Best Talvacchio family capsule stories


*Famous, Infamous, and Best Family Lore*

80% true.
Good enough!

These stories are highlighted for their value as prompts for discussion or as connections to the larger events unfolding in the world. See Extended Notes for more-detailed information on these and other family members.

Edvige Ferri (b. 1899) Although she had exchanged letters with her future husband in America and their families knew each other in Italy, she met her husband for the first time when an immigration official escorted her from Ellis Island to St. Peter's Church in the Bronx in 1922 and stayed just long enough to witness her marriage. [312,G0]
Peter Schumacher (b. 1819) and Elizabeth Suter (b. 1821) had 16 children and 163 grandchildren. According to Ripley's Believe it or Not column from September, 1931, this was the largest family in the nation from one husband and wife. They had 452 great-grandchildren. [304,P1].
Jeanne (Anna) Steiner (b. 1816) was one of the first converts to the Apostolic Christian Church in her Mennonite community in Wayne County, Ohio. Her husband, the Mennonite bishop, locked her and their young children out of the house on Sunday nights when they returned from services, forcing them to sleep in the barn. [303,P2]
Joseph Jacobberger (b. 1869) was a prominent Portland, Oregon, architect in the first third of the 20th century. At least 11 of his buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places including the home that he designed and built for his own family. Among the buildings that he designed is St. Mary's Cathedral where his grandson became the pastor. [614,G1]
Louis Powell Harvey (b. 1820): Shortly after taking office as Republican governor of Wisconsin on Jan 6, 1862, he went on an inspection trip of Wisconsin troops in Tennessee after the Battle of Shiloh. He drowned on April 19, 1862, when he was transferring from one steamer to another in the Tennessee River at Savannah, Tennessee. [220,0s]

Joseph Michelini (b. 1880) Starting before Prohibition, Joe Michelini and his sons operated a number of businesses in and around Chicago including The Chicago Wine & Liquor Company, the Alpine Gun Club (skeet shooting), and the landmark "500 Club" restaurant that was later leased to new management as "Gene and Georgetti's" and still operates under that name. [639,G1]
Caesar Hilty (b. 1856) was one of the first prospectors to go to Alaska when gold was discovered. His younger brothers followed him there. Al Hilty arrived in D in 1898, went on to Circle in 1900, and in 1903 sank the shaft on Clear C that netted him more than one million dollars. (Bluffton News). [301,D2]
Miriam Burns Horn (b. 1904) was a nationally known golfer. She won the Missouri State Championship (1922 and 1923), Women's Western golf championship (1924 and 1930), Women's Trans-Mississippi Champiionship (1927), and Women's National Golf Champioship (1927). [215,K3]
Peter D. Steiner (b. 1792) was drafted into Napoleon's army for the Russian campaign. As a prank, some soldiers walled Peter and a few others into a cave where they had gone to sleep for the night. By the time they freed themselves, the army had decamped. Peter headed the other direction, crossing into Switzerland and then emigrating to America. [302,L1]
Elno C. Wall (b. 1890) The Akron, Ohio, neighborhood of Wallhaven gets its name from the 19-room hotel that Elno Wall built in the 1930s, at what was then the western edge of Akron. He also operated a pharmacy on the ground floor of the hotel, which continued operations until 1967, when it closed as part of a renovation of the building. Today the landmark building is part of the commercial center that defines the neighborhood. [510,0s]

Marianna Menconi (b. 1875) was 15 -- too young to live on her own -- when she was given the choice of moving with her parents to Butte, Montana, or staying in Chicago and marrying a 19-year-old son of family friends. She married. [601,G1]
Michael Jacobberger (b. 1841) moved his family to the United States so that his sons would not face conscription into the German army after France lost Alsace in the Franco-Prussian war. However, Michael's first trip to North America had been in the French army to fight Mexican revolutionaries in 1860-61 when France attempted to install the puppet dictator, Maximillian, as the Mexican leader. [613,0]
Cordelia A. Perrine Harvey (b. 1824) After the 1862 death of her husband, Wisconsin Governor Louis P. Harvey, Mrs. Harvey worked for reform in Army hospitals. She had audiences with President Lincoln and War Secretary Stanton and convinced them to establish several hospitals in the North where soldiers could convalesce. After the war, she converted one of these hospitals in Madison, Wisconsin, to an orphanage. [221,0]
Giuseppe Talvacchio (b. 1895) emigrated to America in 1912. During World War I, he joined the U.S. Army and spent over 2 years in the Ohio 37th Army Division. He served in Europe in five campaigns. He suffered poison gas while in France and was hospitalized for five months. He automatically became a U.S. citizen with his honorable discharge from the Army. [312,G0]
Agnes and Mary Latta (b. 1774, 1783) were sisters who married Benjamin Barton and Joseph Hamer, respectively, and settled in Lewiston, New York, about 5 miles from Niagara Falls. Both of their homes were burned by the British during the War of 1812. [202,W0]

