There’s Blood in the Salad

I was sitting in my office indexing coroners’ inquisitions as I do most days. My badge hung heavily around my neck. I could feel the years were taking their toll. Thicker glasses. Scars from over a decade of paper cuts. Knuckles cracked from the dry air. All part of the job they say, but no one really prepares you for the responsibility of being an archivist.

As I moved on to my next inquest, the name struck me. Domenico Pasquale. Not a common name for Elizabeth City County, Virginia in 1916, but I found the information I needed for the indexing. Spreadsheet fields entered.

Name: Domenico Pasquale

Date: Inquest filed in the Elizabeth City County Circuit Court April 3, 1916.

Race: white [Italian]

Age: 20-30

Sex: Male

Cause of Death: A gunshot wound of chest and head from a pistol or pistols in the hands of Giuseppe Oddo, Feligi Campinelli, Vincenzio Fairo, Paquale Bellochi, and Piedro Leonti

On to the next inquest. I had a job to do; these inquests wouldn’t index themselves. They couldn’t move on to the digitization lab until I finished. So, I couldn’t let him get to me, couldn’t make it personal. I’d gotten burned before, and since then I’d had a strict no-rabbit-holes policy. But at the end of the folder, I couldn’t do it. I had to know what was going on with Domenico Pasquale.

This quest took me through food ways, government records, and transportation history. In the end I still have a million questions, but I managed to find enough answers to pitch Scorsese his next film because instead of dressing, Domenico Pasquale’s 1916 salad came with a side of murder.

I promise to get to the actual events of 1916, but part of why I became so interested in this inquest is a result of how this journey unfolded. When I started indexing the inquest, the only document present in the folder was the inquest itself. The purpose of the inquest is to simply record the official cause of death as determined by the coroner and/ or the coroner’s jury, so there’s rarely any additional information about the circumstances surrounding the death in the actual inquest. However, to determine cause of death, many times witnesses are interviewed by the coroner to assess the circumstances surrounding the individual’s death. Unfortunately, there was no witness testimony in this case, which was a little odd for a murder. Due to this lack of testimony, I went to the holy grail of murder coverage: the newspapers [specifically Virginia Chronicle].

In the newspapers, I didn’t find many answers, only more intrigue. An April 18, 1916 article Italian Gets Life Term in Prison reports Guiseppe Oddo’s life sentence, “for his part in the murder of Dominica Depasquale, an Italian fennel hunter, … Guiseppe Oddo, believed to be the leader of the crowd of fennel hunters responsible for the death…” An additional news article notes that Oddo is a resident of New York. There was no explanation of the motive, but fennel hunters from New York? 100% invested now.

DISCLAIMER: These initial newspaper articles I found were in Richmond, Virginia newspapers. I realized after writing much of this blog, that we had the Daily Press from Newport News on microfilm for 1916 and that would have answered a lot of my initial questions. A lesson in simply relying on what’s digitally available… don’t do it. However, then you wouldn’t be getting this overly long blog.

With the newspapers helping to pique my interest but otherwise unable to answer my questions, I sought out the criminal records. Luckily, the Library of Virginia houses some of the criminal and felony papers from Elizabeth City County for this period which includes Commonwealth vs. Giuseppe Oddo, Feligi Campinelli, Vincenzio Fairo, Paquale Bellochi, and Piedro Leonti. Unfortunately, the excitement of this find faded real fast, as the case returned no additional answers. The only documents in the folder included the charge and sentencing information, the jury instructions, and the bullets used as evidence (quite the find, but not informative).

Due to the lack of answers, Domenico Pasquale’s murder then became a matter of state…state government records. My lovely colleague, Senior State Archivist Roger Christman, helped to track down information on Guiseppe Oddo in the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Executive Papers after discovering that Oddo’s sentence was commuted. Wouldn’t you know, the first document in the folder of information concerning Oddo’s commutation was a letter written by Oddo in 1923 laying out his account of the event. Finally, I had some answers as to why these guys were all so mad at each other!

Then, to help matters, later that morning, I found the rest of Domenico’s coroner’s inquest. It was in the next box of Elizabeth City County records…

Fast forward a week, and I found the rest of the criminal case in an unprocessed box of records, which included 108 pages of testimony.

Dominico Pasquale’s [also Dominico, Dominica, DiPasquale, DePasquale, Di Pasquale, De Pasquale] inquest is a sizable one, containing testimony from 20 witnesses. The criminal case included 17 testimonies, many of the same ones present in the coroner’s inquest. From these testimonies, in addition to the records found in Oddo’s commutation, this is loosely what occurred.

