Pictures, Names, Professions & Places On Italians In Bri

[jamiecapaldi]

I am researching my Family. I have found quite alot of names, places and dates, etc. I am very supprised to see there is not much information out there on Italian immigrants in Bristol!
I am aware in my search, most of the Italians were living in the st James part of Bristol around the late 19th and early 20th Century.
My Family were staying in Montague Street as Musicians and Fruit Vendors.

I am hoping to find as much information as possible and find lots of other people with the same interest and in the same position.

Please can anyone post any info on Italian names, addresses, professions and any scanned photo's or pictures, etc from Bristol.
I hope to have a web page in the near future on Bristol Italian Immigrants, if i can get enough information.

Many thanks Jamie Capaldi

[boozy.bird]

I wish you well with your website......you will be joining a few of us that have already shown how proud we are of our ancestors.
Italian immigrants in UK have sites for Scotland,Liverpool,Manchester,Sheffield........I'm sure there are others.
Good luck

[jamiecapaldi]

Here are some names of Italian's who lived in st James, Bristol:

Fionda - Velardo - D' Agostino - Di Cino - Guatieri - Risi - Rossi - Tedesco - Di Mambro - Di Tomasso - Marocco - Valente - Salera - Di Ciacca - Cornacchia - Capaldi - Giovanetti - Rivari - Gallone - Evangelista - Ricci - Carichanti - Pacitto - Cordani - Capocci - Arpino - Macari - Vitti - Vincenzo - Raimondi - Ceci - Gizzi - Arcari - Picano - Di Paolo - Vettese

I will post more names very Soon. In the mean time please respond with any information on Bristol Italians!

[jamiecapaldi]

More names:
Simione - Leva - Giammbaptista - Di Vitto - Del Greco - Sposito - Buglioni - Di Giorgi - Marino - Cece - Iaconelli - Cortesi - Di Stefano - Latte - Di Marco - Rotondo - Staffieri - Antonio - Lanni - Venturelli - Ticino - Pinchera - Coia - Policella - Mezzone - Vassallo - Grechi - Cocozza - Canali - Cardinelli - Di Rosa - Assirati - Caola.......

More to come, but still no Bristol Italian Desendants??

[jamiecapaldi]

I can tell you quite a few of the Italians stayed in Bristol, but some moved on to places like;

Liverpool
Edinburgh
Dublin
Belfast
Detroit
New Castle, Pennsylvania

[jamiecapaldi]

The Streets circled in red, is the St James part of Bristol, where most of the Italians Immigrated:

[daddymuzza]

Link to 1935 map of Bristol (click areas of map to enlarge)......

http://www.artus-fh.co.uk/Bristol%20193 ... 20Map.html

[jamiecapaldi]

Great find Muzza, its the only map i have seen with Beaufort Place on! (very small alley on the side of lower montague st.)

Thanks!

[jamiecapaldi]

Just a few more names:

Podesta - Lombardini - Isotti - Romano - Ambrosino - Spinelli

[jamiecapaldi]

I have recently found out, my GGGUncle had his Piano Organ on his Pony and Cart (example in Picture) damaged in 1898, Bristol. His name was Giovanni Capaldi. He had it replaced by 'Chiappa Organ Builders' (picture) in London. I have attached a link of an example on the sound of the Chiappa Organ:

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/0509/machi ... Porter.mp3

[jamiecapaldi]

More Italian Street Musicians in London, outside the Rossi and Spinelli Organ Shop.
Surnames was also common in Bristol!

[Emmy]

Fantastic images Jamie,
When my grandfather first came to London approx 1885/1887 his occupation was listed as an intinerant muscian - what it was he played I'll never know! but I do know that my grandparents taught my father and all his brothers to play various musical instruments and to read the music too.

(I think that talent missed a generation because it wasnt passed on to me but it seems to have passed on to my children and grandchildren )
Emmy

[jamiecapaldi]

Here is a scanned copy i have taken out of the book 'Ethnic minorities in Bristol', it is the only pages about Italians in Bristol, hence why i would like to track down as much information as possible.

The names in the cencus is my Capaldi's (capalto)!

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7286/img026k.jpg

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1031/img027la.jpg

[jamiecapaldi]

Verrecchia ice cream - Brislington
Ice cream family melts away - Very quietly and with no fuss, one of Bristol’s best known family companies has simply melted away.

The Verrecchias have been **SPAM** quality ice creams in the city for more than 70 years and introduced the first mobile ice-cream makers. They also took on national giants Walls and Lyons Maid in a battle against their monopolies on sales in small shops. Verrecchia was known to generations of Bristolians as Vereesha, regardless of the fact that the Italian pronunciation is ‘Vereckia’.

The family just sighed, accepted the inevitable and carried on **SPAM** some of the best ice cream in Bristol from their little Brislington factory. Eugenio Verrecchia set up business in Bristol in 1925 after emigrating from Italy to Britain around the turn of the century.

He opened the city’s first ice-cream parlour, the Modern Cafe in Coronation Road, Bedminster, where Italian-style ice cream was made in huge wooden vats. These days, it’s a Bristol & West branch.

