People database
People from the Italian peninsula involved in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery, 15th–19th centuries. Search by name or filter by role, place, network and period.
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La Chiapella Geronimo
1769–1810Born in 1742, La Chiapella first engaged in the trade in goods and enslaved people between the French and Spanish islands of the Caribbean, including Saint-Domingue, Martinique and Cuba, before settling in New Orleans. His first documented sale in the city dates from 18 September 1769, when Manuel Roch bought from him for 200 dollars a three-year-old Creole boy named Joseph. Between 1783 and 1793 he appeared in numerous transactions and sold hundreds of enslaved people. In 1788 alone he appeared in 68 transactions, more than any other merchant in the city; among the twenty-five merchant-traders of New Orleans who dealt in enslaved people, he was the fifth most active. From 1790 he invested the wealth he had accumulated in real estate: he purchased several plantations in the vicinity of New Orleans, in Florida and in Mississippi, and became the owner of hundreds of enslaved people.
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Pestalozza Dominique
1839–1854An Italian immigrant in New Orleans, in June 1839 he sold to Elizabeth Rapp, a free woman of colour, a house at no. 35 Enghien Street (later Franklin Avenue) and three enslaved people (notarial acts of Charles Boudousquié, 3:123, 10 June 1839, and 3:124, 12 June 1839, NONA); two of them still appear in the 1854 inventory of Elizabeth Rapp's property. The house became the shared residence of the two, documented in the City Directories of 1842 and 1851. Pestalozza died in 1854.