Italian Roots and Genealogy
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Italian Roots and Genealogy
The Untold Story of Italian Immigrants in 19th Century America
What if a single journey could unravel years of forgotten history? Join us as we uncover the mesmerizing tale of Italian immigrants in America with Joe Tucciarone, the insightful co-author of "Italians Swindled to New York." You'll be captivated by the story of nearly 3,000 Italians deceived into coming to the United States in 1872, only to find themselves stranded and vulnerable in New York City. Their subsequent journey to Richmond, Virginia, to fill a labor gap left by the Civil War, and their role in a significant railroad tunnel project, are tales of resilience and contribution that predate the widely known mass migration of the 1880s.
Bold claims about the Gilded Age's influx of Italian immigrants and the swindling Padrons set the stage for a deep dive into the complex dynamics of immigration through Ellis Island. Joe helps us peel back layers of history to reveal the harsh working conditions these immigrants faced and the resentment from native-born Americans. We also discuss the anti-Italian bias prevalent during that era, drawing thoughtful comparisons to today's societal issues. Plus, the episode critiques the historical accuracy of the film "Cabrini," which showcases Mother Cabrini’s efforts in the Five Points neighborhood, highlighting the struggles and perseverance of Italian immigrants.
Finally, brace yourself for a gripping recount of Italian immigrants in Churchill, Ohio, who faced severe violence as strikebreakers in coal mines. This chapter brings to light the tragic story of Giovanni Chiesa, arguably the first Italian lynched in the United States, emphasizing the need to remember such harrowing events. We wrap up by highlighting Joe Tucciarone's YouTube channel, "Italian American History," and teasing an exciting collaboration with Michael Cavalieri. This episode is packed with intriguing historical narratives and insights that promise to leave you reflecting on the past and its relevance to our present.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Italians Swindled to New YorkThe story of the first Italians to enter New York in 1872
Growing Up Italian American-Iannuccilli
Great stories about growing up Italian in America
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our blog and our YouTube channel and our newsletter and our great sponsors Yo Dolce Vita Italy, rooting Phil Italy and Abiativa Casa. And today I have a great returning guest, joe Tucciarone, and he's the co-author of Italian Swindle to New York and he's also got a new YouTube series Italian American History. So welcome, joe.
Speaker 3:Thanks for being here, bob, thank you very much. I appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:No, it's great, great stuff that you're putting out there. So what prompted you to start expanding now from the book out to doing some things on YouTube?
Speaker 3:Actually, that started about a year, year and a half ago no-transcript. A lot of people don't realize how long Italians have been here and when they started coming and what they did when they got here, right, yeah, yeah, you know, most historians mention that the great mass migration of Italians began in 1880. And when they say that in a way that's true, but unless you look at the details and the background and the context of world events, it's really not true. It started earlier than that.
Speaker 2:If you do those studies, yeah, yeah, and even as far back as Thomas Jefferson, he had an Italian confidant or friend, or whatever you want to call him right. With respect to the YouTubes, what significantly happened that you put in the YouTube video?
Speaker 3:I've got a half a dozen of them up there. Which one are you referring to now?
Speaker 2:Oh, the one that I was talking about. I wanted to talk about was the one about the railroads.
Speaker 3:Okay, right, okay. So yeah, that's one of my most recent. It's based on events that we uncovered in the book the Italian Swindled to New York book, and I wanted to expand on that and find out if I could could more information, because the publisher of our book said look, we'll give you 50,000 words and that's it. You can't put any more in there, and so we had to limit everything we said to fit that guideline, and I knew there was a lot more to find about these Italians who came down to Virginia in 1872. So that was the impetus for that video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's something. And you know, see, you learn something. Every time I talk to you or somebody else, I learn something. Who knew there were Italians in Virginia in 1872? Right, so they get to Virginia, and now did they just start working on the railroad?
