Giovanni Martini

Giovanni Martino or Giovanni Martini, also known as John Martin (1852, Sala Consilina - 24 December 1922, New York City) was an Italian-American soldier and trumpeter. He served both in Italy with Giuseppe Garibaldi and in the United States under George Armstrong Custer. He is best known as the only survivor from Custer's company in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

Although details of Martino's origin and birth were ambiguous in the years following the Little Big Horn, more recent research conducted by Italian researchers has provided more definitive proof of his origins, as evidenced by the comune (or town) of Sala Consilina’s (Province of Salerno) municipal records. He was born in the period between late November 1851 and early January 1852 in or around Sala Consilina, but was subsequently left at one the town’s Proietto Domiciliata (orphanages). Within a day of his abandonment on January 28, 1852, he was provided a name (Giovanni Crisostomo Martino), baptized and placed into the home of a local wet nurse.

The unreliability of parish records – as opposed to municipal birth and death registers - inspired two Italian municipalities to claim him as one of their own: Apricale (Province of Imperia) and Sala Consilina (Province of Salerno). New evidence appears to substantiate the latter. Although Martino himself, in an interview in 1922 a few months before his death, claimed to have been born in Rome in 1851, Martino’s advanced age - as observed and noted by the interviewer, Colonel William Graham – contributed to this apparent self-contradiction.

According to Martino’s diary, as recorded during a 1906 interview, he joined the Corpo Volontari Italiani in 1866, led by Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, as a drummer boy for several years before eventually returning to Sala Consilina, where municipal records indicate a reconciliation occurred between Martin and his biological father. By 1873, Martino boarded a ship in Naples bound for the United States and was registered at Castle Clinton upon landing (as Giovanni Martino, a 21-year-old laborer from Sala). His true name, prior to its anglicization, was confirmed as Giovanni Martino during his registration, effectively dispelling the widespread belief in later years that he was Giovanni Martini. One year later, facing limited employment options, he enlisted with the United States Army as John Martin and was assigned to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri to begin training as a cavalry trooper and bugler before his permanent assignment to the U.S. Seventh Cavalry Regiment, led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

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