More about the padrone steamship Cheribon

[joetucciarone]

An 1888 congressional investigation indicates a padrone (or padrones) probably arranged the voyage of the steamship Cheribon, which arrived in New York (from Naples) on March 9, 1887. Here's the first page of the manifest of that passage:

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903 ... cc=1849782

Among those aboard were 1,101 Italian males, who comprised 92.8% of all of the passengers. There were only 85 Italian females who comprised a mere 7.2% of all of the passengers. Only 88 of the Italians were under the age of 12; they comprised just 7.4% of all of the passengers.

There were only 7 non-Italian passengers among the 1,186 people on board.

This wasn't a group of Italian families on vacation; the passengers were mostly Italian men who had been persuaded to work in America. The ship's manifest has the classic composition of a voyage that had been organized by Italian padrones.