La familia del Zompo

Introduction 2

Main Content: Analyzation of the source material 7

Transcript 9

Father’s Family Tree 41

Familiy history 43

Personal Family Tree 51

The Red Sauce Recipe 52

Ellis Island: Italian Immigrant Experience 55

Conclusions 59

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INTRODUCTION

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Introduction

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Introduction

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Introduction

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Introduction

San Benedetto 1910

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Transcript of Minnie and Lucy’s Interview

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! Family information extracted from Minnie and Lucy’s interview ( see part one of the Analyzation of sources )

! Historical information extracted from the Batxillerat Història del món contemporani, Vicens Vives.

! Photos from family archives

My family’s story begins in San Benedetto del Tronto with the birth of the man that

would start the Delsener family, Eugenio del Zompo on the 13 of March, 1868.

Eugenio was raised in the recently unified Italy (unified just seven years prior to his

birth) along with his three brothers, named Nicolas, Joseph and Dominic as well as his

three sisters, Leticia, Angelina and Julia. It wasn’t until the year 1884, when he was a

mere sixteen years old, that Eugenio set off to seek his own fortune in the United States

of America.

Along with a man called Peter Del Signore, Eugenio was hired almost immediately after

their arrival to go pick fruit in North Carolina, a job he held for approximately two years.

It was during these two years that Eugenio went to “Miss Murphy’s”, a school where he

was given the name Charles Delsener, as he did not know how to write his own name

and the teacher wrote it down as such.

However one day there was a murder in the plantation they worked in, and the two

decided to run away and follow the train tracks. It’s a family legend and joke that

Eugenio and Peter were the murderers and that’s why they had to leave so abruptly

after their co-worker’s death, but there is no proof to these claims and they are just

speculation.

Eugenio followed the train tracks until he arrived at Hudson Falls, New York, which at

that time was called Sandy Hill.

Once he got settled in his new home, someone ( It’s not clear who) took a liking to

Eugenio and bought him a peanut stand. After a short period of selling fruit and roasted

44

Family History




peanuts, he was offered the opportunity to take over the business, and with help from a

local family the Dwyers who rented him a store-front space, and a man named Sigwain

that taught him how to make ice-cream and candy, he got his first proper business, a

“Soda Fountain” (Ice cream parlour) all set up and running.

A few years later, in the mid 1890’s, Eugenio’s first wife named Maggie, ran off with

another man, divorcing Eugenio. Nobody knows where Maggie and her lover escaped

to but it was a hard blow for Eugenio.

A few years after this drama, at the turn of the century, Eugenio took a holiday back to

Italy to see his family. It was back in his hometown that he saw his future wife, Irma

Sorge, walking down the street and fell for her instantly.

However, the path to love was not straightforward. Irma

was already engaged at the time to a man named Silvio,

who was conveniently in China at the time when

Eugenio met Irma. Eugenio immediately asked his sister

Leticia to go and speak to Irma’s family to arrange a

wedding. This was a difficult request for Irma’s family,

on one hand, they knew Eugenio was a divorced man

and couldn’t get married in a church in Italy.

On the other hand, they knew Eugenio had enough

money to take care of her, so she went back to America

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Family History




with Eugenio. ( she also brought along her brother and cousin, but they didn’t stay for

long).

And so they arrived in America and were married in New York City Hall, on October

24th 1903, ten days before Irma’s birthday. Unlike most Italian immigrants of that time,

they chose not to stay in New York City, and moved back to Sandy Hill to run the soda

fountain.

In the following years their five children were born, Lucia (Lucy) on the 13 of April 1905,

Philomena (Minnie) on the 26 of June 1906, Antonio (Tony) on the 21 of May 1908,

Ercole Vincenzo (Ackley) was the only child not born in the USA, he arrived in San

Benedetto del Tronto during a trip in the month of August of 1909. Their last child, Silvio

(Zippy) was born on the 24 of November back in Hudson Falls (the town had only just

changed it’s name from Sandy Hill to Hudson Falls earlier that year).

The trips to Italy were cancelled for three years after

Ercole’s birth, out of fear that Eugenio would have been

drafted to go and fight, as part of his country’s colonial

ambitions. It was at that time that the Italian government

had begun to occupy Libya and start the Italo-Turkish War.

The First World War began only two years later, making

travelling to Italy an impossibility once again until it became

stabilized by peacetime in the early 1920’s.

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Family History




The Del Zompo/Delseners lived happily in Hudson falls for the first two decades of the

century, working the ice-cream parlour, which expanded into a restaurant after WWI. All

of the Delsener children worked in the family business as well as attending local schools

during these early years of their life, effectively assimilating into American society.

