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How the Italian Immigrants Came to New England

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.

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.

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 39^th 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.

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.

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?

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 19^th 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.

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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Mexico, Maine? Rome, Maine? How Maine Place Names Came To Be

Many Maine place names are not like the rest of New England’s, with Bristols and Yarmouths and Portsmouths named after counterparts in England.

Maine has a Madrid, Mexico and a Peru, located just north of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Belfast is near Frankfort and Vienna is near Rome and Belgrade. Calais sits on the Canadian border.

The famous sign showing Maine place names of foreign cities and countries.

It has to do with timing.

The English and Scots-Irish settled coastal Maine first. They named their early settlements after their birthplaces, with English and Scots-Irish place names like York and Belfast.

Quite a few Maine place names come from the Native American people, including Machias (“bad little falls”) and Ogunquit (“beautiful place by the sea”). Indigenous people also named Caribou, Damariscotta, Kennebunk, Millinocket, Orono, Penobscot, Saco and Skowhegan.

But Europeans settled Maine’s vast interior later than the rest of New England because the French and Indian wars made it too dangerous. Settlers didn’t put down roots in much of Maine until the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They incorporated towns when many people in foreign countries fought for independence. And so they named their towns after the freedom fighters they admired.

Maine Place Names

Mexico, for example, was originally called Holmanstown because Col. Jonathan Holman owned the land. When the pioneer settlers planned to organize into a town, they sympathized with the Mexicans battling the Spaniards for independence. So when the settlers incorporated in 1818, they chose the name to honor the Mexicans who won their fight for freedom in 1815.

Mexico, Maine, in 1905.

In 1821, people in Maine’s western interior decided to name their town Peru after the South American country that had just declared its independence from Spain.

Denmark, incorporated in 1807, was named in solidarity with the people of Copenhagen. The British Royal Navy attacked the Danish city in 1801 and 1807, much as it had attacked Falmouth in 1775. Eleven years later, Falmouth’s neck had grown into a shipping center. So that part of town broke off and gave itself the functional name of Portland.

Peru, Maine, in 1906.

In 1812, the settlers of Moscow, Maine, admired how the Russians had turned back Napoleon’s army. So they named the town after them.

Two decades earlier, the people of Township No. 4 felt gratitude toward the French for their help in the American Revolution. In 1793, they incorporated the town and named it Paris. Ironically, the land was originally granted as a reward to 60 men for their services fighting the French during the French and Indian wars.

Though Maine has few people of Italian descent, it has several towns named after Italian cities: Verona, Sorrento, Palermo, Naples and Rome. Maine Romans believed their town compared favorably with Rome, Italy, because they had seven times as many hills. They also had enough granite to rebuild the Italian capital.

‘Just Liking’ Maine Place Names

Some Mainers actually named their towns for non-British places they’d lived in. Swedish immigrants bestowed the Maine place names of New Sweden and Stockholm. Sweden, Maine, on the other hand, was given to Yankees who fought with John Lovewell during Father Rale’s War . No one seems to know why it became Sweden in 1813.

French and German Protestants originally settled a Downeast town they called Frankfort. In 1794. Lincoln County Probate Judge Jonathan Bowman renamed the town Dresden because he liked the sound of it.

The Poland Springs House

Similarly, Moses Emery named the Town of Poland, home of the famous Poland Springs resort. As one of the early settlers elected to the General Court, he procured the town’s incorporation in 1795. The town’s residents rewarded him by letting him name it. According to the Poland Historical Society,

He had always had a peculiarity for an ancient melody called “Poland,” found in most of the collections of ancient psalmody.
The melody must have been running through his mind the day he considered names for the town, for it was Poland he chose.

Japheth Washburn had the privilege of naming another town. He wanted to call it Bloomville, but the people of Bloomfield, 25 miles away, objected. They thought the names sounded too similar. So, like Moses Emery, he chose China, the name of one of his favorite hymns.

Unsolved Mystery

The origin of the town of Norway, incorporated in 1797, remains a mystery. Originally the town petitioned the General Court to be called Norage, an Native American word for “falls.” But then fire destroyed the town records in 1843, so no one knows how Norage became Norway.

