ARPINO Francesca Julietta 1873-1943
Francesca Arpino was born in 1873 in Sant’Elia Fiumerapido, a small town and Commune in the Province of Frosinone in Lazio, Italy. Her father, Benedetto Arpino, was 40, and her mother, Benedetta Francato Cascarino, was 34. The youngest of six or seven. children, her elder siblings being Michelangella, Michael Angelo, Nicolo, Maria Josephine and Giuseppe. There may have also been an Angelo.
Francesca Juliette Arpino married Augusto Quilietti in Edinburgh in the year 1893.
They married at the Church of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Lauriston, Edinburgh. Francesca was the daughter of Benedetto Arpino and Benedetta Francato Cascarino. Witnesses at their wedding were the Antonelli family and they were to remain close for over a decade.
A bit about Francesca’s roots and her family
Arpino lies in the region of Lazio in the Province of Frozinone near Naples in the South of Italy. The folks who live there are called ‘Arpinato’. Their Saint is Madona of Loreto and is celebrated on the 10th of December each year. The ancient city of Arpinum dates back to at least the 7th century BC. From this town many travelled to Britain. In Scotland we have Arpino, Fusco, Gargaro, Capaldi, Neri, Coppola, De Marco, Valente and many more relations from this town who are somewhat connected through marriage to everyone else.
Their family moved from Sant Elia Fiumarapido at first through France where some of the family remained. Then Benedetto and his line moved Bradford in England sometime in the 1880s. His brother and family also moved with them to England.
Both branches remained in the region for a while but there was some scandal to do with Francesca and her brother which I am sure was fabricated by her own father to get him off the hook for indecently assaulting her at the time. This caused an uproar at the time and Benedetto ended up on the Bench blaming her and not himself!! The truth will never be known but he got acquitted. It was in fact not uncommon for very close relatives to marry in Italy at that time.
However, Benedetto alleged that the assault was fabricated by Francesca, as she was angry that her father would not let her marry her brother.
Ultimately, the verdict was not guilty. Today we will never know the truth but only have this documentation to go with. We do know however that Francesca’s father and Mother moved up to Edinburgh and they all remained close until their deaths in 1913 and 1919.
The Arpino family had already established themselves in Edinburgh and they ran a shop at 85 Grassmarket where they traded as ice cream manufacturers and confectioners. Some of the family had arrived at first in London and made their way up to Manchester where the Italian community there was well established in the 1860s. Others through Bradford
You can also see from the census above that the Arpino siblings were residing with the Antonelli family at 85 Grassmarket in Edinburgh. The Antonelli family were from Picinisco. The Antonelli’s were already in the Confectionery line and that they started off in London where their eldest daughter Dora was born in 1879. The families remained close and one of the Antonelli children are interred with the Quilietti family in Easter Road Cemetery in Edinburgh.
Of course Edinburgh’s Grassmarket in those days was home to many immigrants but especially Irish and Italians. You only have to cast your eyes over the 1891 cencus to see how many were crammed into these old tenements. The street itself was used as a marketplace and had been throughout the centuries. Horses would have drawn the carts full of the goods to be sold at the markets. These goods would have been local vegetables mostly with meat stalls and fish from the Forth Estuary
FRANCESCA marries AUGUSTO QUILIETTI 1893
The venue was the Church of the Sacred Heart in Lauriston Street, just off the West Port, in Edinburgh. Leonardo Quilietti surprisingly described as an Ice Cream Vendor as was old Benedetto. This begs the question as to whether Leonardo was in Edinburgh for a while working with his two sons Emilio and Augusto. He did return home however as is documented in the annual census entries in Castelvecchio
Augusto and Francesca had two daughters, Angelina born on April 6th 1894, and on 4th August 1898, Ermennia, [known as Amelia] born on 4th August 1898. Unfortunately Amelia was to pass away at the tender age of only 1 . She died at 45 The Canongate, Edinburgh.
