Joseph Vaccaro Jr.
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 8 Dec 1894 - New Orleans, Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Christening:
Death: 19 Apr 1960 - Hotel Dieu Hospital, New Orleans, Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Burial: 21 Apr 1960 - Hope Mausoleum, New Orleans, Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Cause of Death:
Parents
Father: Joseph Vaccaro Sr. {FGID: 124190377}
Mother: Antonina Mustacchia {FGID: 124190448}
Spouses and Children
1. *Olivia Tricon
Marriage:
Notes
General:
Per 1900 US Census 6/7/1900 1121 N Peters St, New Orleans, Orleans, Ward 6, Louisiana
Joseph Vaccaro Sr is the 43 year old white male head of household, born Nov 1856 in Italy, as were his parents. He immigrated in 1865, lived here 25 years, and is a naturalized citizen. He is self-employed as a Conv Merch, and owns his home free of mortgage. His wife of 25 years is 36 year old Antonina Vaccaro, born Dec 1863 in Italy, as were her parents. They have had 7 children, all still living. John Vaccaro, 17 year old son born Sep 1882, works as clerk (Com House). Lucas Vaccaro, 16 year old son born Jan 1883, clerk (Com House). Anna Vaccaro, 15 year old daughter born Sep 1884. Felix Vaccaro, 8 year old son born June 1891, at school. Joseph Vaccaro, 6 year old son, born Dec 1893, at school. Philomina Vaccaro, 10 year old daughter born Sep 1889, at school. All the children were born in Louisiana.
Stephen Vaccaro is 23 years old, head of the household, born Aug 1876 in Louisiana, his parents in Italy. He is a clerk (Com House), renting his home, married 1 year to Lena Vaccaro. Lena is 24, born Sep 1877 in Louisiana, her parents in Italy. They have had 1 child, 9 month old Lena M. Vaccaro, born in Louisiana in Aug 1899.
Salvatore Dantoni is 25 years old, head of household, born May 1875 in Louisiana, his parents in Italy. He is a clerk (Com House). He has been married 1 year to Mary Dantoni. Mary is 21 years old, born Aug 1878 in Louisiana her parents in Italy. They have one child, 7 month old daughter Roselyn Dantoni, born Oct 1899 in Louisiana.
Per 1910 US Census 4/22/1910 1937 Ursuline Ave, New Orleans Ward 6, Orleans, Louisiana
Joseph Vaccaro is the 54 year old white male head of household, born in Italy, as were his parents. He immigrated in 1868 and is a naturalized citizen, working as a merchant of produce, and renting his home. His wife of 35 years is 50 year old Lena Vaccaro, born in Italy, as were her parents. She immigrated in 1868, has had 11 children, 8 still living. Anna Vaccaro is their 23 year old daughter, single, born in Louisiana, as were all the children. Philomena Vaccaro is their 19 year old daughter, single, attends school. Felix Vaccaro is their 18 year old son, single, attends school. Joseph Vaccaro Jr is their 16 year old son, attends school. Luca Vaccaro is their 25 year old son, single, works as a shipper of produce. John Vaccaro is their 27 year old son, single, works as a shipper of produce. Son-in-law Salvator Dantoni is 35 years old, born in Italy, as were his parents. He is employed as a merchant of produce, and has been married for 10 years to 29 year old Mary Dantoni, the Vaccaro's daughter. She was born in Louisiana, as was her 10 year old daughter, Rosina Dantoni, who attends school. Biagio Dantoni is her 9 year old son, born in Louisiana, attends school. Joseph S. Dantoni is her 2 year old son born in Louisiana. There is also a boarder, 14 year old Josephine Bruno.
Per WWI Draft Registration 6/5/1917
Joseph Vaccaro Jr is 23 years old, born Dec 8, 1894, in New Orleans, LA, USA. A natural born citizen, he works as a clerk for Vaccaro Bros & Co, 1105 Q&C Bldg, New Orleans. He is white, single, and has no military service. He is described as medium height, medium build, grey eyes and light hair.
Per March 20, 1919 Passport Application
Joseph Vaccaro Jr, born in New Orleans, LA on Dec 8, 1894. His father Joseph Vaccaro was born in Contessa Enterlina, Italy. A permanent resident of New Orleans, he is a wharf supt., and is leaving for an indefinite stay in Ceiba, Honduras to work for Vaccaro Bros. & Co. He is described as 24 years old, 5' 6" tall, high forehead, brown eyes, Roman nose, medium mouth, round chin, dark complexion, full face.
