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Revere Mass.

Italian Thanksgiving, or How One Ethnic Group Resisted American Food

The Italian Thanksgiving in New England was and still is a piece de resistance – a masterpiece of Italian and American cooking. It’s also a result of Italian cooks who successfully resisted do-gooders trying to Americanize their food habits.

An Italian Thanksgiving in the Italian cities like Waterbury, Conn., or Providence, R.I., or Revere, Mass., typically started out with antipasti – thin slices of prosciutto, salami, mortadella along with black olives and crusty bread. Soup followed, maybe escarole or dumpling, and lasagna or ravioli. Then came the turkey, stuffed with Italian sausage, brown gravy, potatoes, squash and cranberry sauce, washed down with homemade wine or soda for the children. And then finally dessert! Pie, torrone, spumoni, panna cotta, candy almonds, hazelnuts – topped off with roasted chestnuts.

That was not what social workers had in mind for the new arrivals from Italy. They wanted to Americanize the Italian immigrants who lived in the crowded North Ends and Little Italys of New England. And they took special aim at their dietary preferences – without much success.

“The reformers could not budge Italians on culinary matters,” wrote Harvey Levenstein.

Fortunately.

Boston’s North End today

Lacking Nutrition

Between 1880 and 1920, four million Italian immigrants came to the United States, more than any other ethnic group. Many settled in New England, still the most Italian region in the country.

Most came from Southern Italy to escape extortionate taxes, disease, failed crops and the ravages of the Messina earthquake, which killed 10,000 Sicilians. They were often unskilled, illiterate and dirt poor. When they arrived in the United States, they crowded into tenement slums where tuberculosis ran rampant.

Reformers in the 1890s believed they could help the immigrants living in slums by teaching them sanitation, personal hygiene and household economics.

And they blamed Italian food, in part, for Italian troubles.

“They easily fall victim to tuberculosis, they crowd together in unhygienic tenements, and the food to which they are accustomed seems to lack nutrition sufficient to enable them to fight with vigor the difficulties besetting them,” according to an 1899 report of the Family Welfare Society of Boston.

Robert Woods, who ran the South End House in Boston, attributed an increase in death rates among Italian immigrants in 1904 to crowded tenements and ‘their over-stimulating and innutritious diet.’

new-haven-garment-workers-wooster-square

Welcome to New Haven’s Little Italy, Wooster Square

Poison Tomatoes

Throughout the 19^th century, Americans viewed the tomato, a staple of Sicilian cuisine, as dangerous. In 1880 the tomato’s reputation fell even further when scientific research revealed they caused cancer. Though that finding was quickly disproven, many continued to believe the tomato safe only in very small quantities.

Experts also tried to discourage the Italian love of fruits and vegetables. They didn’t know vitamins were a thing, and believed produce mostly consisted of water and cost too much. Good Housekeeping declared pork, a key ingredient in Italian sausage meat, as unhygienic. Spicy foods damaged the stomach, had no nutritional value and led to the excessive consumption of alcohol they thought. And garlic – Oh! The horror!

Reformers of the era believed food was more nutritious when cooked separately. A pamphlet for Italian immigrants warned that ‘it wasn’t right’ to cook meat, cheese, beans and macaroni together. Some people referred to their soups and stews as ‘pig wash.’

Pasta alla norma, a traditional Sicilian dish. Hardly pig wash.

The Local Store

The reformers were no match for the tidal wave of Italian immigrants and the food they brought with with them.

In Boston’s North End, Italian food became available by 1874, when Pietro Pastene opened a grocery store at 229 Hanover Street. Another Italian immigrant, Alessandro Badaracco, had moved to Boston before the Civil War and ran the biggest fruit business in the city. John Ponte started the Boston Macaroni Co. in 1890, and Prince followed soon after.

Reformers figured they could change Italian cooking habits by changing their shopping habits.

