The victims of the 1891 New Orleans lynching

Eleven Sicilian men were killed by an organized mob of white men. Eight more escaped their would-be killers by hiding in the prison. The merciless attack on defenseless prisoners in a New Orleans jail is remembered as a hate crime. It also deserves recognition for another reason: as a decisive Mafia battle.

What led to the attack on Saturday, 14 March 1891 is complicated. Most people reading this probably know that the lynch mob brought vigilante justice after the court did not offer a guilty verdict in the trials of nine Sicilians charged with the murder of police chief David C. Hennessy. Hennessy was shot the night of 16 October 1890 on his way home. When he was found dying and asked who had shot him, he reportedly whispered that it was “dagoes.”

In 1890, New Orleans was full of Sicilian immigrants. Which “dagoes” would have a reason to shoot the police chief?

Hennessy had become entangled in a feud between the leading Mafia gangs, which fought for dominance over the docks where fruit was unloaded. Bananas may seem like cheap merchandise today, but when Hennessy was killed, bananas and other tropical fruits were the hottest product on the market. Thanks to steamships and railroads, people living throughout the United States were enjoying these exotic treats for the first time, and demand was high for the nutritious, hygienic snack that came in its own sealed wrapper. 

Here on Mafia Genealogy: This Thing of Ours Is Bananas, on the Ohio-based extortion ring called The Society of the Banana 

Business was very good for J.P. Macheca and his chief ally-turned-rival, Joseph Provenzano, importers and wholesalers of fresh fruits. Their business also profited the companies that contracted to unload their vessels when they came to the docks in New Orleans. The two stevedore companies associated with Macheca and Provenzano were aligned with competing Mafia gangs, the Stuppaghieri and the Giardinieri.

The gangs had been part of business on the New Orleans docks since shortly after the end of the Civil War. Although they originated in Monreale, near Palermo, in New Orleans they were part of a larger culture in which politics was often practiced with violence and threats upheld by organized mobs. Some of those mobs were formed after the Civil War to oppose the changes of Reconstruction by terrorizing Black police officers, politicians, and ordinary citizens. The Democratic alliance of such domestic terrorists were known collectively as the “White League.”

One of these “White League” groups, seemingly paradoxically, was founded by Joseph P. Macheca (1843-1891), the Louisiana-born, Sicilian stepson of a Maltese produce wholesaler. Macheca’s “Innocenti” were not the only white supremacist paramilitary group in Louisiana during Reconstruction. Outside the city, a similar group called the Knights of the White Camellia killed more than a hundred people in one night. Even more ironically, Macheca was killed by a similarly motivated assemblage, in a prison attack which even today stands as a symbol of white, nativist hatred and contempt for ethnic Italians.

Chief Hennessy was associated with the Republican Party in New Orleans. He’d fought on the Union side of the Civil War, making him an unpopular figure to most in the city he later defended as a law officer. His pursuit of the leader of the Giardinieri, an Italian fugitive named Raffaele Agnello, drew him into the conflict between Agnello’s gang and their rivals, the Stuppaghieri. Joseph Provenzano, a fruit importer who was once a client of Macheca, left him to lead Agnello’s former gang.

In May 1890, an attack on the stevedores of the Matranga & Locascio import company was believed to be the work of members of the old Giardinieri gang of stevedores. They were associated with Provenzano, and had recently lost their contracts to the Matranga-allied Stuppaghieri. When the ambush case went to trial, Hennessy’s officers failed to testify in the first case against the Giardinieri. Days before Hennessy was expected to take the stand in the second trial, he was shot dead. He had reportedly been mediating the dispute between the two gangs up until his death. 

Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare ordered the mass arrest of Italians in New Orleans. Nineteen were ultimately charged: nine with murder, and ten more with conspiracy in Hennessy’s assassination. Most people presumed the guilty parties were Matranga and his associates, and that they’d killed Hennessy. 

