Francesco Stefano Di Giacomo [DiGiacomo] was born in Lercara Friddi, prov. Palermo, Sicilia, on 22 August 1869.

He was educated at Italian Grammar school (presumably the Istituto Valdese established in 1865 in Palermo) and, after service as a missioner, at the Biblical Seminary, New York (1920-1922).

Di Giacomo arrived in the USA on the SS Liguria on 2 Sep 1903 nominating his profession as 'shoemaker' and his main contact as his cousin Giovanni Arico, then living in Brooklyn. His obituary suggests he studied at a 'Waldensian Seminary in Palermo' - but no such institution existed there at the time. It is more likely that he attended the Waldensian school in the Palazzo Sambuca, Palermo, overseen by the former Dominican-turned-Waldensian evangelist, Sebastiano Trapani.

On 18 Dec 1904, he married Sebastiano Trapani's daughter Maria 'Mary' nee Trapani. She and her siblings had accompanied their uncle, Sebastiano's brother, to New York, in 1903, and it was there that Maria re-connected with Francesco. Their marriage would produce four children, Emmanuel (b. 1906), Concettina (b. 1907; m. James Hindle), Dorothy ['Dorine'] (b. 1909), and John Nathaniel (b. 1913). Both Mary and her sister Emmalina were missionaries in their own right, bringing the skills they had learned as teachers in their father's schools in Palermo and in Trabia to work among Italian migrants in New York city and state.

In 1919, Di Giacomo was naturalized, with an attestation witnessed by Rev. Stefano Luigi [Louis] Testa and Anna Lydia Testa.

From 1904-1912 DiGiacomo and his wife were missioners at the Italian Mission, Schenectady. The Mohawk Valley would be the scene for much of his early ministry, among the industrializing centres of Schenectady, Utica and Rome. Though working for the Presbyterian Church of the USA, much of DiGiacomo's work was across denominational lines and in temperance unions, 'united churches' and Protestant combined revival settings. He preached and sang for others, and others - such as William Burt, the Methodist Episcopal missionary and Bishop -- preached for him.

In 1912 the Di Giacomos moved to the charge of Lockport, NY, and from 1915-18 to East Rome, NY. There are brief mentions in the press of Di Giacomo’s work as an evangelist. In York, PA, for example, he ran a campaign in 1916, which saw more than 40 people confess Christ as saviour. In the words of the York Daily

Twelve more Italians hit the trial at the evangelistic meeting held in the Princess Street U[nited] E[vangelical] church, last evening by the Rev. Francesco Di Giacomo, the Italian evangelist. The total number of the evangelist countrymen to “hit the trail” is now 41. Inclement weather of last evening kept many Americans from the service, but the Italians turned out in large numbers. (25 Feb 1916: 1)

In what for the time was a relatively soft 'back hander', the York Dispatch reported the next week that:

The Rev. Di Giacomo in the course of his evangelistic campaign here, converted 50 Italians. He advised them to convert to return to that faith in which they had been baptised and trained. So 30 of the converts have returned to the Catholic Church, having followed the advice of the revivalist. [York Dispatch 6 Mar 1916: 6]

DiGiacomo for his part then left to carry out the next campaign in Norristown with the Rev. W. E. Biederwolf.

In 1918, they accepted the charge of the Church of Peace, Brooklyn, 1971 Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. This also involved taking over the former St John Mission (at Central Avenue and George St.), and St James Mission (Elton St and Arlington Ave). Di Giacomo's mission was later associated as the Italian Branch of the Mt Olivet Presbyterian Church, and his duties expanded to oversee the John Hall Memorial Italian Branch in Manhattan. [Obituary, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 14 Dec 1946]

Having served the church for 15 years, from 1920-22 Di Giacomo went on to further study at the Biblical Seminary, New York. On graduation in 1922, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Brooklyn-Nassau.

In 1924, Di Giacomo joined a large number of Italian ministers who supported the campaign, led by Charles Fama on behalf of the Italian Evangelical Protestant Ministers Association of Greater New York, to elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the post of Governor of New York. Fama was strongly anti-Fascist, and the ministers group would grow increasingly so as the Catholic Church and the Fascist state approached and then reached rapprochement in the 1929 Lateran Treaty (the 'Concordat').

Di Giacomo was active in, and sometime president of, the American Waldensian Aid Society.

In 1926 he was appointed as 'supply' preacher for the Evangelical Italian Church in Gregg Chapel in New York. This was the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church's mission to the Italians of Gowanus in the early years of the 20th century, located at 190 4th Avenue. This work was very much outreach to the poor, through such organizations as the Urban Settlement and Lincoln Settlement. They were regular fixtures in street outreach meetings and special revival campaigns. In 1930, Di Giacomo, Maria and their son John provided music and singing at 'the Open Coney Revival' meetings led under a tent by Rev. H J Reemstma of Lefferts Park Presbyterian Church for the Brooklyn Federation of Churches.

In 1934, after near three decades of ministry with the PCUSA, Di Giacomo retired. Mary died in 1943. Francesco died of a heart attack in his home at 9 Palmetto St., Brooklyn on 13 Dec 1946 and was buried at The Evergreens Cemetery. After some time as a merchant seaman and railway worker, an encounter in Africa at a leprosy colony in Kenya encouraged their son, John, to reconsider the Presbyterian ministry. He would serve in Missouri and Illinois, become Moderator of the Alton Presbytery in in Illinois, and engage in the debates over biblical inspiration when the PCUSA sought to institute a new Creed.

Sources:

Ancestry.com

newspapers.com

Sappa, Micael, 'Sebastiano Trapani', Dizionario Biografico dei Protestanti in Italia, https://www.studivaldesi.org/dizionario/evan_det.php?secolo=XIX&evan_id=252