According to her obituary, published in the April 7, 1983 edition of the Kansas City (MO) TIMES, "Mrs. Jennie Barelli DeSimone, 83 . . ." a restaurateur, ". . . had been the owner of Jennie's Restaurant since 1938 and was its manager before she retired in 1981." And it added that she had died in a nursing home at 9700 W. 62nd St. in Merriam, Kansas.

The obituary further stated that she had lived in the Kansas City area since 1906 [around the time when she and her mother Grazia and older sister Rosina immigrated to the U.S.A. from Sicily to join the patriarch Filippo who had come over in 1900] and, at her death, had left one son, Dr. Pat Barelli; two sisters: Clara Coughlin of Philadelphia and Frances Wall of Kansas City; five grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

In most all of its "classified" newspaper advertisements over the years, the restaurant - located on the first floor of her home at 511 Cherry St. on the western edge of the Columbus Park neighborhood of Kansas City, directly east of the City Market - was referred to as "Jennie's Italian Dinners." (When it opened in 1938, the restaurant was popularly known as "Jennie Red's" - for her red hair - or "Jennie's Party House," known primarily for its beer and gaming tables rather than its food. This, according to an article in the Kansas City Star of May 24, 1987, pg. 7G.)

To see an album of vintage photographs from the Columbus Park neighborhood, click here: https://pendergastkc.org/taxonomy/term/8

Feature articles about Jennie's Restaurant were published in the Kansas City Star on October 2, 1991, pg. E-1 [see below] and on December 10, 1998, pg. B-1. The main source for both articles was Jennie's grandson Thomas Paul "Tom" Barelli - https://www.facebook.com/thomas.barelli - who said that he planned to, and did, close the business on December 23 of that year - 1998. So the restaurant had been open for business over 60 years. Quite an accomplishment!

One of the original waitresses at Jennie's Restaurant, perhaps its very first, was Josephine Avery.

Does the passenger manifest from 1904 below refer to Jennie? No, I have now determined that it does not. The 1910 federal census, posted on her father's memorial and taken in April of that year, shows that "Giovannina" had arrived in the United States in 1906 and was age 11 at the time the census was taken. And if we assume that she was indeed born on February 7, then this would suggest a year of birth of 1899. Most other evidence indicates that she was born in 1900. Any additional documentary evidence of her full birthdate would be much appreciated. It would be interesting, though not dispositive, to know just what year of birth, if any, is shown on Jennie's grave marker. A request for a photo is currently outstanding.

New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957

Name: Giovanna Montalbano [This is not Jennie!]
Arrival Date: 23 Aug 1904
Birth Date: 1900
Age: 4
Gender: Female
Ethnicity/ Nationality: Italian (South)
Port of Departure: Palermo [Note: Palermo is the capital city of the southern Italian island of Sicily.]
Port of Arrival: New York, New York
Ship Name: Sicilian Prince
Search Ship Database: Sicilian Prince
Giovanna Montalbano - Aug 1904 - New York, New York Palermo Palermo - Female - Sicilian Prince

1910 United States Federal Census

Name: Giovannina Montalbano
Age in 1910: 11
Birth Year: 1899
Birthplace: Italy
Home in 1910: Kansas City Ward 6, Jackson, Missouri
Street: East 3rd
Race: White
Gender: Female
Immigration Year: 1906
Relation to Head of House: Daughter
Marital Status: Single
Father's Name: Filippo Montalbano ["street laborer;" arrived in the U.S. in 1900]
Father's Birthplace: Italy
Mother's Name: Grazia Montalbano [arrived in the U.S. in 1906 along with her two eldest children, Rosina and Giovannina, aka Rose and Jennie]
Mother's Birthplace: Italy
Native Tongue: English [sic]
Attended School: Yes
Able to read: Yes
Able to Write: Yes
Household Members: Name Age
Filippo Montalbano 37
Grazia Montalbano 29
Rosina Montalbano 13
Giovannina Montalbano 11
Maria Montalbano 2
Salvatore Montalbano 1

Missouri, Marriage Records, 1805-2002

Name: Jennie Montabano
Marriage Date: 11 Sep 1916
Marriage Place: Jackson, Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Spouse: Antonio Barelli
Household Members: Name Age
Jennie Montabano
Antonio Barelli

1920 United States Federal Census

Name: Giovanna Borelli
Age: 21
Birth Year: 1899
Birthplace: Italy
Home in 1920: Kansas City Ward 5, Jackson, Missouri
Street: Cherry Street [521 Cherry St.]
Residence Date: 1920
Race: White
Gender: Female
Immigration Year: 1906
Relation to Head of House: Wife
Marital Status: Married
Spouse's Name: Antonio Borelli
Father's Birthplace: Italy
Mother's Birthplace: Italy
Native Tongue: Italian
Able to Speak English: Yes
Naturalization Status: Alien
Able to read: Yes
Able to Write: Yes
Household Members: Name Age
Antonio Borelli 37 ["saloon keeper"]
Giovanna Borelli 21
Pasquale Borelli 0 [actually "11/12", meaning 11 months old; this, of course, is Pat Anthony "Patsy" Barelli]