From October, when Hennessy was killed, through March the next year, Mayor Shakspeare drummed up animosity toward the imprisoned Italians. His appointed committee investigated secret societies — an obvious jab at the Mafia — and an ironic one since he enjoyed the support of his own party’s insurrectionist terror squads. A newspaper salesman radicalized by the response to Hennessy’s murder walked into the prison and shot one of the accused, Antonio Scaffidi (1866-1891), in the neck. Scaffidi recovered, only to be killed in the March lynching.

On Friday, 13 March 1891, the nine murder defendants attended the conclusion of their month-long trial. Ten more men waited in jail on charges of complicity. By the end of the day, three of the murder defendants’ cases were declared a mistrial, and in six others, the men were found not guilty. All nine were returned to the jail, to appear again in court on Saturday morning on charges of lying in wait. Since the murder charges had not stuck, there was no reason to believe anyone would be found guilty in Saturday’s trial, and everyone expected the charges to be dismissed.

But the case wasn’t heard. Instead, early in the morning on Saturday, a mob of white men forcibly gained entry to the jail. They’d been summoned by ads in the local newspaper and direct appeals from members of the same Democratic machine in New Orleans that fed the White Leagues. 

Hundreds of armed men easily overpowered jail staff and systematically made their way through the building, killing every Italian they found. A few managed to hide, and in one case — a fourteen-year old boy charged with murder — the lynch mob showed mercy and left him unharmed. His father, accused of the same crime, was not so lucky.

The same ethnic hatred that took their lives also robbed them of their names. I hope at least to set the record straight on who lost his life that day. The victims killed in the New Orleans jail were called Antonio Bagnetto, James Caruso, Loreto Comitz, Rocco Geraci, J.P. Macheca, Antonio Marchesi, Pietro Monasterio, Emanuele Polizzi, Frank Romeo, Antonio Scaffidi, and Charles Traina (although not all of these are entirely correct, as you will see). Those who hid inside the prison and managed to escape with their lives were John Caruso, Bastiano Incardona, Gaspare Marchesi, Charles Matranga, Peter Natali, Charles Pietzo, Charles Patorno, and Salvatore Sunseri.

The consul supplied information on nearly all the victims of the lynching. I’ve added to this with entries found in the New Orleans city directories, migration and vital records. Other writers have described the events and causes in great detail, in particular Thomas Hunt and Martha Macheca Sheldon in their 2007 book Deep Water. 

Antonio Marchesi and his son were recent arrivals, living under an assumed surname in New Orleans. Antonio was actually Antonio Grimaudo (1842-1891), a widower born in Monreale. His son Gaspare (1875-unk) was born in Roccamena: his mother’s hometown. Gaspare was the boy, arrested along with the men and held at the prison, whom the mob declined to murder. Antonio had been a barber in Sicily. According to the Italian consul, he’d had some trouble with a woman, a vague accusation unaccompanied by any formal charge. About five years after his wife died, he and his only surviving child, Gaspare, sailed to New Orleans. They had been in the US for two years when Antonio declared his intention to naturalize, days before the Hennessy murder.

Antonio Bagnetto was born Antonino Abbagnato (1846-1891), one of at least four who were from the district of Molo, in the city of Palermo. The Italian consulate and the news provided dramatically different profiles of Abbagnato. The consul claimed he was a sailor and a man of good character. But an expose on the lynching victims, which contained much of the same information on their voting records and declarations of intention to naturalize as the consulate, gave another alias for Abbagnato, Antonio Catuna, and said he worked not as a sailor but in the sulfur mines, where he killed a fellow miner. He fled to the hills, they wrote, where he joined the gang of Giuseppe Esposito. 

The same Esposito escaped armed guards and fled, first to New York City and then to New Orleans in the spring of 1879. He used the alias Vincenzo Rebello, and led the Giardinieri for two years until he was deported, following his arrest by Hennessy. Abbagnato preceded Esposito to New Orleans by four years and like most of his fellows, had made the first step toward citizenship by making a formal declaration of intention in the criminal district court of New Orleans.

