This episode opens with a short fictional vignette set at the edge of order and wilderness, then turns to the historical record.

At its center is Giovanni Battista Sartori, an Italian pasta maker operating a commercial works in Trenton in the early 1800s—supplying elite households, including Thomas Jefferson, navigating Atlantic trade during the Embargo Act, and remaining prominent when Joseph Bonaparte, former King of Naples, arrived in New Jersey in exile.

Food becomes the through-line: a way to trace power, foreignness, faith, and continuity in a young state already plugged into global networks. The Jersey Devil appears not as a legend to be explained, but as a witness to a world in transition.

Email me: njhistorypodcast@gmail.com

#NewJerseyHistory #ItalianAmericanHistory #Foodways

Selected Sources:

United States House of Representatives. Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 10th Cong., 2nd sess.
November 25, 1808.

Thomas Jefferson. Memorandum of Payments. November 29, 1809.
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
(Records payment to John B. Sartori of Trenton for two boxes of macaroni, 25 lbs each.)

———. Correspondence referencing supply from “Sartori’s works at Trenton.” 1809.
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation.