As mentioned elsewhere on this site dad, Luigi (Louis) Grisolia, and grandma, Michelina Fiorita, and grandpa, Filippo, settled in Frostburg, Maryland. How this came about had always been a little bit of a mystery. How did they, and many others, deciding to leave Celico in the Province of Cosenza Region of Calabria Italy, come to know about and move to Frostburg in Allegheny County, Maryland in the United States? Overall, Italian immigration to the U.S. between 1866 and 1879 was only about 70,000. There was a dramatic rise to four million between 1880 and 1914. Some of the Italians found work in Baltimore. In 1880 that city's Little Italy had a population of 184, however by 1900 almost every house in the twelve square block area was owned by Italians. For a time I felt that it was logical to think that my ancestors may entered the United States through the Port of Baltimore, but that has changed.
I have since discovered that dad and grandma actually did enter the U.S. at Ellis Island. They arrived on a ship called the Berlin on November 5th, 1912. Grandma was 29 and dad was three years old. I found this on the Ellis Island web site, you can find your way there from the Links page. There is an Ellis Island record of Filippo arriving was on the Hesperia on April 13th, 1902 at age 21, according to the manifest he would be staying with a Cousin on Webster St. in Pittsburgh, PA. There is also a record of him arriving at Ellis Island on April 21, 1909. He was going to stay with a cousin, Giovanni Veltri, at 31 Charles St. also in Pittsburgh. These are two of his many trips abroad including he and his father having worked for a time in Brazil. I have yet to locate the record of his final entry into the United States. If the 1909 trip was his last arrival in the U.S., that would mean he left a new wife and one month old son in Celico and the family was not together again untill late 1912.
Some of the newcomers remained in or around the city. Since many of the Italians had some type of farming background, some of the early arrivals grew vegetables which they sold. And so they progressed to become grocers. Shoemaking became a popular trade as well as bricklaying . There were jobs with the railroad, and many as laborers. A few opened boarding houses near the train station. Later arrivals worked in factories for $1.00 to $1.50 a day. Many went to the coal field in western Maryland, to towns like Frostburg.
It is important to recognize that long before the telephone was available to everyone, before overnight mail, FAX machines, the internet and email, the immigrants did a very good job of keeping in touch and letting relatives and friends back home know about jobs that became available. Mail and word of mouth were the order of the day. Letters and people traveling back and forth to Italy as well as within the States kept up the flow of information. They had to have been very good at "networking" before the word was even invented. It also would have been a simple matter for mine operators in Frostburg to spread the word when they needed more manpower.
Cousin Charlene Iusi has her mother's diary that describes a a trip taken by her mother and father in 1929. They traveled from San Jose, California to Sao Paulo, Brazil. The first leg of the trip was clear accross the U.S., in a Model T Ford, to Frostburg to visit Charlene's grandfather who was working in a coal mine there. The text of the Frostburg visit, from her mom's diary, follows exactly as it was written in 1929. The Morantown mentioned here was an area near Frostburg where it appears that at least some of the Italian miners lived. Morantown still exists today as an unincorporated area near Frostburg.
Florence Mulè and Francesco Iusi taken in 1927. These are Charlene's parents who later, in 1929, took the monumental trip from San Jose, California to Sao Paulo, Brazil with a stop in Frostburg , Maryland. Francesco (Frank) was born in Frostburg.
"...Finally we got to Frostburg, and had to ask several people before we could be directed to Morantown. We finally got going and we passed the beautiful metropolis without knowing it, went all the way to Mt. Savage, and then had to come back again. No wonder we didn't know Morantown. It had nothing to indicate what it was, in fact there were only about 4 houses on the highway, and two back a ways. Six houses altogether and that was the town!
"Dad was glad to see us. I don't know when I'll get time to write again...
"Tuesday, Sept 10, 1929"
"Morantown"
"Today was washday for me, and what a day. Saintary conditions are not the best. Frank had to go to the well about 1/2 block away, and then the water had to be heated on an old wood stove. An old fashioned washboard, and a wooden tub constituted the rest of the equipment. There is no bath tub anywhere in the town. I guess, but there is a little wooden house about 50 feet away from the house. The house has only four rooms, and all the houses are the same. I saw the house in which Frank was born. It is an exact duplicate of this one. Oh! Dear what a terrible life a woman would have to live here. Yesterday we were in Frostburg, and we almost got caught in the rain. It was a bright sun shiny day, but suddenly it started to down pour, in bucket fulls, water was pouring down the gutters like miniature rivers and then suddenly about fifteen minutes later, the sun came out again as bright as ever. Thus it rains in the East, they tell me.