In 1911, Eva White, the head of Peabody House in Boston, complained about Italians shopping in such shops. “No matter what inducements the larger stores of the city offer they will trade with none but their own people.”

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

No Takers for Cooking Schools

Settlement houses held cooking classes for immigrants to teach them economy and proper food preparation. In the 1890s, the Denison House cooking school was popular among the Irish residents of Boston’s South End. But then when the Italians moved in and the Irish moved out, the cooking school attracted few students. The same thing happened with the Bennet Street settlement house in the North End. Irish immigrants flocked to its cooking school, but when the Italians moved in the cooking school had to close for lack of interest.

One despairing social worker commented in a report, “Not yet Americanized; still eating Italian food.”

U pizz’ di creanze

For their part, Italian immigrants viewed American food as disgusting. Doctors complained about Italians who refused admittance to hospitals because they thought the food unfit to eat.

Italians also attached great importance to the family rituals associated with eating Italian food.

Joanna Clapps Herman, who grew up in an Italian family in Waterbury, Conn., described one ritual: u pizz’ di creanze, the piece of politeness.

“If the last piece of anything is eaten, all the customs of politeness have been violated,” she wrote in The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America. “It means that the host hasn’t provided enough for all their guests to have as much as they wanted,” she explained. “It means that the guest is demonstrating this fact publicly. No matter how much the host presses her guests, no one is to take it.”

Instead of abandoning Italian food, Italian Americans simply added American ingredients to a traditional Thanksgiving for a belly-busting feast.

An Italian Thanksgiving

Ed Iannuccilli described his grandparents’ Italian Thanksgiving in their second-story tenement in Providence. They had come to the city from Italy in 1910.

“They may have been comforted when they learned that they shared something with those early settlers who long ago also arrived with fear, expectation and hope,” Iannuccilli wrote in the Providence Journal.

Their Italian Thanksgiving began after a thankful prayer. Then antipasto, hot dumpling soup and lasagna before Grandfather proudly carried in the turkey. And then a couple of fruit pies, torrone, nuts and chestnuts for dessert.

The feast may have been Italianized, wrote Iannuccilli. “But it was now clearly American.”

Here is a menu the DeFinis and Diioria families from Norwalk, Conn., still serve (thanks to Brooke Dojny):
Cold Antipasti
Ravioli Soup
Home-Style Lasagne
Roast Turkey with Bread Stuffing and Homemade Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Candied Sweets
Boiled Diced Turnips
Green Beans Almondine
Steamed Broccoli
Sausage-Stuffed Mushrooms
Date-Nut Bread
Italian Bread
Green Salad
Chocolate Cream Pie
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s latest ebook. Available from Amazon (click here).

Old school Italian Thanksgiving by Paul Altobelli, creative commons license. Boston North End By Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27355267; Pasta alla Norma By Paoletta S. – Pasta alla Norma, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4992962.

With thanks to The American Response to Italian Food, 1880-1930, by Harvey Levenstein in the Food in the USA reader. This story last updated in 2022.

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Wonderland, Revere’s Brief, Brilliant Million-Dollar Amusement Park

In 1903 and 1904 the face of American public amusement changed with the successful opening of two new parks in Coney Island: Luna Park, which replaced Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park, and Dreamland, originally to be called Wonderland. Together with Steeplechase Park, they gave the relatively small Brooklyn district a high concentration of state-of-the-art attractions and rides.

Entrance to Wonderland through the Administration Building on Walnut Street, as it appeared in 1906.

Entrepreneurs in other cities saw the large crowds drawn by such parks and the potential profits. And so they started to construct their own amusement parks. They often named them after the Coney Island parks, with the result that Luna Parks, Steeplechase Parks, Coney Islands and Wonderlands blossomed across the country.

Because they all wanted the same high-draw popular rides, the parks were superficially very similar. Most had more than one of the popular attractions from the Coney Island parks. Those included a Shoot the Chutes water ride plunging into a central lagoon. They also had a LaMarcus A. Thompson Scenic Railway, a Tower of Light, a Fighting the Flames show and a Wild Animal Show.

