Castellammaresi network (New York City)
 Nicolo “Cola” Schiro in 1923; he organized a Williamsburg Mafia family within the wider Castellammaresi migration network | |
| Origins | |
|---|---|
| Founding Location | Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City |
| Territory | Williamsburg, Brooklyn |
| Lineage | |
| Successor(s) | Bonanno crime family (through the Schiro–Maranzano organization) |
| Profile | |
| Structure | Hometown, kinship and Mafia network |
| Activities | Extortion and protection rackets Bootlegging (later period) Murder |
| Politics | |
| Leader | Sebastiano DiGaetano (reported c. 1909/10–1912) Nicolo “Cola” Schiro (1912–1930) Salvatore Maranzano (1930–1931) |
| Notable Members | Vito Bonventre Stefano Magaddino Joseph Bonanno |
| Activity | |
| Status | Developed into a formal Mafia family |
| Years Active | c. 1909–1931 (organized formation; migration ties documented from 1897) |
The Castellammaresi network is an analytical description for a hometown, kinship and Mafia milieu formed around immigrants from Castellammare del Golfo in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, during the early twentieth century. Castellammaresi is the Italian plural demonym; Castellammarese is the usual English singular or adjectival form. The label describes overlapping migration and criminal relationships rather than a single self-named organization encompassing every immigrant from the town.
Individual migration ties are documented in the late 1890s: specialist research places Nicolo “Cola” Schiro's immigration in 1897 and Castellammare-born Sebastiano DiGaetano's first arrival in 1898. Evidence for an organized Williamsburg formation is strongest from approximately 1909 onward.[1]
Williamsburg network
[edit]Historian David Critchley writes that the Williamsburg organization became strongly oriented around interrelated Mafiosi from Castellammare del Golfo. Shared kinship and birthplace affiliations produced networks as Castellammaresi immigrants settled within a few blocks of one another. Most future members arrived within a few years of Schiro's 1902 move to Brooklyn, and the circle developed into what Critchley calls New York's second Mafia family after Giuseppe Morello's organization.[2]
Warner, Santino and Van't Reit cautiously reconstruct DiGaetano as the organization's leader around 1909 or 1910. Schiro succeeded him in March 1912.[1] Schiro himself was born in Roccamena and raised in Camporeale, demonstrating that the Williamsburg family was hometown-weighted rather than composed exclusively of people born in Castellammare del Golfo.
The network extended through marriage and blood relationships to Castellammaresi in Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia and other American cities. Figures associated with its New York development included Vito Bonventre, Stefano Magaddino and other interrelated migrants.[2] These connections facilitated cooperation and movement but did not place every Castellammaresi group under one national command.
From compaesani network to Mafia family
[edit]The organized Williamsburg Mafia was nested inside the broader migration network. The 1921 “Good Killers” case exposed Bonventre–Magaddino–Buccellato vendetta ties across Sicily, Brooklyn and Detroit.[3] Hunt and Sheldon interpret the Good Killers as one crew or enforcement arm within a wider formation; Critchley responds that the evidence does not establish them as the enforcement arm of a unified Castellammarese syndicate.[4] The name should therefore remain attached to the 1921 case rather than used as a synonym for the whole Williamsburg organization.
Schiro left the field around 1930 amid pressure from Giuseppe Masseria. Salvatore Maranzano then led the organization during the Castellammarese War, after which Joseph Bonanno inherited the surviving family.[5] The war faction and subsequent Bonanno family represented later organizational stages; they were not synonymous with every person connected through the original Castellammaresi compaesani network.
The New York group maintained familial and fraternal links to Sicilian men of respect, but the available evidence supports networks and particular personal connections rather than routine command from Castellammare del Golfo.[6]
References
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Richard Warner, Angelo Santino and Lennert Van't Reit, “Early New York Mafia: An Alternative Theory”, Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, May 2014, pp. 52–61.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 212–230.
- ↑ Thomas Hunt and Martha Macheca Sheldon, “The Good Killers: 1921's Glimpse of the Mafia”, revised from On the Spot Journal of Crime and Law Enforcement History, Spring 2007.
- ↑ Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 218–223.
- ↑ Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 178–191.
- ↑ Critchley, Origin of Organized Crime, pp. 69–71.