The ANNOTICO Report

We frequently need to be reminded of the Enormous Sacrifices our ancestors
made that enable us to have the freedom, opportunities, and successes that
successive generations, and we enjoy today.

Padrones, virtual slavery, immigration quotas, vicious slurs of "dirty
dagos", "thick headed and ignorant" in the newspapers no less, paid $1.25 a
day  for back breaking work by the "elite" rapacious "robber barons", and
then ridiculed for their impoverished circumstances, by the same.

Would anyone of us have the fortitude to have persevered. How do we show
our gratitude?

We Dishonor their memory by turning our back on their ancestral heritage,
and not being knowledgeable about it, and not passing that knowledge on to
the younger generations.

[Bradford county is in N.E. Pennyslvania, across the New York state line
from Tioga and Brome counties.]

Morning Times
By Lisa R. Howeler
Times Reporter
Feb, 21,2005

WEST BURLINGTON -- ... Once a month a group interested in the genealogy and
history of Bradford County gather at the Bradford County Library in West
Burlington....

This month...when Guy and Marti Abell began to talk about workers in
Bradford County, especially those who worked on the railroads at Barclay
Mountain, they struck a well of memories with those in the audience of
Italian descent.

James Leone remembered his own father and grandfather as he heard about how
the Italian immigrants of the coal and mining towns of Laquin and Barclay
lived...

The audience was one of the largest in quite a while, close to fifty people
said librarian Claire Bortis...Guy and Marti are one of those people who
are fascinated by local history...and have spent hours in the museum
conducting research on those who helped to build the county...

The Abell's tale began in Bradford County about a railroad that had to be
rebuilt because of a flood. It then continued in Elmira, N.Y. with Michael
Del Papa, a padrone, who eventually organized close to 4,000 Italian
workers who built the railroads and worked on the railroads in the late
1800s and early 1900s...

Padrone is an Italian word meaning "patron." Del Papa, like many other
agents, worked out of New York City, and brought Italian citizens from
Italy to work in the United States. The padrone expected to be paid back
for bringing the immigrants to the United States. The padrone became the
landlord of the person and many times a banker, making the lives of the
immigrants easy in some ways, but in later years more like the life of a
prisoner.

The stories of how Italians lived come from newspapers of the day. Those
newspaper articles feature racial slurs and stereotypes of Italians, which
were prevalent at the time and in some cases still are today. The articles,
though extremely detailed and slanted against the Italians, paint a
completely accurate picture of how immigrants lived so long ago, the Abells
believe. Even the slurs, such as "mere macaroni eaters," tell the story of
how the Italians were looked at negatively, as if they were only meant for
menial labor.

"How the dirty dagos live on nothing in grease and dirt." was the title of
an article, printed in an Elmira newspaper in 1888. The Italians were "too
thick-headed and ignorant," to do more than use a pick and shovel,
according to the article. The Italian men worked for $1.25 a day and had to
feed a wife and children in most cases with that salary. Other laborers ate
fresh and tender meat, but the Italians ate the tough meat, which was all
they could afford.

The homes of the Italians had dirt floors and their furniture was pieces of
scrap metal from the railroad.

"I heard this once that 'when the Italian immigrant came to the States he
found out first that the streets were not paved with gold and then the
second thing he found out was, the streets were not paved at all," Abell
said. "And the third thing he found out was, everyone expected him to pave
the streets.'"

James Leone said the life of the early Italian-American was not easy.
Despite newspaper reports the Abell's had, the Italians who came to the
States in the 1800s did not come to the States to earn money and then
return to Italy, he said. Family members earned money so they could bring
their families to the States to live a life of freedom.

"I can vouch for a lot of what you say about these immigrants," Leone told
Marti Abell after she read the newspaper article. "The reason they came
here, they said a lot of them took the money and went back to Italy is
false. They had nothing in Italy. They were treated like slaves. My father
was beaten one day almost to death, that is the way they were treated over
there. Most people don't know this stuff, but I know."

Leone's grandfather came from Italy to become a citizen but was told the
"quota" for Italians was filled. He returned to Italy and then traveled to
Brazil, learning the language there and then returned to Italy to pick up
his son, Leone's father, and entered America as a Brazilian. Eventually his
grandfather worked on the railroad.

"These padrones as you call them were nothing more than the start of the
Mafia," Leone said. "They treated these people so that they couldn't even
live."

Leone's father also worked on the railroad, he said.

...The next meeting of the Genealogy and history group is March 17 at 1
p.m. at the library.

Morning Times of  Sayre, Athens, S.Waverly, PA; Waverly, N.Y.
http://www.eveningtimes.com/
articles/2005/02/21/news/news3.txt

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