www.ellisislandrecords.org is the official web site of the American Family Immigration History Center. It’s a superb site that is rich in both visual design and content. It’s attractive, easy to navigate, and offers an array of services. Not only can you find the names of your ancestors in their records, but you can also find the dates of their departure and arrival, the name of the ship they were on, their country of origin, and the place they would be living upon their arrival!

The site also provides a multitude of other services. You can create a digital family scrapbook, view a picture of the ship your ancestor/s arrived on, peruse a list of related links, read some family histories, learn more about immigration, and browse through the Family History Gift Shop.

The first time I visited the Ellis Island Records web site I felt like a kid in a candy store. It was so exciting to be able to search through the records of the 12 million immigrants who entered America through Ellis Island’s doors from 1892 to 1954—and in a matter of minutes! Much to my surprise and delight, after entering my grandparents’ names into the data base I found records confirming that my maternal grandparents had, in fact, come through Ellis Island. Previously, my mother believed they had arrived through Boston. It was such an exciting moment to see my grandparents' names on the ship’s manifest. I had discovered an important piece of my family history. What an unexpected gift!

The Ellis Island Records web site is worth visiting time and time again. It is one of my favorite family history sites. I highly recommend it!

The following life story is based on an oral history interview Anita conducted in 1999 for her Master’s Thesis--Growing up and Growing Old in Boston’s North End: An Oral History Approach to a Study of Italian-American Women.

Mary is a small “never-married” ninety-year-old woman with a gentle voice and an affable disposition. Except for the fact that she walks with a cane she seems to be in fairly good health for her advanced age. Mary has lived her entire life in the North End and is currently residing in a low-income apartment complex reserved predominantly for elderly North End residents. Having never married, she lived much of her life with her father and/or siblings. Although most of Mary’s immediate relatives have died, she continues to maintain a very strong bond with her remaining family members.

Mary’s parents came from the same town in the region of Avellino, located near Naples in southern Italy. They emigrated to America at an early age and came directly to the North End where they met, and married. Both parents were illiterate, and neither learned to speak English with any fluency. Mary’s father was a plasterer’s assistant and her mother cared for the family’s seven children. When she was twelve, Mary’s mother died from influenza, leaving Mary and two siblings to rear the youngest four children.

Mary’s narrative is a litany of loss, pain, illness and death; but it is also one of familial love and reciprocity, caregiving, pride, and family cohesion. Although she spent much of her life sacrificing for her family, Mary never expressed resentment or bitterness during the interviews. On the contrary, she exhibited great pride in her family and in her ability to sustain them, and herself, during times of crisis.

Mary is a “natural” storyteller. Her memories are vivid and her narrative is rich in detail. During much of the interview she spoke slowly, poignantly, wistfully and, occasionally, painfully--as if she were reliving the memories she was recounting. Reminiscent of an actor “going in and out of character,” she often expressed the emotions—and used the vocal intonations—appropriate to the story she was relating.

Mary’s storytelling became particularly animated when she talked about her family, which she did quite frequently. In fact, oftentimes when I asked Mary a question about herself she would answer briefly, almost curtly, and then begin another detailed story about one of her relatives. Her life has been so inextricably intertwined with her family--particularly her siblings--that her narrative focuses as much on their lives as it does on her own. In a very real sense, Mary’s life narrative is the narrative of her family.

At my request, Mary started each session by showing me family photographs. This allowed us to ease into the interview and seemed to stimulate memories as well. The pictures also provided a place for her to begin her narrative. As she related stories about her siblings Mary gently and lovingly caressed each of their photographs.

I was born September 6, 1906....When my mother died I was twelve. I don’t know if you heard about the influenza epidemic of 1918. We were seven children going to school. My mother was the type who even if she was sick she was up. She wasn’t the type who would stay in bed and all that….So, she got a cold, she took sick. Vinnie was four months old. Of course, she must have been weak. And then, you know, the Italian ladies. In the fall they start preserving tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and all that. She must of got cold and she got sick. She only was sick about a week. She got pneumonia [pauses] and she died. She left seven children. My sister [pauses to show pictures] was fourteen. She was two years older than me, when my mother died. And I was second; and I was twelve. So, my mother died. [My sister] was fourteen. And of course, it was the influenza time and people were dying like flies, right here in the North End, everywhere. It was an influenza epidemic....

When [my mother] took sick the doctor came and said, “I think you should go to the hospital.” She cried. She didn’t want to go. But she didn’t go. She died. She died at home. I was there. There were candles, the priest came and gave her the last rites. The candles were all around her bed, she had the saints all on the bureau...And Vinnie was in the crib, crying, crying. Because he was a breast [fed] baby, and she was sick. She couldn’t [nurse], but still she wanted to. She heard the baby cry and she wanted the baby, to nurse it. She couldn’t, she was so sick….