Speaker 3:I'll give you just a little bit of background first. Yeah, good, good, these Italians who came to Virginia, the ones I describe in the video, they were part of the nearly 3,000 who were swindled to coming to the United States. They were dumped in New York City without friends or without jobs, and so they had no recourse, no money, no jobs to look forward to. And what happened was the superintendent of Castle Garden, bernard Castlery, put out the word that I've got a lot of people looking for work, and it just so happened that the governor of Virginia was looking for men to come down to work there, because Virginia had been decimated by the Civil War. They lost upwards of 30,000 working men, and so he needed help. He needed people to come down and work. Basically, he wanted farmers to come down and work the fields, because there were a lot of farms that were fallow because of the soldiers who were killed there, the Confederate soldiers.
Speaker 3:And so Bernard Castle, where he found out about this, and they communicated. He and the governor of Virginia communicated about this and 200 Italians were booked to Virginia, but kind of along the way, it was decided that, instead of them being farmers, they would go to work in the city of Virginia to help in a railroad project. They were building a railroad tunnel under the city. They were doing that to avoid destroying historic landmarks. You know the Churchill area of Richmond, I think it's where, isn't that where Patrick Henry gave a speech? Give me liberty or give me death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not sure I don't know a heck of a lot about Virginia.
Speaker 3:I've driven through there but yeah, I'm not real sure either, but I believe the Church Hill area was historically significant and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad wanted to connect to the tidewater so they could ship goods to and from overseas. And the best passage was to go through Richmond and unfortunately, the initial plan put that railroad right through Churchill. Well, they couldn't do that, they couldn't destroy this historic area, so they decided to build a tunnel onto the city and that's what they needed these Italians to come and do to help dig this tunnel.
Speaker 2:That's just so, so interesting. You know to hear these stories and find out. So what year was that?
Speaker 3:This was in December of 1872.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Long before the 1880, date that everyone thinks that Italians came to this country. This happened eight years earlier than that.
Speaker 2:So now did these men I mean, were they the first of a larger group to go there and did they settle there or did they move on from there?
Speaker 3:There were already Italians living in Richmond at the time. I don't know how big the colony was, but they were established and they were well-liked by the general populace. They had a beneficent society by the general populace. They had a beneficent society. They had a ball, I believe, a few months or a few weeks before these Italians from New York arrived. So they were kind of accepted by society and moving in societal circles in Richmond.
Speaker 2:I'm going to show a little clip of that just to whet people's appetite and so they could see what you have to offer in this particular video.
Speaker 1:Three months after their arrival, opinions differed on the performance of the Italians.
Speaker 4:Some praised their efforts now employed at the tunnel and other terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad are an industrious, frugal and painstaking class of laborers. They mind their own business, work well and promptly pay for what they get. We have room for more of them. Yet others voiced disappointment. One Virginia African is estimated to be worth three Roman citizens in that kind of work.
Speaker 2:Now I know one of your I think I guess this I think this is the most recent one that you did was the whole castle garden to. You know, liberty Island versus Ellis Island, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the one we had just been talking about, the Italians coming to Richmond to help dig the tunnel and then to build the two railroad viaducts in the mountains. That's a sort of a nice feel-good story, but it's limited to a couple of hundred Italian immigrants. The one you just mentioned, the Castle Garden, ellis Island story, is really big. It's a national story, and let me tell you why. I didn't know this until I started the research.
Speaker 3:In 1890, congress had decided that Castle Garden was no longer adequate to handle the huge numbers of immigrants that were coming in to the country. They decided to open the first Federal Immigration Bureau. See, up till that time there had been an immigration bureau in New York City called Castle Garden, but it was a state-run entity and it was located, as you probably know, on the tip of Manhattan Island. So when immigrants came off the boats, they were immediately surrounded by some undesirable elements people trying to put them up in shabby boarding houses, sell them goods, all sorts of criminal activities. And so in 1890, the United States Congress decided we have to have a controlled environment to bring immigrants into this country. It has to be a federally operated environment. In fact, they stated that this cannot be entrusted to the states, and they were referring to the Castle Garden facility, which was operated by the state of New York. They put William Wyndham in charge of locating this new facility. Now let me give you some background.