A week before the shooting, Domenico Pasquale, Eusebio Torre [or Sabio Torre, Domenico’s cousin], and Guiseppe “Joseph” Dullito [or Vilut?], arrived at Charles E. Carrol’s farm [land he rented from “Mr. Howe” who I believe is Albert Howe] and made a deal to purchase his “turnip salad” patch for $20. The group paid $10 that day with a deal to pay the additional amount within the week.

Guiseppe “Joseph” Oddo, meanwhile claimed he made an agreement with Charles E. Carroll in January 1916, to harvest the same patch of salad following up in early March with the promise of paying 50 cents a bag. Oddo claims Carroll agreed to this price, leaving Oddo with the understanding that the salad was in fact his to harvest.

These deals collide on March 27, 1916, when both groups come to harvest the salad patch. Pasquale and his group had already started cutting the greens when Oddo arrived leading to an argument over the ownership of the salad. Both Oddo and Pasquale call upon Charles Carroll to settle the issue; being unavailable, Elizabeth Carroll, the wife of Charles, is requested to settle the affair. Not being well acquainted with the matter, Elizabeth implores the men to wait or return the next morning to settle the issue but believes that Oddo enjoys the rights to the patch. Both parties leave that evening with the hope of settling the matter the next morning.

The morning of March 28, Oddo and his companions Piedro Leonte, Vincenzio Fairo, Feligi Campanelli, and Pasquale Bellochi, arrive at the salad patch only to see that Domenico Pasquale and his companions, Eusebio Torre and Giuseppe “Joseph” Romeo, are already cutting the salad. The men make another attempt to settle the disagreement by calling upon Charles Carroll who was again not available. Upon return to the salad patch, the shooting begins.

Torre is the only one to claim he knows who shot first, asserting it was Fairo. Everyone else who provides testimony regarding the actual shooting only confirms that there were 20-40 shots fired by many of the parties associated with Oddo except Campanelli. Torre supplies several attempts to diagram the shooting, noting positions and movement. None of this really tells us who shot the bullet that killed Domenico Pasquale, but it seems that this was an act driven by anger and impulse. So, there we have it, Domenico Pasquale was killed March 28, 1916, as a result of a salad patch turf war.

Even with a general understanding of Domenico’s death, the whole “fennel hunter,” “salad cutter,” “turnip salad,” component of this fiasco still lived rent free in my brain. Here is where I entered a journey of Italian immigrant foodways.

Again, one of the big things that grew my interest in this death was the newspaper’s description of these groups of men as Italian “fennel hunters.” You see a lot of niche jobs in 19th and 20th century documents, but this was a first for me. I wasn’t able to find much in terms of the “hunter” element of this title, but I did learn a lot about the greens business.

First, I find it important to note that “Turnip Salad,” not fennel, is the green involved in Domenico’s killing. “Turnip Salad” is made from Seven Top Turnips, a variety first documented in Virginia around the 1830-40s. Unlike typical turnips, this variety does not have an edible root, and instead farmers and gardeners plant the vegetables purely for the tasty greens. This appears to be the plant in “the salad patch” based upon the testimony of Charles Carroll and several other witnesses.

Moving on to fennel. I learned that there are multiple varieties of fennel. The fennel in question is Florence fennel or finocchio. Florence fennel is a cultivar of fennel, native to northern Italy. This is the bulbed fennel you grow in your garden, find in the grocery store, and use for cooking. Like with many things, Thomas Jefferson gets a lot of credit for introducing fennel into American cuisine after Thomas Appleton, American Consul in Naples, Italy, praises the vegetable and sends Jefferson seeds for planting in 1824. Despite the reputation of our top 19th century influencer, fennel remained rather unpopular in America until the turn of the century. The rise in Italian immigration saw the popularization of the plant as Italian farmers, laborers, and grocers contributed to the increase in growing, marketing, and selling the vegetable. While the history of this plant vaguely explains the “fennel hunter” and Italian immigrant connection, it does not answer why these men traveled to Virginia from New York for fennel and other greens.

Oddo kindly answers this question as he retells the killing in a January 20, 1923, letter to Jane Ewing Speed: “In the Spring of 1916, myself and man named Campenella [Campanelli], came to Hampton Virginia, from New York City, for the purpose of buying up a large quantity of [fennel?] and other kinds of green goods to be shipped back home. We had been in the business for many years and had found it quite profitable.” Oddo additionally shares in his testimony, as do several of the other men, that they had connections to other green suppliers in the Hampton, Norfolk, and Newport News area. From the testimony, it appears he rotated locations during the harvest season for various greens which grew more widely in Virginia than in New York.