In later years, company secretary Betty Verrecchia tried in vain to explain what made their product so special. ‘It’s traditional home-made stuff,’ she said. ‘We Italians started it all.

But trying to explain the difference between Italian and English ice cream is like trying to say what’s different about English and Italian pizza.

If you go to Italy, you’ll soon find out.’ Eugenio started it all, but it was Romeo and Maria who made the Verrecchia name a by-word for delicious ice cream in Bristol. Romeo was one of Eugenio’s seven children, and he married Maria — known as Mrs V. to thousands of customers — in 1946.

Romeo's brother Robert started the factory in Stockwood Road, Brislington, but it was Mrs V. who built up the fleet of vans which toured the city seven days a week. The family also ran three cafes in the city.

It was in 1960 that Verrecchia launched Bristol’s first ‘ice-cream machine on wheels’, as it was then called. It was a real novelty. A wide-eyed newspaper report stated:

‘It means, in effect, that ice cream is made only minutes before it is served, unlike the days, and perhaps weeks, which the family brick type of ice remains in the refrigerator. ‘An additional motor is fitted to the van to supply the generating power which works the machine and runs the freezing apparatus. ‘Each morning the vans will leave with a complete load of mixed ingredients and will not have to return to the depot for refills. Cones are filled with ice cream by a tap similar to a miniature bar pump’.

The launch of the mobile ice-cream maker also marked the end of the Verrecchia link with Bedminster and the move to Brislington. By then the business had grown from one van to 36. Mrs V. died in 1991, aged 71, and Romeo died in 1993, aged 78. But the family link was maintained by Robert, his wife Betty, their sons Martin and Joseph and daughter Gianna.

The hot summer of 1975 did wonders for the business, with production up by 50 per cent on the previous year, and a record output of 120 gallons of soft ice cream (7,200 cornets) and 18,000 ice lollies a day.

It was the same picture in 1990 when the staff worked a 14-hour day and Verrecchia sold nearly four million ice lollies and 100,000 litres of ice cream. And all the time the emphasis was on traditional quality. ‘People want ice cream as it used to be,’ declared Betty Verrecchia.

Before the war the family also sold ice-cream at No.9 Peter Street. This once popular street was lost during the blitz in 1941, and now lies under modern-day Castle Park.

As well as being a shop **SPAM** ice cream, the premises included a seating area where customers could eat ice cream sundaes, etc. This shop was very popular on those long hot summer days of years past, huge queues sometimes blocked the pavement.

‘Today they are fed up with newfangled things. We see it as a craft. With big firms, it’s all economics. They start with the idea that they have so much to spend on packaging and so much for marketing. We have always done it the other way round and made ice cream according to the same recipe for 60 years. That’s what’s most popular.’

Betty and her sister Gloria had a starring role in the Oscar-winning film The English Patient as an accordion and piano duet. It was hardly a surprising choice — Betty was West of England accordion champion in 1950 and the film’s director, Anthony Minghella, is her nephew and Gloria’s son.

Now Verrecchia is no more. The van fleet and the remaining stock have been sold and the Brislington factory shut. The family has declined to say why. Perhaps the reason lies in what Betty, now in her seventies, said back in 1990:

‘None of us could bear to see the factory merged or taken over. It’s been in the family so long. I suppose it’s a bit of excessive pride.’

[maenadpl]

Dear Jamie Capaldi
I have printed the 1901 actual census form for Sims Alley,(since demolished) St. James, Bristol. At No.3 and/or No.9 lived Johan Sposito(b. Italy) with wife(born Ireland) and 6 children (all b. Bristol),
At No.11 was, this has been transcribed in print as "Saues" but on original one can see it is handwritten as "Paolo" Velardo, 29 years, born: Spain, Spanish citizen, wife Lucia b. Bristol, and 2 children (b Bristol), and 3 sons b. Bristol and Guiseppe brother, 14 years, (b. Italy).
Still at No.11 were Michael d’Agostino and wife Rosa (both 34 and born Italy) and 3 children b. Bristol. Also at same address areAntonio D’agostino (45, b Italy) 2 sons and 1 daur all born Bristol. (no wife mentioned).
Also at No.11 were Andrea Cappucci 56 b.Italy and Nascence wife, b. Italy, and daur Geretta 11, b. Italy and Antonio, 14 born Plymouth, Luigi 9, Guiseppe 7, Federigo 3 last 3 born Bristol.
Still at No.11 were Benedetto Arpino b.Italy, daurs Guiseppa 14, Antonia 8 both born Italy (no wife mentioned)

You wrote me that our grandfather’s brother, Agositino Panetta and wife Maria were the witnesses at Guiseppe Velardo’s marriage. What year was that? And what church?

Since our last correspondence I have heard that our family folklore tells that our grandfather, Giovanni Cocozza, and Agostino Panetta were in fact brothers. Agostino fought with their father over an arranged marriage for their sister and the two brothers fled Vallegrande, and that Agostino changed his name to Panetta. If this is true, the Bristol Panettas should in fact all be of the Cocozza family.
Regards, Helen Lewis, maenadpl@bigpond.com