John Caruso (1858-1920) escaped the mob, while James Caruso was killed with five others near the entrance to the women’s side of the jail. John Caruso worked for Matranga on the docks. He married under the name of Spiridione Carrouso in 1879 in New Orleans. Caruso cycled through several occupations: besides working on the docks, he was a fruit merchant, a sailor, and an oyster salesman. Having such an uncommon name, he would have been easy to find if he were born in Palermo, like James, and if the two were related, but that does not appear to be the case. 

James Caruso (1853-1891), like John, worked on Matranga’s dock crew. A good match for his exact reported age at death and likely father’s name (based on his oldest son’s) appears in the Palermo index of births as Girolamo Caruso, born in the district of Molo, like Abbagnato, in 1853. James filed first papers toward citizenship in 1886 and was registered to vote. According to the consul, he was at one time the commissioner of elections in New Orleans’ Fifth Ward. While some of his fellows were buried alone as paupers, two were noted as having had large, well-attended funerals proceeding from their residences and including a mass at St. Louis Cathedral: fruit magnate J. P. Macheca, and James Caruso.

One of the men whose bodies went unclaimed was that of Charles Traina (1852-1891). In one news source he’s described as a lemon dealer who lived in St. Charles Parish, but by most accounts, he was a laborer on the Sarpy rice plantation in St. Charles. He was one of three victims born in Italy who had not renounced his allegiance to the king (as one does when declaring intention to naturalize, the first step toward US citizenship), although one source claims he voted (a privilege Louisiana extended to those who filed first papers toward naturalization). The same source also describes Traina as a fugitive who served multiple prison terms in Italy, and that his real name was Vincenzo Rocci.

It was reported that Traina came into New Orleans from the Sarpy plantation the day before Hennessy was killed, and returned the day after. Traina was one of six men whose bodies were found huddled in front of the entrance to the women’s section of the jail, where they’d gone seeking refuge and found a locked door. Each of them was shot multiple times.

The Times-Picayune wrote that after Traina’s body was carried off in a charity wagon for burial, a woman appeared claiming that money had been raised for his proper burial. She left saying his remains would be reinterred “that day,” but Find a Grave reports Traina is still interred in the potter’s field of Holt Cemetery. Charles Traina was born Vincenzo Traina in Contessa Entellina, a comune in the province of Palermo, Sicily, in 1852. There’s no indication that Traina was married. According to the consulate, his parents were still living in Italy.

Some of the Stuppaghieri are identifiable among the lynching victims, including men who’d been attacked in the May 1890 ambush. Along with Charles Matranga were Bastiano Incardona, Rocco Geraci, James Caruso, and Salvatore Sunseri, the latter two injured in the May attack. John Caruso and Frank Romeo were both politically aligned with Matranga, Romeo as a “ward heeler” and Caruso in an advisory role reminiscent of the classic padrone.

Sebastiano Incardona was born around 1863 in Trabia, based on correspondence and ship manifests, but there are no records for that time period available with which to confirm his birth. He’s called a fugitive from Italy, seen with Scaffidi and Abbagnato shooting from in front of Monasterio’s home. In the prison, he hid from the mob in a box of garbage. Surviving the attack on the prison, he made at least one and possibly several more trips between Italy and the US. In 1900, he joined a cousin in New York City’s Little Italy; on the manifest he claims to have been in New Orleans from 1888-1890. 

Frank Romeo (1843-1891) was one of the six caught by the mob near the women’s jail entrance. He was born Francesco Romeo in Molo in 1843. Of all the targets of the lynch mob, he had lived in New Orleans the longest: he arrived in 1859, before the Civil War, and was naturalized in 1868. 

Frank appears as a 25 year old farm laborer in the 1870 US census.

He worked as a cigar dealer and as a screwman, a stevedore who stows compressed cotton bales in ships’ holds. Frank married Annette Spino, who was previously married with children, and they had three sons and a daughter.