The Wonderland Park that went up in Revere was another of these enterprises that hoped to cash in on such appropriated glory. Revere’s Wonderland, however, was larger and more impressive than most.

Revere’s Wonderland

It got its start with John Joseph Higgins, a real estate agent and a recent transplant to Chelsea, Mass., from Savannah, Ga. Higgiins managed to obtain almost 25 acres of land near Revere Beach. Located near the new narrow gauge railway, it was easily accessible from Boston – much more so than Norumbega Park to the west or the newly-opened Paragon Park on Nantasket Beach in Hull.

There were already amusements going up along the recently refurbished Revere Beach Boulevard, and Coney Island had shown the advantages of concentrating the amusements in one central location.

Somehow Higgins made the acquaintance of Floyd C. Thompson, who had spearheaded an attempt to build the largest amusement park in the world in Coney Island. Thompson bought up Steeplechase Park and nearby property. He intended to tear down most of the amusements and construct a completely new park.

The deal fell through when the consortium he put together could not raise enough funding to complete the purchase. This left Thompson and his co-investors on the edge of bankruptcy. But the experience left Thompson with contacts for performers, crowd-pleasing acts and architects of rides. He threw himself into the construction of Wonderland Park in Revere, lining up railroad and mining magnates as investors and contacting ride inventors.

A photograph of the Shooting the Chutes ride from the Wonderland Souvenir Book. You can see how the boat leaps into the air.

The Rides

The centerpiece of the park was, as in many of these parks, a Shoot the Chutes ride. A light skiff was drawn up a long ramp to a tower at the top, then released with a lubricating base of water. The boat would achieve such a high speed sliding down the ramp that it would skip across the surface of the lagoon like a stone. Thompson managed to acquire the largest Shoot the Chutes ride in the world, built for the 1904 St. Louis exposition. It had two tracks, so that boats could be released alternately from each side.

The front of the LaMarcus A Thompson Scenic Railway (which was next to the Beautiful Orient).

Revere Beach already had a Scenic Railway ride, but it was not constructed by the originator of that ride, LaMarcus Adna Thompson (no relation to Floyd). Floyd Thompson visited the Thompson Scenic Railway company and arranged to bring the first Thompson Scenic Railway to Massachusetts. The ride featured a railway track that undulated up and down with a gentle sinusoid rather than the high plunges and sudden turns that characterized later roller coasters. It took passengers to a separate building that housed dioramas of scenes from Venice and Vesuvius and other places around the world. Then it returned them along the undulating track to their starting point.

Descent Into Hell Gate

One of the most popular attractions of the St. Louis exposition had been the ride Creation, invented by magician-turned-ride inventor Henry Roltair. Dreamland at Coney Island had installed a somewhat reduced version of the ride. Wonderland attempted to obtain the rights to a copy of Creation, but the deal fell though.

The front of the Descent into the Hell Gate Ride.

They ended up with their own copy of another Dreamland attraction instead: Attilio Pusterla’s Descent into the Hell Gate. This ride took the passengers on a boat through a spiral track toward a center point where it dropped suddenly down into a lower level. The lower level was decorated as a cave populated by demons and mythological creatures. The riders disembarked and were brought to the throne of Satan himself, before emerging back into the sunlight.

Top view of the Descent into the Hell Gate ride from Attilio Pusterla’s patent, showing the spiral track the boats ran on (and, in dashes, the “underground” path they took after they dropped down).

Fighting the Flames

Another feature, virtually essential in amusement parks, was the Fighting the Flames show. This, too, had been a hit at the 1904 St. Louis fair. Both Luna Park and Dreamland at Coney Island imitated the show. They opened their copies within a few weeks of each other.

The “Fighting the Flames” postcard. This color postcard is a drawing, but it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of the “set”, judging from photographs, and it depicts the show as it must have appeared during a night show.

