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A.C. Gilbert, The Man Who Saved Christmas (and Invented the Erector Set)

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In 1918, America was at war. The country needed to devote all of its industrial might to victory in Europe. A war council considered banning all toy production and prohibiting gift-giving at Christmas. It took A.C. Gilbert, inventor of the Erector Set, to save Christmas.

Gilbert led a remarkable life. He was a medical doctor, an Olympic gold medal winner, a magician, a toy millionaire, a big-game hunter and, most of all, a kid at heart.

A.C. Gilbert and his Erector Set

He wore old gabardine suits and rubber soled shoes, and he always carried a pipe that he sometimes stuck into his pocket while lit. In late October 1918, he brought a satchel full of educational toys to Washington, D.C., and let a room full of Cabinet secretaries play with them.

He persuaded them that children needed toys because the nation needed scientists and engineers. The war council decided to give Santa free rein after all.

“The toys did it,” Gilbert said.

A.C. Gilbert

Alfred Carlton Gilbert was born in Salem, Ore., on Feb. 13, 1884. His strict Congregationalist father, a banker, “viewed his son with puzzled pride,” according to his obituary.

Though frail, he had a competitive streak, winning a tricycle race at the age of seven. As a boy, he turned the family barn into a fire department, cutting a hole in the haymow floor and installing a wooden pole and cots. A neighbor would set a small brushfire while he and his friends would pretend to sleep on the cots. The neighbor then rang an alarm, and the boys would rush to the fire in a wagon rigged with a 110-foot garden hose.

Gilbert loved magic, and practiced his tricks relentlessly. He got so proficient he once matched a professional magician trick for trick. “My boy, you will be a great success,” the magician said.

Olympic Gold

Gilbert also loved athletics, but only grew to 5 feet 7 inches and weighed 135 pounds. Still, he excelled at track, gymnastics, wrestling and boxing. Gilbert attended Pacific University, where he met and later married Mary Thompson. While dating, he’d put one arm around her and practice magic tricks with his free hand, she recalled.

A.C. Gilbert as a young athlete

He went east in 1904 to study medicine at Yale, but he didn’t intend to open a physician’s practice. Instead, Gilbert wanted to stay in sports as a health advisor.

He competed at the Olympic games in London in 1908, winning a gold medal for pole vaulting. During the trials he set a world record; he was the first man to top 13 feet.

After earning his medical degree in 1909, he borrowed $5,000 from his father and started the Mysto Manufacturing Co. in New Haven. The company made magic kits for kids – cards, interlocking rings, instructions. Soon he opened a store in New York.

Erector Set

One day in 1912 he rode into New York on the train. The railroad was converting from steam to electricity, and Gilbert watched the construction out the train window. The network of girders erected to carry the electricity lines fascinated him. He thought, “What fun to make things with miniature girders.”

At home that night he and his wife sat at the dining room table and cut miniature girders out of cardboard. He then asked a local toolmaker to make him a set from steel.

The Erector Set flew off the shelves. Gilbert renamed his company after himself, and it thrived. It turned out chemistry sets, electric trains, tool chests, minerology sets and, into the 1960s, magic sets.

For more than 50 years, the A.C. Gilbert Co. ranked as the top producer of learning toys n the world.

“I’ve remained a boy at heart and only introduced items that appealed to me. I figured they would appeal to all boys,” he said.

He insisted on punching the time clock just as his employees did, and he stood in line with them in the morning. The company offered benefits like paid maternity leave and health insurance contributions. From the early 1930s to the late 1950s, A.C. Gilbert employed as many as 5,000 people, the largest employer in New Haven.

Vintage Erector Set.

World War I

As the United States prepared to enter World War I, President Wilson appointed government officials to the Council of National Defense. He tasked them with coordinating resources and industry for the war effort. The war council turned the country’s industrial might to making war materiel, banning the manufacture of nonessential goods.

The council asked A.C. Gilbert to make munitions instead of toys, and he did. It asked him to promote War Bonds, and he did. Then the war considered banning gift-giving at Christmas.

A.C. Gilbert could not let that happen.

As president of the Toy Manufacturers of America, Gilbert wangled a meeting with the war council. They gave him 15 minutes to persuade them not to kiss off Santa at Christmas.

American Flyer locomotive

Gilbert packed a bag with toy submarines and trains, picture books and air rifles, and took the train to Washington.

As he sat outside the office of Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, bureaucrats walked past and glanced at his toys. He tried to hide them behind his satchel.

A.C. Gilbert Saves Christmas

Finally his name was called. A naval guard inspected his toys before he could bring them in.

Gilbert spread the toys out on the table. Daniels focused on a toy submarine, asking where one could buy it.

Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels. He liked the toy subs.