He was active in politics and had a history of occasional violence. In 1875 he shot and killed a man in a bar. He was accused of dueling a few years later, and of assaulting a woman as she passed a saloon. He was seen running from a shooting in which Rocco Geraci was accused of murder, in 1886. Geraci was not tried for the murder until the summer of 1890, a couple months after the ambush, and before the Hennessy assassination.

Rocco Geraci (1857-1891) was an enforcer for Matranga and a member of his dock crew. He killed a member of the Giardinieri, Vincent Raffo, in December 1886, a crime that was finally prosecuted after the ambush in 1890 in which Geraci was wounded. He was shot to death in the jail along with Romeo, Caruso, Traina, Monastero, and Comitz. Antonio Abbagnato was with them and was shot, but not fatally. Abbagnato was then dragged from the prison and hanged in the street.

The consul reported that Rocco was born in Monreale, and the sometimes-reliable article in the Public Ledger claimed he was properly named “Francisco Gerachi,” but based on the available evidence, I believe Rocco was born Filippo Geraci in the district of Molo. He married and had children in New Orleans; his heirs sued the city for failing to protect him while in their custody.

Tony Matranga and Anthony Locascio were ambushed with Geraci and the other stevedores, but were not among the victims of the lynching. Tony’s knee was shattered in the ambush and he later lost his leg. His brother, Charles Matranga (1857-1943), the leader of the Stuppaghieri, was one of the survivors of the lynch mob.

Joseph P. Macheca (1843-1891) was the only victim of the lynching that I could positively tie to the Giardinieri. He was its leader, as well as a fruit merchant and shipping tycoon, businesses he inherited from his stepfather, Giuseppe Macheca. J.P. Macheca’s father was a Sicilian known in New Orleans as Peter Carvanna, sentenced to life in prison. 

When the lynch mob found Macheca, he was in a cell with Scaffidi and the elder Marchesi (Grimaudo). Someone shot through a window and killed Scaffidi. Antonio Scaffidi (1866-1891) was born in Brolo, in Messina province, and had been in the US for ten years. He appears at age fourteen on the manifest of the St. Egadi on the line above a young Francis Marion Crawford. (I don’t think they traveled together; Scaffidi was in steerage while the young professor was in a cabin.) The consul names different parents than I found for Scaffidi. A look at the indices of 1864-67 did not find a match for the son of Diego born in Brolo who is described by the consulate. Antonio was the firstborn child of Giuseppe Scaffidi and Felicia Ziino. 

After Scaffidi was shot, Antonio Marchesi tripped and fell over his body and was shot many times, but got back up to face the oncoming mob. Macheca picked up a club and used it to break a lock so they might escape into the gallery. The mob caught them both just as the door was opening. Marchesi, though already severely injured, fought back: he pushed away a gun barrel aimed at him, and it blew off his hand. Macheca was shot in the head and died instantly.

Emmanuel Polizzi (c. 1856-1891) was discovered hiding under some stairs, as Abbagnato was being dragged out of the prison to be hanged. Why Abbagnato was selected by the mob at the door of the women’s prison appears to be a matter of pique: the crowd wanted Macheca, who was already dead, and chose someone else who happened to be close at hand. On the way they found Polizzi, who is described in various accounts as mentally ill or a “fool.” After giving a partial confession, he became paranoid about the others who were charged. He tried to throw himself from the window of the sheriff’s office. 

Both men were hung: Polizzi at the corner of St. Ann and Abbagnato in Congo Square. In each case, the first hanging was unsuccessful and the victim came crashing down, to be abused, kicked, even shot, and then hung again.

Polizzi, called “Manuel Politz” in news accounts and histories, was reportedly born in San Cipirello in 1862. Migration records indicate he was about eight years older. Birth and baptismal records are unavailable for San Cipirello before 1860. Based on a clue that Polizzi’s father was named Salvatore, I found what is likely his brother’s birth record in 1861. 

