Dominick Malatesta: Fireman

Your great great grandfather, Dominick Malatesta, was a Chicago fireman. I found this article in the Chicago Tribune dated 8 NOV 1872, announcing his transition from a probationary member of the Fire Dept. to a regular member. This occurred a year and a month after the Great Chicago Fire.

District Meet Programs

Here are downloadable programs from District Meets of yesteryear. We have the series from 1965 through 1975, excluding 1973, which may yet turn up in my diggings.

• 1965
• 1966
• 1967
• 1968
• 1969
• 1970
• 1971
• 1972
• 1974
• 1975

Where the Bodies are Buried

I received a death certificate for your grandmother, Kathleen Ware Glass, in addition to death certs for her mother (Mayme Orne Ware), her aunts (Emily Orne Hitchcock and Nellie Ware), and her uncle Freeman Orne. All died in the Los Angeles area. When I got the certs back, I was surprised to see that Nellie was listed as being buried in the Sunset View Cemetery* in Berkeley (now El Cerrito). So I requested her cemetery record, hoping to see if her husband Thomas Ware and/or your great grandfather, Charles Bennett Ware (Thomas' brother) were buried there as well. Per Arden, Kathleen and her mother had lived in Berkeley for a while, and Kathleen had attended Cal prior to marrying Joseph Glass.

I was surprised to find that the whole bunch of them (except Thomas Ware and Emily Hitchcock) were buried in Berkeley. The best new information was pinpointing Charles Bennett Ware's burial date (2 FEB 1929) --- up till now, I only knew that he died between 1920 and 1930. I imagined that he'd probably died in Illinois (they lived in Oak Park in 1920), and after his death Kathleen and her mother moved west to make a new start. Now it seems most likely that they all moved to Berkeley around the time Kathleen entered Cal, and Charles died a few years later.

Here is their headstone:



UPDATE: The two plots are side-by-side, but there is no marker for Kathleen's plot, even though the cemetery records indicate there is a monument there. At some point we may need to buy her a headstone. There is also no marker indicating that the remains of Nellie and Freeman are interred/inurned here. I need to follow up on that.
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* Financial Services mogul Dean Witter is buried here