47

Family History




In 1925 however everything changed again when Irma decided she was homesick

wanted to move back to Italy. To do so, Eugenio had to sell his business and send

money to his wife and children in Italy, while he remained in the US.

The family travelled on the largest ship of the time, the SS Majestic, from New York to

Paris and took a train through the Swiss Alps into Italy. The conditions in which they

took this journey were horrendous, they travelled during the winter and the train’s water

froze, meaning they had no water to drink or wash in.

In fact when they arrived, the Italians hung out flags to greet them and their return from

the ‘new world’ caused a sensation. It was the first snowy winter since 1900, which the

locals, blamed on the “Americans” stating they had brought the bad weather with them.

Their bad start in Italy was only the beginning of their problems, as Eugenio sent over

money, Irma’s family refused to sign over the house to her, beleiving that Eugenio was

much torcher than he actually was. As well as refusing her the deeds to her rightful

property, they gambled away Eugenio’s money, using up every last penny. Over and

above the financial problems, things were complicated further by their realisation that

they missed America and it’s ways of life and greatly disliked the more conservative

lifestyle in Fascist Italy. (Mussolini had just recently taken full control of the Italian

Parliament and had the renowned socialist Giacomo Matteotti assassinated a year

earlier). This culture clash between the Delseners and their Sorge relatives eventually

came to a head ( Minnie and Lucy were even insulted for wearing sleeves dresses that

48

Family History




the Italians considered inappropriate ) and after a miserable 13 months of living with no

money and being criticized for their American lifestyle, the Delseners once again

departed Italy for US, this time with no money and no family business to return to.

Instead of Hudson Falls, the family decided to move to the big city, New York City.

From the Bronx, to Park Avenue, the

Delseners moved around 12 times over the

next couple of years, and Eugenio set up

several shops. It was however a hard time to

be running any business, due to the

desperation many suffered during the Great

Depression which deeply affected the

American people of the thirties. Eugenio struggled with several robberies at his stores,

and the harsh treatment given by his banker, who refused to loan him a single cent

even though Eugenio had proven himself a capable business man.

Another family story worth mentioning was how the boys of the family very narrowly

avoided being sent of to fight in the Pacific theatre of World War II as part of the 69th

Regiment ( curiously, an Irish Heritage Unit ) until Lucy went to argue with the military

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Family History




officals about letting them stay, luckily Lucy succeeded in keeping the boys

home. Not even Lucy was quite sure how she managed that!

Before finally setting down in Astoria, Queens, to set up a smaller candy shop

(which was also robbed 3 times over ), Eugenio and Irma had been constantly on the

move. Finally after decades of turmoil and hard work they settled into life in this vibrant

New York Italian neighbourhood and it had become clear that they, like so many other

immigrants before and after them, had become part of

the great American melting pot of cultures. Their

children married into other families, and other cultures

and as time went on, the Italian language was replaced

completely by English. In my own paternal line , their

sone Ercole married Ethel Klein who came from a

Jewish family that traced its roots back to Hungary,

expanding the multicultural aspect that has been part of

the Delsener legacy since 1884 when Eugenio

embarked on his first journey.

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Family History

3.1 Personal family tree

1. Photo of Irma’s spoon from family archive 2. The red sauce has been served backstage after concerts in Madison Square Gardens, NYC by my

Grandmother and great Uncle who both worked in the music business. 3. Photo of food from stock photo archives 4. Recipe extracted from La Cucina Del Zompo

As I mentioned in the introduction, food has always been a defining aspect of our family

from mixing the drinks at the Soda Fountain in upstate New York, to preparing dinner for

the family.

Every family has that one family dish that is passed on through the generations. In my

family, this dish was the Red Sauce (a.k.a. the Del Zompo

Red Sauce).

Of course, as most family traditions go, some say it is

done one way, and the others will say it’s made in a

completely different way.

From it’s humble origins in Eugenio and Irma’s kitchen, to

being served to the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Paul

McCartney and the Rolling Stones2, there are many

different versions of how to prepare this family classic.

For this project however, I have included the recipe as it’s

featured in La Cucina Del Zompo , a cookbook of family

recipes that my parents made back in 2011.

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Red Sauce Recipe

1. Photo of Irma’s spoon from family archive 2. The red sauce has been served backstage after concerts in Madison Square Gardens, NYC by my

Grandmother and great Uncle who both worked in the music business. 3. Photo of food from stock photo archives 4. Recipe extracted from La Cucina Del Zompo

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Red Sauce Recipe

! Photo from http://www.everyculture.com/ ! Original ship manifest from Ellis Island Museum Archives

Historical Information from : ! http://www.pbs.org/destinationamerica/usim_wn_noflash_5.html ! The Tenement Museum of New York ! Family History from Minnie and Lucy’s interview ( see part one of Analysis of sources ).

