Good post as usual Cabrini! Bonanno also seemed to have been more like Carlo Gambino in the sense that they were both born into Mafia royalty from Sicily. They weren't just some street punks who made it big like John Gotti, they had their entire family history behind them.

I don't know too much about their families from way back then in Sicily, but they must've been very powerful in their respected hometowns.

That's not to say that Bonanno and Gambino didn't earn their respect, they were both certainly well respected for decades (at least until Bonanno was forced into exile).

And yeah, it's very interesting that the Bonanno Family was almost exclusively Castellamarese back when it formed and for decades after. People seem to say that before the Five Families was formed that Luciano wanted to wipe out the old school "Mustache Petes" who only cared about regional stuff (whether someone was Sicilian, Calabrese, etc.) but the Bonannos were a very localized family.