"The evenings we spend very quietly usually sitting on the porch in the dark, describing our trip to some young miners that live around there. They sit around gaping at all we tell them, and what we tell is the truth, believe me. One youngster wanted to know if we had dogs in California.
"Frank went into the coal mine to-day, and he describes it thusly!--
"It was very low, about 4 1/2 feet as one entered, and cold as soon as you leave the outside air. Water was dripping from the beams above, and it sure looked dangerous, altho' the miners didn't seem to mind it. The coal vein was only 18 to 20 inches thick and three ft. of rock above the vein had to be dug out in order to take the small carts around the various shafts. In some places the beams supporting the shafts were either cracked, or falling, and just another beam would be added. From the mouth of the mine to where dad worked was a good 1/2 hrs. walk. When the men dug the coal they would have to work lying on there side.
"During the days we visited various people we obtained several address of friends in Soa Paolo so I guess we won't feel lost when we get down there.
"Sept 11, Wednesday--well, we left to day. Hated to say good bye to dad. He gave us $30.00 and a box of candy. That was all he had. We had left home with $170.00 in cash and $30.00 in shell coupons. We have now about $118. left, including dad's $30.00.
A little Frostburg History I've often wondered what life was like in Frostburg for the Italian immigrants, especially when they were new to the place. Dad was nine when he and grandma left for Chicago after grandpa's death, but he did tell us a little. He remembered that grandpa spent much of his days in the coal mine working on his hands and knees. He also said they had a large garden, and that they slaughtered their own hogs. They kept perishable food in a deep hole "under the house". He often mentioned that they had a large collie named King.
Coal Coal was noted in the area from the mid eighteenth century. A letter written by George Washington, who was no stranger to the place, mentioned the "fuel of the future". Small, individually owned mines opened early in the nineteenth Century with some commercial ventures around 1820, however, lack of transportation made distribution difficult. The coming of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 1842 and 1851 respectively, changed all that.
The Maryland coal region was five miles wide, east to west, and twenty five miles long from the N.Branch of the Potomac River at Piedmont, West Virginia, to the Pennsylvania state line. Much of it lay in George's Creek Valley between Big and little Savage Mountains and Dan's Mountain, and was within the boundaries of Allegany and Garrett counties. The many mining companies that operated in George's Creek are much to numerous to mention here, but the largest was the Consolidation Coal Company, established in 1864. Consolidate they did, at one time being the largest coal mining concern in the nation. The coal in the George's Creek region was bituminous or soft coal. Machinery was unsatisfactory for use with this coal , and blasting was also not a practical way of mining as it fractured the coal. That left only pick and shovel work .
Miners The early immigrant miners were Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish and German. Maryland miners were allowed to buy land and build their own houses. Home ownership among the miners was five percent in 1860, by 1870 it was up to twenty percent. In general, miners homes, rented or owned, were well kept with vegetable gardens and tidy yards. Company stores were outlawed by the Legislature in 1868, although they may have continued to operate in disguise. Many businesses were run by retired miners. Cash payment for wages was mandatory by 1880.
In spite of the above, the life of a coal miner was by no means a bed of roses. The veins of coal were often several feet high, and the method of removing the coal was hard labor as well as quite dangerous. The miners, using hand tools, would undercut the wall of coal cutting a horizontal slot three to four feet into the wall at floor level, placing temporary supports to prevent the rest of the wall of coal from collapsing. In order to get the slot deep enough into the wall, the men would have to dig while lying on their side. Then the supports were removed and the upper portion of the wall would collapse and could be broken into smaller pieces. There were many attempts to unionize the workers and, at times, some success. The Consolidated Company simply chose to ignore the union and not meet to hear it's proposals for better wages and working conditions. Other operators followed suit.
There were company spies who would sit in on union gatherings and report on those present, and report anyone observed talking to any union organizer. A miner could be black balled for those activities, and anyone living in company housing could be put out of their house as well as loose their job. Often there were imported, armed thugs hired by the mine owners, reportedly to protect the owners property.
In addition to the nationalities mentioned above, a few Hungarians began to arrive in 1890 and totalled 248 in 1910. 35 poles had arrived by 1900, and 247 Russians lived in the area by 1910. The same census data showing the country of origin of residents in those parts of Allegany and Garrett counties where coal was mined, indicate zero Italians in 1900, but 689 in 1910. The total number of mine workers in the George's Creek field in 1910 was 5,798.
