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| Innocenzo in his Army uniform, and later in life |
INNOCENZO CIAMBRIELLO
(aka John Cambriello)
December 16, 1891 - May 6, 1958
His family wanted him to enter the priesthood, but he wanted to go to America.
Innocenzo was born in Naples (Benevento) Italy to the parents of Giovanni Ciambriello and Rose Mauro. He had a sister, Antoinette Ciambriello. We really don't know much about her except that she was supposed to have had red hair.
Innocenzo arrived in the United States around 1911, when he was about 19 years old. In 1915 he married Maria/Mary Moschella, from Revere, Massachusetts. They had a son, John Cambriello. There are no records as to how the marriage ended or what happened to his first wife.[Footnote 1] We occasionally saw our half-brother John, but he remained in the Boston area after Innocenzo moved to New York City.
In 1918, even though World War I was almost over, Innocenzo decided to join the Army. He did this to improve his English language skills. He spoke some English already, as he had studied it during his time at a seminary in Italy. At that time, the U.S. government was giving automatic citizenship to anyone who joined the Army, so our father became a U.S. citizen soon thereafter. My father was so proud to be an American citizen. For the rest of his life, the American flag was proudly displayed wherever he lived.
Innocenzo worked for the City of New York as a motorman driving trolleys like the one below, and later city buses.
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| Left: Amanda Hakansson; Right: Amanda's parents, Hakan Gummesson and Dorothea Petersdotter |
AMANDA HAKANSSON/HAWKINSON/HAWKINS
March 7, 1885 - May 11, 1929
Amanda came to America in 1912[Footnote 2] with her mother, Dorothea Petersdotter, and her brother Sven (also known as Albert), from Karlskrona, Sweden. They crossed on the vessel the SS Franconia in August 1912. They settled in Revere, Massachusetts, where Amanda’s brother, Karl Manfred Hakansson, was already living. Karl had arrived in America 10 years earlier, in May 1902, on the ship the St. Louis. He married a woman named Marie and they had two children, Karl and Doris. Karl later changed his name to Carl Hawkins.
Amanda’s father, Hakan Gummesson, had been the captain of a fishing fleet in Sweden. He died in 1906, before Amanda, Sven, and Dorothea came to the United States.
Amanda had two sisters, Maria and Anna. We know that Anna only lived to the age of 20. She died in 1898.
Left: Maria and her mother, Dorothea. Right: Maria, Dorothea, and Amanda
We are not sure when Maria came to America,[Footnote 3] but she married a man named Karl Schmidt, and they settled in Corpus Christi, Texas.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Our family now has documentation that Maria Moschella, Innocenzo’s first wife, was married for a second time in December of 1920. We also have documentation that Innocenzo and Maria were living together in the same household through 1918. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that Innocenzo and Maria were divorced sometime between 1919 and 1920.[click here to return to text ↩]
2. Our family has discovered — thanks to the Ancestry website — that Amanda came to the United States first in 1906 and stayed for five years, until 1911, when she returned to Sweden; and then in 1912 returned to the United States with her mother Dorothea and brother Sven.[click here to return to text ↩]
3. Our family has learned that Maria came to the United States in 1890, arriving at Ellis Island on May 8th of that year, when she was about 13 years old. She was accompanied by her brother, Sven Hawkinson. According to Philip Lee Schmidt, Marie's youngest child, "Uncle Swan [Sven] saved money to bring Mom [Marie] to the U.S. as a teenager, where she worked on a farm near Pleasanton, KS, cooking for farmhands." [click here to return to text ↩]