Norway, Maine, in 1912

Given the precedent of Maine place names, the General Court may have thought ‘Norage’ was a misspelling of Norway.

This story about Maine place names was updated in 2023.

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The Mysterious Death of Tobias Lear

Tobias Lear meticulously recorded the details of George Washington’s death, but was strangely silent about the events leading to his own.

Tobias Lear in the 1780s

As Washington’s personal secretary and confidante, Lear scrupulously chronicled the events of his own remarkable life, and yet he left some things unexplained.

Perhaps there are clues to his strange death in the story of his life. He knew four presidents, failed at land speculation, lived well in Algiers, wrote the first history of Washington, D.C., took a honeymoon aboard the USS Constitution and paid tribute to pirates. He married two of Martha Washington’s nieces.

George Washington liked, trusted and respected him, and we owe much of what we know about his personal life to Tobias Lear.

Tobias Lear, Secretary

Tobias Lear was born in Portsmouth, N.H., on Sept. 19, 1762, the son of a shipmaster turned farmer (the farm was located at the present site of Wentworth By The Sea).

Tobias Lear House in Portsmouth, N.H., built by Tobias Lear, Sr., around 1750.

He graduated from Harvard in 1783 as the American Revolution ended. He traveled in Europe and throughout the British colonies. In 1784, a family friend of the Lears and the Washingtons, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, recommended Tobias Lear as tutor to Martha’s grandchildren and secretary to George. Washington offered this job description:

Mr. Lear…will sit at my table, will live as I live, will mix with the company who resort to the house, will be treated in every respect with civility and proper attention. He will have his washing done in the family, and may have his stockings darned by the maids…

Site of Tobias Lear’s family farm

It was a big job. He had to catch up on Mount Vernon’s accounts, neglected after Washington spent a decade at war, and reply to a flood of correspondence.

After arriving in Virginia in 1786, Lear soon became Washington’s friend and right-hand man. When Washington was elected president in 1789, Lear moved with the family to New York, then to Philadelphia when the capital moved.

Lear married Mary Long in 1793. They had one child, Benjamin Lincoln Lear, and Washington acted as godfather. Mary died three years after their marriage.

Tobias Lear then married Frances Bassett Washington, George’s niece, in August 1795. Washington gave them a house and 360 acres of his Mount Vernon estate. The marriage lasted seven months, as Frances died of tuberculosis in March 1796. Lear was devastated.

Business Ventures

George Washington

He rejoined the Washington household, serving as the president’s secretary throughout his first term and submitting his expense reports to Congress. At the beginning of Washington’s second term, Lear left to start his own company and to work with Washington’s Potowmack Company to build a canal around the waterfalls in the Potomac River (now Great Falls Park). Lear lost money on the venture.

As his finances worsened he continued to work for Washington. He once collected rent from one of Washington’s tenants and kept the money himself. Washington was furious with Lear when he found out, but forgave him.

Lear also kept funds from a business partner for months and feigned illness to avoid repaying him. He eventually confessed, apologized and agreed to pay him back.

In late 1799, Lear visited Washington when the former president died. He recorded his famous diary entry:

About ten o’clock, Saturday December 14, 1799, Washington made several attempts to speak to me before he could effect it, at length he said,—”I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than two days after I am dead.” I bowed assent. He then looked at me again and said, “Do you understand me?” I replied “Yes.” “Tis well” said he.

Those were his last words. Lear followed Washington’s wishes to a T, even measuring his body at 6 feet 3.5 inches long and 1 foot 9 inches across the shoulders.

Washington left Tobias Lear a lifetime interest in Walnut Tree Farm. He spent the next year sorting through Washington’s papers, some of which went missing. Lear was accused of destroying the papers, including letters that could have damaged Thomas Jefferson.

To Africa and Back

Old Ironsides

Despite his bequest from Washington, Lear was still struggling financially. Jefferson did him a favor and appointed him to two potentially lucrative posts: American commercial agent in Haiti in 1802 and consul general to North Africa in 1804.

