Detective Joseph Petrosino

-

 





Det. Joseph Petrosino was He was the NYPD’s first Italian‑American detective--and the only NYPD officer ever killed in the line of duty in a foreign country.


Petrosino was murdered by Mafia members on March 12, 1909 while he was in Palermo investigating the Black Hand. It took almost a month for his remains to be returned to New York.

After a funeral Mass at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Little Italy, over 200,000
New Yorkers lined the route to Calvary Cemetery— an unprecedented tribute for a police officer. The New York Times wrote that “if Petrosino had died a President or an Emperor no deeper or truer show of feeling could have been manifested.”

His funeral remains one of the largest NYC has ever seen.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Mother's Grief

-
Image
  Near the edge of Green -Wood Cemetery, a sculpture of a beautiful woman –Rose Guarino--reclining across stone steps stops visitors in their tracks. Open-eyed, with lips parted and long hair flowing, she is dressed in a flowing gown, and wearing sandals. She clutches a bouquet in her hands. For generations, Brooklyn locals have believed that the monument commemorates a mafia bride gunned down on her wedding day in a revenge killing. The true story behind the statue does involve a murder and is just as tragic.  In the summer of 1909, Dominica Merello and her daughter, Rose Guarino, were dining with family members on the lawn of their NJ summer home when Pietro Silverio, an irate domestic employee, rushed the women, gun in hand, to exact revenge for losing his job. As the women attempted to flee, Silverio gave chase and shot Guarino in the back.   She died three days later. Guarino's body was held for two years in the cemetery's receiving vault while the monument w...
Read more

Serendipity in the Cemetery: Unearthing Unexpected Stories

-
Image
Some of my best cemetery finds have come my way through pure serendipity. Walking through a cemetery can be a solemn and, at times, an eerie experience. The silence, the weathered tombstones, and the weight of history all cast a mysterious cloak over the atmosphere. Yet, amidst the somber surroundings, there are occasions when serendipity sweeps in to unearth unexpected stories that lie quietly beneath the gravestones. Cemeteries are not solely the resting place of the departed: they are also a testament to the lives lived, the triumphs and struggles woven into the fabric of humanity. Each tombstone tells a unique tale, often with fragments of personal narratives that time has erased. But sometimes, amid the rows of weathered memorials, a serendipitous find sheds light on forgotten stories, connecting us to the past in ways we never imagined. One might stumble upon a gravestone adorned with flowers, meticulously maintained despite the passage of time. Curiosity piqued, we learn that a ...
Read more

Thomas Clark Durant

-
Image
  Born in Lee, Massachusetts, Thomas Clark Durant attended Albany Medical School, earned a degree and, for a time, taught surgery. However, after becoming aware of the need for better transportation, he became involved in the railroad industry. When he became involved in a lawsuit about a bridge, he hired a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to defend him. This connection paid off when Lincoln became president. In 1862, he gave Durant’s company, the Union Pacific, a big part of building the Transcontinental Railroad. Although construction faced delays due to the Civil War, Durant took advantage of the situation by secretly bringing in cotton from the Confederate States to make money.  After the war, railroad construction resumed, and Durant organized publicity stunts to draw attention and investors. A memorable moment was when he swung the sledgehammer to drive the Golden Spike into the ground in Promontory, Utah, completing the Transcontinental Railway. Durant died in 1885, b...
Read more