Thompson contacted the leading theatrical agent in New York to get the talent to build his own. The show featured an entire city square constructed in an amphitheater with 3,500 seats. Twice a day, actors would stage a street scene, in the midst of which a fire would break out. Real retired and off-duty firemen would then rush in with examples of the latest fire-fighting and rescue gear to put out the faux conflagration.

Wonderland also had a Hale’s Tours, a sort of virtual reality ride. Patrons sat in a replica of a Pullman railroad car and watched a motion picture of a railroad journey, seen from the point of view of the engine, projected on the front wall. The amusement park also had a ballroom and restaurant, a wild animal show, a circus ring and an infant incubator exhibit. It had a Japanese Village, complete with a miniature Mt. Fuji, and a Beautiful Orient Near Eastern attraction with camels, a bazaar and belly dancers).

The Japanese Village, including its own miniature Mt. Fuji. The attraction features a Japanese torii gate, several bridges, tea shops, a jiu-jitsu demonstration, and a lecture on the recent Russo-Japanese war.

Changes

The attractions at Wonderland didn’t stay static. The circus acts changed every week, for example. The theater that housed Gillette’s Dog and Monkey Circus the first month was used for the musical revue The South Before the War for the rest of the summer.

The Beautiful Orient attraction as it appeared in 1906. If you look closely you can see a camel in front (the exhibit had a camel barn in the back). The banners hanging in the archways read “Turkish Wrestlers”. The attraction also featured “muscle dancers, which we would call “belly dancers,” and were considered scandalous at the time.

Even larger changes occurred from year to year. Although the large attractions – Shoot the Chutes, Hell Gate, the ballroom – remained every year, many of the others changed. So for the second year The Beautiful Orient gave way to the Florida Alligator Jungle (despite keeping its domes and minarets). The South Before the War became Willard’s Temple of Music, an attraction called The Fatal Wedding (a magic illusion) was replaced by a giant glass-walled water tank called Under the Sea.

The next year Willard’s Temple of Music became Paradise – The Show Beautiful. Under the Sea became Pilgrim’s Progress (a funhouse), and the Florida Alligator Jungle became Darktown. For that third season, the Fighting the Flames show was replaced by Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show.

Panic of 1907

By the end of the third season, however, Wonderland was virtually bankrupt. A large part of the reason was the Panic of 1907, a recession on the same scale as the more recent one of 2008. It sapped discretionary income and many amusement parks around the country, their business drying up, were forced into bankruptcy as well. Revere’s Wonderland was able to keep going with some financial sleight of hand. With some severe belt tightening, they were able to keep Wonderland going, and actually turned a profit in 1909. But the park continued to decline, possibly because so much of the park had to be shuttered, but also because it was not directly on Revere Beach, and was losing business to attractions along the Boulevard. Wonderland closed at the end of the 1910 season.

Cover of the 1906 Souvenir Book. The painting on the cover is from early 1906 and represents the park as it was then visualized, not as it was when built. But it’s very close in appearance. Things such as the large fountain in the foreground and the large round building on the right were never constructed.

It was not an uncommon fate. Of six amusement parks named “Wonderland” that had opened in the United States in 1905 or 1906, five had closed by 1911. The original park that gave these their name – Dreamland in Coney Island – was in financial straits in 1910. It finally closed when a fire started, ironically in that park’s Descent into the Hell Gate ride. The resulting conflagration destroyed the entire park.

Fireproof

That would not have happened at Revere Wonderland’s Hell Gate ride. Revere’s park had been especially constructed to be fireproof. It had non-flammable materials where possible, asbestos sheeting between walls, fire-resistant roofing materials and plenty of fire hydrants. It also had its own in-house fire department, separate from the one used in the Fighting the Flames show.

The leading fire insurance magazine of the day wrote those features up as an example of safe and fireproof construction. In its five years of operation Wonderland never suffered a serious fire. But that still couldn’t preserve it from bankruptcy.