My sister started to take over [care of the children] right away. But Vinnie, he was only four months old. He was so young. My sister was fourteen and I was only twelve. What did we know about bringing up [a baby]? I don’t know how they got the [information]. I don’t know if the undertaker reported that a mother died and left seven children. And they came in and, you know, investigated....Those days they were from the State House, but they were kind of a social worker. I don’t know how they found out that we were seven children. How they found out I don’t know. Because we never reported anything. So they came over and they seen the condition of the house and my father, if he was staying home at night, if he was working, if we were helping one another, and if we had food, things like that.

And they put Vinnie in one of these, it must have been a foster home. They took the baby [Vinnie] because he took sick. He caught cold and they had to take him to the hospital. From the hospital they took him to a foster home. They came and told us what happened, that from the hospital they were going to bring him [to the foster home]....We had no relatives, nobody to [help]. So, Vinnie went to a home in Reading. And of course, as soon as we heard where he was, right away we went to see him. And from then on we kept visiting him on Sundays. My father would be home and we’d go visit him and all that.

Then when he was about, I think about three years old, we figured we were able to take care of him, my sister and I. We went to report that we wanted him [back]. Those [foster parents] fell in love with him. They wanted to adopt him. My father said “No.” He said, “He’s coming back home.” So he came back home when he was about [three]. Now, he came back home and there we were--seven children all together. Of course, when my sister turned fourteen, she went to work. She went up to the eighth grade, and then she went to work....Of course, I still had to go to school until fourteen. So I went to school and my sister stayed home from fourteen to sixteen. She did a wonderful job….

When I was fourteen I got a home permit to stay home [from school]. The school didn’t want me to leave school. They wanted me to continue, but my father said he couldn’t afford to take care of the family and all that. He was working....Instead of having a working permit, they gave me what they called a home permit. So I stayed home and all that. And I was taking care of the house, shopping, cooking, cleaning the house. In them days there was no laundries, you know. No laundry like there is now. Everything was by hand. But although my sister had got married and all that, she was always with us, you know. Then she started having children. She had two children. She was with us all the time. And we were together, all the holidays we spent together and all that there.

Then the Depression in 1938 broke out, and times were bad. And I had to learn how to be economical, to feed everyone. I had three brothers--one, two, three--and a father to feed. And of course my sister helped me. Because my father, at the beginning, he was telling my sister what to do, and I was watching what to do, and I followed. She was a good teacher, she was good and all that there.

[During the Depression my father] was working with the WPA. And they were only giving $12.50 a week. He worked with the WPA. He couldn’t find any other work, and neither [could] the boys. But this brother here [Mary’s voice wavers]--he’d go and shine shoes and everything. He had customers and they would give him tips and he’d bring the money home to us. And that helped. He helped all he could, all that there. And we managed. Because I was shopping, and I’d be with the married women who had families. I’d see what they would buy, and we would talk. I was so young, but still I was always talking with married women. And what they would buy--and it kind of came to me. It just came to me, and all that….I mean, we did it....We did what we had to do. That’s it! You got up in the morning and you did it. You didn’t look at it and say, “Oh, what are we going to do? This and that.” You just started to go ahead and do it....

Then after World War II broke out, the government took all three boys. They took all three boys, and I was left with my father. But, do you know what I did? I went up to the [draft] board, and I told them, I says, “My father is the only one working.” I never worked because I kept house and all that there. Now, on the board was a Judge, Judge Sotelli. He was Italian. And there were others too. So, the judge said to me, “You stayed home on your accord.” Because I wasn’t getting paid, you know. My father wasn’t paying [me] anything. I stayed on my own accord. I could buy for myself, but most of the time I had to put the money on the food. And my father would take care of the rent and the bills, you know. I says, “What is my father going to do when you’re taking the three boys away from him?” And he says to me, “You wanted to do it. You could have went to work.” Italian! He did say that! I’ll never forget those words. He says to me, “You stayed home.” Which I did....I saw them all as young boys, you know, so….

There was Leonardi, a dentist from the North End. He was on the board. He looked at me [sympathetically]. Well, this brother, Mark, my father had a friend who owned a plumbing business, and my father wanted his son to be a plumber. So, he asked him if he’d take in Mark and let him be a helper and all that....So he became a plumber and got his license and all that there. And he was working. Oh, this here I should have said. So, wait a minute. So, [the draft board] asked--I didn’t point out none of them who to take--God forbid if they should die. I would never have lived with myself. But they asked Mark, and they asked Peter, and they asked Vinnie. So Mark was the plumber, so they decided to take Mark out of the draft. Well, not out of the draft but take Mark and let him go work for the government as a plumber. And they assigned him to some islands around here. And then they assigned him to the [Charlestown] Navy Yard while the war was going on….

I got to make you see [pictures of] my mother and father....My mother came to America with her brother....[pauses] Wait a minute, my father said he came here in 1900. She was young. She was pretty young. Her brother would come to America every once in awhile. You know what they used to do? They’d come here and buy things and go back to Italy. So one of the trips, she came here to America. She was with her brother. But she must have known my father from Italy, before she came here….[My parents] were from Ciusanno. It was a town near Avellino, near Naples....Both were from the same town.