Secretary of Commerce William Redfield pushed a toy train around the table. “I learned the rudiments of engineering on an engine like this,” he said.

Interior Secretary Frank Knight Lane picked up a book on aviation.

According to the Boston Post, Gilbert told the war council.

The greatest influence in the life of a boy are his toys.

A boy wants fun, not education. Yet through the kind of toys American toy manufacturers are turning out, he gets both. The American boy is a genuine boy, and he wants genuine toys. He wants guns that really shoot, and that is why we have given him air rifles from the time he was big enough to hold them.

It is because of toys they had in childhood that the American soldiers are the best marksmen on the battlefields of France.

Finally, he said, toys that educate help boys visualize their future.

The Post ran a photo of Gilbert with his Erector Set above the caption, “The man who saved Christmas.”

Not for the Money

After the war, A.C. Gilbert Co. grew into the largest toy company in the world. “He did it for the satisfaction of competition and to accomplish his goal more than he did it for money,” recalled Herb Pearce, Gilbert’s former plant manager.

Gilbert with his ever-present pipe

Gilbert called his workers “co-workers,” not “employees.” He visited the night shift once a week to see how things were going, and almost always found something to change or improve.

The company had a credit union, offered free legal advice and threw a Christmas party for children. Co-workers could take their grievances directly to the man they knew as A.C.

But the company really stood out, said Pearce, because of its broad range of manufacturing equipment and skills. It had big presses, screw machines, die casting and toolmaking equipment. It made its own dies and plastic molds, did its own printing, made its own boxes, formed its own wires. In addition to toys, the Gilbert company made small appliances as well as educational toys.

A vintage Gilbert chemistry set

Then in 1938, Gilbert bought American Flyer, a struggling toy train manufacturer. During World War II, the company retooled its electric train factory to make parachute flare casings.

“I love to see the wheels go ’round, love to see people develop, it’s not for profits alone,” he told the New Yorker in an interview. “Sure, that’s part of it because no one has any fun going busted, but I know this: just the object of making money has never meant anything to me.”

Living in Paradise

Glibert made plenty of money, however. He bought a country estate in Hamden with two lakes, a golf course and a lodge filled with his stuffed big-game trophies. He shot every kind of American game that had any importance, according to his obituary in the New York Times.

His Paradise Farm had a dairy herd and a pasteurization system that provided milk for the company cafeteria. He bred hunting dogs and champion German shepherds. Gilbert also developed Old Orchard Road in North Haven, one of the town’s finest residential neighborhoods.

At 70, when he wrote his autobiography, he titled it, The Man Who Lives in Paradise.

The U-238 Atomic Energy Lab

In 1950, the A.C. Gilbert Co. introduced the U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, one of the companies few flops. It carried a price tage of $49.50, about $530 today.

The kit included Electroscope, Spinthariscope, a cloud chamber, four glass jars containing uranium-bearing ore samples and batteries. It also featured a comic book, “How Dagwood Split the Atom.” The instructions suggested playing hide-and-seek with hidden radioactive samples and a Geiger counter.

The atomic energy lab didn’t sell because of its price tag rather than its danger.

In 2006, Radar Magazine listed it as the second most dangerous toy of all time. First on the list: lawn darts.

The Gilbert cloud chamber

The A.C. Gilbert Legacy

A.C. Gilbert died in Boston on Jan. 24, 1961. His son, also A.C., had been running the company, but it didn’t survive long after the founder’s death.

Gilbert had a showroom in New York called The Gilbert Hall of Science, a forerunner of today’s science museum. Today, the Eli Whitney Museum & Workshop in Hamden has an exhibit on A.C. Gilbert. It also collects and studies the products and legacy of A.C. Gilbert and his company.

The Erector Set has a legacy of its own. Bill Sewell, a Yale Medical School student, in 1948 built a heart bypass device in 1948 with Erector Set parts and an Erector Set motor. origins of the artificial heart.

Then in the early 1990s, Mark Summers had an assignment to build a virtual reality ride for Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim. He used Erector set parts to design a way for cars to fly over the virtual-reality screen.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian created his suicide machine from an Erector set, old toys and some jewelry.

 *  *  *

 

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

 

With thanks to the Library of Congress Inside Adams blog, A.C. Gilbert’s Successful Quest to Save Christmas and to Mental Floss, A.C. Gilbert, The Toymaker Who (Actually) Saved Christmas.

Images: Atomic Energy Lab By Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62037438. Early Erector set: By Cullen328 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75997438. Santa: CCO public domain. American Flyer locomotive: By James G. Howes, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6096168. Gilbert Chemistry Set By Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3344050. Cloud chamber By Science History Institute, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29337436. This story updated in 2022.

