Nicola was a younger son, perhaps the youngest, of a pizzicagnolo (deli-owner, sausage-maker) called Pellegrino Minutillo and his wife Clavia Barrilla Maria Mutarelli. Nicola was 24 years younger than the oldest sibling we know about: Maria Concetta. His oldest brother Vincenzo, named after his grandfather, was 20 years older than Nicola. He was a baker, and stayed in Foiano all of his life.
Perhaps because Nicola was the youngest of Pellegrino's children, or perhaps for some other reason, he immigrated to America at age 15. He sailed on The Spartan Prince from Naples to New York, along with four other older men from Foiano, and soon he settled in Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley, eventually adopting his grandfather's occupation of shoemaker.
There were other Minutillo's who made their way from Naples to the US in years before and after Nicola did, but we have no information linking any of them to Nicola's family.
Maria Giussepia Vallone, often called Josefina, came to America sometime around 1906. A little later came her formidable widowed mother Angela, along with her sister Caterina and some of her brothers. Like Nicola she settled originally in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania where she was spotted by Nicola. According to a family story, he was immediately smitten. Eventually her brothers gave their approval and Josefina married Nicola in Bethlehem, PA in May of 1908.
Some time after the birth of her first son Francesco Pietro Paolo, Josefina returned to Italy with one of her brothers, Pietro, and traveled to Foiano to show off Nicola's son. While visiting Foiano, she also gave birth to Nicola's first daughter, Iolanda.
In 1913 Josefina and her brother Pietro returned to the US and re-joined her husband, who, perhaps at the advice of his wife's relatives the Carnevale's, had decided to move to Beverly Massachusetts. He had apprenticed and then prospered as a shoemaker, eventually moving to a house he commissioned on Chase Street that included a little store.
Nicola lost his beloved Iolanda to a mysterious illness when she was in her twenties, and died quite young himself, age 60, leaving two other daughters, Inez and Ellen, and his eldest son now known by his Americanized name: Frank P Minutillo.
Several families were associated with the Vallones. Liberato DiPaolo had married Josefina's sister, Caterina, moved in nearby, and produced four sons of his own. Many members of Josefina's mother's family, the Carnevale's, lived in the area. Guiseppe Carnevale was on the same ship with Josefina when she returned to the US in 1913. He was also going to Beverly, to join his brother Anthony. In Italy, Josefina's sister Emilia married Giulio Piacitelli, and was the mother of several children, including Luigi, Attilio, Mario, who Bob Minutillo visited in the 60's; and Victoria, who married Giuseppe Abetecola, creating a link to that family, a family that might also have sent relatives to Beverly and simplified their name to Abate. Also back in the US, Josefina's brother Angelo married Antonia Conte, who also lived in Beverly and was well known in the Minutillo family as zi'Anton.
Carmine Guerriero, born in San Felice di Capriglia, Avellino, Italy in 1873, was the son of Antonio Guerriero and Rosa Modugno. He came to New York City in 1898. According to a story told much later by one of his sons, he literally 'bumped into' his future wife on the streets of New York. He must have recognized a familiar accent in the things she was "saying to him" for knocking her down.
Carmine married the fiery young lady in 1898, and immediately moved to Massachusetts, eventually coming to Beverly, living on the same street as the Minutillo family, and then across the bridge to Saunders Street in Salem, settling into life as "Joe the Barber," becoming a familiar figure in the city.
Like Nicola Minutillo, Carmine Guerriero unfortunately died young, at age 51, but not before building a fine home at 60 Bridge Street in Salem with an apartment for himself and his wife, and space eventually occupied by the families of some of his relatives. Much later, stories about his large family cited them as the "first Italian family" in Salem.
Carmine had produced a highly musical family which included two sons, Anthony and George, two other sons who died in childhood, and five daughters, Anna Louise, Rose, Florissa, Gilda and Yolanda. Florissa may have gotten to know young Frank Minutillo while visiting Guerriero relatives who continued to live on Chase Street in Beverly. In any case, they did meet, and eventually married, and soon moved into Carmine Guerriero's house in Salem.
Carmine Guerriero brought his parents and many family members to the U.S. Of his four sisters, two came to America married into the Tomeo and Mirandi families. Carmine's sons and daughters married into the Mazzarini's and the Femino's, as well as the Nolan's, the Theriault's, and the Filips', Carmine's grandson Frank married into the Salvo's.
Rosa Di Geronnia Capaldo is a bit of a mystery woman. Unlike the other three grandparents she has no prior 'family' than anyone can trace for certain, although it seems her mother may have been named Maria. We know she came from Atripalda to New York in July of 1897 as a 19 year old girl, most likely under the protection of a Neopolitan musician named Aniello Raffaello Penza, who she described on the ship's manifest of the S.S. Fulda as an 'uncle.' He had arrived only a few months earlier (on an earlier sailing of the same ship!) and was living in New York teaching violin.
After 'bumping into' and marrying young Carmine Guerriero, and moving to Massachusetts, Rosina kept in touch with Penza, and it might have been Penza's musical heritage as a violinist and composer which influenced both of Rosina's surviving sons to become professional musicians and led her first daughter, Rose, to a brief operatic career. Her first son, Anthony, even went back to Naples in 1922 to study at the same classical academy which had produced Penza, and perhaps Anthony was admitted there under Penza's patronage.
After Carmine Guerriero's death Penza himself came to Massachusetts and moved into the Guerriero family home with Rosina, bringing a small collection of Verdi materials with him. According to family stories, Penza was once a young associate of Verdi's and traveled on Verdi's last trip to Petersberg in Russia. Late in her life, Rosina, who by this time had become a formidable matron and well-known activist in the local Italian-American community, was occasionally named in the press as Rosina or Rosa Penza.
Within the families of Rosina's children a lot of whispered stories were traded about Rosina and her background, and about "Russian blood," but in the end her secrets, and Penza's, died with her.
While no blood relatives of Rosina are known for certain, some family members heard rumors of a sister, Annunziata Gilli, who was said at one time to be living in New York.