How the two came to be in Tacoma tells a fascinating story of how the broad sweep of history plays out in the lives of individuals. The occupation of Rome by the Italian army in September 1870 completed the unification of the peninsula and solidified the creation of the Kingdom of Italy. The unifiers, almost all from the north, then settled down to try to govern their new country. Integration was severely hampered by the lack of a true national language. At the time, few people (less that 3%, according to one scholar) could properly use “Standard Italian” – a “prestige” variant adapted from a Tuscan dialect.
In fact, different parts of Italy had, and still have, their own vernaculars that linguists consider “sister languages,” not dialects of any common form. Some variants were different enough that speakers might switch to Standard Italian to avoid misunderstandings. Ordinary conversation, especially among the poor and least educated, continued in their “native tongue.”
For reasons that are beyond the scope of this blog, the new government’s policies imposed disproportionate hardships in the already-impoverished south. (Even now, specialists in Italian history argue about the root causes.) But the resulting mass exodus is clear in the numbers: Records show that as many as 300,000 Italian immigrants came to this country during the decade after 1880. Seventeen-year-old Vincenzo Cappa was among them, arriving at New York City in the spring of 1883. Here, he most often went by “James,” which was probably his Roman Catholic confirmation name.
James was illiterate, with only a limited command of English. Still, a hard-working manual laborer could find jobs if he was willing to go anywhere and do anything. A decade later, we find him in Tacoma, probably as a railroad section hand. He gravitated to the local “Little Italy,” in the Hilltop neighborhood west of downtown where many immigrants from Calabria had settled. While small in comparison to most such districts – an estimated 400-600 members in 1893 – the community offered ties to a familiar language and culture. Before the decade was out, James married fellow Italian immigrant Rosina “Rose” Vercillo at Saint Leo Catholic church in Tacoma.
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| St. Leo Catholic Church. Vintage Postcard. |
Meanwhile, the exodus from their homeland continued … almost 600,000 coming to the U.S. in the decade after 1890. Francesco Cusato somehow endured those years. He had also acquired a half-brother, Michele “Mike” Sita, a few years after his mother remarried. Mike would play a key role in Frank’s future.
Matters in Italy came to a head near the end of the decade. A major failure in the wheat crop caused a spike in prices, followed by widespread “bread riots.” A savage over-reaction by the military resulted in many civilian deaths, and only fueled further strife. Frank’s stepfather moved to this country a few months before Italy’s king was assassinated in the summer of 1900. He too ended up in Tacoma’s Little Italy.
The murder of the king did spark changes, some good, some bad. On the plus side, officials created a Commission on Emigration to guide those who wanted to leave. Frank’s brother Nicola “Nick” Cusato and half-brother Mike also immigrated and settled in Tacoma. Frank finally joined them there in June 1906. He was forty years old, could not read or write, and had poor English. Like Cappa, he found manual labor jobs wherever he could: on the docks, in construction, mining, and more. He never married, but Nick and Mike did, and Frank would eventually have eight nieces and nephews.
James and Rose Cappa had six children by 1910: two daughters and four sons. Being still unable to read or write, James had to make do with odd jobs to support the family. Luckily, Rose could read, which helped open a few more doors. James finally found better-paying work at a lumber mill … still physically demanding, but it offered some hope of advancement.
As Frank Cusato grew older, he escaped the treadmill of hard physical labor through a family connection. Half-brother Mike Sita had started the same way Frank did, but then found a different route. Around 1911, he went to work at a shoeshine parlor. His flare for the job, and winning personality, made him an immediate success. In fact, Mike proved to have a knack for the business, with his own shop by around 1915. Within a couple years, he opened a larger shoeshine parlor at a better location.
That made room for Frank, who worked as a bootblack in Mike’s shop until at least 1923. (That same year, Frank’s stepfather, Mike’s father, was killed in a railroad yard accident.) Available records for Frank are rather spotty after that. However, there are indications that he worked at least part time at the parlor for several more years.
We also don’t know how long James Cappa stayed with the sawmill job. However, at some point he acquired a small partly-developed property about a half mile west of the family home. He kept a few cows on the land and sold the milk. Although one son had died – in 1918, probably from the so-called “Spanish” flu – his family had grown to nine living children (six daughters and three sons) by 1925.
Over the years, James Cappa and Frank Cusato had become friends. They obviously had a lot in common: near the same age, Roman Catholic, and from the same region of Italy. And both had spent most of their lives doing hard physical labor. After about 1928, when they had semi-retired, Frank lived in a shack less than two hundred yards from James Cappa’s little dairy. Most evenings, they got together at Cappa’s place to play cards.