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New England’s Gun Valley, Child of the Springfield Armory

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New England’s Gun Valley began with George Washington, who in 1777 scouted the site on an old Puritan muster ground in Springfield, Mass. Washington was looking for a place to store weapons out of reach of the British Royal Navy.

The site met Washington’s approval, as it’s located just north of Enfield Falls on the Connecticut River. That put it out of reach of oceangoing vessels.

The Springfield Armory stored musket and cannon and made cartridges and gun carriages for the American Revolution. Then in 1796, it produced the Model 1795 Musket, the first made in the United States. It wouldn’t be the last.

From 1796 to 1968, the Springfield Armory served as the U.S. Army’s main design and production workshop for small arms.  In the process, it became the hub of Springfield’s industrial economy and launched dozens of weapons makers and related businesses in the Connecticut Valley. Companies like Colt, Remington and Smith & Wesson gave the region the nickname Gun Valley.

The Springfield Armory

New England’s Gun Valley

The Springfield Armory, along with the one in Harper’s Ferry, came under orders from the U.S. Ordnance Department. The Ordnance Department adopted a new doctrine that weapons should be identical and repairable on the battlefield. It ordered the arsenals to figure out how to do it. The Springfield Armory then developed the manufacturing process known as ‘armory practice.’

Ultimately, the Springfield Armory drew up designs and specifications then farmed out much of the production work in Gun Valley.

One contractor was Eli Whitney. He received a government contract to produce muskets with interchangeable parts, which he did at his armory in Hamden, Conn.

As weapons production geared up during the War of 1812, hundreds of skilled workers flocked to the Connecticut Valley.

During the Civil War, the Springfield Armory supplied most of the small arms for the Union Army, making an astounding 276,200 rifles in 1864. Other factories in Gun Valley got orders for ammunition, swords, cannons, cotton goods, gun carriages and railroad cars.

In 1891, the Springfield Armory got a new job: develop and test small arms. It made pistols and rifles, including the Enfield rifle, for U.S. troops during World War I.

Then beginning in 1936, the Armory made 4.5 million M1 rifles, semiautomatic weapons invented by John Garand. From 1959 to 1964, it made the M14, followed by the M16 used in the Vietnam War.

By 1968, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara closed the Springfield Armory, but Gun Valley remained. Below are some of the major gun makers in and around Gun Valley.

Colt’s Manufacturing Co.

Samuel Colt applied for his first patent for the Colt revolver in 1836, and by the end of 1837 he had produced more than 1,000  of his revolver that would grow up to become an icon. His only problem: no one bought them.  Capt. Samuel Walker of the Texas Rangers finally saved Colt’s dream. Walker had run across the revolvers in Florida and he had seen their repeating firing.

john-colt-samuel

Samuel Colt

On the brink of the Mexican-American War of 1846, Walker hunted down Colt to get him to build some more guns, but with revisions. The new gun, for example, should hold six shots and not five. He also wanted some improvements so it would load faster. Colt gladly complied, and immediately set about filling the first order for 1,000 pistols. A second order soon followed.

In 1848 Colt established his factory in Hartford, Conn., and the legend grew from there. In 1855, he built the Colt Armory with machine tools built by Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney. The company made muskets and pistols during the Civil War.

By World War I, Colt had 10,000 employees making semiautomatic pistols. In World War II, 15,000 workers made pistols and machine guns. Colt also made the M16 for the Vietnam War, selling 5 million of them worldwide.

Smith & Wesson

Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson founded Smith & Wesson in 1855 in Springfield, a good time and place to make guns.

They’d founded another company to make the Volcanic Rifle in Norwich, Conn. Oliver Winchester bought it in 1855. Smith went back home to Springfield and Wesson stayed on as plant manager. Then Winchester declared bankruptcy, reorganized and moved to New Haven as the New Haven Arms Co. Later it took the name the Winchester Repeating Arms Co.

Meanwhile Smith and Wesson regrouped in Springfield, rejoined each other and made a cartridge revolver. During the Civil War, Smith and Wesson received a large Federal contract to manufacture pistols.  Soldiers even bought them privately for self-defense.

After the war, Smith & Wesson switched to a revolver more suitable to the western frontier. Then in 1899 the company developed the Smith & Wesson Model 10, the standard gun for police officers during much of the 20th century. Smith & Wesson created the .44 Magnum in 1955, immortalized by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films.

The company has changed hands several times, and now calls itself American Outdoor Brands Corp.

Winchester Repeating Arms Co.

The company began as Smith & Wesson began in Gun Valley – Springfield – then moved to New Haven. Winchester made a rifle known as the Model 1873, a lever-action gun known as The Gun That Won the West.

Teddy Roosevelt with a Winchester rifle

Winchester also made the Enfield rifle for Britain and the U.S. in World War I. It struggled, though, during the Great Depression, and the Olin family purchased its assets in 1935. The company later changed its name to Winchester Western, and it made the M1 carbine in World War I. After the war, Winchester made the M14 rifle.

