Camden People - Charles Graziosa

CHARLES GRAZIOSA was born in New Jersey in 1904 to Giovanni and Rose Graziosa. Giovanni Graziosa, who in America went by Jacob, and his wife were both Italian immigrants who had arrived in the 1893 and 1894 respectively. He was a hat maker by trade. When Charles Graziosa was born in 1904, the family had only recently moved to New Jersey from Pennsylvania, where five other children had been born. By 1910 the family owned a home at 2004 South 10th Street, next door to the gas station which Charles Graziosa would operate for many years at the corner of 10th Street and Ferry Avenue.

During the 1920s tragedy struck the family. Oldest daughter Julia assed in 1923, leaving a son, Frank Ballerino. Oldest son Frank passed in 1925, father Giovanni in 1926. Tragedy would continue to follow the family, when, in November of 1943, Private Frank Ballerino was one of 1015 American servicemen to perish when the troopship HMTS Rohna was sunk by a guided missile of the coast of North Africa.

Charles Graziosa was working as a plumber when the census was taken in 1930. Sometime during that decade he acquired the gas station adjacent to the family home. The gas station was known, appropriately enough, as the Graziosa Gas Station.

Rose Graziosa passed in 1952, and Charles died in 1954. Sister Ella, who did not marry, was last a resident of Somerdale NJ. She passed away in August of 1994. All are buried at New Camden Cemetery.



2004 South 10th Street, Camden NJ in May of 2002. As you can see, the house is adjacent to what was a gas station at South 10th Street & Ferry Avenue. The gas station sits across the street from the Clement T. Branch Village Housing project, which was completed in 1941, and a bar, The Democrat Club, which is still in operation today.