1930 United States Federal Census

Name: Jennie Barelli
Birth Year: 1901
Gender: Female
Race: White
Age in 1930: 29
Birthplace: Italy
Marital Status: Married
Relation to Head of House: Wife
Homemaker?: Yes
Home in 1930: Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri, USA
Map of Home: Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri
Street Address: Benton
Ward of City: 16
Block: 16
House Number: 3510
Dwelling Number: 177
Family Number: 184
Age at First Marriage: 16
Attended School: No
Able to Read and Write: Yes
Father's Birthplace: Italy
Mother's Birthplace: Italy
Language Spoken: Italian
Immigration Year: 1906
Naturalization: Alien
Able to Speak English: Yes
Household Members: Name Age
Anthony Barelli 46 [owner; grocery store]
Jennie Barelli 29
John Righs 25 [lodger; salesman, grocery store]
Pat Barelli 11

Anthony "Tony" Barelli died on December 12, 1937.

1940 United States Federal Census

Name: Jenny Barelli
Respondent: Yes
Age: 39
Estimated Birth Year: 1901
Gender: Female
Race: White
Birthplace: Italy
Marital Status: Widowed
Relation to Head of House: Head
Home in 1940: Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri
Map of Home in 1940: Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri
Street: Cherry Avenue [Census shows that she was living at 511 Cherry Ave. with her sister Clara Coughlin and Clara's husband Tom and their son Jerry.]
Farm: No
Inferred Residence in 1935: Kansas City, Jackson, Missouri
Residence in 1935: Same House
Resident on farm in 1935: No
Citizenship: Having first papers [i.e. papers declaring "intention" filed by an applicant for citizenship as the first step in the naturalization process. It is unknown if Jennie ever completed this process.]
Sheet Number: 4B
Number of Household in Order of Visitation: 90
Occupation: Proprietor
Industry: Bees Tavern [sic; "Beer Tavern"]
House Owned or Rented: Owned
Value of Home or Monthly Rental if Rented: 5000
Attended School or College: No
Highest Grade Completed: Elementary school, 6th grade
Hours Worked Week Prior to Census: 60
Class of Worker: Working on own account
Weeks Worked in 1939: 52
Income: 0
Income Other Sources: Yes
Household Members: Name Age
Jenny Barelli 39
Theresa Ferra 30 [lodger]

Missouri, Marriage Records, 1805-2002

Name: Jennie Barelli
Age: 46
White
Birth Date: 7 Feb 1902 [sic; it appears that Jennie fibbed about her age, making herself "younger," rather like she had done at the time of her first marrage in 1916 when she made herself "older" to avoid having to secure parental consent since she was not age 18 or older.]
Marriage Date: 23 Oct 1948 [sic; this was the date of the application; the marriage actually occurred a week later on Oct. 30.]
Marriage Place: Jackson, Missouri, USA
Spouse: James De Simone
Household Members: Name Age
Jennie Barelli
James De Simone

Pasta like Grandma's
Jennie's of Kansas City a family affair since 1938

by John Martellaro, Food Editor

The way Tom Barelli relates his family history - a long and rambling tale, replete with richly detailed anecdotes - you would think he'd spent his life preparing to take over the family restaurant that is at the heart of the story.

But Barelli came to be the third-generation owner-operator of Jennie's Italian Restaurant quite literally by accident.

As Barelli tells the story, he was a young man just returned from military service, contemplating his future over a platter of Grandma's pasta. In this case, Grandma served her pasta not in a homey little kitchen but in one of Kansas City's oldest and best-known restaurants.

Barelli was thinking about going back to college; the restaurant business was the furthest thing from his mind until a commotion suddenly broke out in the kitchen. The dishwasher had fallen and broken a leg. How would the restaurant deal with the oncoming lunch rush? Grandson Tom was pressed into the breach.

It wasn't a natural position for him. Despite his heritage, Barelli had not grown up with the restaurant business.

Jennie Barelli DeSimone had opened the restaurant that bore her name in 1938. Although it was a family operation from the beginning, with uncles and cousins employed in all areas, she had other plans for the only one of her four children to survive to adulthood. Pat Barelli, her son and Tom's father, was headed for medical school. Tom grew up as a Johnson County doctor's son, not a restaurant brat with an apron that reached to his ankles.

