Journeys in Time

"We all go or no one goes!"

Ellis Island Immigration Station 1902-1913 from the New York Public Library Archive. Photo by Edwin Levick

Not long ago I read an article that seemed to chalk up the enormous American interest in genealogy to people seeking prominent ancestry for purposes of self-aggrandizement. Some may seek dead relatives who held positions of status and power, but I’ve never been one of them. There are many reasons to be interested in your heritage and ancestry, such as understanding your predecessors and origins, and your identity. As they say, the past is prologue. Patterns of behavior and character traits can be found laced through generations.

For instance, I love working with wood. Walnut is my favorite, then cherry and maple. The grains are stunning and unique and the smell of wood shavings resonate on a deep level. I was well into my forties when I found a yellowing business card of my grandfather Patsy’s. Somewhere, somehow, he made furniture. He was a meticulous man and I’d love to know if any of the pieces he made remain in the family. There’s no one left to ask.

I also like to hand stitch and was pleased to find records of women a few generations ago whose occupations were listed as filatrice (spinner of thread.)

I don’t think that I’m alone in being content to be from solid peasant stock. Unfortunately, ancestors with wealth and power often exploited and abused others and nature with both impunity and societal sanction. I’m glad my people didn’t have the opportunity to treat large numbers of human beings poorly.

So I’ll take my contadina/o (farmer) vaccaro (cowherds) and filatrice (spinner of thread.) ancestors. My coachman great-grandfather and French furniture polisher grandfather on one side and the coal miner on the other. My people had their prejudices, their less attractive traits along with the good ones. To me, the measure of a human being is how well they treat others.

Last week I wrote about my grandparents Minnie and Patsy. I always liked the stories I heard about Minnie’s parents, Grace and Luca, and wished I’d known them. I also wish I’d seen Minnie in action when she was younger.

Minnie

Minnie was a unique individual in a time when women were limited to narrow ideas of acceptable behavior and pursuits. Their talents were often undiscovered or squashed instead of helped to thrive. Minnie managed to express herself when she had the chance and I relished family lore about her.

The most intriguing Minnie story was about her idiosyncratic behavior in church. I wasn’t lucky enough to witness it myself, probably since I never went to their church in the Bronx. My mother would have died of mortification if Minnie tried to say mass at our church.

Minnie had attended a convent school in Gravina, the small town in southern Italy where she grew up. There, she had memorized the Catholic mass in Latin. As was the norm at the time, parishioners repeated the phrases and heard sermons from the pulpit with no translations. They didn’t know exactly what was being said.

In New York, when Minnie finally read the bible translated into Italian, word had it that she was shocked at all of the sex and violence in it.

Since Minnie had the Latin mass memorized, the story I heard was that she’d sit in the front pew, say her own mass aloud, and leave when she was finished. Whether the priest had concluded his mass or not.

She must have attended the 6:00 or an earlier mass alone or with my mother and her brother since I can’t see Patsy putting up with that. I can just imagine the poor priest’s reaction. At the same time, he should have been impressed. How many lay people, and especially women, had the Latin mass memorized?

I love that little rebellion by Minnie.

Gravina

In Italy, Minnie’s father, Luca was a coachman to a wealthy physician. The doctor liked to travel and Luca drove the family to France, Germany, and other European countries. Word on Luca was that he was a lovely man who wrote poetry to his wife, Graziella (Grace,) and they enjoyed romantic movies.

Luca liked to collect recipes on those travels. That was why we made German stollen as our Christmas bread instead of panettone, the traditional Italian holiday bread. Luca brought our recipe back that produced three large loaves. When I used to make it, I had to find people who wanted the other two loaves or they would have gone to waste. Stollen requires considerably more candied fruit to be kneaded in than panettone and I wasn’t fond of doing so.

The story on Luca and Grace was that when the decision was being made about going to America, Grace said, “We all go or no one goes!” Grace was no fool. Many a man had gone ahead to the U.S. intending to get a job, send money home, and bring the family over when he could. Others planned to work for a few years and return to live in Italy. Unfortunately, some, I imagine lonely in a foreign country for so long, abandoned their families back home and started new ones.

Grace and Luca sold everything and boarded a steamer in Naples, which was the closest port with ships to New York. Bustling, poor Naples was known for pickpockets and people selling snake oil and shoddy goods to unsuspecting people from smaller areas. Padrones in the pay of coal mine owners and others gathered people to work, some loaning the passage to people at exorbitant interest rates. Unfortunate people who thought they could bring furniture on board had to sell it at a loss.

So Luca and Grace had been smart to sell everything and according to the immigration records Luca purchased all of their tickets. No Padrone and also no relative in the United States who sent them tickets to come over as my grandfather later did for his mother and siblings.

Wealth from poor immigrants

I’ve read about these huge ships that were luxury liners for the wealthy, yet the poor people in steerage kept those shipping lines financially afloat. The wealthy swanned around on their decks drinking champagne, eating rich foods, dining, and dancing in evening dress. Some of them went down to steerage to stare at and denigrate the poor people there in old clothes who had had to cook their own food and were crammed together in unsanitary conditions like cattle.

