Dean Martin’s Italian Roots: Dino Crocetti of Montesilvano, Abruzzo

Before he was Dean Martin — the crooner, the actor, the King of Cool — he was Dino Paul Crocetti, born in Steubenville, Ohio, on 7 June 1917, the son of an Italian barber.

A barber from Montesilvano

His father, Gaetano Alfonso Crocetti (1894–1967), was born in Salino, a hamlet of Montesilvano — then in the Abruzzo province later known as Teramo, today part of the province of Pescara. Gaetano was a barber, and he married Angela Barra, an Italian-American, in Steubenville on 25 December 1914.

Two foundlings in the register

Gaetano was born on 15 December 1894 to Giovanni Crocetti and Maria Focoso, who had married in Montesilvano on 23 February 1884. Their marriage record holds a poignant detail: both bride and groom are described as foundlings, children of unknown parents. It is exactly the kind of story that lives only in the archives — a family whose beginning was officially a blank, and yet is written down, in ink, in the registers of an Abruzzese town.

A barber’s son from Abruzzo who became the King of Cool. Where does your family begin?

Behind Dean Martin stands Montesilvano, in Abruzzo, and a marriage of two foundlings whose story survives only because the registers kept it. Your family’s trail is waiting in an Italian archive too. Tell me a little about your family, and I will give you an honest assessment of what is possible.