The Italians of Belleville and Newark

Andrea Lyn Cammarato-Van Benschoten was born in Columbus Hospital in Newark and grew up in Belleville in the 1970s.

“I loved it,” Cammarato-Van Benschoten said. “It was a primarily Italian-Irish neighborhood. We had a great street I grew up on. It was a time you could hop on your bike.

No cell phones. No technology. You were on your own. You did your own thing until the lights came on and you knew you had to come home for dinner.”

Cammarato-Van Benschoten has a passion for Italian heritage and has written a book, her first, called “Italians of Newark.”

Her own family experience is not unusual. Her parents, grandparents, and Uncle Sonny moved out of Newark to Belleville after they got together and purchased a two-family house on Irving Street in 1972.

“My grandparents and Uncle Sonny moved upstairs,” she said.

Cammarato-Van Benschoten lived there until 2001 when she was 30. She and her husband were married and they moved upstairs.

“There was always a lot of family around. It was really special to be able to see my grandmother every day from when I was 2 until her passing in 2001. It was very special. And having my uncle there, we got to see him every day.”

Growing up in Belleville, Cammarato-Van Benschoten loved School 7 and still has friends that go back to her School 7 days.

“You’d cross the street, go to Rosebuds, a little coffee shop across the street from School 7, and get your penny candy and walk home,” Cammarato-Van Benschoten said. “It was a real community.”

In “Italians of Newark,” Cammarato-Van Benschoten said that there’s quite a bit of connection with the Italians of Belleville and the Italians of Newark. In the 1950s eminent domain began taking private property in Newark and many Italians went to Nutley, Belleville, or Bloomfield, she said.

Writing the book gave her an awareness for that first group of immigrants.

“I can’t imagine having no language skills, can’t speak English, can’t write, and making the decision to go somewhere else and start over,” Cammarato-Van Benschoten said. “It really gave me a new appreciation for what it took. What happened when they got here, they were discriminated against terribly.”

Cammarato-Van Benschoten’s great grandmother came to New Jersey as a young woman. “Never had a job,” Cammarato-Van Benschoten said. “Raised her children.

They moved and immigration service had her register as an eminent of the state. She had to be fingerprinted, had a mug shot taken. When they moved from one section of the First Ward of Newark to the Second, she was questioned.”

To learn that information, it was shocking and heart-breaking for Cammarato-Van Benschoten. “It gave me a real and greater appreciation for all they endured so we can now live this comfortable life here in America,” she said.

The biggest challenge of writing “Italians of Newark” was lack of documentation. In 1999 Michael Immerso wrote a book called “Newark’s Little Italy: The Vanished First
Ward.”

“When he wrote his book, there was even less available,” said Cammarato-Van Benschoten.

She explained that it was announced in The Star Ledger that Immerso was writing a book and he asked people to send in their stories.

“That’s how he collected his information,” she said. “Without him doing that initial collection of data, we wouldn’t even know most of what we know now. They never really documented the First Ward history of Newark. If it wasn’t for his research, it would have made my research more difficult. Most of them were illiterate and still learning what it is to be an American. Everybody knows about the famous people that came from Newark. I want to know about the everyday people who built the city.

Those are the stories I wanted. Those are the stories that are forgotten. Finding those stories was a huge challenge. I was blessed and honored that the people who shared their stories were willing to. These stories deserve to be told.”

To learn more about Andrea Cammarato-Van Benschoten and “Italians of Newark,” visit: https://theitaliansofnewark.com/

  Belleville, Italians, Newark