Before leaving for North Africa, Lear married Martha Washington’s niece, Francis Dandridge Henley. To the end of his life, he doted on Fanny.

While they sailed to Algiers on the USS Constitution, pirates seized another ship, the Philadelphia, and nearly 300 souls aboard. Lear negotiated their release in exchange for a substantial sum in the Treaty of Tripoli.

He was vilified for mishandling the negotiations.

The Lears spent nine profitable years in Algiers. Then Tobias fell out of favor with the dey, who had a habit of beheading people he didn’t like. Just as the War of 1812 broke out, the Lears fled to America.

James Madison

President James Madison gave Tobias a job as a secretary to the War Department, and he leased a house in Georgetown. He lived there with his beloved Fanny and his son Benjamin, now a lawyer.

He was apparently wealthy, happily married and well employed.

Or was he?

Lear suffered from headaches and depression. He was dogged by accusations about Washington’s papers and the Treaty of Tripoli. He had only reluctantly accepted his job as chief accountant for the U.S. War Department, having hoped for a Cabinet post.

On Oct. 11, 1816, Tobias Lear shot himself in the head with a pistol. His son Benjamin found him in his Georgetown home, the bloodied gun still in his hand. No note was found, nor did Lear leave an official will.

The mystery of his death remains to this day.

This story was updated in 2022.

Image: Tobias Lear House By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15203288.

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Italians in New England Declared Enemy Aliens in WWII

Angela Puleo was one of thousands of Italian immigrants stigmatized as enemy aliens by the government during World War II .

Two months after Mussolini declared war on the United States, the 51-year-old mother living in Boston’s North End was questioned, fingerprinted and photographed. Officials took her camera and made her carry a little pink ID booklet at all times.

Angelo Puleo went through all that despite having three sons — Charlie, Tony and Jack — on active duty in the military. Many Italian mothers like Angela pasted blue stars in their windows to show they had two, three or four sons fighting the war.

Charles Ruggiero, clerk in a grocery store in New York’s Italian section, wishes the handful of spaghetti he is breaking were Mussolini’s neck. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Enemy Aliens

As many as 500,000 Italian sons of immigrants served in the armed forces during World War II. But 600,000 Italian immigrants had not become U.S. citizens. The U.S. government therefore declared them enemy aliens. About 2,000 Italians were arrested and sent to internment camps in a little-known chapter of the Second World War.

The government treated Italians on the West Coast more harshly than their counterparts in the East. Many had to move inland. East Coast Italians had it a little better because their dense neighborhoods gave them political clout. Italians, after all, helped elect Fiorella LaGuardia mayor of New York City.

But still, Italians throughout the country carried the stigma of their classification as enemy aliens. They lost jobs because of curfews. The government shut down their Italian-language newspapers, and the U.S. Navy requisitioned their fishing yawls. They had to give up cameras and short-wave radios for military reasons.

Opera Singers?

The day after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began to impound the assets, bank accounts and homes of Japanese people on the West Coast.

Four days later, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini declared war on the United States. LaGuardia warned President Franklin Roosevelt he’d better not try it with Italians, threatening revolution. “You’re not going to do what you did to the Japanese. The Italians of the East Coast will form into a revolutionary army and we will march on Washington,” he said.

Attorney General Francis Biddle, in his book In Brief Authority, described how he told Roosevelt about plans to intern enemy aliens.

“And you’re going to intern all of them?” said the President in a tone that suggested he approved of the idea.

“Well, not quite,” replied Biddle.

“I don’t care about the Italians,” continued Roosevelt. “They are a lot of opera singers, but the Germans are different; they may be dangerous.”

Joining Up

Italian-Americans, in fact, were some of the bravest fighters in the war. Thirteen Italian-Americans won the Congressional Medal of Honor. Lt. Col. Henry Mucci of Bridgeport, Conn., won the Distinguished Service Medal for leading the daring rescue of American prisoners who had survived the Bataan Death March.