Speaker 3:In 1890, when this was all under discussion, the Statue of Liberty had already been standing on Bedloe's Island for four years. The Statue of Liberty had already been standing on Bedloe's Island for four years. It had just arrived four years earlier. It seemed to take a little while, but America fell in love with the statue. They called it Our Beloved Lady Liberty, and it's located on an island, a limited access area. It's the kind of place that the US Congress would have thought to build this immigration center. Think about it, in fact, william Wyndham said it's quoted in my video that this seems to be the best place to bring immigrants because as their ships come into the harbor, they'd be welcomed by the grand statue of Lady Liberty. What could be more fitting, he thought. So that's the background.
Speaker 3:Why then, as I asked at the beginning of the video, why then, did they decide to put this new immigrant depot on Ellis Island instead of Bedloe's Island, where the Statue of Liberty was? That's the big question and, it's sad to say, the answer lay in anti-Italian bias, because what was happening in 1890 was the United States was seeing a huge surge in Italian immigration At that time. Immigration from Great Britain, canada, ireland, germany those had all been countries that had sent huge numbers of immigrants to this country in the 1860s and 1870s and early 1880s. But immigration from those countries the four leading countries when it came to immigration into the United States the immigration from those countries was declining. At the same time, immigration from Italy was beginning to skyrocket. At the same time, immigration from Italy was beginning to skyrocket and what was happening was a lot of those Italian immigrants were brought here by Padrons those are the Italian bosses and they were brought over in the thousands, railroad companies and coal mines to send hundreds of Italian laborers on each of these construction projects or mines. And they would come in and the Padrons would offer the owners I'll tell you what my men will work for half of what your American laborers are working for. Well, american industry loved the sound of that.
Speaker 3:More background on this is that in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, america was in what was called the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age referred to the huge expansion of the country westward, the huge increase in steel output. In other words, the country was really blossoming industrially and it needed workers. It needed workers desperately. In the last half of the 18th century the Padrons were able to furnish this.
Speaker 3:But you know, if you think about it in perspective, americans didn't want this. Their husbands and sons were being displaced by these foreigners. It wasn't really the fault of the Italians. They were swindled over here continuously in the latter part of the 19th century by the Padrons, and so they were brought in. They were forced basically to do what the Padrons told them to do. So the fault lay in the Padrons.
Speaker 3:But the fallout was that, because America was being inundated by this class of Italian immigrants, congress said basically no. They said to the Treasury Secretary no, we don't want you to build this immigrant depot on Lady Liberty's island because it will desecrate her. You have to find a different place. At the time Ellis Island could not be approached by large boats because it had shallow waters. It was occupied by a naval munitions depot. So there were no good reasons to put the immigrant depot on Ellis Island. But Congress insisted that Wyndham do so, and so that's why Ellis Island and not Liberty Island was the site of the great immigration center that we all know so well. We call it Ellis Island.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can look at that story and almost compare it to what's going on now. You know, so many people are coming it's not their fault, right, they're being invited in, but you know, instead of padrons, now you, you, you have these cartels making tons, and I mean the money they're making probably pales in comparison to what these padrons were making back then right, it's, it's an interesting story and for us it's a sort of sad story.
Speaker 3:But you have to look at history dispassionately. You have to realize it can't always be a happy ending, it can't always be good. And so, because of anti-Italian bias in Congress, ellis Island became the center of admiration instead of Liberty Island.
Speaker 2:Ellis Island became the center of admiration instead of Liberty Island. Yeah, and I, you know, I didn't know it, that was because of the Italian. You know, you watch somebody's documentaries on Ellis Island and you and you, you know, you see, the things like the one that stands out to me was that I I don't remember the doctor's name, but he was the one who apparently he had had drawings or pictures of people and then hung. You know, if you look like this, you're an imbecile. If you look like this, you're an idiot. You know that kind of stuff, and most of the pictures look like Italians.
Speaker 3:The newspaper articles of that time, the contemporary articles. They always not always, but they tended to illustrate, uh, italian immigrants, uh, in a derogatory way, they they depicted them as uh what are called banditi or brigands, instead of the the ordinary run-of-the-mill immigrants that they were uh, yeah, and you know a lot of that.
