Sunday, 11 July 2010 - 12:36 PM EDT
Name:
"Marie Pizzuto Meyer"
I never knew my grandmother Orsola Tobia, but I think of her often, wondering about her decision to come to America. In May of 1904, she left her home on Via S. Antonio in Borgetto, traveled to Palermo and boarded the Sicilian Prince headed for New York City … she and 712 other passengers.
She was only 21 (or 19, depending upon which records you view) and alone, and I know from my mother’s stories that she had no intention of returning to Borgetto. She was free, on course for a new life in a new country. I am sure she was well aware of the long journey at sea (15 days), the crowded ship, the demeaning protocol at Ellis Island and the unwelcome attitude of the Americans. Apparently, true to her name, she was a “little bear,” undaunted by both the known and the unknown that loomed ahead. Coming from such a small town and sheltered existence, what she faced must have been both frightening and exhilarating.
On the same ship, there was a young man from the same town named Vincenzo Salamone. He saw rosy-cheeked Orsola and it was love at first sight. Oddly, they had never met in Borgetto. As the story goes, he asked her if she had spent her life in a convent because he had never seen her before, and she told him that he was too young for her (he was 17). “Why should you care if I don’t” said Vincenzo … and so the romance began!
Upon arriving in NYC, she stayed with a relative on East 63rd Street and he a relative on East 68th Street. They were of like mind … this was their new home; they would work hard and make it despite the discrimination and the difficulty of assimilation.
Vincenzo continued to pursue Orsola, and in 1907, they were married at the Church of St. Catherine of Sienna on East 68th Street. They settled at 1142 First Avenue (62nd & 63rd Streets), where their four children were born (Tony, Bea, Jim & Joe). Orsola got a job in a sewing factory where she worked beside Jewish woman, all returning home each evening dead tired. Vincenzo, a cabinet maker by trade, worked on bridges and what ever type of labor available until he found work as a carpenter. When jobs were non-existent, he opened a fruit & vegetable market nearby on First Avenue. It paid the bills, and he could keep an eye on the kids while Orsola was at work.
Around 1929, my grandparents bought an apartment building with Antoinetta & Guiseppe Tobia (Orsola’s brother and sister-in-law) and later each family built a bungalow in Queens (the country at that time) so that they and their children would have a summer retreat. Pretty darn good for immigrants!
Orsola & Vincenzo made their American Dream -- they sent their three sons to New York University and one on to Columbia University for his MFA … first generation Ivy League! Concerning their daughter Bea, well Orsola was “old country” in this sense … kept my mom under tight reign … and sent her to high school only. Eventually, Orsola regretted this, but she meant well, and my mom understood this. At age 39, my mom married James Pizzuto, two years after Orsola passed away.
Sadly, Orsola died at the young age of 62, and according to my mom, Vincenzo was never the same again. He died 17 years later.
I write this in tribute to my grandmother Orsola Tobia Salamone who seems often forgotten in her role to educate her children and give them lives they would not have had without her. Since she died in 1947, few of us knew her and those who did were very young when she passed away. What I know of her was passed down to me by my mother. Orsola was a loving woman of courage and determination, and her legacy continues to benefit increasing generations of her family.
I am the only daughter of Beatrice, who was the only daughter of Orsola, who was the only daughter of great-great grandma Antonina Morici Tobia (1850-1945). I have always been amazed by all of them, and I have always felt such a sense of loss that my grandma died before I was born. I know I would have been her favorite :)
Marie Antoinette Pizzuto Meyer