The author of this story, Stephen R. Wilk is a scientist, engineer and author who lives in Saugus. His previous books include Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon and How the Ray Gun got its Zap!, both from Oxford University Press. He also writes genre fiction and a semiregular column for the Optical Society of America.

Check out more pictures of Wonderland at www.lost-wonderland.com. You can purchase Lost Wonderland: The brief and Brilliant Life of Boston’s Million-Dollar Amusement Park by Stephen R. Wilk from the University of Massachusetts Press or from book stores like bookshop.org.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Maurice Lerner, the Brookline Mobster Hired To Kill Fidel Castro

Maurice Lerner grew up in Brookline, Mass., and as a young man he was astute, polite and athletic. His athletic prowess landed him a baseball career that spanned 10 years playing second and third base and outfield. But it peaked at double-A ball, played out in tiny stadiums across the country.

Lerner had earned the nickname “Pro” – supposedly short for little professor – because of his studious nature as a kid. And in baseball he had a reputation as an early advocate of diet and fitness training in an era when most ballplayers relied purely on talent and genetics to keep them in the game.

But by the time his career wound down in 1962 and 1963, Lerner was moving into a life of crime. He knew how to induce fear in people, first with a baseball bat and later with a gun.

Maurice Lerner built a “shooting gallery” in his basement to practice his marksmanship. His demeanor and efficiency soon brought him to the attention of the New England Mafia, led by Providence’s Raymond Patriarca. In 1962, Lerner got his first taste of big-time crime.

The Plymouth Postal Robbery

As of Aug. 14, 1962, when it happened, the Great Plymouth Mail Robbery was the largest robbery ever. Though all the details aren’t known (nor will they ever be), it played out roughly as follows: George “Aggie” Agisotelis got the idea of robbing a mail truck. One specific mail truck.

Aggie had watched the truck perform its routine run from Cape Cod up to Boston. On certain days it was loaded with cash traveling from the banks on the Massachusetts South Shore to the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. He knew just the spot to hijack the truck (which had no security) and just the guys to help him do it.

He reached out to John “Red” Kelley, a bank robber known for his precision bank jobs. They assembled a team of at least six men. Knocking off the mail truck was a breeze. One gangster, posing as a cop, flagged down the truck. The other cars then surrounded it. Gunmen held two postal employees at bay with machine guns, and the crew scooped the bags of cash – more than $1.5 million – into the waiting cars.

Maurice “Pro” Lerner probably belonged to the gang, though he was never charged. Aggie and Red were, and they got off, but only after one member of the gang disappeared – Thomas Richards. The gang didn’t think he would stand up under questioning and Lerner shot him.

Patriarca Affiliation

For several years Pro Lerner and Red Kelley formed a formidable team. Red was precise and disciplined. Pro was calm and smart. Police suspected that Red Kelley took part in planning for the Brink’s Job, but backed out when he didn’t like the way the plan shaped up.

Pro was getting more work and attention from the Patriarca crime family as his reputation for violence grew. Vincent Teresa became his contact with the family. Lerner was asked to kill two men – Rudolph Marfeo and Anthony Melei – who were interfering with Patriarca gambling operations.

Lerner recruited Red Kelley to help with the getaway planning. Raymond Patriarca was growing frustrated at the pace Kelley’s careful planning required. “I don’t want to hear any stories, I just want him [Marfeo] killed,” Patriarca said, ignoring his usual dislike for public spectacle.

Murder in Broad Daylight

So on April 20, 1968 Lerner and another gunman murdered the two bookmakers in the middle of the afternoon in Pannone’s supermarket on Pocasset Avenue in Providence. The public nature of the shooting put intense pressure on police to make arrests, and luckily they now had an edge.

Red Kelley, at age 55 and with a long criminal history, had been implicated in another robbery. Facing the prospect of a long prison term, he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. And at the top of his list of people to give up was Pro Lerner.

