Our People of the Century Giovanni and Mary D'Ipplito: Industrious Family Built Corps of Businesses

Like so many immigrants, Giovanni D’Ippolito arrived in America alone, a teenager with only a small trunk of belongings and a lot of hope. It was 1876, and the 13-year-old went to work in a shoe factory in Brooklyn.

Four years later, he followed his dream to Vineland at the suggestion of a family friend, Nicola Pasquale. Giovanni found work at Keighley’s Shoe Factory and married Pasquale’s daughter, Mary.

Quite the artist and craftsman, Giovanni made Mary a pair of high-button shoes with bells in the hollow heels and flowers engraved on the soles. Keighley was so impressed he showed the shoes to John Wanamaker in Philadelphia and returned with orders for as many as the factory could make.

But the real business head of the family belonged to Mary, according to a 1982 Vineland Times Journal article.

While her husband worked in the shoe factory, Mary took in boarders who had come from Italy to work in the factory. She sold potatoes from her father’s farm, and soon opened a general store. The enterprise later grew into a department store, then a bakery and jewelry store were added.

Giovanni left the shoe factory to help his wife run the businesses. They added a macaroni factory and a soda water factory. In the early 1900s, the D’Ippolito businesses ecompassed the entire block from Sixth to Sevenths streets between Cherry and Quince and included a water-pumping system to serve the factories, shops and homes of the people Giovanni brought from Italy to work.

D’Ippolitos introduced the first motorized delivery truck to Vineland. Their macaroni was shipped all over the northeastern U.S. until the factory was sold after World War I.

Giovanni for a time operated his own bank to help the Italians who came over to work for him – and when it grew too much for him he advised them to put their money into Tradesmens Bank.

Their sons -- Gaspar, Angelo, Solve, Henry, and John B. -- made homes and lives in Vineland.