As a follow-up on Carmelo “Charles” Triolo. While he had previously lived in Oak Park, in the 1890s he was living in Cicero, apparently being one of the first Italians to live there (and, if he were a mafioso, he would have then been the first in a very long and storied line of Cicero mafiosi). The executors of Carmelo’s estate named by the Chicago probate court in 1910 included Stefano Malato, the likely mafia-connected Grand Ave alderman and disgraced Cook County ASA (whose office was located on Grand and Milwaukee next to Giuseppe Morici’s saloon and Calogero Caltabellotta’s barber shop, where Tony D’Andrea was said to have gotten his start in Chicago), and Carmelo’s daughter Angelina, who had married Carmelo’s Barese business partner, prominent confectioner Giacomo Allegretti.B. wrote: ↑Thu Oct 20, 2022 3:55 pm A+
As a Unione founder and big time Palermitano who met a violent death it looks like this Triolo could have been a prominent early member in the 19th century. Triolo is a common name in Western Agrigento (Phil Bacino's mom was one) and Ignazio Lupo's sister-in-law was a Triolo -- I've speculated her family could be from Agrigento but also possible they were Palermitan given the Lupo relation.
Shows too the Chicago>California connection was in place early.
Triolo is common all throughout both Western Sicily and Messina province, but given that all his documents stated that he was from Palermo, I think he probably was from Palermo Città. This would fit with him already having been involved in citrus wholesaling before arriving in the US. As I also noted previously, in the 1870s Triolo was initially partnered with Alessandro Ribolla, a Palermitano citrus merchant who arrived in Chicago in the 1850s.