Per 1920 US Census: 1/9/1920 5010 St Charles Ave., New Orleans, Ward 13, Orleans, Louisiana
[Note this census page is faint, so the following is my attempt to read it]
Joseph Vaccaro is the 68 year old white male head of household, born in Italy, as were his parents. He immigrated to the US in 1876, becoming naturalized in 1889. He owns his home, free of mortgage. Joe is a wholesale merchant of fruit, of his own account. His wife is 66 year old Lena Vaccaro, also born in Italy as were her parents. Luken Vaccaro, 40 year old son, single, born in Louisiana, works of his own account as merchant for a fruit company. John Vaccaro, 40 year old son, single, born in Louisiana, works of his own account as wholesale merchant for a fruit company. Joe Vaccaro Jr, 29 year old son, single, born in Louisiana, works of his own account as wholesale merchant for a fruit company. Felix Vaccaro, 26 year old son, single, born in Louisiana, works of his own account as merchant for a fruit company. Anna Havner, 35 year old daughter, widowed, born in Louisiana. Lena Dantona, 31 year old daughter, widowed, born in Louisiana. Josephine Brown, 23 year old niece, single, born in Louisiana. Vincent Dantona, 2 year old grandson, born in Louisiana, as were his parents. Felix Havner, 6 month old grandson, born in Louisiana, his father in Virginia, his mother in Louisiana.
There are two household employees: a 22 year old butler, Lawrence Blanco, of Honduras, and Julice Copas, a 45 year old nurse from Louisiana.
Per New Orleans States (New Orleans, LA) September 1925 Page 1
RISE OF VACCARO FIRM IS GREAT BUSINESS ROMANCE
DAY LABORER IN YOUTH, IS MASTER OF MILLIONS
Mr. Frost Tells Story Of Achievements Of 3 Vaccaro Brothers by MEIGS O. FROST
It takes America to produce a story like this. America, where the only limit to a man's achievement is the power that has its being in his brain and heart and hand. America, where what you were weighs nothing in the scale compared to what you are; and where what you will be can never be safely predicted from your origin.
When the Hotel Roosevelt, newest and most magnificent hotel in the South with the addition of its towering annex, opens to its full capacity this October, it will be the scene of a great banquet. Not, as is customary, a banquet by the owners to their friends. Nothing so ordinary is this.
At the Roosevelt there will gather for that banquet more than five hundred of New Orlean's folk, leaders in every walk of life in the South's greatest city. They will gather there to pay honor to the Vaccaros and the D'Antonis.
Rightly they do this. For they are honoring something more than mere wealth. They are honoring the keen brains and clear eyes and indomitable courage of a man who began life penniless, son of simple Italian farmers in the little village of Contessa Entellina, who started work as a laborer in Louisiana for seventy-five cents a day, and who here in New Orleans, beginning with a capital of a bride and twenty dollars, has built up the great Vaccaro fruit importing, steamship, railroad and commercial interests.
Rules Great Enterprise
Yes, it takes America to produce a story like this. And here, for the first time, exclusively in the New Orleans States, is told the amazing story of the rise of Joseph Vaccaro, Lucca Vaccaro and Felix P. Vaccaro, three Italian immigrant brothers, and of Salvador D'Antoni, their associate in the great business of the firm of Vaccaro Brothers and Company.
New Orleans is the home of that firm. But its interests reach out from New Orleans into the tropics, where it pours a stream of gold into Honduras, Nicaraga, Mexico and Panama.
Many a lordly ruler whose name has gone down in history of Joseph Vaccaro's native Italy, wielded a power that was puny beside the power in the hands of this son of simple Italian farmers. Today at the age of seventy, as president of Vaccaro Brothers and Company, a fleet of sixteen great steamships moves at his word.
Two hundred miles of tropical railroad bears his cargoes to the palm fringed beaches. More than 500,000 hectares of land produces his crops, while an army of more than three thousand employees do his bidding on his payroll. And yearly from those tropics his steamships bring 8,000,000 bunches of bananas into the markets of the United States of America, of which he is a citizen.
Began as Laborer
There at the head of that commercial empire stands the man who began his work in America, an Italian immigrant lad, paid seventy-five cents a day down at the mouth of the Mississippi River where he wove willows into the "mattresses" that lined the banks of South Pass when the great Eads jetties were being built to give a permanent deep-water gateway to New Orleans.
It takes America to produce a story like this.
Yet you cannot get that story from Joseph Vaccaro. You cannot get it from the lips of Lucca Vaccaro or Felix P. Vaccaro or Salvador D'Antoni.
