Maria and Dino Ricardi

 

Maria, the fifth child and third daughter of Marino and Marianna (Pazzini) Grilli, was born on June 14, 1897 in Verucchio, Forlì.

She was 11 years old when the family moved from Verucchio to Montefiore in 1908 to live with her uncle, Don Secondo Grilli, a priest, at his parish rectory San Gaudenzo.

 Maria was planning to come to America with her sister Caterina and Marietta Libretti in 1913 but was denied a passport because of her age, 15, and lack of sponsors.  Several months later, upon turning 16, she did leave Italy and crossed the ocean alone on the SS Cretic,  landing in Boston where her brother, Pino, and Caterina and Marietta met her.

Soon after her arrival, Maria went to Shrewsbury to help prepare for the birth of Brigida and Nicola’s daughter, Anna.  Anna Betti is the first American-born Grilli descendant.

When Maria returned to East Boston, she joined Pino, Caterina and Marietta where they lived on 75 Neptune Road.  She found a job in a chocolate factory in Boston.  To get there, she had to walk through East Boston because she could not afford the 5 cent streetcar fare, and then took the one-cent ferry that ran between East Boston and Boston.

She met Dino Ricardi and soon they began making plans to marry in June of 1915.  Sadly, the family received word that their mother, Marianna, had unexpectedly passed away on March 26th in Morciano di Romagna at the age of 55 from the complications of diabetes. She had been taken to Morciano for medical care and, in accordance with tradition was buried there.  Though Maria felt she should delay her wedding plans, a letter from her father, Marino, assured her that it would have pleased her mother to know that she had married as planned.  Reluctantly, and dressed in black, she and Dino married at St. Lazarus Church in East Boston and honeymooned in Maine.  They settled in Worcester and raised five children:  Marian, Peter, Elena, Mary and Jean.

 Maria told the story of when, as a child, she had a fear of a painting that hung in a stairwell in her home.  This painting of the Annunciation had, in one corner, a black cat which she feared.  Using the stairwell often reminded her of this fear.  Maria died on March 25, 1981, at the age of 84, the same date as her mother and coincidentally, on the Feast of the Annunciation.

Dino Ricardi died on February 20, 1980 at the age of 88.