The New Haven plant closed in 2006, and the Olin Corp. licensed a Japanese company to make some Winchester rifles.

Remington Arms

gun valley remington

The abandoned Remington Arms plant.

Eliphalet Remington II founded the company in 1816, moving it to Ilion, N.Y., in 1828. Remington still makes firearms at the plant.

Remington’s family sold the company in 1888 to a New York sporting goods company that also owned the Union Metallic Cartridge Co. in Bridgeport and Winchester Repeating Arms Co. It changed Union Metallic name to Remington and continued to make ammunition in Bridgeport.

The New York Times once called the enormous Remington Arms plant ‘the greatest small arms and ammunition plant in the world.’ It may also have ranked as the deadliest.

At its height, Remington Arms employed more than 17,000 workers. Some of them died on the job. On April 4, 1905, three workers were killed in an explosion that blew up an entire building. In 1914, Bridgeport police killed an 18-year-old striking worker, Frank Monte. On March 28, 1942, an explosion killed four women and three men and hurt 80 others.

Today the abandoned Remington Arms plant still sits at 812 Barnum Ave. in Bridgeport.

High Standard

Waves demonstrating the High Standard pistol in 1943.

Carl Gustav Swebilius founded High Standard Firearms in Hamden, Conn., in 1926 to supply firearms companies in the Gun Valley. He bought the Hartford Arms and Equipment Company in 1932 to make .22 caliber pistols. During World War II, High Standard also developed a silent pistol that Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) agents could use behind enemy lines. The company’s assets moved to Texas in the 1990s.

Savage Arms

Arthur Savage founded Savage Arms in 1894 in Utica, N.Y., to make rifles, handguns and ammunition. Then during World War I the company merged with Pennsylania-based Driggs-Seabury Ordinance Co. to make machine guns. In 1920, Savage bought Stevens Arms of Chicopee Falls, Mass., where it made Thompson machine guns in World War II.

Eventually Savage Arms moved to Westfield, Mass., and has gone through a  bankruptcy and sale.

Sturm Ruger

Sturm Ruger, now the nation’s largest gun maker, was founded in 1949 near, but not in, Gun Valley.  It’s in Southport, Conn., with manufacturing facilities in Newport, N.H. making semiautomatic pistols and rifles. Now

SIG Sauer

Another firearms company located near Gun Valley, SIG Sauer Inc. was founded in 1985 in Newington, N.H., to import and sell firearms from its sister company in Germany.

This story last updated in 2022.

With thanks to Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts By Timothy D. Lytton .

Images:  Remington Arms by Eric Kilby.

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The Tungsten Light Bulb Scandal of 1908

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John Allen Heany managed to fool some of the people with his tungsten light bulb, but he couldn’t fool General Electric.

In 1905, the electric industry was improving by leaps and bounds. Heany wanted to push it further forward.

Thomas Edison had created light bulbs with carbon filaments in 1879, but they were problematic. They tended to cloud the inside of the glass as they burned. A light bulb with a filament made of tungsten, with its incredibly high melting point, was the Holy Grail for manufacturers.

Yet the manufacturing technique to make a tungsten light bulb had yet to be perfected.

The Tungsten Light Bulb

John Allen Heany, owner of the Heany Lamp Company of New Haven, was hot on the trail of the tungsten light bulb.

General Electric was the 800-pound gorilla of the electricity world. The company conducted its own research, but also funded other inventors, usually buying out their companies if they were successful.

GE funded Heany’s promising research, but in December of 1904 the company’s faith in Heany flamed out. At the time, Heany lived in Pennsylvania where he had taught college-level science courses before venturing out as an entrepreneur.

Heany applied for a patent for his tungsten light bulb, and then brought samples to the GE offices. All failed miserably. Heany left, discouraged. After the visit, he sent a letter asking GE to return the bulbs. GE kept one.

John Allen Heany's light bulb (courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution)

John Allen Heany’s tungsten light bulb (courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution)

As the race intensified to see who would develop the tungsten filament, Heany emerged in 1908 with a winning light bulb. He claimed he based it on his 1904 patent, but GE – which  backed other entries in the race to perfect the tungsten filament – had suspicions. If Heany’s bulb based on the 1904 design was working fine, why had it failed so miserably when he showed it to them?

As all this was going on, Heany tried to sell the patent to GE for $500,000.

3rd Time the Charm

The GE patent staff went to work. Three times they visited the patent office to review Heany’s various applications, and on the third time they found a flaw.

The patent office had accepted a submission from Heany on one of his applications dated and stamped January of 1905. The paper had a watermark, however, that didn’t come into use until later in 1906.