Not that they are ashamed of their origin. They are proud of it. But their personal modesty is such that when the conversation turns to them, they grow tongue-tied, and dumb. Only by many questionings of their intimate friends who know their personal history, is the New Orleans States enabled to give to the world this intimate sketch of the man who came to this city penniless and founded a commercial empire that has made him and his associates probably the most powerful financial group in the South today.
Invest Millions Here
But, though they are world figures in their field, there is in the hearts of the Vaccaros and the D'Antonis an affection for New Orleans where their fortune was built - a love of the old home town - that is a remarkable trait of human loyalty. They haven't said it with flowers. They have said it with dollars. Somewhere between $15,000,000 and $20,000,000 are their investments in New Orleans.
Keen business men admit with surprising warmth that had the Vaccaros invested that money in their own fruit business the returns would have been far greater. But with the feeling that "we wanted to do something for the town where we got our start," the executive heads of that Vaccaro organization have poured millions of dollars into New Orleans investments.
It is an amazing group of men, those heads of the Vaccaro interests. Joseph Vaccaro, 70, is president of Vaccaro Brothers and Company. Lucca Vaccaro, 68, is vice-president. Felip P. Vaccaro, 60, is secretary-treasurer. Three brothers. And Salvador D'Antoni, 51, who after he became in the early days the business associate of Joseph Vaccaro, also became his son-in-law, is general foreign manager of the great interests of the firm. A close corporation, you observe. A family corporation. And it will continue so. For the next generation of Vaccaros and D'Antonis, heirs to millions but every one of them trained in as hard a school as though he had been born penniless as was his father, form the roster of junior members of the firm, every one of them keen and trained to leap into the saddle the minute "the old folks" decide to dismount.
Four Sons Active
John Vaccaro, 43; L. J. Vaccaro, 35; Joseph Vaccaro, Jr., ("the baby," they call him smilingly) all four sons of Joseph Vaccaro, are active in the work of the firm today.
And C. D'Antoni, 46; with B. S. D'Antoni, 25, are the remaining junior members of the firm.
Here, told for the first time, is the story of the origin of the great firm.
Joseph Vaccaro, a mere child less than ten years old, first came to America with his parents from the little Italian village where he was born. They came to New Orleans. They didn't like it. They went back and of course little Joseph Vaccaro went back with them.
But something in America had touched his childish imagination. He begged and pleaded to be allowed to return. And he did return.
Barely past the age of ten, he was placed on a sailing ship headed for New Orleans. He landed in Louisiana, a boy on his own resources at an age when modern children are mostly cared for almost like babies. He worked at various boys' jobs. Then when he was in his early 'teens, came a chance to earn seventy-five cents a day down at the mouth of the river, weaving willow mattresses that were anchored there by great rocks to prevent the scour of the current gouging out the banks that line the channel.
His most intimate friends tell this story.
Little Joe Vaccaro straightened up his weary back one day down at the mouth of the river. Past him, heading out into the Gulf of Mexico, a great ship went its majestic way.
"Looks fine, don't she," said one who stood beside him.
"Someday I'll have them running like that," said Joe Vaccaro.
And he meant it.
The next that his friends remember, Joe Vaccaro, about sixteen, was working cutting rice at a dollar and twenty-five cents a day on a plantation at The Jump, down by Sixty-Mile Point towards the mouth of the river. (He owns that plantation, today, by the way.)
Then he came back to New Orleans.
He was a man now, almost seventeen; earning his own way. He didn't have any job. He didn't want one. He was going to have a business of his own. Didn't he have twenty dollars cash in his pocket? You bet he did.
So he got married. The bride was Miss Lena Musacchia of New Orleans. They rented a little furnished room out on Chartres street near Esplanade avenue, back of where the No. 9 Fire Engine House stands today.
"We had to rent a furnished room," Joe Vaccaro has chuckled since then to one or two of his intimate friends. "All the furniture I had was on my back."
Began in a Basket
So the Vaccaro business started. It began in a basket, literally.
Pretty soon the basket wasn't big enough. So Joe Vaccaro started a little fruit stand in the old French market where Grimaldi's Fish Stand is today. The fruit stand's business grew. Felix Vaccaro and Lucca Vaccaro whom he had left behind in Italy, mere babies, came over to America, and joined Joe Vaccaro. The fruit stand by now had expanded into a little fruit and produce business in Ursuline street. It expanded still larger on Decatur street between St. Louis and Toulouse with Felix and Lucca as partners.
