Cleveland pre-Lonardo

[B.]

- In 1892, Cleveland police identified a "branch of the Mafia" existing in Cleveland. An Italian who rejected the mafia provided detailed info about the group and stated it had 200 members, held monthly meetings, helped its members financially, and was headed by three "astute and cunning" Sicilians (unfortunately not named). The Cleveland mafia was said to embrace both respectable Italians as well as men who were "little more than cutthroats". One "member" worked for a local bank that served Italians and allegedly absconded with money from the bank.

- After a local Italian named "Carrizza" was killed by police, a non-Italian witness claimed the police had acted in self-defense so a murder contract was placed on the witness. The mafioso employed by the bank was supposedly involved in issuing the contract and a 19-year-old man named Vincenzo "Stafano" tried to shoot the victim. When "Stafano" was arrested, he tied a red bandana around his own arm for symbolic reasons; "Stafano" had only been in the country for 6 months. Later, another 19-year-old named James Lauri assaulted the witness.

- During this 1892 reporting, it was stated that a prominent Italian Anarchist had visited Cleveland two months previous and attended a meeting with the local mafia requesting assistance. This man was allegedly a "member of the New York mafia".

- In 1903, a local Sicilian businessman named Cosimo Catalano (b. 1856) was the victim of an extortion attempt by a Lorenzo "Lanciolo" and LE said they had unearthed a Cleveland "Mafia society" which included five men who came to Cleveland from NYC and were in communication with "members of the society" in both the US And Italy. Catalano's macaroni factory was also bombed around a decade later.

- Depite being a seeming victim of the underworld, Cosimo Catalano was from Termini Imerese (same hometown as future boss Dr. Giuseppe Romano) and in 1909 he helped a Michele Sottosanti (b. 1885) who was evading a murder case and employed Sottosanti at his factory. Sottosanti was originally from Santa Caterina Villarmosa in Caltanissetta but had lived in Ribera where he married a Riberese woman named Sarullo (a name connected to the Ribera mafia) and ran a macaroni factory before coming to the US. Sottosanti hid out in Chicago for a month after the murder before returning to Cleveland and working for Catalano. Both Santa Caterina and Ribera as well as Termini Imerese would produce Chicago members so these connections aren't surprising.

- Catalano was later arrested for bootlegging in 1919. While he was ostensibly a legitimate businessman and respected in the community, it's clear he was involved in underworld activity himself even though he also reportedly fell victim to "mafia" aggression earlier. He died in Cleveland in 1938 while Sottosanti died in Cleveland in 1963.

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These are just a couple examples where the term "mafia" was used, I haven't dug in very deeply but the description of the "mafia branch" in Cleveland in 1892 is very intriguing and the story of Cosimo Catalano starting the following decade is as well.

Most coverage of early Cleveland begins with Joe Lonardo because he is the first confirmed boss but like other Midwestern cities there is reason to believe the formal mafia was established in Cleveland much earlier.

[chin_gigante]

Great write up, looks like an interesting area for further research

[B.]

Yeah I plan to look into it more. I don't think the Family was founded by Licatesi or even Agrigento natives even though they became prominent by the 1910s but more likely mafiosi from Palermo province.

I already suspected Termini Imerese played a role as they did around the country by the late 1800s and Cosimo Catalano just happened to be from there. No reason to suspect he was a boss but I do think he may have been a member. We see affluent Alta Mafia types come into conflict with the more ruthless Basso Mafia types in the early US and Sicily where it appears from the outside to be a legitimate Sicilian businessman against "mafiosi" or "Black Handers" when in reality it's more complicated. It's amazing to me that even in 1892 the PD and newspapers were aware of the organization being made up of both respected legitimate figures (Alta) and a more obvious criminal element (Basso). Together they make the mafia what it is and there is a tendency for historians to only look for the Basso elements since those are what scream "organized crime".

I'm also unsure if the guy arrested for extorting Catalano, Lorenzo "Lanciolo", was even a Sicilian. I found some variant spellings of his name in newspapers but they all seem to be butchered. If he was non-Sicilian it would mean something else was likely at play.

[B.]

The red bandana thing is also interesting. The newspapers speculated that it symbolized the "Sangue", or blood, but I think that was just their speculation. Could be a coincidence but Giuseppe Morello wore a red bandana around his neck when he attended a meeting.

[Sullycantwell]

amazing info!

[bronx]

great info !!

[PolackTony]

Unsurprisingly, Cosimo Catalano had a sister, Giuseppa Catalano, who immigrated to Chicago where she married Salvatore Cosentino, a grocer from Tèrmini.

Francesco Catalano, who was born 1838 in Tèrmini and may have been an uncle of Cosimo Catalano, was one of the first documented Sicilians in Cleveland, establishing a citrus importing company in 1880 that soon became a major player in produce and olive oil wholesaling in Cleveland (Frank Catalano & Son). Giuseppe Vittorio was another early Termitano who made it big in import-wholesaling. The early Termitani, along with other Sicilians primarily from Palermo province and Messina, settled and established their businesses in the Haymarket district in Central Cleveland, along Woodland Ave. By 1900, this district, rechristened “Big Italy” to distinguish it from the “Little Italy” that subsequently formed to the East around Mayfield Rd, was over 90% Sicilian. Presumably, this was the locus for the early mafia in Cleveland, which I would suspect formed in the 1880s (based on the initiation of Sicilian immigration and further supported by the account that you found from 1892).