Clearly, the patent application for the tungsten light bulb had been updated, but made to look like the original submission.

With the warning flags raised, it didn’t take long for the patent office to zero in on the problem. The office had fraud in its midst. The patent office uncovered collusion between a patent examiner, Ned Barton, and Heany’s lawyer – Henry Everding.

The patent office fired Barton. Not surprisingly, Heany hired him and Barton went front and center to defend his new boss.

“I would be a fool to mix up in any matter such as this,” Barton said. But he soon caved. He pleaded guilty to fraud. Everding and Heany stood trial.

Eventually, Everding admitted his part in altering the patent douments. A jury convicted him.

Both Everding and Barton refused to implicate Heany. Others had no qualms.

No Bullet, No Patent

Witnesses from his own company testified that Heany had crowed about his infiltration of the patent office. A glassblower showed how bulbs supposedly patented in 1905 hadn’t been designed until years later. Nevertheless, Heany dodged the bullet and won an acquittal.

Following the trial the patent office took up the question of whether to invalidate Heany’s patents – now worth millions. Heany put up a fight, but refused to answer questions about his involvement in the patent rigging. In 1911 all the patents were invalidated.

Heany would go on to have a successful career as an inventor and business man. He won dozens of patents both in the U.S. and in foreign countries. During World War I he turned his skills toward developing gas mask technology.

He died at age 69 in 1946 in Hamden, Conn. — his home for 25 years – the fraud scandal of his youth well behind him.

This story was updated in 2022.

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peddler's cart north end

How the Italian Immigrants Came to New England

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Italian immigrants put their stamp on New England as indelibly as any Puritan. New England, in fact, is the most Italian region in the United States.

Boston's North End, 1909, by Lewis Wickes Hine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Boston’s North End, 1909, by Lewis Wickes Hine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the population of every New England state except Vermont and Maine. Any New Englander can recognize the voice of Joe Castiglione or the Magliozzi brothers. And tens of thousands attend the region’s 45 summer festas. They happen from Our Lady of Assumption in Portland to St. Bartholomew in Providence.

Italian Americans have undeniably influenced New England’s food history. Boston’s North End brought us Prince spaghetti, Pastene sauces and Dragone cheese. It also gave us the first Italian café, Café Vittoria, in 1929.  Amato’s Italian delicatessen in Portland, Maine, claims to have originated the Italian sandwich. And, of course, Frank Pepe in New Haven invented the white clam apizza.

More recently John Bello of New Britain created SoBe beverages.

Italian-Americans

And yet Italian immigrants have contributed to American history and culture in ways that are typically – well, American. Italian immigrants sculpted the Lincoln Memorial. They frescoed the dome of the Capitol. And they founded the Bank of America, formerly the Bank of Italy.

S. Z Poli of New Haven built a chain of vaudeville theaters and Charles Ponzi of Boston’s North End discovered a new form of financial fraud. Bart Giamatti presided over Yale University and Major League Baseball. Providence’s Edward Valenti created the Ginsu knife and the infomercial.

Mike Eruzione of Winthrop, Mass., captained the U.S. Olympic team that defeated the Russians in 1980. And Filippo Mazzei, a physician friend of Thomas Jefferson, published a pamphlet that contained a familiar line. It read,

All men are by nature equally free and independent.

Jefferson then used it in the Declaration of Independence.

Beginnings

The first Italians were explorers, and not just Christopher Columbus. America got its name from an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci. He explored the east coast of South America from 1499 to 1502.

italian-immigrants-cabot

Giovanni Caboto

Venetian John Cabot – Giovanni Caboto — and his son Sebastian are the reason Americans speak English. That’s because Cabot first explored the mainland in North America in 1497 under the commission of English king Henry VII.

And Giovanni di Verrazano explored the Atlantic coast between Florida and New Brunswick.

Italians also fought in the American Revolution. Afterward, Italian immigrants came to the United States as political refugees, as missionaries and as explorers.

They came as well because of a need for their professional skills. In 1801, Philip Trajetta founded a music conservatory in Boston, the first in the United States. And beginning in 1871, Gaetano Lanza taught mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 40 years.

Scattered Italian families settled in Boston between the American Revolution and the Civil War, but the city didn’t attract large groups of immigrants then. There was too little land and too little commercial opportunity. Boston’s homogeneous and self-contained social life also made it forbidding to outsiders.

But 7,000 Italians fought in the Civil War, and six won the Congressional Medal of Honor. New York even recruited infantrymen from Italy for its 39th regiment, also known as the Garibaldi Guard.

Then after the Civil War, New England’s mills and factories didn’t have enough workers, so they recruited immigrants from overseas.