In Italian neighborhoods, young men rushed from street corners and taverns to enlist. Others got drafted. Italian families displayed satin flags in their windows, with blue stars for each son serving in the U.S. military. They replaced the blue star with a gold one when the son or brother died in the war. Italian mothers, like all American mothers, learned to dread the very sight of a telegram delivery boy.

Popular athletes like Rocky Marciano, Dom DiMaggio and his brother Joe enlisted in the military. The DiMaggios’ parents weren’t U.S. citizens, but the government didn’t intern them as enemy aliens. Doing so would probably have created a public outcry.

In February of 1942, Biddle issued the regulations for enemy aliens. Italians who were not U.S. citizens above the age of 14 had to go to the nearest post office to register.

Me Boom-Boom

Josie Patania, then living in Boston’s North End, remembered how her parents were classified as Italian enemy aliens.

I remember filling up an alien card every year for my mother and father. We were witnesses. Then we made my mother go for citizenship. We taught her how to write her name and to say George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. If she saw Mussolini, we said to shoot him. They actually asked her that question. She said, “Me boom-boom.”

Italian-Americans bent over backwards to prove their loyalty to the United States. In Milford, Mass., the Sons of Italy banned the Italian flag and the Italian language.

Hanoer Street in Boston’s North End.

That didn’t stop the government from deporting or interning certain classes of Italians. According to some estimates, about 2,000 Italians were interned by the War Relocation Authority; others place the number closer to 10,000. The unlucky enemy aliens included those who ran pro-Fascist Italian-language newspapers, members of the diplomatic corps, businessmen and students from Italy.

Pasquale DeCicco

Pasquale DeCicco, a prominent Italian-American resident of New Haven, had served as acting vice consul of the city’s Italian consulate. In May 1909, six years after his arrival in the United States, he became an American citizen. But during World War I, he enlisted in the Italian Army. The U.S. government held that against him in the Second World War, though Italy sided with America during the First.

Forty-two members of his family who had immigrated to the United States were all American citizens.

On April 24, 1942, the FBI came to the New Haven home where Pasquale DeCicco lived with his wife and daughter and arrested him. He was 63 years old. He sent letter after letter pleading his loyalty to his adopted country. The government confined him as an enemy alien in Hartford, in East Boston and then in Ft. McAlester in Oklahoma, where he lost 32 pounds. Unable to pay his mortgage, he lost his home.

Pasquale DeCicco didn’t go home until Dec. 10, 1943, after Italy surrendered.

The Italian fishing fleet in Boston. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Italian Fishing Fleet

Fisherman in Boston and Gloucester, Mass., bore the brunt of the war as well.

The U.S. government requisitioned fishing yawls from the fishing fleet in those two cities to use as minesweepers and patrol boats. At least 200 fishermen were grounded as enemy aliens during the war. The government either bought the vessels outright or chartered them.

Josie Patania remembered,

During the war, they took my father off the fishing boat. So he went to work in the spinach plant, washing the spinach. My brothers Carmelo, Angelo, and Vincent were all in the service at this time. Carmelo and Vincent weren’t even citizens. They swore them in before they went, Vincent to Normandy and Carmelo to the Philippines.

Some fishermen could keep their boats, but they had to jump through hoops to go fishing. Frank Firicano, a Boston fisherman and secretary of his union, remembered:

They had a sub net in Boston harbor too. Because there’s the Boston Navy Yard, and there were convoys leaving night and day from Boston. Eventually, they let us go fishing. We had to have a password each day, go to the Customs House to get clearance, a pass, and then on the way out, stop at a barge off Deer Island manned by the Coast Guard, and they would check out the boat to see we weren’t taking provisions to the Germans. We were allowed provisions for seven, which was our crew. There was the steel gate–it opened, but no one could get out after 5 pm. We had radio silence too; we had locks on the radios. Only in an emergency could you use it.

Columbus Day

On Columbus Day 1942, Attorney General Francis Biddle announced Italians living as long-term residents in the United States were removed from the list of enemy aliens. He had political reasons to do it. Italian immigrants made up an enormous voting bloc and congressional elections were coming up.

The United States was also about to invade Italy.

