Bartolomeo Giammarco was born in Camp di Fano, between Prezza and Sulmona, L'Aquila, on 31 March 1891, the son of Santo Giammarco (1855–1925?) and Maria Teresa Di Mascio [Di Maggio] (1865–). He had two brothers (Antonio and Dominic) and a sister (Filomena).

Giammarco was part of the vast transatlantic labour migration of the Italian southern poor, moving to work in the USA several times - arriving first in 1910, then again in 1920, and finally in 1926. Significant numbers of people from provincia L'Aquila, ended up in northern Pennsylvania, and among these some (such as Sam Pacella, b.1899) were both from Sulmona and involved in the burgeoning pentecostal movement. His younger brother Domenico ("Dominic", 1906-1956) joined him in Washington, PA, in 1922. Unlike many people in the south, Giammarco could sign his name, and Domenico seems to have been quite well educated.

On 14 May 1914 he married Francesca (b. 15 June 1894), at Prezza, Italy. She did not follow him to the USA, however, but remained in Sulmona where they had last lived together, looking after their child Maria (b. 1 July 1915).

Giammarco migrated to the USA on the SS Roma in 1926, arriving in New York on 2 October of that year. This must have been a return trip, however, as the previous year (1925) he acted as witness and guardian for his younger brother Dominic in his marriage banns (preparatory for Dominic's marriage to Philomena Ranalli), as their father was dead and their mother living in Italy.

In 1930, Bartolomeo was living in Washington, PA, with Dominic (b. 1906). About this time, Dominic was ordained in the CCNA, and pastored the CCNA church in Canonsburg, near Pittsburgh (now Belmont Christian Church) for many years. This points to the context in which the Giammarco brothers received the pentecostal witness - from the first generation evangelists (see entries on Jean Perrou, q.v., Umberto Gazzeri, q.v. and Mario Bongiorno, q.v., among others) and who spread out of the Assemblea Cristiana in Chicago, in particular the revival in Erie, PA. The CCNA church in nearby Washington PA, for instance, was founded by local families "when laymembers of the Christian Church of North America in New Brighton, visited friends in Washington and interested them in the Gospel, and in forming the congregation here. Then, Cottage Meetings were held in the home of Louis Arena by the Domenic Capo family and in the home of Frank Julian and Patsy Manfredi." (CCNA Family: Our History) In January 1925, a room on Weirich Avenue, owned by Anthony Comfort was secured and held regular services. Sunday school classes were conducted by Frank Maruso, Mary Bonuso and Rose Mazzie. A permanent church opened on West Wylie Avenue in 1926. This was part of a wave of churches being planted in Italian communities right across the northern reaches of Pennsylvania and New York. The second generation, people such as Frank Maruso (q.v.), continued to evangelize in the area, planting many new churches through the second half of the 1920s, of which Canonsburg was one. According to his obituary, at his death in 1956, Dominic had been pastoring the church in Canonsburg for 26 years, suggesting that the church was founded in 1930.

In 1931 Bartolomeo was living at 15 Strabane Ave, Canonsburg, Washington PA, working as a mill worker in a Tin Mill.

In 1948, when the Assemblee di Dio in Italia was formally constituted, Giammarco is listed as as the leader of the community in Sulmona. In his 1956 account Il Risveglio Pentecostale in Italia, Roberto Bracco noted that "In Sulmona the testimony came through Brother B. Gianmarco returning from the United States and today the small group is looked after by him." He was still alive in the year that Dominic, who was ill for many years even as he pastored Christian Church of North America at Payne Place in Canonsburg, died (1956).

Dominic's wife, Philomena Ranalli Giammarco died in 1982. Of the six children they had, only three survived into adulthood, including two sons James (of Levittown) and David (1933 - 2014, then of Pico Rivera, CA, became an engineer for Rockwell aerospace) and a daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Belcher (Canonsburg).

Sources:

Ancestry.com

Bracco, Roberto, Il Risveglio Pentecostale in Italia (Rome: 1956)

CCNAFamily website, https://ccnafamily.org/our-history/.

Christian Assembly Church, Midland, 'How God used a humble woman to plant 15+ churches!', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monaes1vEcU&t=7s.

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