#52Ancestors | Natural Disaster

The once beautiful waterfront after the earthquake. Digging for bodies.

My great grand-father, Frank DeCarlo (Francesco Carlo) was born in 1880 in the tiny town of Rosalí, just outside Reggio Calabria in the south of Italy. His parents were Giuseppe Carlo, a laborer, and Maria Arecchi, both also born in Rosalí. I’m not sure what his life was like there, but by 1909 he had immigrated to the United States. Records of his exact arrival in the U.S. are conflicting, indicating dates as early as 1898 and as late at 1913, but I know he was in the U.S. in 1909 because that is when he married my great-grandmother, Maria Bianculli.¹

His immigration to the U.S. was timely though, because in the early morning hours of December 28, 1908, Calabria and Messina, Sicily were rocked by a 7.1 earthquake. The quake is said to have been “preceded for a few seconds by a singing sound like a far away wind storm which rapidly drew nearer and became a rumble and a roar when the earth movement began.”²  About ten minutes later, a 30 foot tsunami further destroyed the Reggio seafront.³

One report stated that the whole of the city has been razed to the ground.

“The greater part of the sea front is under water. The whole area of the ground below Reggio seemed to have turned over and a great part of the city is in ruins, covered by the sea…Access by sea is impossible and the town cannot be approached by land…the country has a torn and twisted appearance, roads, bridges, foot-paths and railway lines being uprooted.” ³

At least 75,000 lives were lost, including at least two of Frank’s uncles and six cousins. Neither his parents nor his siblings were listed in the death registers for the town following the earthquake.⁴  The disaster precipitated large amounts of people emigrating to America. Whether my Frank was one of these, or he managed to escape before the disaster, I don’t yet know.

Photo: Underwood and Underwood, The once beautiful water-front after the earthquake. Messina, Sicily, Italy. 1908 catalogue # 10495. Accessed 10 Sep, 2018 from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/.

 

 

---

1. State of New Jersey, Bureau of Vital Statistics. Certificate and Record of Marriage for Francesco Dicarlo and Teresina Bianculli (24 Apr 1909). State file #9-90. New Jersey State Archives. ↩
2.  Perret, Frank A. “Preliminary Report On The Messina Earthquake Of December 28, 1908”. The American Journal of Science. 1909 p 323. New Haven, CT; Google Books, accessed 10 Sep, 2018. ↩
3.  “The Italian Earthquake” Scientific American Supplement No. 1726: 71–74. 30 January 1909; Google Books, accessed 10 Sep, 2018. ↩ ↩
4. Morti, terremoto. 1908.  Sfoglia i registri, Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Stato civile italiano, Rosalì. Accessed 7 Sep, 2018 from http://www.antenati.san.beniculturali.it/. ↩