In Italy, Polizzi was said to have an “unruly character,” but was never tried for a crime. While living in Austin, Texas, he cut a man with a knife, and a couple years before the lynching there was an arrest warrant for him, for trying to kill a man. Polizzi lived with a woman, and ran a vegetable stand at the Monasterio shanty where gunmen were alleged to have hidden in wait for Hennessy. He was identified as one of two Italians seen in an alley next to Pietzo’s store with two guns in a sack, and by another witness after the shooting, dropping a shotgun as he ran. He declared his intention to naturalize the day before Hennessy was killed.

Pietro Monasterio (1848-1891) was identified by a witness as one of the shooters. He was born in Caccamo, the son of a tailor. He worked as a shoemaker, had a wife and five children, and was known as a man of good character. In January 1890, he arrived alone in the United States: his destination, New Orleans. For most of a year, before the mass arrests in October, he worked and sent home money to support his family.

Monsterio lived in a shack beside a gateway from which Hennessy’s killers fired their weapons. For this reason, he was beaten by police and arrested. Monasterio, Incardona, Natale, Comitz, and Abbagnato made complaints to the Italian consulate about their treatment in custody. After the judge declared a mistrial in his case, Monasterio was shot to death in the prison. He had nowhere to hide, and so he and the other men who found themselves trapped near the women’s jail huddled together and died in one another’s arms. 

Because he had no one in the country, Monasterio’s body went unclaimed, and was buried in a potter’s field in New Orleans. Antonio Grimaudo left his son Gaspare, age fourteen; there was no adult to take responsibility for the father’s funeral. Gaspare returned alone to Italy and lived in an orphanage near Rome.

The only non-Sicilian among the accused was Loreto Comitz (c. 1841-1891), said to be a native of Aquila, near Rome. He was one of the three Italian subjects who were killed. He had been a tinsmith, and had a wife and child in New Orleans. He was a criminal who had served a sentence in Italy; one source claimed he was still a wanted man there.

I looked for him in a couple of places in L’Aquila, both the city and the province, but wasn’t able to find anyone with a similar name. While with the others I feel confident I have correctly spelled their proper names, I am not sure of Loreto’s real surname. At the trial he was called “Comitz.” In the city directory it was “Comitise.” It might be “Contessa,” the Italian word for countess, or the word in Latin, “Comitessa.” He was one of the ten charged with conspiracy in the death of Hennessy. In reporting on the funerals of the lynching victims, his wife and child followed his coffin, in a funeral procession of just the one carriage, to its final resting place in Cypress Grove Cemetery.

I wasn’t able to find much more information on Pietro Natale, one of two men who successfully hid from the lynch mob by squeezing into a dog kennel in the yard of the jail. He may be a man by this name who arrived in New Orleans on the same voyage of the Letimbro in October 1889 as Incardona. The one who hid with him was Salvatore Sunseri (1860-1929), a stevedore who was injured in the 1890 ambush by the Giardinieri. Sunseri married and had at least one child. He was a registered voter in New Orleans, and the former Matranga stevedore later worked as a fruit importer. An online family tree indicates he was born in Trabia in 1860, but records for that year are not available, so I cannot confirm this.

Charles Pietzo (1858-), a married grocer, tried to join Natale and Sunseri in the dog house, but could not find room. He still managed to find a place to hide from the mob in the yard, and was spared. He was born Vincenzo Pizzo in Contessa Entellina, and he had a wife and two children. This month’s Patreon Member Reward is the last will and testament Pietzo dictated the same year as the lynching.

Another grocer in the jail that day who succeeded in hiding from the murderous mob was Charles Patorno (1859-1921). Charles’ brother, Anthony Patorno, was a political figure in New Orleans. He paid the bail for Rocco Geraci when he was arrested in the 1886 murder. From the time he was placed in the jail, Charles Patorno appeared to be disturbed, and continued to show signs of trauma after the massacre. He recovered from his ordeal enough to become involved in politics like his brother — as an advisor and supporter, but never a candidate — and was hailed as a community leader at his death in 1921.

