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de Caro, Mulvehill, and Menkhoff Family Papers

Call Number

MS 2956

Dates

1880-2001, inclusive
; 1910-1950, bulk

Creator

Extent

2.5 Linear feet 5 manuscript boxes

Language of Materials

Materials are in English. Several items are in Italian.

Abstract

This collection contains a small selection of documents and photographs of three families of European immigrants who settled in New York City in the late 19th century. These families became connected through a series of marriages and their papers relate to a wide range of topics including marriage and courtship, the Italian-American community in New York City, Columbus Day, and travel accounts.

Biographical / Historical

The de Caros, Menkhoffs, and Mulvehills were three families of European immigrants who settled in New York and Brooklyn in the late 19th century, and eventually became connected through marriage.

Frank A. de Caro immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1884. He worked as a tailor and owned store that manufactured flags, uniforms, and banners. His company De Caro & D'Angelo Co. operated out of a storefront at 169-171 Grand Street in Manhattan. Frank de Caro was heavily involved in the city's Italian-American community and founded New York's Italian Chamber of Commerce. Frank de Caro was also a large supporter of Columbus Day and participated in efforts to have it declared a national holiday. Between 1909 and 1910, de Caro, along with other leaders in the Italian-American community, visited the White House to speak with President William Howard Taft to have Columbus Day legally recognized as a holiday. Their efforts were successful, and Taft declared Columbus Day a national holiday in 1910.

Frank A. de Caro married Anna Menkhoff In 1891. Anna Menkhoff was a German immigrant who had moved to New York with her parents August and Maria Meyer Menkhoff in the 1880s. The Menkhoffs owned and operated a pastry shop in New York, and Anna worked for her parents in the store. When Frank de Caro first started courting Anna Menkhoff, her parents expressed their disapproval and attempted to dissuade their daughter from marrying him. The Menkhoffs went so far as to buy a new piano for Anna as a way to distract their daughter from Frank's advances. They were ultimately unsuccessful and Frank and Anna eloped in 1891. Frank and Anna de Caro later had the receipt for the piano framed along with a letter Frank wrote to her parents announcing their elopement. The receipt and letter are included in this collection. Frank and Anna de Caro had seven children, Elsa, Francis, Lillyan, Frank E., Gertrude, Arthur, and William de Caro, who died as an infant. The family lived in Brooklyn at 725 Greenwood Avenue.

Frank and Anna de Caro's son Frank E. de Caro was born in Brooklyn in 1908. During the 1930s Frank E. de Caro worked as a stock broker on Wall Street and as a male model. In 1938 he married his long-time girlfriend Beatrice Mulvehill. Frank and Beatrice met at Lake Waramaug in Connecticut where both of their families spent summer vacations. The couple began dating in 1929, and eventually married in 1938. Frank was drafted during World War II and died in France in 1944. They had one son, Frank de Caro, who was born in 1943.

The Mulvehills were Irish immigrants who moved to Brooklyn in the 1840s. Beatrice's father John Henry Mulvehill (1873-1943) was born in Brooklyn in 1873 and had a successful career in the insurance business. He married Myrtle Bell Brown (1880-1963) from Russell County, Kansas and the couple had five children, Edward Leslie, John Joseph, Vincent Lyman, Urban Sylvester, and Beatrice Agnes. Many of Mulvehill's sons also worked in insurance, while their sister Beatrice worked for many years at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Arrangement

This collection has been arranged into series by format. Materials within series are grouped by subject or creator.

Scope and Contents

This collection contains documents and photographs that relate to three families of European immigrants (from Italy, Germany, and Ireland) who settled in New York City in the late 19th century. The de Caro, Menkhoff, and Mulvehill families became connected in 1891 when Frank A. de Caro married Anna Menkhoff, and in 1939 when their son Frank E. de Caro married Beatrice Mulvehill. While small and incomplete as a family history, this collection spotlights several topics, most notably, Italian-American identity in turn-of-the-century New York City, travel accounts, and middle-class courtship during the Great Depression.

Materials have been arranged into three series. Series I, Correspondence and Family Papers consists primarily of letters written by Frank E. de Caro (Frank A. de Caro's son) to Beatrice Mulvehill between 1930 and 1933, before they were married. These letters discuss their courtship as well as Frank's social life in New York and his work as a stock broker during the Depression. There are also several post cards written by Beatrice Mulvehill to her family members during a 1928 trip to Europe with a group of students from Berkeley Institute, (now Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn) where Beatrice attended high school. Other papers in this series relate to the first generation of the de Caro family including: documents from Frank A. de Caro's flag manufacturing company, obituaries and biographical sketches of Frank A. de Caro and his wife Anna Menkhoff de Caro, and an account of her childhood by their daughter Frances de Caro.

Series II, Bound Volumes, contains several catalogues from de Caro's flag manufacturing company, De Caro's & D'Angelo Co; scrapbooks, and travel journals. The first scrapbook in this series was compiled by Frank A. de Caro and contains letters to and from a number of Italian organization and dignitaries, which are in Italian. The second scrapbook contains photographs and memorabilia from Frank A. de Caro's daughter Lillyan de Caro Santo during a 1977 trip to Germany to visit with Menkhoff family relatives. There are also three travel journals documenting various trips to Europe and New England by Frank A. de Caro's daughters Frances de Caro, Lillyan de Caro Santo, and one by Beatrice Mulvehill (before her marriage to Frank E. de Caro).

Series III, Photographs, spans the period between the 1880s and 1990s depicting several generations of de Caro and Mulvehill family members. These images vary in size and format and include both individual and group photographs. Highlights include tintype portraits, images of the Mulvehill family at Coney Island in the early twentieth century, and a 1910 photograph of Frank A. de Caro with a delegation Italian-Americans meeting with President William Howard Taft at the White House to discuss making Columbus Day a national holiday. Photographs in this series largely depict family events, including holidays, leisure, and travel and reflect these families' attempt to document their history in the early days of photography.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Items that include presidential signatures will be presented to researchers in duplicate form.

Conditions Governing Use

Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.

Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.

Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions

Preferred Citation

This collection should be cited as the de Caro, Mulvehill and Menkhoff Family Papers, MS 2956, The New-York Historical Society.

Location of Materials

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Frank de Caro, 2013.

Collection processed by

Heather Mulliner

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:48:02 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Description is written in: English, Latin script.

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024