As noted above, no one knows exactly what happened on Saturday morning, January 19, 1929. The weather was miserable, with temperatures below freezing, strong northerly winds, and occasional snow flurries. Cusato showed up about 7:30 a.m., while Cappa was washing milk bottles. James claimed that Frank immediately began saying “bad words” about “a woman of the neighborhood.” It appears – although never proven for sure – that the two had a long-standing difference of opinion about this woman. She was never identified, which suggests that there was some family connection. The community might have known, but would not have revealed that fact to outsiders.
Nor do we know the nature of the “bad words.” Newspapers used the word “taunt” in their articles. However, we don’t really know if that captured the proper nuances of the exchange in Calabrian vernacular. Given the violence of Cappa’s reaction, one may infer that the woman was related somehow, and that the purported transgression was of a sexual nature. But that’s only speculation.
Cappa demanded that Cusato leave and, when he didn’t, smacked him with a milk bottle. Cusato still wouldn’t go and the two struggled a bit. Now thoroughly enraged, Cappa broke free and rushed into his bedroom where he kept a revolver. In some versions, Cappa claimed that Cusato had picked up a club, or perhaps a hatchet, by the time he returned. In any case, Cappa shot two or three times and Cusato fell. Still in a blind rage, Cappa said, he picked up a rifle (where that came from was never explained either), and bashed his victim several times. The blows fractured Cusato’s skull before the weapon broke.
One report said he reloaded the revolver and dropped it in a pocket. In any case, he then went to a neighbor and had them call police. Officers found Cappa inside, “covered with blood” but not injured. Cusato’s body was on the porch, not in the kitchen. Cappa must have moved it, although he never mentioned doing so. In fact, Cappa probably never offered any one clear account of what happened. Police even enlisted a prominent member of the Italian community who had previously spent ten years as a city detective. He helped piece together a somewhat plausible sequence from multiple versions.
As it happened, Tacoma Captain of Detectives John Strickland was familiar with the scientific detection skills of private criminologist Luke S. May. Thus, Tacoma authorities quickly hired him to help with the case. May’s verification of the death weapon would have been a routine matter by 1929. However, he also logged the case as involving “bloodstains,” surely meaning blood spatter analysis. The pattern of stains would have told its own story.
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| Tacoma, ca 1929. Tacoma Public Library. |
However, we don’t know what May’s report said because the case never went to trial. Cappa was initially charged with second degree murder, to which he (his lawyer) pleaded “not guilty.” Family and friends raised his $10,000 bail, so he did not spend a long time in jail awaiting arraignment and trial. Even so, the strain soon ruined his health. Rather than go to trial in mid-March, James pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Rose and his attorney had to steady him so he could stand for the reading of the sentence: one to ten years in the state penitentiary.
James remained an invalid for the rest of his life, and does not appear to have spent any time in prison. He was at home with his family for the census in the spring of 1930. It’s a tribute to his basic toughness that he lasted until December of 1932.
James left a large family. Oddly enough (given the norm for that era), of the nine children who survived to adulthood, five never married. That included two of the three sons, and the one son didn’t marry until long after his mother died. Still, the children did well by “the American Dream.” The three sons all went into far better paying fields than their father could have ever hoped for: One owned a custom upholstery business and another was a pharmacist.
The three daughters who married had husbands with skill-based positions: professional gardener, bottler, and studio photographer. Daughter Eva trained in photography and assisted in her husband’s studio. Of the three unmarried daughters, one became a social worker for the state of Washington, another had a long career at Sears, and the third was a nurse.
The three married daughters, despite their Roman Catholic heritage, did not raise large families. One, in fact, had no children. Thus, when Rose (Vercillo) Cappa died April 9, 1952, she’d had time to enjoy just three grandchildren … all males.
| References: “[Cappa-Cusato News],” News Tribune, Tacoma, Seattle Times, Tacoma Ledger, Washington (January 1929 – December 1932). |
| Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Encyclopædia Britannica, Chicago, Illinois (2012). |
| Rita Cipalla, “Little Italy Communities Helped Early Immigrants Adjust To New Lives,” L’Italo-Americano newspaper, New York, New York (November 1, 2020). |
| Luke S. May, Luke S. May Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (1969). |
| David Wilma, Walt Crowley, “Tacoma – Thumbnail History,” Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, HistoryLink.org, Seattle, Washington (January 17, 2003). |