Maurice Lerner frightened Red Kelley. The younger Lerner, 34, was too violent. Kelley laid out exactly what happened in the shooting, right down to the route they planned for their getaway, and he was convincing. His testimony not only put away Lerner and the rest of those directly involved, it also put Raymond Patriarca behind bars.

Patriarca would be out of prison after serving a few scant years for his conspiracy conviction. But Lerner faced two life sentences for the murders. He would serve 20 years before he was even eligible for parole.

Maurice Lerner, Hit Man

About the same time that Red Kelley put Pro Lerner in prison, another member of the Patriarca crime family left the fold. Vincent Teresa, 325-pound “Fat Vinnie,” was a lieutenant in the organization. The Revere, Mass., boy rose up in the ranks of the Mafia and ran a number of operations for the mob, though he claimed he never killed anyone.

In 1966, one of Patriarca’s hit men, Joseph Barboza, had started cooperating with the federal prosecutors. Federal marshals decided to stash Barboza on Thacher Island off the coast of Gloucester. The small island with distinctive twin lighthouses is actually part of Rockport, Mass. With Barboza out of reach, Patriarca ordered Teresa to find a way to get him.

1928 police photo of Raymond Patriarca (Providence Library)

Teresa took Pro Lerner out on his yacht, The Living End, and they circled the island while marshals stood their ground on the shore armed with shotguns. Teresa and Lerner realized they had lost any element of surprise. Outnumbered, they had no chance of successfully getting a shot at Barboza. Lerner and Teresa discussed a sneak attack. Lerner could swim to the island in scuba gear and try to catch Barboza off guard, but they quickly discarded that plan as impractical.

Soon, with Lerner and Patriarcia battling murder charges, Teresa was having his own troubles. By 1969 he was making most of his money by leading gambling trips. Casinos paid him a share of the money lost by the high rollers he brought in. But Teresa also had come in contact with a man who could steal securities. Teresa helped sell the stolen stocks and bonds for a share of the profit.

Joey Barboza

Vincent Teresa Turns

When the stolen securities racket was broken up, Teresa initially kept quiet and went to prison peacefully. He began living the luxurious life in federal prison afforded to Mafiosi, rubbing shoulders with the likes of future New York Mafia don John Gotti. But soon Teresa learned some news that irritated him.

While he had done his duty and headed off to prison, he learned that other members of the Patriarca family were not playing by the rules. They had taken money (he claimed $4 million) that Teresa had stashed away for his family’s use while in prison. With that, Fat Vinnie became a government witness. And what stories he told. Fat Vinnie testified at more than a dozen trials that convicted his fellow mobsters.

Fifty-one indictments were tied to him, though he didn’t always succeed as a witness. Occasionally, his testimony didn’t add up. In 1978, he finally told his biggest shocker.

The Castro Contract

Rolling Stone Magazine got tangled up in a libel case in 1978 over an article that identified a casino as being connected to the Mafia. Teresa had to testify in the case. In a 300-page deposition, Teresa answered a question about Mafia involvement with the CIA, specifically the idea of assassinating Castro.

“I was there when the information came in for Henry (Tamaleo) and Raymond (Patriarca) and they picked Maurice (Pro) Lerner to do the work. This is the story that was told to Henry and Raymond, to whack out Fidel Castro and the man that was picked was . . . Lerner.”

Fidel Castro

Tamaleo and Patriarca were indeed mafia leaders. But was the story true? Patriarca was blunt in his denial to the Boston Herald American: “If you believe anything Teresa says you have to be crazier than he is. He hustled his mother for $2 and if you believe him, then you are crazy . . . I never knew Pro Lerner until they framed him like they framed me.”

Maurice Lerner, still serving time in jail, gave a simpler response: “The accusation isn’t true.”

So where is the truth? It’s well documented that the CIA, in the overheated days of the 60s, did reach out to the Mafia to discuss assassinating Castro. The agency hatched many plans (some of them comically absurd) to go after the Cuban dictator.