The Termitani were very influential in early Sicilian communities, and clearly in the mafia, in a number of cities and regions. They may well have been instrumental in founding the mafia in both Chicago and Cleveland, and possibly Pittsburgh as well. They were influential in early New England, it would seem, and likely influential in STL and NOLA also. If there was an early Family in Baltimore, they were almost certainly a major part of it. From their main centers of settlement and business in Chicago, Cleveland, Pitt, Baltimore, etc, they fanned out across states like OH and PA, setting up produce distribution networks tied to the major importing and wholesaling houses in the big cities. In Chicago, they dominated a large part of the produce market from wholesale to retail by the 1880-90s (implementing a system of, basically, indentured servitude, where the heads of the major wholesaling companies served as patroni to sponsor paesani for immigration who in turn had to work as street fruit peddlers for their patrone to work off their debt for passage and board), provided the first Italian elected official in the city (himself very likely connected to the mafia), and founded powerful pan-Sicilian/Italian social institutions like the Unione Siciliana and Fratellanza Trinacria. They were central in founding the “Società Mano Bianca” to fight “Black Hand” extortionists, even while many of them were likely mafiosi or tied to the mafia themselves, a clear example of the Alta/Bassa tensions that, as you note, were a recurrent feature of the mafia both in Sicily and the early US. In PA/OH, the “Society of the Banana” was composed mainly of men from neighboring Trabìa (another comune that was important in a number of cities in the late 19th century, including SF and Pitt), and Tèrmini, and likely was an early example of collaboration between mafiosi and Mainlanders and Messinesi.

The red bandanna thing is an interesting detail and also reminiscent of the account of Detroit using different colored bandannas in their meetings.

[motorfab]

Great stuff B

[Stroccos]

great stuff B , here is a few thangs i wanted to point out
1.in reguards to this " carizza" , that is Francisco Carizzo who was killed by Cleveland police in1892
2.Sottosantis father worked at the factory as well. Could it be as simple as a father getting his sona job ?
3. if Catalano was Mafioso why did he go to the police about the black hand exortion ?
4. Lorenzo lanciolo the man arrested was allegedly Catalanos cousin
5. is the Italian fraternal organization be what there referring to ? Carizzo was allegelly a member but they claimed he was kicked out when he went to jail.

[PolackTony]

The Francesco Antonio Carrizzo killed by the police in 1892 I believe was from Caserta province. If he was affiliated with a criminal society, I’d think this was a reference to a Camorra group.

Another newspaper account gave the name of the guy with the red bandanna as “Vincenzo DeStefano”. Too general of a name to narrow down, but there were Di Stefanos from Campobasso and Avellino early on in Cleveland.

[B.]

It wasn't clear in the articles I saw that Carrizzo was a mafia affiliate, only that the mafia was upset that an Italian was killed and that witnesses said he was the aggressor. Carrizzo was apparently drunk and disorderly. It may have been an "Italian Lives Matter" situation where they were simply upset a fellow Italian was killed by the cops.

The article did specifically say the mafia organization was led by three Sicilians and included "respectable Italians" along with "cutthroats" which would indicate mafia more than Camorra but given it was 1892 newspaper coverage and we don't have names for the three Sicilian leaders it's not as conclusive as we'd like.

For Catalano I agree we can't say for certain what he was but he wouldn't be the first mafioso of the era to be extorted or bombed. Ignazio Lupo had his store bombed and if I remember right so did Sabella in Philly. Not sure how cooperative they were with police and they may have been part of the plan but there are examples of mafiosi working with police when an enemy or outsider does something to them.

I see these situations / figures as possible leads into the early Cleveland mafia but they should be looked at critically from all angles.

[Stroccos]

It wasn't clear in the articles I saw that Carrizzo was a mafia affiliate, only that the mafia was upset that an Italian was killed and that witnesses said he was the aggressor. Carrizzo was apparently drunk and disorderly. It may have been an "Italian Lives Matter" situation where they were simply upset a fellow Italian was killed by the cops.

The article did specifically say the mafia organization was led by three Sicilians and included "respectable Italians" along with "cutthroats" which would indicate mafia more than Camorra but given it was 1892 newspaper coverage and we don't have names for the three Sicilian leaders it's not as conclusive as we'd like.

For Catalano I agree we can't say for certain what he was but he wouldn't be the first mafioso of the era to be extorted or bombed. Ignazio Lupo had his store bombed and if I remember right so did Sabella in Philly. Not sure how cooperative they were with police and they may have been part of the plan but there are examples of mafiosi working with police when an enemy or outsider does something to them.

I see these situations / figures as possible leads into the early Cleveland mafia but they should be looked at critically from all angles.

Have you found the name Antonio musolino in your research for early Cleveland ?

[JCB1977]

A name I kept coming across as the “King of the Black Hand” was Domenico Mazola aka Dominic “Big Dom” Mazola also spelled Mazzola was killed by brothers Joseph & Peter Randazzo in April of 1915. He was of Sicilian descent but not 100% clear on where. He lived off Orange Ave near Big Italy and was the chief suspect in the murder of Walter Chapman, police officer during the strike in Cleveland. I have his criminal case file and his coroners report…but other than a death certificate, I can’t locate him which tells me he was here illegally.

**His death certificate was signed by “witness” Charles Masseria, brother of Joe “The Boss” Masseria.