David Baumgartner (b. 1870) and Hermine Hilty Baumgartner (b. 1875) named all of their nine children with 3-letter first names: Pet, Tot, Isa, Roy, Tom, Dee, Lee, Ima, and Eve. [304,D2]
Emmet G. Latta (b. 1849) was granted 176 US patents, "80 of which apply to bicycles, and there is not at present made a bicycle that does not contain some of his inventions." He ran the Latta Bros. Bicycle Manufacturing Company with his brother, Adrian C. Latta. [213,F3]
Henry Perrine (b. 1730) The main portion of the Battle of Monmouth was fought on his farm. This was the longest battle of the Revolutionary War and the last betweent the main armies. His sons, John and Lewis, fought there in Washnigton's army. [806,G6]
Francis and Vincent Jacobberger (b. 1898 and 1899) lettered in football at the University of Oregon in 1918-19-20 and 1919, respectively. Both brothers played in the 1919 Rose Bowl game against Harvard. [ref.,0]
Millard Fillmore (b. 1800) The 13th U.S. President and 3rd cousin 6 times removed may have been an obscure president, an appeaser of southern slaveowners, and a Know-Nothing who espoused anti-immigrant, anti-Roman-Catholic views, but he was our Know-Nothing. [ref,3]

Moses B. Hershey (b. 1843) served with Co. A. 29th Ind. Vol. in the battles of Shiloh, Stone River, Liberty Gap and, finally, Chickamauga, where he was captured. He was held prisoner for eighteen months, mostly in the infamous prison at Andersonville. He was returning home on the Mississippi River in March, 1865, on the steamer, "Sultana," and beat the odds again by surviving the explosion of the boat that took about 1500 lives. [418,F3]
Liane Kuony (b. 1914), Fond du Lac, Wisconsin's, Belgium-born, flamboyant culinary diva, "made it her life's work to inculcate a measure of European civilization among [Wisconsin's] benighted masses." Madame Kuony's Victorian-era home was the site of her Postilion Restaurant, School of Culinary Arts, and Studio of Interior Design.. Food critics from The New Yorker, Gourmet, and Bon Appetit magazines gave her rave reviews. [ref1, ref2]
Harold J. Kelly (b. 1903), who operated a grocery and department store in Devils Lake, North Dakota, was made an honorary member of the Devils Lake Sioux Tribe for his contributions to econmic development and housing for Indian residents in the Fort Totten area. "Chief Charging Eagle" provides the kernel of truth to those family stories about the uncle who was an Indian chief. [401,K0]
Nathaniel "Priest" Wood (b. 1729), an expelled Congregational Church minister, led a 40-member cult called the Wood Scrape, Fraternity of Rodsmen, or New Israelites, in Middlebury, Vermont, and founded the town of Woodville, Jefferson County, New York. The group's divining rods were used for oracular wisdom, seeking buried treasure, and fortune-telling. There is some controversy about the extent of his contacts with the fathers of LDS founders Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. [ref,0]
Samuel C. Johnson (b. 1833) In 1886, Sam Johnson diversified his Racine, Wisconsin, flooring business by developing a preservative, Johnson's Prepared Wax, that ultimately replaced flooring as the core of his business. By 1919, his company had over 200 employees and "Johnson's Wax" had become a household name. [263,p1]

Hubert M. Amstutz (b. 1901) is Ohio's oldest living World War II veteran at age 107. He was an Army sugeon who served with the first hospital unit to land at Normandy. He practiced medicine in Lancaster, Ohio, for more than 50 years. [ref1, ref2, ref3,H3]
Daniel Perrine (b. 1642) and Maria Thorel (b. 1649) were among 30 passengers who arrived in the New World with the first governor of New Jersey (New Caesarea) on the ship, Philip, in 1665. Their marriage in 1666 is believed to be the first marriage licensed by Governor Carteret in the new settlement. [208,G9]
Coburn Haskell (b. 1868) is credited with the invention of the modern golf ball in Cleveland in 1898. It consisted of a solid rubber core wrapped by elastic thread under tension. The cover was made from gutta-percha. [ref]
Hazel M. Steiner Polsky (b. 1882) At a time when a number of her distant cousins were working in Akron, Ohio's largest department store, Polsky's, she married the son of the founder and became one of Akron's leading philanthropists. [ref,S1]
Lewis B. Hershey (b. 1893), drafted 14.5 million men into the armed services as Director of Selective Service for 29 years under six Presidents spanning World War II, the Korean War, and the war in Vietnam. He was both a four-star Army general and a Mennonite. [ref,M4]

Benito Jacovitti (b. 1923) "is probably the most famous Italian satirical cartoonist, known for his absurd and humorous series full of bizarre events." The most popular of his more than 60 comic characters is from the Old West, Cocco Bill. Jacovitti published more than 150 books. [ref1, ref2, ref3]
William V. Cruess (b. 1886) was a UC Berkeley food scientist who invented the "fruit cocktail." He pioneered the production and preservation of fruit-juice beverages, fruit-based concentrates, and syrups. He is also credited with aiding the rebirth of California's wine industry after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. [ref1, ref2]