Speaker 2:Uh, we just we just watched a couple of weeks ago we watched Cabrini, which I found was really fascinating. I mean, first of all, the woman herself was just unbelievable, but you really got that sense of how bad the five points were. And of course, the Irish were there before, the Irish gangs were there before, but then you could see and again it almost parallels what's going on today in some of these immigrant neighborhoods where their own people are taking advantage of them. It's really terrible stuff as human beings, how that happens, you know right yeah, what you you just mentioned, uh, the cabrini uh movie.
Speaker 3:Uh, I've seen a lot of movies and I I know how hollywood dramatizes things. The part about that movie where the italians were spit upon and and uh, that was real. That's not a hollywood invention. I have uh collected uh I don't know how many documents, hundreds of documents, and in those documents it clearly shows that Italians were, there was Italian anti-Italian bias, a strong anti-Italian bias in the 1880s and 1890s, and they were treated like that. In fact, I've got one article from New York City. I think it was in 1873. This was one of those first Italians who had been swindled over here. They began working in the city and a number of them got on a streetcar and the conductor ordered them off the streetcar. This is the kind of thing that you see in 1950s in the South. You know, they told the blacks to go to the back of the bus.
Speaker 2:Well, they ejected the Italians off this streetcar in 1872. Yeah, well, they show that in the movie and I found I don't know where I found it, but I found an article someplace where they did a comparison of the movie to real life and it was to your, your point, it was almost 90 percent accurate. Um, the things that that were going on, uh, you know they, they, they said, like the mayor, for example, was he wasn't the real mayor and they said, in some cases they, uh, like they usually do in hollywood, they'll, they'll make one character out of three or something like that. But the, the scenes of five points, and you know how she was treated both in Italy and in America, were pretty true. But I just came away from, I mean, I remember hearing about mother Cabrini, you know, in grammar school, because you know she was made a saint, not, you know long, not shortly before I was in school, but they didn't go into a lot of detail.
Speaker 2:You know she was made a saint, not, you know long, not shortly before I was in school, uh, but they didn't go into a lot of detail. You know, the first american and saint and we were italian.
Speaker 3:So of course that that uh matched up um, but I had no idea what a strong will this woman had yeah, I actually had never heard of her until uh, a friend of mine mentioned the movie to me a couple weeks ago really, yeah, I say I remember because I'm not.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't grow up in an italian neighborhood, but there were a lot of italians there, um but um, I remember them talking about it because, uh, I don't know if there was an earlier movie or there was, maybe they were celebrating the 10th or 20th anniversary of her being a saint or something like that, but it was always out there that she was, of course, the first American saint, so I do remember that the 1880s, padrons brought thousands of Italians to the United States.
Speaker 5:During that time, attitudes toward the newcomers hardened as they displaced American workers. When the Secretary of the Treasury, william Windham, suggested landing migrants on Liberty Island, indignant citizens and a galvanized Congress opposed him. As a result, the nation's storied immigration center would rise on Ellis Island and a half mile of open water would keep the lowly foreigners from Bartholdi's famous sculpture. The unrestrained importation of Italian immigrants by Padrones had determined in large part the site of America's historic gateway.
Speaker 2:So, joe, so you mentioned that you know you started this about a year, year and a half ago. What are some of the other topics that you cover in the YouTube videos?
Speaker 3:So far. The videos cover things that I've unearthed over the last dozen years and a lot of which appeared in my books, one of the things that I'm very I don't know how to say this, because it's a very sad event what happened? But I'm very proud of having worked on this project. When those Italians came to my hometown in 1873, 150 years ago came to my hometown in 1873, 150 years ago, there was also a group of them who went to a town right next door, just walking distance away from my hometown, and what happened there was worse than what happened in my hometown. What happened there is the Italians were being harassed by the locals is the Italians that were being harassed by the locals. The Italians came in and took the jobs that the locals had quit. The locals went on strike. These were in the coal mines of my area. The local miners went on strike. The owners went to New York City, brought these Italians in. The Italians had no idea they were being brought in as strikebreakers. They didn't know until they got there. But they were poor. They couldn't return to New York City, so they had to do what they had to do. They went into the mines and so the miners and this little village was called Churchill by the way, had nothing to do with Churchill in Richmond, virginia. Churchill, ohio, was a small mining village and the Italians there were harassed as they worked in the mines.