But after his inauguration as emergency dishwasher, Barelli soon was immersed in the business. "I was cooking sauce and meatballs in the morning, busing tables at lunch, then I worked the [cash] register at night," he says. He came to love the business. He took restaurant management courses, first at a local community college, later at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, preparing to make the family business his own.

Then a crisis threatened: An urban renewal program in the early 1970s threatened to condemn and tear down the restaurant and the entire block around it.

"It took thousands of dollars in engineering and legal fees to prevent it," he says - a commitment made only after some soul searching. "I had to make a choice whether to leave the neighborhood or to stay. That's when the history and the heritage first came in." Barelli smiles as he relates tales from the restaurant's past: How his grandmother originally opened it as a catering hall for private parties and dubbed it "Jennie's Party House," leading some Pendergast-era Kansas Citians to think it was a brothel.

How whiskey stills and bootleggers' tunnels and secret cellars dotted the neighborhood, and protection money was paid to the Pendergast machine as a necessary cost of doing business.

How regular customers donated their extra ration coupons so their beloved restaurant could stay open during World War II.

How poor neighborhood kids would beg meatball sandwiches at the back door and later grew up to work at the restaurant.

"I've had customers come in who said they slept here during the flood in the West Bottoms in 1951," Barelli says. "Grandma put 'em up and fed 'em, and never took a dime." The building that housed the original Jennie's, still part of today's restaurant complex, was built by Tony Barelli, Jennie's first husband, in 1932 as a Prohibition-era speak-easy saloon. They were married when Tony was 40 and Jennie was 15, a not-uncommon pairing among immigrants in those days. [Note: Tony had just turned 34 and Jennie was 16 when this "civil marriage" occurred on September 11, 1916; T.N.]

The saloon was closed when Tony died in 1936 [actually, Dec. 12, 1937; T.N.] and although Jennie continued to live in the apartment upstairs, the saloon stayed vacant until 1938. That, Tom Barelli says, was when a group of shady characters approached her about a business deal.

"The boys wanted to put in some slot machines and open up a joint," he says. "And they weren't the kind of guys you could say 'no' to easily." Thinking quickly, Jennie told them she had been planning to open a restaurant to support herself, and the mobsters decided to look elsewhere. Soon after that, JENNIE'S was born.

Barelli says the menu hasn't changed much since those days.

You'll see an occasional upscale lunch special such as fettuccine with prosciutto in saffron cream, but Jennie's remains a bastion of old-fashioned red-sauced Southern Italian cooking.

"We're still a family place. That's why we didn't go to the high cuisine, why we didn't go to the white tablecloths." Cheese ravioli is still made by hand, in-house; lasagna remains the most popular menu item. Candles in straw-wrapped Chianti flasks, dribbled with melted wax, sit on tables decked with red-and-white checkered tablecloths.

Barelli also takes pride in continuing to do business with some of the neighborhood suppliers the restaurant started with. He rattles them off from memory: the Roma bakery, LaRocca pasta, Pisciotta's produce, Boyle's meats. "It means a lot - we still feel a lot of loyalty to those people." The dining area underwent a major expansion in 1976, when a row of tenements was torn down to make room for the new dining room that opens onto Fifth Street; the back of the house has seen a more gradual evolution. Barelli says the restaurant has had five kitchens built since it opened; the original kitchen now is a tile-lined dishwashing room.

Oh, and the dishwasher who broke his leg and got Barelli into the business to begin with? Today he's a cook at Jennie's. So is Barelli's 81-year-old uncle, who still arrives at sunrise each day to make a fresh pot of tomato sauce.

In that sense family tradition still runs strong and deep. But Barelli is the only member of his immediate family connected with the restaurant. His wife, Lizbeth, is an interior designer. His two daughters, Alexis, 10, and Annalisa, 7, are too young for aprons just yet. "They'll have the option" to get involved with the restaurant, Barelli says, and adds with a laugh: "But I wouldn't wish it on them."

Published in the October 2, 1991 edition of the Kansas City (MO) STAR

Note: regarding the 6th paragraph in the above article, where it says ". . . she had other plans for the only one of her four children to survive to adulthood,": I am unaware that Jennie (and/or Tony?) had any children other than Pat or "Patsy" in 1919. If any were stillborn, say, or died shortly after a live birth, then there should be a death certificate issued by the state of Missouri - assuming that they died in Missouri, of course. Is it possible that one or more of the children died "in utero?" In that case, there would be no death certificate. Could any of these three children have been adopted? Could Jennie have been their stepmother? (Probably not; on the 1910 federal census - posted on his mother Lucia's memorial - Tony Barelli's marital status is shown as "single," not married or widowed or divorced.) And are these children "memorialized" in some manner in the Montalbano or Barelli - or DeSimone - family cemetery plots? More research needs to be done regarding this matter.