was not born in the same place as her husband, though her hometown was a quick jump away down the train tracks. She hailed from San Lucido, a village that today has just over 6,000 inhabitants and faces the expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Researching further back on Maria Rosaria’s line I discovered her ancestors were from Paola, and given the lack of post-1910 records I cannot tell how long she lived, where she spent her remaining years, but I relate to her as someone who lives far from a big part of the family. Even harder for her, with no fast or reliable means of communication, I wonder how she kept in touch with the sons in Brazil. Unfortunately, I don’t have any documents, no pictures, no letters exchanged between them.
Life in Calabria at that time was difficult, the circumstances of my family members who emigrated were hard, the urge to find a better life somewhere was imperative. Giovanni and Maria Rosaria saw them pack and leave, one by one, knowing that their return would be unlikely. In 1902, eldest son Fedele died in Brazil, and a few weeks later Nicola went to work with their bothers in Rio as they had a burgeoning newspaper distribution business and were now one man short. I hope eventually the sons were able to send back some good news of their professional success, and financial support to help the parents in their old years. Giovanni had been a contadino his whole life, he worked in the fields, there was no retirement, no income after you stopped.
Not wanting to see your children live a life of hardship and uncertainty is what gives a parent the strength to support a decision to emigrate. I thank Giovanni and Maria Rosaria for that, for letting their boys go. I hope they found friends and relatives who helped them when they needed it, and I hope someday I can find out where they were laid to rest, make the way back as a way to say their great-great-great grandchildren are alright, that their sacrifice was worthwhile.
