Giuseppe's Story: A Tale for Italian-American Heritage Month

Hearing that the streets were paved with gold, Giuseppe sailed to the United States to make a fortune and return home to live out his days as a king. Instead he fell in love with the land and sent for his wife and children, or so the story is told. October is Italian-American Heritage month. Giuseppe is one of approximately 7 million Italians that immigrated to the United States in the last days of the 1800s and early 1900s. Each immigrant's story is the same and different. Facing starvation, lack of jobs, oppression and political unrest or upheaval causes them to seek a new land of opportunity and freedom to call home.

This is Giuseppe's story:

Ruoti, Italy was a small rural community. There was a well in the center of town where the ladies went to wash clothes using a scrub board in a small concrete pond. Buckets of water were carried home for household use. Meat was a luxury reserved for Christmas when a pig was roasted, only for the adults to enjoy, not the children. Times were hard for poor Italian farmers. As family and friends left for America word was sent back, via letters, describing the economic opportunities across the sea. So it was that in 1909, Giuseppe left his pregnant wife, baby and daughter boarding a ship for the US of A.

Like most Italian immigrants, he entered the country via Ellis Island and New York city. He went to East Orange, New Jersey to stay with good friends called paisanos. He was soon working in a quarry. Later he was hired as a masonry laborer working his way up to mason. He volunteered for the US military when World War 1 broke out, but was turned down due to not being a citizen and having a wife and 3 children across the sea. After 11 years in the new country he had saved enough money to pay for his wife and children's passage. Somewhere during those years he took the Anglicized name, Joseph.

When his wife, Vincenza arrived he saw his son Domenico (who later became Domenic) for the first time and told her they would have no more babies until she learned to speak English. 9 months later a baby girl arrived and as Joseph's son, Jerry says, "She must have been a fast learner." Joseph took his wife and children to New Brunswick, New Jersey where they shared a home with paisanos. When the friends left for Argentina, they rented their first home. Later Joseph purchased his own home and went into business with his son Rocco. Much of their work can still be seen in the New Brunswick area, such as the Douglas College dormitories and many brick front homes.

Joseph was no stranger to responsibility and hard work. He was orphaned at 12 when his father and mother died a year apart, leaving him to care for his younger sister, brother and elderly grandmother in Italy. His formal education had ended at a 3rd grade level. Like many male children, he was needed to work in the fields. Growing up thus, he made Rocco quit school after Junior High, explaining that he had to work to help feed the family. The USA was in a severe economic depression. Jerry tells this story about his father:

"He taught us honesty with a story. He asked, during the depression, what was worse stealing five dollars from a rich man or stealing five dollars from a poor man with five kids to feed. I said 'a poor man'. He said that it was bad to steal from anyone."

1920 was the year prohibition went into effect, but for Joseph and his family there would be no joining those who profited through illegal sales of alcohol. His oldest son had to work. As soon as he was old enough, Domenic joined the US Military. When the youngest, American born son , Jerry graduated High School his whole class was drafted and he choose to serve time with the Marines fighting in World War II. When he returned home, he and Domenic bought a very old printing press and type and began a print shop in their father's garage. Joseph was soon working for them, leaving the hard physical labor of masonry work behind.

Joseph said he learned to speak English by looking at newspapers and "after a while it started to make sense". Known as Jennie, his wife who had no formal education at all, taught herself math so that she would not get cheated by store owners. At age 55 she went to night school to learn how to write. Living in the US, Joseph lost all trace of a Italian accent. Perhaps because she was a bit older when she arrived on US shores, Jenny retained a bit of a "broken-English" accent and the older she got the more she lapsed into speaking Italian, seeming to forget learning the English language. Their US born children were not taught more than a few words of their parents native tongue.

Communicating with family and friends left back in Ruoti via mail, may have been the reason Joseph and his children gladly embraced US citizenship and a democratic society. Benito Mussolini had begun his reign of terror, taking over the Italian government on the guise of improving economic conditions. Mussolini's new government was called Fascism and it was a dictatorship style of governing. Joseph's only brother died at 19 of starvation in a Nazi concentration camp in Austria while serving in the Italian army. Joseph's first US born daughter, Anne, worked in the drafting department at the Raritain Aresenal during the war against Hitler and Mussolini. She drew a print for a 105mm Howitzer shell that is still in use today. Her Italy born siblings and parents had other reasons for loving life in the United States.

It was great turning a faucet to get water for household use. Jenny would still scrub clothes in the basement sink with a scrub board, as often as using the new fangled wringer clothes washing machine. Meat was on the table 7 days a week. "Mun-ja. Mun-ja" (mangia), Jenny would extol the family, "Eat. Eat". Never having enough to eat in Italy, Rocco especially liked to do that: eat. None of the family were obese, just what was called "pleasingly plump". For Joseph and his family, life was good in the United States of America, despite the hardships. Perhaps having blue eyes he escaped some of the bigotry that his dark skinned children faced. Dago, wop and ginney were often flung at the new immigrant children who started school in the first grade, despite their ages.

Taunted because he could not speak English, Domenic often got into school yard fights. Kids said Domenic was built like Tarzan and called him "Tar" for short or "Tar Baby." Rocco fared a bit better. Black classmates took pity on the skinny little, immigrant being bullied by the other kids, befriended him, teaching him to speak English and the ways of American life. The family were not "WOPs", With Out Papers, just poor people come to the USA for the American Dream. There were no government assistance programs to provide food, cash assistance, health care or small business loans and grants. Help came from paisanos who gave them shelter and helped them find jobs. Some Italian immigrants were hated by the Irish immigrants who felt they were taking away their jobs. Only immigrants and Negros would accept such low wages for long hours of menial labor.

Although Joseph, and thus his children were proud citizens of the country they choose as their own, they kept a bit of Italy in their backyard. They planted a fig tree, grew peppers and Roma tomatoes as well as having kept chickens, rabbits and bees. Jennie made pasta from scratch as well as gravy, which Americans call tomato sauce. Devout churchgoers, the house was adorned with crucifixes, rosary beads, the Blessed Virgin Mary statuettes, dried yellow palms tucked under the corners of wall hangings and other Catholic religious symbols. On the dining room credenza was a bottle of anisette and shot glasses ever ready for a toast on any occasion.

Joseph's sister also immigrated to the United States, married and had 3 children. Joseph and Jenny had 7 children who gave them 23 grandchildren. Joseph and Jenny only returned to Italy once, when their children presented them with tickets for their 50th Wedding Anniversary. I was quite young when most of the family had a tour of the cruise ship and later watched as my grandparents waved Bon Voyage from the deck as they sailed out of New York harbor for their trip back to where their life began in Ruoti, Italy.

Author Note:
People, myself included, often blast the United States; but for my ancestors it truly was the land of opportunity and freedom. For all that is wrong with the US, there is a lot that is right.

Uncle Jerry became the first family millionaire having learned from his parents how to turn a very old printing press into a lucrative business, through frugality, hard work, and honesty. The young company got contracts, such as printing the local newspaper as well as High School year books. Uncle Domenic and my dad died young, perhaps due to early childhood malnutrition. My father never forgot the kindness of his classmates. He hired African-Americans and paid them Union wages, even if they did not belong to the Union, long before Affirmative Action was created to force hiring of minorities.

I completely missed October 6: German-American Day and a tale of German immigration to the USA. My parents faced much opposition to what was called their "mixed-marriage", but that is another tale for another day.

A brief look at the transition from wood garage to tech world of the Internet: Mariano Press History