I’m Michele Cappiello from Matera, and I also deal with heritage travel, but then something happens right to me!

In September 2023, I received a message from Zina Cappiello asking if we were related, as her grandfather Bartolomeo had left Matera over a century ago. I replied yes, distant relatives, though the Bartolomeos are from another branch of the Cappiello family to which I belong.

We began to reconstruct the family tree and concluded that my great-grandfather Eustachio was the brother of her great-grandfather Bartolomeo.

My father always told me about an American relative named William who came to visit Matera after the Second World War, but I never had the means to verify and explore this story further. William was Bartolomeo’s son!

In October 2023, Zina quickly passed through Matera and got to know her Italian side more intimately. Here is her story and the photographic documentation.

My Italian roots

In 1906, my great-grandfather Bartolomeo Cappiello emigrated to the United States of America aboard the steamship Il Piemonte, departing from Naples and arriving at the port of New York. He was 29 years old and was married to his wife Chiara when he set foot on American soil for the first time at Ellis Island. The couple dreamed of starting a new life in America. In 1906, he opened a butcher shop in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The business grew, and so did the family. Bartolomeo and Chiara had five children: Rose, Michael, Nicholas, William (Willie), and Artillo (Artie). The family worked hard. In the morning, while Bartolomeo went to the meat market, Chiara opened the shop for the first customers. Sometimes, she even went to the market herself to choose the meat (unheard of for the time, a woman at the meat market).

So, Bartolomeo and the family boarded the Guglielmo Peirce to return to America. He reopened a butcher shop in Manhattan and then a second store on McClean Avenue in Yonkers, New York. His son Michael ended up managing the Yonkers store until the 1950s, while his son William managed the one in Manhattan. During World War II, Michael was married and had a family of his own. Therefore, William (Willie) was called to arms to fight in Europe. He was stationed for a short period in Morocco, then transferred to Italy, where, as a sergeant in the American Army, he could make use of his knowledge of many Italian dialects.

Upon finally returning to the United States in 1945, he reopened the Manhattan store on Second Avenue, at 1711 Colonial Market, where he remained until his death in 1972. At Willie’s death, his son William (Billy) carried on the family business as a butcher until his retirement in 2001.

The story I was told as a child was that Bartolomeo had 16 brothers and 6 sisters originally from Matera, Italy. He was the only brother who had emigrated to the United States and had learned many of his trade secrets from his wife Chiara’s family. His uncle, his brother, and his sister’s husband, already established in America, were professional butchers in New York. Growing up inside the shop and going to the market with my father has always made me very curious about my heritage and my Italian roots.

Zina B. Cappiello