Maria Palermo



Maria Palermo Resti

 



  I know I have been remiss in writing this blog over the last several months.  Frankly, I have reached a roadblock regarding one member of our family, my paternal grandmother, Maria Palermo Resti.

 

  When I started this process last summer, my intention was to solve some of the mysteries and uncover the secrets that were rampant in our family. I really wanted to untangle our sometimes complex family history.  As I started to fill in our family tree (available to public view on ancestry.com) I realized that there probably was no way to learn much more about our ancestors than their names, some important dates and where they lived.  My parents generation is largely gone and with them the rich detail of who our ancestors really were.  I would like to know more about our grandparents and great-grandparents, but except for Kate Munsey there seems to be little accessible information.  The one who interests me most at the moment is my paternal grandmother, Maria Palermo.

Alfred E. Smith Houses

Draft Riots of 1863

Born July 1, 1896 in Manhattan, Maria was the oldest of the five children of Giuseppe Palermo and Carmella Pascarella.  The Palermo family lived near what is now the South Street Seaport.  In 1910, the family resided at 56 Roosevelt Street,  a street that ran from Pearl Street at Park Row to South Street.  Roosevelt Street existed from Colonial Times to the 1950's, when the Alfred E. Smith Houses, a public housing project, was built.  Roosevelt Street is also known for being the site of the "Draft Riots" in 1863 when Irish immigrants from the Seaport and Five Points neighborhoods rioted against the enactment of the draft for the Civil War.  This changed quickly into a race riot with white immigrants, primarily Irish,  killing several hundred blacks and driving much of the black population out of Lower Manhattan.  The neighborhood is now known as Two Bridges.

Two Bridges Neighborhood
 

Maria Palermo was 14 in 1910.  Her sisters Julia and Rosalita were 11 and 3;  her brother Louis was 4 and her brother  Peter was an infant.  There was also a step-son living with the family named Nick Perlellon, who was 21 at the time of the 1910 Census.  Giuseppe Palermo, who had changed his name to Joseph by 1910, supported the family by working as a longshoreman.  His step-son Nick, who was born in Italy, was a watchman. This was a second marriage for both Joseph and Carmella, who were married to each other in 1892. 

Maria Palermo was, as I reported in an earlier entry, was married to my grandfather, then Andrea Reste, in 1913.  She was 16 at the time of the marriage while Andrea (later Andrew) was 25.  Three children quickly followed:  Frank in 1915, Joe in  1916 and my father Pat in 1920, when the family was residing at 96 Oliver Street, in the Two Bridges neighborhood, just south of Chinatown midway between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.  96 Oliver Street is less than a block away from the home of the Palermo family on Roosevelt Street and in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge.

The 1915 New York State Census shows the family living at 257 Hudson Street and shows the family name as Rest. The 1920 Census lists the family name as Resta, another variation added to the growing list of Resti last names.  Resta probably is accurate, since Andrea Resta's father, Pasquale Resta, is listed on the rolls of Craco, Italy, the city that Andrea Resta emigrated from in 1904. 

The 1920 Census is the last record I have found for Mary Resti.  The 1930 Census shows that Andrew Resta was living on Orchard Street with Frank and Joe and lists his marital status as Widowed.  The same Census shows Patsy Resti living with the Longobardo Family in Laurel Hill and shows his status as Step-Grandson.  Clearly Mary Resti nee Maria Palermo died sometime between 1925 and 1930, but I have been unable to uncover any information about her whereabouts during that time period.  My father spoke of the two of them moving in with the Longobardos, possibly because she was going to marry one of the Longobardo sons, but the trail grows cold after 1925.

My father was raised by the Longobardo family, particularly Columbia Longobardo, who he always referred to as hos grandmother.  How did this come about?  Hopefully, when this is posted someone in my family may have some information that can be provided to me to solve this mystery that I have been unable to solve.