A Wave of Italian Immigrants

An Italian immigrant family, 1911. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

An Italian immigrant family, 1911. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

From 1880 to 1920, an estimated 4 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. Most came between 1900 and 1914, and most came from southern Italy and Sicily. Italian unification in 1861 had worsened conditions in the mother country. Plus the soil was exhausted, taxes and tariffs were high and young men were conscripted for seven years

In 1880 about a thousand Italian immigrant families came to Boston. They represented the first wave to the city bypassed by most Europeans, save for the Irish.

These immigrants didn’t speak English. They therefore had to take low-wage jobs and fell prey to labor brokers known as padrones. So they settled in ghettoes known as Little Italys. Those included Front Street in Hartford, Central End in Bridgeport, Shrewsbury Street in Worcester and the South End of Springfield, Mass.

Burlington, Vt., Portsmouth, N.H., and Portland also had Little Italys, but they since disappeared.  The once-crowded tenements of the North End of Boston, New Haven’s Wooster Square and Providence’s Federal Hill have all gentrified.

Birds of Passage

About a third of the newcomers were birds of passage, workers who intended to stay until they saved enough money to reestablish themselves in Italy. It wasn’t easy. Italian men ended up working low-paying construction jobs, while women usually worked as seamstresses in garment factories. Many Italian immigrants led the fight for better pay and working conditions. Arturo Giovanitti, Joe Ettor and Carlo Tresca organized the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

Many blamed prejudice against Italian immigrants for the 1927 execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. And many Italians Anglicized their names to avoid the stigma of their ethnicity. For example, actor Ernest Borgnine of Hamden, Conn., was originally Ernest Borgnino. Steve Carell, a Concord, Mass., native, would have been Steve Caroselli had his father not changed his name.

World Wars

World War I abruptly ended the massive wave of Italian immigration to America. Then came the restrictive Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924. The Little Italys stabilized and prospered, and English became the predominant language. Italian Americans then started to get better jobs as civil servants and skilled tradesmen, though the Great Depression reversed many of their gains.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

By the time the United States entered World War II, 600,000 Italians had not become American citizens. The government therefore  declared them enemy aliens and required them to report regularly. At the same time, as many as 500,000 Italian-Americans served in the armed forces.

During the war, Italian-American servicemen earned the Medal of Honor. For example,  Col. Henry Mucci of Bridgeport led Army Rangers on a daring raid of a POW camp that held survivors of the Bataan Death March.

Postwar Prosperity

The war, however, opened up good-paying jobs to Italian immigrants in defense factories. Then after the war many Italian-Americans took advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend college. In the post-war era, Karen Ignani of Providence became CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Samuel Palmisano, of Southport, Conn., was named president and CEO of IBM.

Because they prospered, Italian-Americans gained political power. Ella Grasso won election as governor of Connecticut, the first woman governor elected in her own right. Tom Menino served as Boston’s longest serving mayor, while Massachusetts elected Foster Furcolo, John Volpe and Paul Cellucci as governors. Even Maine had an Italian-American governor, John Baldacci, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s mother has Italian ancestry.

Rhode Island

Nearly one in five Rhode Islanders – 18.9 percent – claim Italian ancestry. That makes the Ocean State the most Italian in the country. In 1950, John Pastore became the first Italian American elected to the U.S. Senate. Donald Carcieri, Edward DiPrete and Gina Raimondo since won election as governor. Raimondo now serves as secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce

And who can forget Buddy Cianci, who for years served as the colorful mayor of Providence?

italian-immigrants-atwells

Gateway Arch to Atwells Avenue in Providence.

Johnston, R.I., the most Italian municipality in the United States, has 46.7 percent of its population claiming Italian ancestry.

Companies like the Silver Spring Bleaching and Dyeing attracted Italian immigrants to Providence’s North End in the 19th century. Today, 36.7 percent of North Providence residents say they had Italian ancestors.

Famous Italian Americans from Rhode Island include comedienne Ruth Buzzi and novelist Peter Pezzelli. Rhode Island also produced Italian-American athletes —  hockey players Jack and Dave Capuano and Olympic skater Marissa Castelli.

Connecticut

Frank Pepe's pizzeria.

Frank Pepe’s pizzeria.

Today, Connecticut ranks as the second most Italian state in America after Rhode Island. A full 18.7 percent of the population claims Italian ancestry.

Roughly half the populations of  East Haven, West Haven and North Haven are descended from Italian immigrants. Wooster Square, home of Frank Pepe’s white clam apizza, is a bastion of Italian culture and cuisine. And more than a quarter of the populations of seven Connecticut towns — Northford, North Branford, Oakville, Orange, Wolcott, Derby and Wethersfield — have Italian ancestors.

Stamford sent Andy Robustelli to the Football Hall of Fame and Bobby Valentine to the helm of the Boston Red Sox. Joe Castiglione of Hamden announces Red Sox games on the radio. And Rosa Ponselle of Meriden performed with the Metropolitan Opera during the 1920s and 1930s.