As for the CIA negotiations with the Mafia, the discussions were between Robert Maheu – the Waterville, Maine, boy who rose up to be a CIA operative and Howard Hughes’ right hand man – and Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia boss. And the Mafia, ousted from Cuba by Castro’s coup, certainly had no love for the dictator.

Model Prisoner

Red Kelley told one of his protectors, former U.S. Marshal John Partington, that he knew of the plan to assassinate Castro and had been approached about participating along with Maurice Lerner. But did Giancana reach out to Rhode Island and Lerner? Lerner was a significant enough underworld figure that a congressional committee investigating the assassination of President Kennedy subpoenaed and reviewed his CIA files. Still, the trail of evidence grows cold, and there were never many reliable sources in the matter to begin with.

All the parties to the story died long ago. Maurice Lerner got out of prison and led a crime-free life, detailed in a New York Times profile. The story portrayed a model prisoner who spent his final days reliving memories of his baseball career. Teresa would write three books about his Mafia life. By the end he was angry at his treatment by the government. Still, much of his insider information was valid and useful.

This story about Maurice Lerner was updated in 2022.

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The Colonial Slade Mill Starts a Spice Empire in Revere, Mass.

When David and Levi Slade went into business with their father at his Slade mill in 1837, they had an idea. In addition to grinding corn and tobacco, why not grind spices – which were mainly sold in bulk and had to be processed at home?

The boys ground a test batch – a half a barrel of cinnamon – and carried it to the markets in Boston. Turned out people liked the labor saving convenience of having spices preground and delivered in small amounts, and the Slades were in a new business.

David and Levi came to the spice business via their father Henry. The Slade’s Mill was on the border of Chelsea and Revere, and it was the surviving portion of the original mill built in 1735 at the request of the citizens of Chelsea. Over the years, the mill changed hands several times and was destroyed by fire, but it always fulfilled its initial mission of standing ready to grind the corn of any citizen of Chelsea. In exchange for grinding the corn, the mill owner received a “Miller’s Dole” – a percentage of the corn he ground.

The Slade Mill

The mill was one of several tide mills dotting the New England coast – an innovation that some say originated in the area. Tide mills worked by using a set of flood gates. When the tide surged in, the flood gates swung open to allow the ocean water to fill the marsh and mill pond. When the tide turned and began to exit the marsh, the gates closed, trapping the water. From this impounded water the mill drew off a steady stream to turn its machinery – similar to the way a mill on a river used the flow to drive its works.

David Slade

In 1775 the mill provided a footnote to the American Revolution. One of the earliest naval engagements of the war took place near the mill, and its gates prevented the British from sailing up Mill Creek and coming within firing range of Chelsea.

Henry Slade had bought into the mill in 1827, and the innovation introduced in his time was the grinding of tobacco into snuff to supplement corn. As Henry’s children David, Levi and Charles took an interest in the business, they – especially David – wanted to let their new ideas and ambition increase the business.

For one year, Henry turned the mill over to the hard-working David, who increased the mill’s profits to $500 until the older generation stepped back in. But soon David took charge again, creating the D & L Slade Co. with brother Levi. It would for more than 100 years turn out spices for New England home and professional kitchens.

Counterfeiting

In popularizing the grinding of spices, Slade actually introduced into the spice trade an expanded opportunity for crooks to begin selling fake spices. Counterfeiting was long a problem with spices, as the legend of the Connecticut nutmeg highlights, because they commanded such handsome prices.

Spices already ground afforded counterfeiters an easier way to profit. Rather than having to fake an actual spice, the counterfeiters could simply adulterate the spice with a filler or other substance when they processed it and boost profits this way.

Slade, with his insistence on purity, turned this practice to his advantage. He used the dependability of his mill and his family’s reputation for honesty as a marketing tool to set the company apart from competitors. From 1850 to the mid-1900s Slade became the largest spice company in New England with trading partners around the world and a factory and offices in Boston.