Then, when Joe Vaccaro was about thirty years old (this was some forty years ago) he took in Dominick Tortorich as partner in a fruit and produce business at 1121 North Peters street, while Stephen Vaccaro, the oldest son who died in 1922, took over the original business. After five years of partnership it was dissolved.
It wasn't all easy sailing in those days. Joe Vaccaro has told one or two of his friends of one little episode. He had a small line of credit with the Fruit Auction Board. Very small. He couldn't go a dollar beyond it. Into New Orleans came a shipment of 4,000 cases of lemons from Messina, Italy. Joe Vaccaro wanted those lemons. He knew he could sell them. But to buy the whole shipment was far beyond his means. The man who today handles 8,000,000 bunches of bananas a year, at that time couldn't buy those 4,000 cases of lemons. He asked for them on credit. The Fruit Auction Board turned him down cold.
Finds Friend in Roth
Then up stepped Charlie Roth. The same Charlie Roth New Orleans knows in the real estate business today. He was then an official of the Fruit Auction Board.
"I'll stand good for anything Mr. Vaccaro wants," said Charlie Roth. And Joe Vaccaro got his 4,000 cases of lemons.
About this time two young Italians were developing a little business on the Mississippi River. They were brothers: Salvador D'Antoni and Camilla D'Antoni. They owned a battered little lugger. In New Orleans they would buy a lugger-load of fruit, and take it up the river, peddling it across the levee to the sugar plantations that lined the bank. Joe Vaccaro sold them the fruit they peddled. That was the beginning of the association of the Vaccaro and D'Antoni families.
Also about this time there were great orange groves down the Mississippi River. The Louisiana orange was becoming famous. Joe Vaccaro had a little capital and credit now. The D'Antoni brothers had a boat - that battered lugger. So Joe Vaccaro worked out the idea of buying up the down-river orange crop and bringing it to New Orleans in the D'Antoni lugger. They got together.
On Cocoanut Venture
Then, just as this infant business was getting under way, there came what all Louisiana remembers as the Year of the Big Freeze. The orange groves down the river were wiped out. That was in 1899.
Were the Vaccaros and D'Antonis discouraged? They were not. Joe Vaccaro knew one Captain Travieso, Italian master of a schooner. They were talking of trading opportunities.
"I'll tell you," said Captain Travieso, "There's a lot of cocoanuts can be picked up on the island of Rautan, about thirty-eight miles northeast of Ceiba, off the coast of Honduras. You can swap provisions for cocoanuts."
But a boat was needed for a trip like that. The D'Antoni lugger was all right for the Mississippi river but not for the Gulf of Mexico to Honduras. So Joe Vaccaro did some heavy thinking. He had a rich friend - though not the kind who would lend money to him . That man was the late Salvador Oteri, a great fruit magnate of his time in New Orleans. And Salvador Oteri had, idle at its morrings in New Orleans, a battered-old-schooner.
Joe Vaccaro went to Salvador Oteri.
"I see you've still got that old schooner over there," he said.
"Sure," said Salvador Oteri. "Do you want her? I'll give her to you."
Salvador Oteri was the most surprised man in the world when Joe Vaccaro took him up. "But he didn't give him the vessel. That wasn't business. What he did do was take Joe Vaccaro's note for $2,500 and sell him the schooner.
Lugger Starts Fleet
"That schooner was the Santa Oteri. She and the little D'Antoni lugger were the foundation of the Vaccaro fleet. The schooner herself was the foundation of the Vaccaro deep sea fleet. She rests today in honorable retirement in the harbor at Rautan.
Joe Vaccaro and his brothers stretched their credit till it cracked. They loaded the Santa Orteri with provisions and headed for the island of Rautan in the Caribbean. They got their cocoanuts. But they learned that the real fruit production was on the mainland of Honduras. They went to the mainland.
Voyage after voyage they brought back to New Orleans cocoanuts, limes and pineapples. They had no sheltered harbor. On the open roadstead of that tropical coast they moored that crazy little schooner caro, worked up to their necks in water alongside brown and black skinned labor getting the loaded lighters out to the schooner's side.
Their keen eyes were on the banana business after the first trip. It was no business to be grabbed with ease. The competition was strong. The Oteri interests of New Orleans were firmly intrenched. The interests that later built up the gigantic United Fruit Company were there on the ground.
Enter Banana Field
But the Vaccaros went to work. And they sailed out of Honduras on their little schooner with a few contracts for the banana output of some planters in Honduras. They came back to New Orleans with those contracts in their pockets.