1901 shows us the family residing at 1 Ramsay’s Close, the Canongate, Edinburgh. Augusto already a confectionery shop keeper on his own accord.
The photograph on the right is when Augusto’s brothers left Italy to join their brothers Augusto and Emilio in Edinburgh. Seated to the left is Adolfo and standing between Adolfo and Augusto is Giuseppe Quilietti.
The occasion may have been for the wedding of Emilio Quilietti in 1892. Or for Augusto’s wedding in 1893. Their gold chains suggest a wedding.
with her daughter Angelina Quilietti [Arpino]
and her daughter Mary Arpino
It was said she became fluent in French and worked in a nearby craft factory.
However after returning back to Edinburgh Francesca Quilietti Arpino remarried in the year 1909 to a Commercial Traveller called Wallace Bain.
Wallace did change his trade and became a butcher. He was still alive in 1943 when Francesca died in Edinburgh. He had been married and divorced before their marriage.
He seems to have been a horse racing aficionado operating between the borders and Edinburgh. JJ says he can’t place any definitive actions or outcomes on him, but everything points to a silver tongued gambler who preyed on widows. was as it turns out an unfortunate mistake for Francesca as history now tells us that he was an unsavoury character.
Wallace has come across as a rogue. Within a few days of marriage he was imprisoned, and Francesca’s loss of her properties in Edinburgh and Dalkeith and her soon moving in with son Giovanni do indicate a less than savoury individual.
He was also a bit of a gambler and losing her businesses and home were due to this.
Some photos of Francesca’s Arpino family
Gt-gt-gran Francesca Juliette’s Parisian cousins. Marriage of Luigi Arpino to Angela Angelosanto 1927 Paris. One of the family restaurants was Bar de l’Escalier owned by Luigi’s brother Alphonse (talk about falling into stereotypes) in Amiens.
Still operating so many years later, though I’m not sure who owns it now.
Finally found out that gt-gt-gran Francesca Juliette and daughter Angelina were working for Cristallerie de Sevres under Alfred Landier during their stay with relatives in the Paris suburbs (Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine).
Four of Angelina’s husband-to-be, John’s, brothers worked there too: Alexandre, Jean, Benoit, Jacques and a couple of cousins (names are the ones they used from then on and it’s a pain to write out all the linguistic variations they went through).
From way back when, I had a vague memory of a piece of glassware which gran Mary Hunter inherited from her mother Angelina Quilietti, which I initially and mistakenly thought was Lalique.
That led to chasing up Lalique employee lists for 1900-1910 until I came across the barely legible employer’s name faintly scrawled in a census margin.
My meagre excuse is that the glassware produced by both Landier and Lalique in the 1910s are very similar in design and production methods (attached pics are Landier for comparison and as example of glassware family worked on).
Not yet found solid corroborating evidence to match up timelines and crossed paths, but census records show that most of gt-grandfather John’s family, including his parents, left the US and moved to Paris during 1907-1911.
Francesca and Angelina were also there at some point in that timeframe. There were at least a couple of hundred relatives living in and around Paris in the early 1900s (way more than I expected and not counting those with surnames other than Arpino or in-laws).
This raises the distinct possibility that gt-granddad John met Angelina in Paris – would explain why he left the whole family and La Belle Époque behind and moved to Scotland.
Going through old French papers while writing this and found a document listing an Andréanne Mazzarelli as gt-gt-grandad Gaetano’s stepmother (belle-mère) – another rabbit hole?
This is Francesca’s sister Maria Giuseppa Arpino 1867 – 1960. She married Giulio Ceci [later change of name to John Joseph Church. The family stayed in Bradford where they enjoyed this lovely family. His family were also from the Casino area in Italy.
Sister Michaelangela Arpino married Benedetto Fusco whose family were from Villa Latina. They had a large family who settled and indeed remained in the Edinburgh area. Their daughter Mary married Joseph Gargaro.
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