So the government lifted many restrictions on Italian enemy aliens. Angela Puleo could travel freely again, own a camera and throw away her little pink booklet.

She was one of the lucky ones. All three of her sons – Jack, Tony and Charlie – came home safely from the war.

This story about Italian enemy aliens was updated in 2023. Hanover Street image by By Bundesarchiv, Bild 137-047635 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5418684. With thanks to The Italian American Experience in New Haven by Anthony V. Riccio and Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II by Lawrence Distasi.

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Epitaphs Tell More Tales in New England’s Graveyards

The epitaphs in New England’s graveyards tell many tales. Carved into the chiseled stone are stories of people who lived long rich lives and babies who breathed only hours; lives tragically cut short by accident or misfortune and lives that grew weary.

Old Town Burying Ground, Sandwich, Mass.

Such a one was Roswell Stowell who died Dec. 2, 1875, age 60, in Chesterfield, N.H. His epitaph reads,

Let no one stand behind my grave,
Now that I am called to rest,
Nor shed a tear that I am gone,
For what I need is rest.

Rest from the weary load of care,
Rest from the wearing pain:
For Death shall ever be to me
An everlasting gain.

I know the road was bright and fair
Or once it seemed to be.
But it has changed so much of late,
It has few charms for me.

Soon Rotten

Mary Fowler probably wouldn’t have appreciated her epitaph upon her death at age 24 in Milford, Conn.

Molly tho’ pleasant in her day
Was suddenly seized and went away
How soon she’s ripe, how soon she’s rotten
Laid in her grave and soon forgotten.

Capt. E. Griffin, 1767, Madison, Conn., lies under this verse on his tombstone:

The Boreas’ blasts and Boistrous waves
Have tost me too and fro
In spite of both, by God’s decree
I harbor here below.

While I do now At Anchor ride
With many of our Fleet
Yet once again I must set Sail
My Admiral Christ to meet.

Another ship captain, Augustus N. Littlefield, who died at 75 in 1878 in Newport, R.I., had something else to boast about. His tombstone reads,

An experienced and careful master
Mariner who never made a call upon
Underwriters for any loss.

Ephraim Wales Bull, who developed the Concord grape, received no rewards for his effort — something his epitaph reflects:

Ephraim Wales Bull
The originator of the Concord Grape
Born in Boston March 4, 1806
Died in Concord September 26, 1895
He sowed, others reaped.

One epitaph in a Boston burying ground recounts the patriotic career of a Son of Liberty:

Here lies buried in a
Stone Grave 10 feet deep
Capt Daniel Malcom Mercht
Who departed this Life
October 23d 1769
Aged 44 Years.

A true son of Liberty
A Friend to the Publick
An Enemy to oppression
And one of the foremost
In opposing the Revenue Acts
On America

Editorializing

This epitaph is an artifact of the baby boom that populated the colonies:

Litchfield, Conn.
Here lies the body of Mrs. Mary wife
Of Dea. John Buel Esq. She died
Nov. 4 1768 AEtat. 90
Having had 13 children
101 grand-children
274 great-grand-children
49 great-great-grand-children
410 Total. 336 survived her.

And in Duxbury, Mass, a gravestone reads:

Asenath
Widow of
Simeon Soule
Died
Feb. 25, 1865
Aged
87 years, 11 mo.
19 days.

The Chisel can’t help her any.

Score-settling epitaphs were not uncommon. In Boston, one gravestone reads:

Here lies ye body of
Mrs. Ammey Hunt wife of
Mr. Benjamin Hunt
Who died Nov. 26, 1769
Aged 40 years.

A sister of Sarah Lucas lieth here,
Whom I did love most Dear,
And now her Soul hath took its Flight
And bid her Spightful Foes good Night.

Childrens’ Epitaphs

The many, many infants who died young sometimes inspired whimsical commentary:

Ezra Thayer Jackson died after 25 days in Plymouth, Mass., in 1783.
What did the Little hasty sojourner
Find so forbidding & disgustful in
Our upper World to occasion its
Precipitant exit.