Massachusetts

In Revere, 35.7 percent of residents claim Italian ancestry, making it the most Italian city in Massachusetts. Massachusetts itself ranks as the fourth most Italian state in the country behind New Jersey. That’s because close to 14 percent of Massachusetts residents have Italian ancestry, with a half-million living in metropolitan Boston.

Famous descendants of Italian immigrants to Massachusetts include poet John Ciardi and artist Frank Stella. Massachusetts has also produced such Italian-American athletes as Rocky Marciano, Tony Conigliaro and Joseph Bellino.  Aerosmith’s Joe Perry’s mother was Italian, and so was Jay Leno’s dad.

New Hampshire

Yes, New Hampshire ranks as the seventh most Italian state in the country. Nearly 11 percent of its residents say they have Italian ancestors.  Salem, along the southern tier, has the densest population of Italian-Americans in New Hampshire at 15.7 percent.

This story was updated in 2022.

Image: Atwells Avenue By Zigamorph – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3996788.

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Deane Keller, Monuments Man From New Haven

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In 1942 Deane Keller, a pudgy, bespectacled, 42-year-old Yale professor, ached to fight the Germans in Europe. He tried to enlist in the Marines, but they rejected him because of his eyesight.

Deane Keller

Deane Keller

Then a friend  insisted he sign up for a new kind of service. He should find priceless cultural treasures the Germans had stolen or damaged and return them to their rightful owners.

And so Deane Keller became a Monuments Man. He traveled 60,000 miles through Italy by jeep, saved priceless frescoes in Pisa during a battle and delivered 13 freight cars of stolen art to Florence.

Of the experience, he wrote, “Life is full of mysteries in which unfathomable forces produce mystical results.”

Letters Home

Deane Keller left behind his beloved wife and his two-year-old-son. The many letters he sent them were crucial documents in telling the forgotten story of the Monuments Men. The New Haven Museum in 2015 exhibited Keller’s works and photographs of the material he collected in Italy.

His story was made into a book, Saving Italy, The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, and then a film, The Monuments Men.

Deane Keller

Deane Keller was born Dec. 14, 1901 in New Haven, the son of a Yale sociologist, Albert Galloway Keller and Caroline Louise Gussman. His father wanted him to study science and history; he wanted to study art. But he acquiesced and earned a B.A. in science and history from Yale – then went to study painting at the Art Students League, much against his father’s wishes. He earned a B.F.A. at Yale and then the Prix de Rome, which allowed him to study for three years in Italy.

He returned to start teaching at Yale and married Katherine Hall, one of his students, and they had a son, Deane or Dino.

After the United States entered World War II and the Marines rejected him, he received a letter from his friend, Yale University Art Gallery director Theodore “Tubby” Sizer. Sizer told him about the first ever unit formed to preserve artistic and cultural treasures. Formally known as the Fifth Army, Manuscripts, Fine Arts & Archives (MFAA) Section, it was also known as the Monuments Men.

By the time Keller set foot in Italy, the Allies and Axis raced to control Europe’s cultural heritage: by stealing it, destroying it or displaying it.

“In wartime, when the thoughts of men fighting nations are concerned primarily with winning battles and the consequent fear, animosity, hatred, blood and death, it seems incongruous and inconsistent that the commanders of opposing armies should give attention to culture and Fine Arts,” wrote Keller. “Yet in both the Nazi-Fascist and Allied Armies, perhaps for the first time in history, there were men whose sole job it was to preserve the heritage and culture of nations being torn to shreds by the ravages of war.”

Deane Keller with statue of Cosimo de Medici

Deane Keller with statue of Cosimo de Medici

Thieves?

There were 345 Monuments Men (and women) from 13 nations spread throughout Italy. They were museum directors, curators, art historians, artists, architects and educators.

They had a mission to safeguard cultural treasures from war damage. And after the war ended, they were to return art stolen from stolen from wealthy Jews, museums, universities and religious institutions. They succeeded in tracking, finding and returning more than five million artistic and cultural items stolen by Axis forces.

The Germans called them thieves and Jews intent on looting Europe’s treasures.

Loneliness

Deane Keller often felt alone and isolated in the Army. He was described as “introverted, sensitive and extremely hard working.”

He seemed to travel everywhere in Italy, encountering devastated towns. The stunned and starving citizens hid in caves during battles between the Allies and the Nazis.

“When I see a little boy Deane’s age with one leg, the other blown off by a bomb … It makes me feel terrible. I got sick to my stomach and sick at heart,” he wrote.

‘Off Limits’

He brought baking supplies to the town of Gaeta, lugged pipe to help repair the town’s water works and delivered freshly baked bread. In Gaeta, as in so many other Italian towns, he found someone who knew about the town’s history and art. He then posted ‘Off limits’ signs on historic and cultural buildings to prevent troops from entering them.

