|
|
|
| Beginning about one hundred years ago and up through the end of the first World War, our present homeland, "the autonomous Province of Trento" was under the rule of Franz Joseph, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During this period all school children were required to learn their ABCs, read and write, and do their numbers which well served later immigrants to the United States to preserve their proper names and the names of their home towns. | |
| Because of the mixture of the countries making up the Austro-Hungarian Empire there was a blending of cultures, most important to us were the Austrian and German influences as seen in our food and language. Upon the ending of World War One, the Treaty of St Germain on September 10, 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire was reduced by four fifths. One part of this area was known as Sud Tyrol in Italy and this area became known as "The Trentino". | |
| Our Club was established in 1980 and adopted the title "Tirolesi-Trentini" because a large number of our original members came to America before the end of World War One and they carried a passport which indicated they were from Tyrol, Austria. This fact made them proud. Considering that persons born in Italy after September 10, 1918 were subjects of Italy and because the territory given to Italy was called the Trentino, they were Italians from the Trentino. We decided to name our club "The Tirolesi-Trentini Del Colorado" to acknowledge all of the pre and post war inhabitants of the region. | |
| We recently received some historical information from our member, Mary Beth Moser, regarding Trentino immigrants. The article is listed below: On the tombstones of the cemeteries in the USA “The History of Trentino Emigration” by Alberto Folgheraiter An ample chapter in the history of the Trentino emigration between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is written in the cemeteries of the United States. As in The Anthology of Spoon River by Edgar Lee Masters, the deaths of immigration are sleeping on the hills, in the fields outside the villages. Between the rocks of granite or of limestone, among the letters sometimes consumed by the surnames, they filter fragments of biographies, stories of lives lived and snatched in the flower of the years. From Pennsylvania to Colorado from Montana to New Mexico, from Utah to Illinois, the surnames of the Trentini valleys recur. There were at least 23,000 of them, which, in twenty years in the second half of the 19th century, left their southern Tyrol for joining the coveted America. They were above all peasants and woodsmen of the valleys of Trentino with the most misery: Giudicarie e Rendena, Cembra e Piné, Non, Sole e Rabbi. Ellis Island is a little Island in the bay of New York. Here, on first of January 1892, was prepared an imposing immigration office. All the ships that arrived from Europe disembarked their cargo of men and women for a medical visit, a general exam, and a test of intelligence. Every one had to indicate the name of a relative or a friend that would guarantee for them a first arrangement of logistics. From 1880 to 1930, 27 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Of the 20 million transiting Ellis Island, 4.6 million were coming from Italy, 4 million from the Austria-Hungarian Empire. In 1901, 389,000 people transited this island; over a million in 1907. Since 1990, an imposing museum of immigration has readied itself, and a data bank has been started that gathers 25 million names and surnames. They are great grandparents and relatives of 100 million Americans. The immigrants admitted into the entrance of the United States were transferred onto terra firma at Manhattan. From here, they made their way to the interior. Many Trentini went to Colorado, in the mines of gold and of silver, or in the coal mines in New Mexico. Others (the Mengon of the Val di Rabbi, for example) went to Montana to work in the forests. Twenty years gone . . .up in smoke. Luigi Villotti (my grandfather) departed from Segonzano in the spring of 1901. He was 27 years old. He arrived in New York, May 20, 1901 with the ship “La Gascogne” that departed from Le Havre in France one week earlier. At Ellis Island he declared that he was an Austrian peasant farmer [“contadino”] from south Tyrol, who was going to Trinidad (Colorado), claimed there by cousin August Zancanella. A little time later, he found work in the nearby New Mexico, in the coal mine of Sugarite, an “alpine” valley