Antonina Zammito was born in the village of Valledolmo, Palermo Province, Sicily, Italy in 1883. Almost nothing is known of her childhood. She was married to Calogero Russo Alesi in the same village in 1901. According to family tradition, she and Calogero married on the same day they met. This story is hard to believe, especially given the mores of the time and the place. It probably suggests that they were married after a too brief a courtship for the times, and that Antonina buried before her older sisters: an act defying custom and tradition. They spent their first night of marriage in the house of one of Calogero's sisters, Mamie. This
sister-in-law checked the sheets on the marriage bed in the morning to look for the blood stains proving her sister-in-law's virginity.
In Italy she bore two children: Jacobo and Santa. Her husband immigrated to America in 1907 and left her alone as her family had left for America previously. Reportedly, she survived in Italy by gleaning, going through the fields after the harvesters and picking what they had dropped or missed. By early 1909 she had enough money to book passage for herself and her two children to leave Sicily, from Palermo, and rejoin her husband and parents. She traveled under a strange spelling of her maiden name: Antonina Zanimito. She arrived in the port of Philadelphia on a ship named the Ancona on February 8 (or 9) 1909.
Once in this country she had four more children: Dorothea, Rosina (who died in infancy),Anthony, and Rosina (called Mamie by her father). By the time of Rosina's birth in 1920, she had become a diabetic and nearly died from the complications of delivering such a
large baby. She frequently worked at odd jobs to help support her family, while still being the homemaker. Pasta was a staple of every evening meal. She usually bought live fowl at the public market and slaughtered them for fresh food for the table. She dried her own tomatoes on the roof of her house. She was not a religious person and insisted on church services only for baptism, marriage, and death.
She died in her home on Central Park in 1954. She was having a meal with her husband and daughter Santa when she got up to cross the room. She had a heart attack while walking and collapsed on the kitchen floor. She died instantly.
She became a citizen on 27 August 1940. At that time she was 57 years old weighed 160 pounds, and was 5' 3" tall. The witnesses on her petition were Frances W. Shelp and Cecelia Groszewski, her daughter's mother-in-law. Her daughter insists that the name was
Zambito, not Zammito. However, all documents list the name as Zammito. Sometimes the name is spelled Zamita.



Sources:
Birth Certificate
Marriage certificate
Recollectionsof her daughter, Rosina
Naturalization Records, Monroe County Clerk's Office, PV238, p.1