A ship for emigrants to America

Emigrants ready to leave.

Rich gentleman don Achille Caso at the beginning of 1900.

Prince Umberto di Savoia during a visit in San Gregorio during the 30s.

The repetitious use of the usual given and surnames compelled the use of nicknames which marked the families for many generations. There are "ru cocciero", "ru saracaro ", "muto", "frungilla", "ru papa" and "ru ribello", "corecontento" and "voccapiccirillo". The most recent, from "fanfani" to "trullallà", posterity will discover them.

Towards the end of the 1800s in San Gregorio something happened that nobody could forget. In the Parco d' Amore a girl, Mariannella, was found beheaded from a hatchet blow. The truth will never be known. Her fiancée ended in prison, but in the village it was murmured that a suitor from a nearby neighborhood, hurriedly, was taken to the steamboatheaded for America. Steamboats were used by many of the villagers between the end of the 1800s and the beginning of next century. They were used for emigration to Buenos Aires and New York, and also to San Paolo, Montevideo and Assuncion, but always with the hope of returning to the Matese. This emigration emptied the village. In the last thirty years of 1800 a thousand people had departed. It was an irreversible demographic hemorrhage that continued through the 1900s with the new added destinations of Switzerland, Germany and Great Britain. Meanwhile San Gregorio saw many new innovations, the clock on the bell tower, the lighting system to acetylene and the new cemetery.

Social struggles had begun at this time. Don Giacomo Vitale was in the favor of the peasants in the same Town Council where Arturo Lombardi impersonated the rising Fascism. Meanwhile the old gentlemen, like Achille Caso, could do nothing but step aside.

In 1928 the road for vehicular traffic was completed and opened. It connected the village to Piedimonte. The first automobile arrived. The mayor Mariano Costantini too arrives. Every saturday the secretary of the Fascist Party assembles the young fascist (balilla) in the public square. Life was peaceful, even if sometime there was a punch up. At time of the workers celebration Marcellino Fattore, nicknamed Marrocco, was carried to the barracks for safety. There was great festivity in 1930 when in the village Prince Umberto di Savoia: arrived: on a convertible car he passed the public square and paused to look at an unexpected military parade down in the Padule, where the tennis courts are today.