in Raton County. He stayed there for 20 years. In 1919, after the treaty of St. Germain that assigned the Trentino-Alto Adige to Italy, he requested and obtained American “naturalization.” He had put aside a reasonable savings. In 1921, however, taken by nostalgia for the ancient homeland he decided to leave the United States temporarily to return to Segonzano to the tomb of his parents, who had died in the meantime. He deposited the money in the bank of Germany (“it was the most secure,” they advised him) and with a certificate of deposit in hand of 57,000 marcs, he landed in the Val di Cembra. He was 47 years old, and was again a single man. He met Maria Benedetti, a widow with three children at a tender age. He married her. When some months later, he went to the bank to retrieve his money earned in 20 years in the mines, they replied that it had all come to nothing (everything “up in smoke”) like the coal that he had produced. It seemed a story of today, analogous to that of the silver bonds or of the investment banks, failed in 2008 in the United States. Even at that time – 1923 – the crash of the money, of the marc in particular, had left thousands of savers penniless. Maria Benedetti still had some dollars. It was an indemnity – 1,197 dollars – obtained from the Tomboy Gold Mine and from the state of Colorado for the death of the her husband, Celeste Mattevi, assassinated by a robber on September 11, 1919. Assassinated in a robbery Celeste had arrived at New York February 21, 1913 with the steamer “France” departing from Le Havre. He was directed – he declared – to Russell Gulch near Denver, by a friend and fellow countryman Massimo Fortarel of 38 years who had found himself already at Trinidad for a month. He ended in a gold mine at Tomboy, a village at almost 4000 meters in altitude, on the Rocky Mountains above Telluride. In the meantime, the First World War was bursting into flames. At the end of August in 1919, Celeste wrote to his wife, Maria Benedetti Mattevi, that he would be returning home within the month of September. The eleventh of that month, he was robbed and assassinated together with four other miners in the barracks where they were sleeping at Tomboy. Augusto Morletti and John (Giovanni) Giacomozzi, recognized as responsible for the slaughter, were condemned to prison. A third bandit who fled to another county of Colorado, was absolved (acquitted) by a juridical quibble. Five miners were buried in the cemetery of Telluride near the funeral monument that records the head of the union of miners, John Barthell of Finland, killed in 1901 during the miner’s strike in the Rocky Mountains. That cenotaph still makes memory of the 24 miners suffocated by smoke in the fire burning in the interior of the mine of the Smuggler Union. Among them were also four Tyrolese: Luigi Borzaga (of Cavareno), Antonio Anesi (from Baselga di Piné) and the cousins Marco and Francesco Zadra (of Tres), 33 and 22 years old. The same year, on December 16, Pietro Casagranda (from Bedollo) died by falling over twenty meters from a bridge utilized as a slide for the minerals. In the cemetery of Lone Tree at Telluride, among the thousands of emigrants who had died were Raffaele Mengoni, born at Cis (Tyrol) April 12, 1860 and died February 2, 1905; John Avi (1883-1925); Vigilio Avanzini; Giuseppe Franch; Emanuele Zadra (1881-1918); Silvio Benedetti (1875-1898); Joe Inama. Some Mattie e Matte (a contraction of Mattevi) and, finally William Matthevi (1867-191. . . ) They are
surnames analogous to those at the cemetery of Hillside at Silverton, on
the other slope of the Rocky Mountains, in San Juan County: Dalla e
Dallavalle (Piné), Silverton, 2,828 meters, rests on a plane encased among the summits. The cemetery is on the limits of habitation. Anticipated by a monument of the “Trentini-Tyrolese of Colorado,” inaugurated in 1999: “In grateful remembrance of the immigrants and of their descendents from the province of Trento, Italy, who with strong will and with desire of success, at the cost of sacrifice of life, have helped to construct and to develop Silverton, the mountains of San Juan, and of Colorado.” The scarce information on the tombstones speaks, often, of young lives shattered; of maladies, of slides, of accidents in the mines. Among the tombstones of the cemetery, a date stands out: 1918 and the cause of death: “flu,” influenza. There were over 150 deaths, here alone, from the “Spanish,” the epidemic that in one year caused between 40 and 100 million victims in the