And Then, Bell’s

In 1918 Slade would make the investment that keeps its legacy alive today. It bought out the Bell’s Seasoning Company. In 1867, William Bell had begun selling his blend of poultry seasoning through his market in Boston. Bell had started as a grocer in Lowell, Mass. before moving south to Boston where he could buy spices directly off the ships arriving in port.

Over the next 40 years Bell continually expanded the popularity of his Bell’s Seasoning – a blend of rosemary, ginger, oregano, sage and marjoram – until his sudden death at age 76. Sensing opportunity, Slade purchased the brand, but wisely did nothing to change the name or formula. Instead, he incorporated Bell’s into his own lineup, which had expanded to baking powders, cumin, pepper and a wide range of spices. The company promoted them in its own cookbook.

The Slade name finally disappeared from the grocery shelves in the 1970s when the Slade family sold the company. Only the Bell’s brand name remains today – touted by a wide range of cooks as still the best poultry seasoning for a Thanksgiving turkey.

The Slade Mill, though, still lives on. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, its owners converted it to apartments in 2004.

Hat tip to: The Spice Mill on the Marsh by Thomas P. Smith. This story was updated in 2022.

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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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Maurice Prendergast Paints New England at Play

The much-loved American artist Maurice Prendergast once wrote in his notebook,

Art is the great stimulus of life -I find it year by year more rich, more desirable, and more mysterious.

Revere Beach, ca. 1896. Private collection.

He found much richness outdoors in New England, especially during the summertime.

His art featured familiar scenes of parks and beaches, holidays, festivals and picnics. But his paintings resembled delicate mosaics more than the representational art then popular in the United States.

Marblehead, ca. 1914-15. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art.

Maurice Prendergast was one of the first American painters to paint in a manner inspired by the French Post-Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Paul Cezanne.

Maurice Prendergast

He and his twin sister Lucy were born in a subarctic trading post in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Oct. 10, 1858. (Perhaps that’s why light and summer attracted him so.) The trading post failed and the family moved to Boston’s South End. He then left school at 14. Prendergast was apprenticed to a commercial artist who painted show cards – advertising point-of-sale displays. By the time he reached 24, he could support himself painting flat, colorful advertisements — much the way his art would look.

Boston, Snowy Day. ca. 1910. Private collection.

His brother Charles, an artist with whom he was close, said he always knew he wanted to be an artist and he didn’t let anything get in his way. Back then, one generally studied in Europe if one wanted to pursue art. The brothers in 1886 worked their way to England on a cattle boat.

Nantasket Beach, ca. 1896. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Maurice then saved enough money to go to Paris, where he studied for four years. He was exposed to James McNeill Whistler, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Edgar Degas and Claude Manet.

When he returned to Boston in 1895 he had some modest success. By 1897 he acquired patrons who sent him to Italy to work for several years. But he suffered from poor health, and he’d lost nearly all his hearing by the time he returned home.

Maine Beach, ca. 1913. Private collection.

Back in New England, he painted in watercolor on the coast in summer, then recast his work in oil in the winter. He especially liked Revere Beach, Marblehead, the South Boston Pier and the Boston Public Garden.

Salem Willows, ca. 1904. Terra Museum of American Art.

His naïve, cheerful paintings sold well, and he began to exhibit in New York to find a wider audience. But not everyone liked his work.

Autumn in New England, ca. 1913, Private collection.

The Eight

In 1908 he exhibited with a renegade group of artists called The Eight. One critic dismissed his paintings as ‘artistic tommy-rot, unadulterated slop, the show would be better if it were that of The Seven rather than The Eight.’ Another compared his work with ‘an explosion in a color factory.’

Merry Go Round Nahant, ca. 1901. Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.

Eventually he moved to New York City, where he often painted Central Park scenes. He continued to work in New England in the summers.

Low Tide at Beachmont, ca. 1905, Worcester Art Museum.

Maurice Prendergast died on Feb. 1, 1924.

This story was updated in 2022.

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