This business of greens was bigger than the eight men involved in this death. In Oddo’s commutation papers, Roland Cock, a Hampton attorney states, “Perhaps something that influenced the jury to give Oddo a heavy sentence was the fact that these gangs of Italians, salad cutters, and fennel gatherers, had been involved in other affairs in this vicinity.” This statement is repeated in various ways through Oddo’s papers and indicates there were various groups of Italian laborers involved in the business of harvesting and shipping greens at this time.

This makes more sense as I learned that this is around the time, that “the salad” becomes a rising star in American cuisine. While people have eaten salads for pretty much forever, they looked different from region to region and culture to culture and may not have even been referred to as salad, but green salads or mixed salads become popularized by Italian and French restaurants as well as shifting notions around food in the early 20th century. Staples of Italian cuisine, and the increase of Italian immigrants and Italian restaurants, meant more exposure to salads as a component to the meal, even for those outside of the upper class.

The theme I discovered to be the most important fact in this whole event was transportation. Shipping and extensive rail networks made it possible for this kind of business to even exist. These networks along the Mid-Atlantic allowed for the ease of shipping goods and people to such an extent by 1916 that these men, and many others, could easily spend large portions of their year working several states away.

Additionally, these innovations in transportation and packaging allowed for greens grown in Virginia to be shipped to New York and sold. Although refrigerated rail cars existed as early as the 1850s, there was not much widespread access to these cars until the early 1900s, with over 100,000 in use by 1913. These cars afforded growers the ability to sell produce states away instead of being beholden to local markets. Slightly ahead of rail, refrigerated ships were also more common by the early 20th century, providing an additional mode for long distance shipments. Both advances meant consumers could purchase produce that was otherwise not in season or usually unavailable period.

Around this period, food packing also became more advanced as products helped keep the food fresher and prevent contaminants like germs and pests. For greens, and other produce perfect for flexible storage, cellophane became a favorite as customers could assess the state of the produce before purchasing.

With innovations making the business of greens possible, transportation on the local level allowed these men to easily navigate between three cities. From the testimonies we know that at the time of killing these eight men were scattered between Newport News, Hampton, and Norfolk, Virginia.

The location of the property containing the salad patch was in the Wythe District of then Elizabeth County, about an equal distance of 3 miles from Newport News and Hampton, Virginia. The men staying in both cities, took the electric car line, by then called the Newport News Hampton Railway and Electric and Gas Company, that passed directly by the property along “The Boulevard” [Cheasapeake Ave.] making the travel to and from the property relatively quick and easy. This line ran about every 30 minutes between Newport News and Hampton, allowing all men to arrive at the property early in the morning of March 28. The “Indian Park” development as well as “The Boulevard” development, which both began around 1916, increased stops in traffic car line traffic in the Wythe District.

This easy access also explains how Charles Carroll, who additionally worked as a night watchman in Newport News, arrived on the scene shortly after the murder by also taking the electric line, and how Oddo and his companions were able to make it to Buckroe by early afternoon. It was around Buckroe that the police arrested Oddo and others while allegedly trying to arrange travel to Norfolk.

For both Vincenzio Fairo and Paquale Bellochi, the ferry system from Norfolk in conjunction with these streetcar systems provided a means for these two men to arrive with the group after only receiving word from Campinelli the evening of the 27th. It’s unclear where exactly Fario and Bellochi lived in Norfolk; however, it appears, Campinelli and possibly Oddo also, called for Fairo and Bellochi between 6:00-6:30 the evening of March 27. There was enough ease in this trip that Fairo and Bellochi used the ferry system, most likely by way of Willbougy Spit, then took the street cars to Hampton. These connecting lines of transportation did not exist until just a few years prior to the connections of the and the Hampton Ferry service in 1911-1912 and the Newport News Hampton Railway and Electric and Gas Company [created in 1888 but greatly expanded between 1890-1900].

It would be inaccurate to say this series of events couldn’t have happened at any other moment in history, but I think it is reasonable to claim that the murder of Domenico Pasquale encompasses much of what makes the early 20th century a unique time in American history. Moving from isolated to interconnected; agrarian to industrial; monolithic to multicultural, the America of 1916, was an America in transition.

Stay tuned…. There’s Blood in the Salad 2: The Clean Up

Find out what happed to Oddo, and the other men involved in the shooting.