Speaker 3:The strike came to an end. Some of the miners who had walked off the job were told you're not welcome here. They were not welcome to come back to the mines. The Italians, some of them, remained to work in the mines and one of them was a 20-year-old named Giovanni Chiesa. And what happened was one day in July in 1873, he was down at the well getting water and one of the local former miners insulted him, broke his bucket, told him to go back to Italy. And that's when Chiesa went back to his barracks, his shanty. He had seven other Italians living there with him and he said I'm sorry, I can't bring your water. I was attacked and the Italians said we'll go without water today. And the Italians said we'll go without water today.
Speaker 3:A short while later, that man his name was Trotter, william Trotter, came to the barracks and he wanted to continue the fight. He had not had enough of it and so he started a fight with Chiesa. The rest of the Italians joined in and they injured Trotter. Well, trotter left the village, heard about the fight. They heard about Trotter being injured. 200 locals showed up, surrounded the barracks and attacked and burnt the place. And there was one German living with those seven Italians and the German was the first one to escape. The crowd didn't hurt him. They said you can go as long as you do not bring the police. So the German left.
Speaker 3:The Italians, one by one left the burning building. They were beaten as they came out, severely beaten. One of them was beaten so bad he had to have a leg amputated. Another had two broken arms. So this was not just a few punches, they were beaten with clubs and stones. The last person out of the building was Giovanni Chiesa and he was so badly beaten by the mob that he died that evening.
Speaker 3:And it turns out that, as far as I can tell through my research, he was the first Italian to be lynched in this country. And you don't hear about that because, well, nobody cared about the Italians in those days. I did research to see when the first Italians were lynched in this country and I found a book. I can't remember the name, I think it's called Rope, something with the name Rope in it. Anyway, the author of that book said that the first Italians lynched in the United States that happened in 1886, she said the first Italians lynched in the United States, that happened in 1886, she said Well, my study showed, 13 years earlier Giovanni was lynched. Now you might say, oh, doesn't the lynching involve a hanging? If you go to the NAACP website, a hanging it could be a part of a lynching, but it does not necessarily define a lynching necessarily. It does not necessarily define a lynching If a person is severely beaten and is killed. That's a lynching in modern terminology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, I didn't know that. You know you always associate with the lynching with being hung or something like that. And yeah, you know it's important for us to get these stories out because it's, you know, it's part of our history. Like you said earlier, there's not always a happy ending to everything like that. I mean, we've certainly, you know, come a long way, but you know, as we spoke in one of the other videos that we did, now we've gotten this whole stereotypical kind of wise guy type of thing that's we're not like that almost a cartoon image sometimes of italians. You know what I mean, right, yeah, I can't tell you how many times.
Speaker 3:When I was younger, uh, when people found out I was italian, they asked me if I knew any mafia.
Speaker 2:I didn't know anybody in the mafia well I knew a couple, but I didn't know anybody in the mafia. Well, I knew a couple, but I didn't know they were mafia.
Speaker 2:back then I didn't realize until I was about 16 or something like that, yeah, but to that point you didn't know because they weren't flashy about it. That was their job. You didn't know because they weren't flashy about it. You know, that was that was their job, I suppose. But they weren't like this stereotypical, you know wise guy walking a swaggering down the street with a cigar and all of that kind of stuff. You wouldn't know. You would never know that they were, that they were associated in gangs or something like that, and they didn't live flashy lives because they didn't want to be.
Speaker 2:You know, out there, of course there was some like you know God and those guys you know, but Al Capone for one, yeah, yeah, there was. You know, probably, I guess in every era there was that one guy who was very flashy, I suppose, uh, but uh, you know, my, my father was a photographer for the daily news in new york city for like 40 years and, um, the gallo brothers, specifically joey gallo, he always wanted to be in the newspaper, um, and my father would, was always taking his pictures and, um, one day he was, uh, joey was coming out of court and my father was there taking his picture and, uh, some guy kept pushing the camera out of the way and, uh, my father went over to Joey and said hey, what's going on? I can't take a picture anymore. And Joey Gallo said he's being taken care of, don't worry about it. The next week they found the guy in the trunk of a car. I thought it was like.