Some of those wealthy people called the immigrants cowards for leaving their countries. Of course, now we have an idea of the courage and resilience it takes to leave everyone and everything you know and travel to another country with only a few dollars in your pocket and no English.

The shipping lines had doctors examine those emigrating before they boarded the ships to ensure they wouldn’t be sent back. People who failed the medical exam in the United States were returned to their country of origin at the expense of the shipping line.s

Over two million Italians, mostly from poorer, less educated, and skilled southern Italy, emigrated to the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1909, the ship that Grace, Luca, and their five children boarded in Naples was called the Virginia. Grace was 36, Luca 39 Minnie, the oldest, was 15. Michele (Mike) 12, Dom 9, Nic 7, Angelina (Lillie) 5. Luca may have been aboard a ship before on those travels with his employer and his family, but I believe it was unlikely that any of the others had been. Gravina is in Puglia, a region which runs along the instep of the boot of Italy. The closest body of water of any size was Bari on the Adriatic, approximately 31 miles away. That would have been a day’s travel by horse-drawn carriage and most working-class people only had one day off a week.

Prior to the advent of steamships, the trip from Italy to New York had taken approximately three months. When my great-grandparents came over, the voyage likely lasted ten days to two weeks. Still, many steerage passengers were seasick for much of that time. This was exacerbated by claustrophobic, unsanitary quarters. They had to cook their own food and may have brought their own bedding and food as well. They were allowed on deck for airings every day.

Tickets cost about $30.00 each in 1900, so approximately that in 1909 when Luca, Grace, and their kids left their home in Italy for the promise of America. Two hundred and ten dollars for tickets for all 7 of them. Thirty U.S. dollars in 1909 is equivalent to $1016 .76 today according to official data.org.

The steamship companies provided some poor food to those in steerage and they had to cook for themselves. According to Mason.gmu.edu, they made enormous profits since their cost was just approximately $.60 per day in food for each immigrant. The companies made, “A net profit of $45,000-$60,000 on each crossing.”

Men were separated from women and children. Rooms might hold 200 bunkbeds with thin jute mattresses. Most slept in their clothes and there was no privacy. Drinking water was rationed, they had cold seawater for washing and poor food.

The pens immigrants went through. NYPL pic. Photo by Edwin Levick

The dreaded gateway, Ellis Island

Once they arrived at Ellis Island, they were almost home free, with all the anxiety of the numerous unknowns ahead. Only a small percentage of immigrants, less than 2%, failed the medical exam at Ellis Island, mostly for contagious diseases. An Italian translator working there at the time was future three-time New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was attending NYU law school at night.

Inspectors were trained to pick out potential health issues in the 6 seconds it took immigrants to walk past them.

Twelve-year-old Mike received the dreaded chalk mark on his clothing for a rash and was barred from entering the United States. Although fear was great, only around two percent of the fifteen million immigrants were turned away. Still, I can’t imagine the trauma to the whole family.

Bad enough that you’d sold all of your belongings to buy the tickets and arrived with so much uncertainty of what lay ahead, and one of your children couldn’t stay. I don’t know if they would have been separated from him immediately. Most immigrants only spent several hours at Ellis Island.

The family likely didn’t have much time to make a decision. They probably couldn’t afford to all go back. Even if they could have, they had no home or job and even if they had the return fares, it could be years before they could save enough for this journey again. By then, Minnie would be an adult and might have a husband and children that could keep her in the old country.

Mike returned to Italy with a paizane, or man from their town of Gravina, who was also being sent back. He agreed to look after Mike and bring him to a relative’s house when they arrived in Gravina. The relative would take care of Mike until he was well.

Can you imagine being so far away from your child for years without access to a telephone to even hear his little voice and know that he was well? I know that Grace and Luca sent money back to Italy to that relative for Mike’s upkeep and care. Two or three years later, he arrived in New York???.

On the passenger record, people had to list who they were staying with in the U.S. Luca and Grace's family was staying with Luca's brother-in-law in New York City. I don’t know if it was one of his sister’s husbands or one of Grace’s brothers. I can’t make out how much cash they had, but people only had to state how much if it was less than $50.00. It looks like $10.00 to me, but would they have said if they had more with all of the pickpockets and swindlers who preyed on people emigrating in Naples on one end and in Manhattan on the other?

For his job as a coachman, Luca wore a top hat and tails and that outfit led to his first job in New York.

What about you? Have you delved into your family history? If so, were you looking for royalty, aristocrats, or prominent family members? Did you find ancestors who shared a personality trait or interest with you or another family member?

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If you’re interested in voyages, American woman Cole Brauer is just days away from finishing a solo global sailing challenge and barring an incident, is expected to come in second place. She is a remarkable young woman and I imagine that her daily updates on Instagram will inspire many girls and women to go on their own voyages.