Giovanni Benedetto Sangiovanni - Some History

"In order to explain who Giovanni was, it would help to explain the entire history of the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the events in the Kingdom of Naples, now part of Italy, but since this is not the place for a comprehensive review of the Napoleonic Wars, here is a brief description. Naples and Sicily were ruled by King Ferdinand IV. In 1799, French revolutionary forces replaced the king with a republican government, but that only lasted a few months until the clergy returned Ferdinand to the throne. In 1806, Napoleon appointed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as the King of Naples. When Napoleon transferred Joseph to Spain, Napoleon gave Naples to his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. Naples remained in upheaval as the Napoleonic Wars raged on. Ferdinand eventually regained the throne and Murat was executed.

The Rogers’ new boarder, Benedetto Sangiovanni, had served under Joseph Bonaparte, then under Joachim Murat. In 1819, he became a knight of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George.

After Murat lost power, the new government put a price on Sangiovanni’s head. He remained in hiding for three years.

At one time he had a narrow escape from one of the friars. As he tried to approach, Benedetto told him “If you come any nearer I will shoot you.” The Priest said, “Oh my son, I want to do you good. I want to give you good council and bless you.” He kept coming, so [Sangiovanni] shot him. Upon examining him, he found a stiletto in his sleeve.

Sangiovanni eventually escaped Naples, going first to America, and then to London. He was heavily involved with the Italian refugee community, and became a distinguished sculptor.

Sangiovanni went to France to help Don Carlos of Spain and Achille Murat, the son of Joachim Murat and Caroline Bonaparte, regain power in Naples, but the plot failed and he fled France. Achille Murat left Europe, inviting Sangiovanni to join him in Florida, where he would provide him with land.

Sangiovanni landed in New York on his way to Florida and secured lodgings with the Rogers family. While there, he received a stream of distinguished visitors including Joseph Bonaparte.

When 52-year old Benedetto Sangiovanni asked for 20-year-old Susanna Rogers’ hand in marriage, her father was very honored and talked her into accepting the proposal. Almost immediately Susanna left her close and affectionate family to go with her new husband to Florida to live with Achille Murat and his wife, Catherine Willis Gray, a great-grandniece of George Washington.

The Sangiovannis quickly realized the prospects in Florida were limited and moved to London, where Benedetto kept up his revolutionary activities and his career as a sculptor.

Benedetto and Susanna stayed with the Gabriele and Frances Rossetti family until they found lodgings. One of the children in the family, poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, described Sangiovanni in his biography as a close family friend, a tall, gaunt man, very intelligent, and “who had, I believe, ‘knifed’ somebody in early youth.”

In 1835, Benedetto and Susanna had a son, Guglielmo Giosue Rossetti Sangiovanni, later known in America as “Sanjo.”

From here Dante Rossetti will tell part of the story:

Sangiovanni, as a husband, was not unkind in his way, but had all the jealousy (perfectly gratuitous in this instance) and the dominance of a Southern Italian; and his wife was almost a prisoner in her dingy tenement… My mother, with some of us children [including Christina Rossetti], often looked in upon her solitude, and held her in deserved esteem. After some years she came to understand (I know not how) that Sangiovanni was already a married man, having a wife still living in Italy. This was, I suppose, true; and not less true that Sangiovanni had heard nothing of his first wife for many years, and had genuinely believed her to be no more. About the same time our Mrs. Sangiovanni got to know something about the Mormons; so one day she vanished with her son to Mormonland, and was never again traced… Sangiovanni, after much agitated inquiry, resumed his ordinary work [sculpting], and he died at Brighton in 1853.

While briefly in Liverpool, Susanna reportedly had a dream of a man on a street corner with an open book who told her about a key she was supposed to use to make a journey.

When she met Wilford Woodruff and Heber C. Kimball in London in 1840, she recognized Kimball as the man in her dream. The next month, Parley P. Pratt arrived in London with a letter for Susanna from her parents, who had met the missionaries in New York and joined the church.

Kimball and Woodruff visited regularly with the Sangiovannis, and although Benedetto remained opposed to his wife’s baptism, she managed to be baptized without his knowledge, and had her son baptized."

http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2011/12/12/eminent-women-ann-fairfax-...