The Patorno brothers’ family were early arrivals in New Orleans. Their father, Captain Filippo Patorno, was an active revolutionary in Sicily, participating in an uprising planned by Francesco Bentivegna of Corleone in 1856; he returned to Italy ten years later to lead Garibaldi’s volunteer army in its march on Rome. Charles Patorno and J.P. Macheca were the only two arrested in the Hennessy murder who were born in the United States: both in New Orleans.

After the lynching, the surviving prisoners indicted in the Hennessy case were released. Charles Matranga went on being one of the most important men in the city. His power was increased by the destruction of the Giardinieri. With Macheca dead, his remaining supporters joined Matranga’s gang. The Stuppaghieri — the victors — are the progenitors of the New Orleans Mafia. Matranga retired in 1922 and was succeeded by Sam Carolla.

Sources

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Jackson, J. B. (2020). Dixie’s Italians: Sicilians, race, and citizenship in the Jim Crow gulf south. LSU Press. Google Books.

Jones, T.L. (2019, April 6). The story of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello – Part 2. Gangsters, Inc. [Website]. https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-story-of-new-orleans-mafia-boss-carlos-marcello 

“Louisiana, New Orleans Index to Passenger Lists, 1853-1952,” database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9P5-S9FB-G?cc=2443949 : 17 August 2020), > image 1 of 1; citing NARA microfilm publication T527; (College Park, Maryland: National Archives and Records Administration, 1958).

“Louisiana, New Orleans, Interment Registers, 1836-1972”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:49GP-21ZM : Wed Oct 04 04:54:13 UTC 2023), Entry for Manuel Politz, 15 Mar 1891.

Manifest of the St. Egadi. (1881, February). Line 96.The Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation [Website]. https://heritage.statueofliberty.org/passenger-details/czoxMzoiOTAxMjIxNDAzMTA5NCI7/czo4OiJtYW5pZmVzdCI7 

Marriage of C. Patorno and Mary Sparicio. (1883, June 5). “Louisiana Parish Marriages, 1837-1957,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-95B4-6DQ?cc=1807364 : 15 October 2015), > image 1 of 1; parish courthouses, Louisiana.

Marriage of Rocco Geraci and Caroline Lazzaro. (1881, February 18). “Louisiana Parish Marriages, 1837-1957,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKJH-6XGC : 17 February 2021), Rocco Geraci and Caroline Lazzaro, 18 Feb 1881; citing Orleans, Louisiana, United States, various parish courthouses, Louisiana; FHL microfilm 911,657.

Marriage of Spiridione Carousso and Louisa Cureaud. (1879, July 28). “Louisiana Parish Marriages, 1837-1957”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKJH-DDFB : Mon Oct 23 15:24:44 UTC 2023).

Nelli, H. S. (1976). The business of crime: Italians and syndicate crime in the United States. The University of Chicago Press. 

New Orleans Italians lynched. (1891, March 20). The Weekly Times-Democrat (New Orleans, LA). P. 13. https://www.newspapers.com/image/333125136/?clipping_id=97629693 

“New York Passenger Arrival Lists (Ellis Island), 1892-1924”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JXZ1-5Y6 : 2 March 2021), Lebastiamo Incardona, 1900.

Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, transmitted to Congress, with the annual message of the president, December 9, 1891. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1891/d634

Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, transmitted to Congress, with the annual message of the president, December 9, 1891. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1891/d647

Persico, J. E. (1973, June). Vendetta in New Orleans. American Heritage. https://www.americanheritage.com/vendetta-new-orleans

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The massacre of the mafia. (1891, March 16). The Indianapolis Journal. P. 1. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=IJ18910316.1.1&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——- 

Those Italian “subjects”. Public ledger. (1891, April 4). P. 3. https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=TPL18910404.1.3&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——–

“United States, GenealogyBank Historical Newspaper Obituaries, 1815-2011”, , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q57T-T858 : Fri Oct 20 20:34:04 UTC 2023), Entry for Sunseri, 25 Feb 1929.

“United States City and Business Directories, ca. 1749 – ca. 1990”, database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QHV-V3DY-1TST?cc=3754697 : 24 January 2024), > image 1 of 1.