In Manchester, Vt., a stone marked the grave of three children who died in 1821, 1823 and 1824:

Here in the dust 3 babes we
Sleep by our Father here
our Mother Brothers
Sisters dear have left us
alone to moulder here.

This epitaph was reported in Lincoln, Maine:

Sacred to the Memory of Mr
Jared Bates who Died Aug. the 6^th
His Widow aged 24 who mourns
as one who can be comforted lives
at 7 Elm street this village
and possesses every qualification for a good wife.

Before the American Revolution, epitaphs modeled after the medieval Edward the Black Prince’s were common. They said, essentially, “I may be dead, but you will be too.”

One such example is the tombstone of Daniel Noyes, who died in Newbury, Mass., on March 15, 1716 at the age of 42:

As you were, so was I
God did call and I did dy
Now Children all whos name is Noyes
Make Jesus Christ
Your only choyes.

Read more old New England epitaphs here.

With thanks to Over Their Dead Bodies, Yankee Epitaphs & History, by Thomas C. Mann & Janet Greene. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Smock Wedding, or Getting Married Naked in Early New England

Some brides in early New England actually got married while naked. Or maybe they just wore their underwear, or smock, which is how the custom earned the name of smock wedding.

They could get awfully cold during a January marriage ceremony.

But the smock wedding had its advantages. According to a custom that started in England, a groom possessed everything a bride owned — including her debts. Most likely, if she were a widow, she possessed her late husband’s financial obligations.

So a groom could avoid paying his betrothed’s debts by marrying her while she wore either her smock (a thin undergarment) or her birthday suit.

In 1917, Elmer W. Sawyer of the Maine Bar Association called the smock wedding, ‘a public declaration and warning to her creditors that she took no property to her husband which would render him responsible for her debts.’

“It is not known how effective smock weddings were in the face of a creditor,” historian Stephen Parker noted drily.

A Maine Smock Wedding

Historian Alice Morse Earle called the smock wedding ‘a vulgar error,’ and reported that it spread from Maine to Rhode Island.

In 1724, the Town of Westerly, R.I., recorded several smock weddings. And in 1767, John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman married in a smock wedding in Lincoln County, Maine.

Some Mainers also believed if the bride was married “in her shift on the king’s highway,” a creditor could follow her no farther in pursuit of his debt, according to Earle in Customs and Fashions in Old New England.

Such “smock marriages” took place in York, Maine, on the public highway. They often happened at night to preserve the bride’s modesty.

In February 1774, widow Mary Bradley wore only a smock when she met her bridegroom and the minister in York halfway between her house and the groom’s. The minister took pity on the shivering bride and threw his coat over her.

The bride must have had money.

The Vermont Version

In 1789, Maj. Moses Joy fell in love with Mrs. Hannah Ward, widow of William Ward. She was executor of her late husband’s insolvent estate; he was the constable of Putney, Vt.

Catherine Cornelia Joy Dyer recounted the story of their smock wedding in her 1876 volume, Brief History of the Joy Family: They wanted to avoid the unpleasant penalties of the law, she wrote.

“On the morning of her marriage with Major Joy Mrs. Ward placed herself in a closet with a tire-woman [lady’s maid] who stripped her of all her clothing,” wrote Dyer. “And when in a perfectly nude state she thrust her fair, round arm through a diamond hole in the door of the closet, and the gallant major clasped the hand of the buxom widow and was married in due form by the jolliest parson in Vermont.”

At the close of the ceremony the maid dressed the bride in a complete wardrobe the major had provided. He had it stored in the closet at the beginning of the ceremony. The bride emerged elegantly dressed in silk, satin and lace, and there was kissing all around.

A Few More Smock Weddings

In another Vermont smock wedding, the widow Lovejoy married Asa Averill while naked. She hid in a chimney recess behind a curtain.

There is also the story of the naked bride who climbed out a second-story window at night and stood on top of a ladder. After the ceremony she put on her wedding clothes.

The custom survived in old England as well. In 1775, the widow Judith Redding married Richard Elcock in a Winchester church wearing her shift. She took off the rest of her clothes in a pew.

This story about the smock wedding was updated in 2023. Thanks to Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England.

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