Now they had to have a steamship. Cocoanuts and limes and pineapples might travel by sail, but bananas demanded the speed of steam.
So they chartered through a steamship agent the little 300 ton tramp steamer Premier. She is still at work down in the Caribbean, working for a wrecking company. She carried 8,000 bunches of bananas. It was a mighty cargo for the Vaccaros in those days. Today their palatial steamers carry 100,000 bunches at a trip and two magnificent liners are now building at Belfast and on the Tyne to enter the New Orleans service just after the first of the year, raising the total of the Vaccaro fleet to 16 steamships flying the house flag of blue, white and blue with the red "V" in the center.
It was touch and go for the new business. Competition was strong. Early in the game the Vaccaros discovered they must have railroads to carry the cargoes to the coast.
"Every dollar we made in those days was put right back in the business," old Joe Vaccaro chuckled recently in talking over the old days with a friend. But they started their railroad on the Salada river and along the coast to Ceiba. Today they have 200 miles of magnificent railroad, and a splendid sheltered port.
Business Grew Fast
Old Joe Vaccaro stayed behind to handle the New Orleans end of the business when once they had it started. Felix Vaccaro and Salvador D'Antoni went along in the Premier for the first load of bananas, and with their own hands helped load it.
And the business grew. Their first offices were in the little brick building upstairs over what is now Cajoleas restaurant, on the corner of Camp and Gravier streets. Presently the offices moved to the Interstate Bank building. Then they filled the eleventh floor of the Queen and Crescent building. Then the twelfth floor. And this week they moved to their new quarters; downstairs and the whole fourteenth floor of the new Union Indemnity building that Vaccaro has built.
And the man at the head of it all - the man many of the folks of New Orleans know in friendly fashion as "Old Joe" Vaccaro - as he sits in his offices in the Union Indemnity building is curiously unchanged in his democracy from the boy who wove willow mattresses at Port Eads for seventy-five cents a day and a quarter a day in the fields of the do???????? (words lined out)
Per Obituary in the Times-Picayune April 22 1960 Page 2
VACCARO -- On Tuesday evening, April 19, 1960, at 9:25 o'clock, JOSEPH VACCARO JR., in his 67th year, beloved husband of Olivia Tricon, son of the late Antonina Muissachia and Joseph Vaccaro, brother of John and Felix Vaccaro, Mrs. Salvador D'Antoni, Mrs. Anna Havener of New York, N. Y., Mrs. Ralph Lally and the late Stephen and Lucas J. Vaccaro, survived by nieces and nephews.
Funeral took place from P. J. McMahon & Sons Funeral Home, 4800 Canal street, near cemeteries (parking in rear) at 11 o'clock Thursday morning, April 21, 1960, followed by Requiem High Mass at St. Pius X church.
Interment in Hope Mausoleum.
Per Times-Picayune April 22 1960 Page 1
VACCARO RITES WILL BE TODAY
Fruit, Ship Firm's Ex-Vice-President Was 67
Funeral Services for Joseph Vaccaro Jr., a former vice-president of the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company, will be held Thursday at 11 a. m. at the P. J. McMahon & Sons funeral home, 4800 Canal.
The services will be followed by a Requiem mass at St. Pius X church, 6600 Spanish Fort blvd. Interment will be in Hope Mausoleum.
Mr. Vaccaro, who resided at 17 Breeze Park, died Tuesday at 9:25 p. m. at Hotel Dieu. He was 67 years old.
A son of the founder of Standard Fruit and Steamship Company, he retired from the firm two years ago. He had served as a vice-president, member of the board of directors and superintendent of wharf operations.
Mr. Vaccaro was a native of New Orleans and was educated in the city's parochial schools, graduating from St. Paul's High school in Covington. He also attended Holy Cross college in New Orleans.
He joined Standard, operators of the Vaccaro Line, in 1920 as an assistant in dock operations. When he retired in 1958, he was superintendent of the wharf.
His father, Joseph Vaccaro, and two uncles were Italian immigrants who started a produce business with a fruit and vegetable stand in the French Market. This same small enterprise developed into a giant steamship company and banana empire.
Mr. Vaccaro was a veteran of World War I, having served in the Army in Europe. Survivors include his widow, the former Olivia Tricon; two brothers, John and Felix Vaccaro, all of New Orleans; three sisters, Mrs. Anna Havener of New York, Mrs. Ralph Lally and Mrs. Salvador D'Antoni, both of New Orleans.