Deane Keller with Michelangelo's David

Deane Keller with Michelangelo’s David

He arrived in Pisa with the Allied Army as it advanced and the Germans retreated. Both sides were shelling the city. Keller realized the shelling exposed and then damaged the priceless 14th-and 15th-century frescoes in the city center. He then directed civilians and troops to erect a temporary canvas roof over the naked walls and scattered pieces of frescco.

He described the experience in a letter to his wife:

How does one feel when the bombs are crashing all around? I PRAYED I tell you and I was trembling like a damned leaf and once it lasted 1.5 hours and I thought of you and Deane and our life and what this all was. The window panes were rattling and some fell out. And in Pisa when the .240s were flying over every night at 8.15 or 10.15 or 12.15. We had that to look forward to every night.

After the war, Keller belonged to a smaller group that stayed in Europe to oversee the restitution of stolen art. According to the Monuments Men Foundation,

During that time they played instrumental roles in rebuilding cultural life in the devastated countries of Europe by organizing temporary art exhibitions and musical concerts.

Keller directed the return of 13 freight cars of stolen art discovered near the Austrian border.

Recognition

He left the service in 1946. For his extraordinary efforts in art recovery he received the United States Legion of Merit. He also received the Member of the British Empire medal, the Crown of Italy Partisan Medal, the Medal of the Opera from Pisa, and the Order of St. John the Lateran from the Vatican.

He then returned to Yale’s School of Fine Arts, where he spent 40 years teaching and painting more than 500 portraits. His works can be seen today throughout New Haven. They’re now in City Hall, Knights of Columbus headquarters, Fusco Corporation and in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University.

Deane Keller died April 12, 1992 in Hamden, Conn.

With thanks to Saving Italy: The Race To Save a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis by Robert Edsel and New Haven’s Monuments Man: Deane Keller by Laura Macaluso in Connecticut Explored. Photos: “Deane Keller cropped” by Monuments Men Foundation: Keller, Capt. Deane bio notes. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia. Deane Keller with the eight-ton statue of Cosimo de’Medici, in the gardens of Poggio ai Caiano outside of Florence, February 1945. Deane Keller papers (MS 1685). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Charlie Bernholz (left) and Deane Keller (right) standing with David, Galleria Accademia, Florence, Summer 1945.  Deane Keller papers (MS 1685).  Also Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

This story was updated in 2022.

 

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Eleanor Estes Assuages Her Childhood Guilt

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When Eleanor Estes was growing up in West Haven, Conn., her classmates mocked a Polish girl who wore the same hand-me-down dress every day. The girl claimed she had a hundred dresses at home. That just made the bullying worse.

Eleanor Estes always felt guilty she hadn’t defended the girl. Years later, she did something about it.

Eleanor Estes

She was born Eleanor Ruth Rosenfeld on May 9, 1906, to Louis Rosenfeld, a bookkeeper, and Caroline Gewecke Rosenfeld, a seamstress. Her father died when she was young, and her mother’s dressmaking supported the family. After graduating from high school, Eleanor worked as a children’s librarian at the New Haven Free Library.

Eleanor Estes

In 1931, she attended the Pratt Institute library school in New York City on a scholarship. There she met her husband, Rice Estes. They both worked as librarians, and he became a professor of library science.

In 1941, Eleanor Estes was confined to bed with tuberculosis. She began writing children’s books about the Moffatt family, based on her own family. She based the fictional town of Cranbury on West Haven.

Hundred Dresses

In 1944 she wrote The Hundred Dresses to atone for her silence when her classmate was bullied. “As an adult, once she had become a writer, she figured that the only thing she could do was to write her story,” her daughter Helena, also a children’s librarian, said in an interview with NPR.

Eleanor Estes The_Hundred_DressesThe book tells the story of a girl named Wanda Petronski, a Polish-American girl. Her classmates mocked for her funny last name and her worn blue dress. When Wanda claimed to own 100 dresses, her classmates cornered her every day and demanded she describe them.

Wanda’s father then took her out of the school because of the bullying. But Wanda had entered the classroom drawing contest with 100 beautifully drawn dresses. She won, and her remorseful classmates sent her a letter of apology.

The book has never been out of print. The National Education Association in 2007 named it one of the top 100 books for children.

Eleanor Estes wrote 19 children’s books, considered classics, and taught at the University of New Hampshire Writer’s Conference. She died July 15, 1988 in Hamden, Conn.

You can buy The Hundred Dresses in the New England Historical Society’s online store here. Photo of “Eleanor Estes By unknown – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: https://www.nocloo.com/eleanor-estes-biography/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35714281.

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