Inside a Frostburg coal mine, 1906 Photo courtesy of Buddy Duckworth. See other old photos at his web site, "Vintage Views of Allegany County".
The Italians So our ancestors found themselves pretty much at the mercy of the mine owners and certainly subject to the same low pay and poor working conditions as those that had arrived before them. The going rate for pick mining a ton of coal during 1910 ranged from sixty to sixty three cents, and the average miner made five tons in a day.
In 1916 the United Mine Workers began a serious organizing campaign in Maryland and nearby areas of West Virginia, the first since 1909, and later that year had achieved a membership of eighty percent of the coal workers. By 1917 every mine in the union's district 16 had a local union. The coal companies were livid, charges of anti- union activity were made against Consolidation for refusing to meet with the miners and causing other companies to do the same.
The two sides never did meet, but an agreement was drawn up by the United States Fuel Administrator's office and signed by the parties, taking effect the end of May. John L. Lewis, acting president of the union, called a nation wide strike on the first of November 1919, and the Maryland miners obeyed. Again in April 1922 Maryland went out on a nation wide strike that ended the following August, however the Maryland miners remained out for another fifteen months in a battle to have the local operators recognize their union. This action ended in November of 1923, and the union, in the George's Creek field, was decimated. Effective rebuilding there did not take place for ten years.
During this last action, the companies brought in strikebreakers from Pittsburgh, Cleveland and various West Virginia fields. There was also considerable violence. Two of Consolidation's thugs were implicated in the shooting of a miner, one of the two was also charged for throwing a hand grenade into a picket line. You have to wonder if the Italians did not feel, at times, as though they had gone from the frying pan into the fire by coming to America.
The following quote is from information provided by the Frostburg Museum: "...the local Italians families seem to have come directly from Italy in the first part of the 20th century, beginning with Ruffo and Arnone, and settling in Morantown, three or four miles from Frostburg on the road to Mt. Savage. Some undoubtedly worked in the mines, but others were barbers and shoe-repairers, they all seem to have come from one small town, Cilica, in the instep of Italy's 'boot', and they were closely related to each other".
Cilica is obviously really Celico, and there's no doubt that, as anyone researching roots from there knows, a lot of the people from there were, indeed, closely related.
A Few of the Early Italian Residents Following are the names of a few of the early Italian Residents of the Frostburg area. These are relatives of mine, Charlene Iusi and Jim Mollo who made the move from southern Italy to Western Maryland early in the 20th century:
Luigi Iusi and Lucia Veltri and their son, Giuseppe, age 3, were there in 1904. A second son, Frank, was born May 28, 1905.
Ippolito Veltri, age 36, and Caterina Passarelli arrived in 1900. There were two children, Charley and Filomena.
Nicolo Veltri, age 27, and Rosa Acri arrived in 1908. Their one year old, Francesco, was born in Celico, and a daughter, Mary was born in Frostburg before the 1910 census.
Arriving in 1905 were Michael Passarelli, age 40, and Maria Drago Passarelli, 39; also Caterina Passarelli, age 15, Rosina Passarelli, age 8, Samuel Passarelli, age 6 and Angelina Passarelli, age one.
Filippo Grisolia, age 29, arrived in 1909 or 11, and was joined by Michelina, 27, and my father Luigi (Louis) who was two years old.
Vincenzo and Michelina Rosanova had a daughter, Francis, baptised there in 1918.
I hope these few names will help give a personal feeling about the hundreds who participated in this adventure, and that in some small way this page will be a memorial to all of them.
This page is not finished for lack of information concerning the day to day life of the Italian immigrants. If you have anything to contribute or know of any sources of this kind of information, please let me know here. Please remember to sign your message we do not respond to unsigned email.
Sources The Best Dressed Miners: Life and Labor in the Maryland Coal Region, 1835-1910 Katherine A. Harvey
City of Frostburg, Maryland History
Thank you to Charlene Iusi for the use of a portion of her mother's diary and the photograph of her parents.
Thanks also to the following:
Mary Elizabeth H. VanNewkirk, Curator, Frostburg Museum Association, Inc.
Carol Askey, Maryland USGenWeb Coordinator
Pat O'toole, Lookup Volunteer, Allegany County MDGenWeb Project
All material on this web site is copyrihted © Anthony Grisolia all rights reserved.
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