Speaker 3:I hope it wasn't, because I asked him about taking the pictures you know it's interesting that you mentioned the Gallo name In some of my research. There were Padrons in New York City named Gallo and one of them came before a congressional hearing in 1890. All about the Padrons.
Speaker 2:Wow, so they were having hearings way back then. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Wow, and Gallo was subpoenaed to come and give testimony at this hearing about the Padrones in New York City. He was suspected I think he was suspected of being one.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's really something. I didn't know, that. I didn't really know that, and you know. That's the other thing, because we were talking about a couple of the movies, and the one was the one I think it was the name Petrosino, the New York City policeman. They made one movie about him. Ernest Borgnine played him, which I thought was a fascinating movie. But they don't talk a lot about the Italians that were actually fighting crime.
Speaker 3:Right right, he was highly regarded at a time when many Italians had to endure prejudice. His name is in newspaper articles and he was always spoken of so highly in these articles. And one thing I found in my research that I had never seen before is that and we have this in our swindled book he came with his father in 1872, in November 1872, to the United States. He was only 11 years old, and it turns out, the ship he was on was one of those named by Congress as one of the swindle ships, and it was believed that most, if not all, of the Italians on that ship had been swindled to this country. So Giuseppe Petrosino and his father, Prospero, may well have been victims of their countrymen, their cheating countrymen, and they were brought here on false promises. And so to me it's interesting that, uh, that Joe Petrosino, who became such a uh well-known crime fighter, uh began his life in this country as a victim of a crime.
Speaker 2:Well, I wonder, maybe that's why he he was so adamant about going after. Because he, uh, if I remember correctly, he started the. He was like one of the first Italian American policemen and then he started the Italian squad or something like that, if I'm getting the story right. Yeah, that's, that's right. Yeah, and he wasn't looked at very nicely by the Irish police either, you know. The other story that comes to mind was the story that I heard from somebody that lived in Brooklyn and how his church was built. And his church was built because the Irish wouldn't let the Italians have mass in the church in Italian. So they went to the, they went to the bishop and they, you know, asked for, you know, to be able to build a church. And they wound up building this, the Italian church, maybe three or four blocks away from the other church, and then to take it to the next step, which is really one of the most fascinating things I ever heard from anybody. They had a storefront, the church was in the storefront and, um, the the priest couldn't pay the bill, he couldn't pay the 500 dollars, um, and he was walking past this jewish, uh, store. There's a jewish couple on this store and um, the guy said to him uh, why do you look so sad? What's wrong? And he said I can't pay the bill, I can't pay for the church. And he said to him and the young couple, and he said I'll pay it. And this Jewish man and his wife collected from Jewish families $500 and gave it to the priest so he could pay the rent or whatever. This was 1913.
Speaker 2:In 1939, by this time the husband had passed away. His family was writing letters from Austria to his wife saying we need to leave Austria because the Nazis are coming, and we got to get out. She tried to get help from the government, the US government. She couldn't get any help and somebody told her to go to Cuba, that there was a to go to Cuba, that there was a priest in Cuba that might be able to help. She goes to Cuba, she gets off the plane and she's greeted by an altar boy and the Archbishop. The Archbishop was the priest that she gave the $500. And he was. He was the and he was the people. Whatever he was, he was very close to Pius XII. They got 39 of these I think it was 39 or 36 people to Cuba. He supported them until the end of the war, fed them, clothed them, kept them.
Speaker 2:That's great, you know, amazing, you know. People say, well, you know, you know there's no God or whatever. I mean me personally. I'm on the fence, but when you hear a story like that, you say, geez, this can't be an accident. Yeah, that's a good story, A fantastic story and it's you know's, very well known in Brooklyn. Very well known in Brooklyn. So, before we go, Joe, where can people find the videos on YouTube so we get to see them?
Speaker 3:I think that my moniker is Italian American history, and so that's how you would find my stuff, short of giving you the URL, which would be a ridiculous thing to do. That's how you find my stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll for sure put the links out there and everything like that. Well, fascinating stuff, joe. I really appreciate you taking the time and for anybody paying attention to Joe and I and Michael Cavieri. We're going to be working on a project together soon. We're in the planning stages right now.