world. Among them, Bonaventura Mattivi (1878-1918); Angelo Mattivi (1888-1918); Giovanni Mattivi (1882-1918). In that tragic autumn of 1918, at Silverton, died also Giuseppe (Joe) Giovannini and Linda Zamarro, married only a short while. Leaving behind a small orphan, Ernesta Mary “Gina,” that was brought up at first in a bordello, then entrusted to a family from Pennsylvania, then “kidnapped” by an uncle and carried by the grandparents to S. Mauro di Piné. Gina Giovannini became an elementary school teacher, married an innkeeper from S. Martino di Castrozza. On July 17, 2008, she celebrated her 90th birthday. At its beginning in the 1900s, Silverton had 1,200 inhabitants. Today 1,400 inhabitants remain, primarily from tourism. The last mine was closed in 1991. Last year, the snow reached eight meters. In these parts, the winter lasts six months. Avalanche and dynamite The avalanche and the snow slide have always accompanied the life of the miners. Luigi Avi, born on June 23, 1873 at Baselga di Piné, died during a snowslide, a “slavina di neve,” on February 17, 1900. Together with three other miners, they were going to the funeral of a co-worker who was killed the day before under an avalanche. The cadaver of Luigi Avi was recovered only at the end of June, buried under 20 meters of snow. Pietro Casagranda, from Bedollo, died together with two “Tirolesi” miners on February 25, 1905, knocked over by an avalanche that whirled him into the ravine down below. Stefania Stella Nones, from Sover, the wife of Ben Bazzanella for only four months, was instead killed in the saloon of Giovanni Dallavalle, one night in the middle of June in 1906. The man who killed her, Thomas Franchini succeeded to convince the judge that it was a crime of “involuntary manslaughter” and was condemned to only 16 months in prison. Pietro Dallapiccolo, instead, had been assassinated only four years before, September 25, 1904 by a rival in love. He intended to marry the young Katie, but Barney Fiore, jealous, had earlier wounded him with two shots of the pistol. Then when Pietro Dallapiccola was regaining his health, the rival had waited until the youth had gone to sleep. Then he had lit the fuses of three sticks of dynamite collocated before that time under the bed, in the barracks. The slumber of the inhabitants of Silverton was shaken by a devastating explosion that began the eternal slumber for the poor Pietro Dallapiccola. It did not go well for Angelo Franchini, from Bolbeno, born on November 24, 1883, killed by a bullet form the pistol of Tommaso Moser. It was on April 15, 1909 and the homicide was entered in the record as an “accident.” The Navajo “cousins” The chronicle of those first years of the “short century” is rich of dates and of names. Of obituaries, above all. But also in the mixed matrimonies. Like that of Giuseppe (Joe) Folgheraiter, son of Quirino (at Pra di Segonzano, from where he emigrated at the beginning of the 1900s they still remember still as Guerrino). In California, he married a “native American,” a Navajo Indian from Arizona. They had many children. Today between Arizona and California, there are some thirty families with the surname Folgheraiter. The names: Amy, August, Augustine, Deborah, Edwuard, Gordon, Joann, Jolynda, Josh, Karen, Michael, Mike, Shannon, Steve, Susan, Tim, Tyler, Tashina, Verlinda. Unknown “cousins,” emerge from oblivion of family memory thanks to an email sent by Mike, 49 years. From California, where he lives, he was asking news of a possible kinship and if possible, the reconstruction of the family tree of ancestors. The diocesan Tridentine archives with the computerized data banks in the spring of 2008 has filled to the brim in a few moments a hole of memory a hundred years deep. Published in the annual book: LA STRENNA TRENTINA 2009, COOP A R.L.-38100 Trento, Italy. The author of the article, Alberto Folgheraiter is a journalist at RAI where, since 1979, he has chronicled the events, even the small ones, of the Trentini community.
[*] Translated from Italian to English for personal use by Mary Beth Moser. All mistakes in translation or misinterpretations are mine. January 28, 2009. [†] Because the article is written in Italian, I do not know whether the monument is in Italian or English. Since I have translated the Italian into English here, the specific wording on the actual monument, if it is in English, might read slightly differently. [‡] Note that Tommaso Moser is not related to our family, Giovanni Moser of Faidá di Piné.
|
|