Ellis Island is one of New York City’s 3 islands and is located in the Upper New York

Bay, just north of Liberty Island. Roughly nine tenths of the island’s landmass was

created with landfill, and all parts of the island that were added after the original

compact are currently under the jurisdiction of New Jersey rather than New York since

1998. The island covers 11.1 hectares of land of which only 1.3 ( being the original

landmass ) belong the city of New York. It was the main entrance to the country for

most immigrants, and over 5 million Italians passed through there when upon arrival in

the US.

Between 1900 and 1915, 3 million Italians immigrated to America through Ellis Island,

representing the majority of all immigrants during that period of time. These immigrants,

mostly artisans and peasants, represented all regions of Italy, but mainly came from,

Southern Italy which was by far the poorest region in the country, due to the economy

still being primarily agricultural and not industrial.

Though the majority of Italian immigrants were farm laborers, a small population of

craftsmen also immigrated to the United States. They comprised less than 20% of all

Italian immigrants and enjoyed a higher status than that of the farm workers. The

majority of craftsmen were also from the South and could read and write; they included

carpenters, bricklayers, masons, tailors, and barbers.

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Ellis Island: Italian Immigration



These immigrants mostly lived in poor conditions, the majority living in overcrowded

tenement buildings, where windows were a luxury and tuberculosis ran rampant among

the neighborhoods that had poor sanitation and

ventilation.

Since there was such a large influx of Italians, they

became a major part of America’s workforce,

especially when it came to the mining business (with

textile taking second place ).

This was the reality for the vast majority of

Italian immigrants from the dawn of the

century, but the Delseners were an

anomaly. Eugenio had arrived years before

the mass immigration from Italy, and never

intended to expatriate back home.

Furthermore, when the family passed

through Ellis Island in 1908, they did not

57




have their name changed like so many others before them.

The transition from Del Zompo to Delsener was years before, when Eugenio was

called Charles Delsener by his American school teacher, Miss Murphy.

Another important difference between my family and the majority of Italian

immigrants was that, from the start they were fully immersed in American culture,

becoming assimilated into the system and even adopting English as their first

language. This was not so for the majority of Italian Americans, who grouped

together in little communities where they would only speak Italian and continue

living as they would have back in Europe (Little Italy, New York is a prime example

of this).

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My final conclusions are varied as each of the objectives led to different results.

My first objective, the most personal one, was to analyze, order and redact the primary

sources of information that I had, including Minnie and Lucy’s interview, old photos and

a family cookbook as well as searching for secondary sources from museums archives

and official immigration documents.

This first objective has been successful and been fully completed as part of the natural

progress of the project.

In transcribing the interview, gathering the family stories, fact checking the different

versions and analyzing pictures, my first objective to create a fully fledged narrative of

Eugenio’s family journey, became a reality. I was able to create a clear overview of their

assimilation into American culture and to define for the first time, a proper chronological

order to the events that occurred during their travels and lives. For the first time, my

family’s history of immigration has been formally collected, written down and analyzed

to fit into the historical context of that era.

However ,my second objective, the more general one, to explore the Delsener’s story

in the larger context of the majority experience of Italian immigration has not come to a

conclusive answer but has nonetheless created a broader understanding of my own

family history.

After reading the information gathered from the family stories, visiting the Tenement

Museum in New York, and a lot of online research using the Ellis Island Archives and

New York City public library archives, it seems that the Delseners stand apart from the

majority of Italian immigrants of their time for a number of reasons.

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Conclusion

Firstly, they had already been settled in America for over a decade before the mass

influx of Italians to the US. They changed their name on their own account rather than

through a mistranslation by immigration officers at Ellis Island and they embraced the

American culture and language, speaking English at home and refusing to live in purely

Italian enclaves such as New York’s Little Italy.

Perhaps the more interesting conclusion comes back again to a personal perspective as

now the fifth generation of a family that seems destined to keep crossing the ocean

between America and Europe. As an immigrant myself to Catalonia, I also, just like my

ancestors find my experience to be outside the normal immigrant experience as my

family came to Barcelona for cultural rather than economic reasons. Unlike my

ancestors though we have retained our first language along side the new ones we have

acquired as part of our new culture. In researching my family’s history I have come to

view my own experience as part of an ongoing legacy that will only expand as each new

generation finds their own path in whichever part of the world they choose to settle.

List of References:

! Minnie and Lucy’s interview ( see part one of the Analysis of the sources ) ! Oral family stories ! http://www.pbs.org/destinationamerica/usim_wn_noflash_5.html ! www.ellisisland.org ! The Tenement Museum of New York ! La Cucina Del Zompo cookbook ! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American ! Photographies provided by family archives

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Coclusion

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La familia del Zompo

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