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The NJ Press of Atlantic City, June 5, 2002

AT HOME IN HAMMONTON / TOWN LEADS NATION WITH MOST ITALIANS

NEAL BUCCINO Staff Writer, (609) 272-7211

This town's flat features are not at all like the olive-tree-lined hills of Gino Pinto's hometown in Salerno, Italy.

But during Hammonton's annual procession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, when he hears the Italian music and sees neighbors attach money to the statue of the Blessed Virgin, Pinto feels like he's back home. This is, after all, the town with the highest percentage of Italians in the United States, according to an Associated Press analysis of new data from the 2000 Census.

More than 54 percent of Hammonton's 12,604 residents call themselves Italian. That's the biggest concentration of any place in the nation with more than 1,000 people, just ahead of Johnston, R.I.; East Haven, Conn.; Rosetto, Pa.; and Frankfort, N.Y.

Southern New Jersey, like the state overall, contains a dominant Italian strain. Of the approximately 1 million people in this part of the state, 21 percent told the census they are Italian - making that the largest single nationality on record. Another 21 percent said they are Irish and 17 percent said they are German. The census lumped the rest into "other ancestries."

Those estimates came from the census long form sent to one in six households. People were allowed to report more than one ancestry, but the census recorded only the first two. People of African American, Hispanic, Asian and other descents were grouped as "other ancestries."

The Press will report more detailed breakdowns when the census releases the data this summer.

Italian is also the largest single nationality statewide. Eighteen percent of New Jersey residents are Italian; 16 percent are Irish and 13 percent are German. The rest, again, are "other."

The news that Hammonton contains more Italians than any other town surprised no one here.

Gabriel Donio, publisher of the weekly Hammonton Gazette and author of a forthcoming book on the town's history, said Hammonton was settled in the 1850s by New Englanders who were duped by property owners into believing there was already a thriving community there.

A few decades later, landowners duped Italians, many of them from Sicily, in the same way. Over a span of less than 30 years, most of the population of the Sicilian village of Gesso was transplanted to Hammonton.

The Sicilians found that vegetables and fruits they had grown in their homeland worked better in the sandy Pinelands soil than the heavier crops the New Englanders tried to cultivate. Their abundant blueberry crops led to the town's moniker as the "Blueberry Capital of the World."

Farms and once-abundant clothing factories provided plenty of jobs for Italians, who stopped entering Hammonton en masse not long after 1900.

It's hard not to know a Donio in Hammonton. The family has been here 125 years. Gabriel's cousin, Ann Donio, said being Italian, above all, means having close family ties.

Children often grow up to work in their family business - whether it's the family farm, the family tailor shop or, in Ann's case, the family law firm.

"For people not from Hammonton it can be intimidating. (They might say), 'We didn't realize people here had so many interpersonal connections,' " she said.

And she said many don't understand how open Italians are to other cultures, she said. "If you've ever been invited to Sunday dinner at an Italian home, everyone's welcome as long as you eat well."

The annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, started in 1875, draws visitors from across the East Coast each July. It includes a very Italian procession of the statues of saints through town.

When Sue Padolese and Annie DiGerolamo were children, people would carry large candles and walk barefoot during the long procession.

"The old people who were very devoted, following the procession with their bare feet, they're all dying out. The young people aren't as involved," Padolese said.

Pinto said people all over Italy know about Hammonton.

He runs a business that sells supplies to wineries. Outside his office is a little piece of home - a five-foot fig tree. Pinto takes it inside in winter, since Hammonton is not as hot as Italy.

"I'm convinced that over here we will grow olive trees, too. Because the weather is getting warm. This past year was the warmest, a lot like Italy. And in Italy it was cold. I was over there in March," he said.

(Press staff writer John Froonjian and The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

To e-mail Neal Buccino at The Press:

NBuccino@pressofac.com

 

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