So, my father was here. My father was here. She didn’t go back. Her brother went back. He was going back and forth even after she got married....When she wrote to her father that she wasn’t going back, he didn’t like it. Anyway, she led a good life, a good life. She was a real mother, a mother type, mothery type, you know what I mean? As young as I was, I can remember. Because if a child was sick, she would not go to bed. She’d sit during the night next to the crib and stay up and watch the baby, and all that. I remember all those things.

When we lived in one house on North Street, [my mother] didn’t even have hot water. No hot water at all. She had to heat the water. And no tub to wash the clothes. She had a big wooden tub on a bench. She had to heat the water and wash the clothes….We had [a bathroom] in the house [instead of down the hall] but we didn’t have a tub. The boys would go--so many days would be for boys and so many days would be for [girls]--to the bath house in the Nazzaro Center....Otherwise, we had to do the best we could by a sponge bath....We were lucky to have the toilet in the house, and only for ourselves. Because they’d be flats that had the toilet outside [in the hall] and there’d be two, three families with so many children!

…There were so many kids. When you’d go outside and play, we’d speak English, some Italian....I’d speak half Italian, half English. But when we would talk in English, [my father] understood us. He kind of understood. But my parents spoke mostly Italian, to each other....They didn’t learn [English], not my mother...and she had us in case anybody came to the house. [We] could translate. We used to translate for her. My father [didn’t learn] much either....He learned to sign his name. But to read and write, he was backwards for that. And he was ashamed. He could have learned because he was working with people that were Irish and all that there. But, you know, he was so ashamed when he would say the word and he wasn’t saying it right. They’d make fun of him and all that there. So, he wouldn’t speak it....He was ashamed of things. He wasn’t refined. [But] he wasn’t rough. He was very gentle....

We had all kinds of people in the North End….We went to school with all nationalities. We went with Jews, because there would be a lot of Jews in the North End. They were very nice. And there was the Irish. Some of them were very, very nice. Of course, some of them thought that where we were Italians, they thought they were better, the Irish. It took a long time for the Italians to be where they are today....They used to call us guineas, you know. They’d make fun of what we would eat....But we got along with them. We knew how to get along with them....

And the Italians they came up quite a bit. Because they had a hard time with the Irish, a very hard time. At City Hall, the State House--they could never get jobs and all that. They had to fight their way in....[The Irish] owned it. And if you worked with them, you had to be very careful because they thought they were a lot smarter, a lot better than you. And we, at times, some of us were better than them. We were cleaner, we were better than them. And we had better homes than them, and everything. But they didn’t think so. So, you had to be very, very careful. Sometimes you’d yes them to death, you know? But some were nice, and some praised what we were doing, how we were working hard and everything....

I felt the Italians improved a lot. The mothers improved their sons and daughters to become schooled. And they sacrificed, you know? They really sacrificed, because at that time there wasn’t a lot of money….A lot of them went to work, the mothers. They got blind sewing, because everything at that time was by hand. A lot of mothers were buttonhole makers. And then they took work inside [the home], the sewing....And they’d stay under the little light every night working, no electric. At night they’d do that and then they had to bring them back to the factory when they were done....And the Italian ladies who went to work in factories, they were hard-working ladies. And they worked to keep their jobs. Or otherwise, they wouldn’t keep them. You had to produce....Oh yes! The Italians came up quite a bit….

I lived on 7 Prince Street. We were left with only two old neighbors. The rest of the other people, we really didn’t know who they were. Because they’d be coming in and out, you know....[Before that] I lived on Small Prince Street [for] fifty-eight years. And a long time in the other house too. We didn’t do much moving. I lived in two apartments....And [I’ve been at Casa Maria housing for the elderly] two years this month. I didn’t [mind coming here] because on Prince Street I was with strangers. If it was like before, we were all neighbors. Then they all moved out and all that….

Then, it started. These landlords start buying property. They start buying property, and they went and they raised rents. And they didn’t care who they gave the apartments to as long as they got big money, as long as they got big money, you know. And they start ruining property. They start breaking walls, equipment, sinks...that’s when I think that it changed. Then, they were looking to buy--they came from all over, different states, to buy property here. And they offered big money. So, some of the landlords would sell it, they sold it to these people. And there were poor, nice families in these houses. They raised them a hundred dollars at once, and all that there. Those people couldn’t afford [it]. They had to get out. They had to do something.

So, who do they start renting [to]? To all this young generation here. That they come in the house at three, four, five [in the morning]. And they don’t clean. They don’t do anything. But, they’re getting big rents. So, they start getting big rents, and now the rest are getting big rents...forcing a lot of people out. And that’s why the old people are trying hard to get into houses like this. And wherever they find them a place, they go now. And it breaks their heart, and they die. Because they didn’t want to move. They didn’t want to move. [Mary is teary] They were here their whole life.

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