THE TEXIANS
AND THE TEXANS
THE UNIVERSITY
OF TEXAS
INSTITUTE OF
TEXAN CULTURES
THE
ITALIAN
TEXANS
AT SAN ANTONIO .......... liliiii ......... .
THE ITALIAN
TEXANS
..
~ The University of Texas
Institute of Texan Cultures
at San Antonio
1994
THE TEXIANS AND THE TEXANS
A series dealing with the many peoples who have contributed to the history
and heritage of Texas. Now in print:
Pamphlets- The Afro-American Texans, The Anglo-American Texans, The Belgian
Texans, The Chinese Texans, The Czech Texans, The French Texans,
The German Texans, The Greek Texans, The Indian Texans, The
Italian Texans, TheJewish Texans, The Lebanese Texans and the Syrian
Texans, The Mexican Texans, Los Tejanos Mexicanos (in Spanish),
The Norwegian Texans, The Spanish Texans, and The Swiss Texans.
Books - The Danish Texans, The English Texans, The German Texans, The
Hungarian Texans, The Irish Texans, TheJapanese Texans, ThePolish
Texans, The Swedish Texans, and The T#:ndish Texans.
The Italian Texans
Principal Researcher: W Phil Hewitt
©1973: The University of Texas
Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
801 S. Bowie St.
San Antonio, Texas 78205-3296
Rex H . Ball, Executive Director
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-620619
International Standard Book Number 0-86701-064-9
Second edition revised; second printing, 1994
This publication was made possible, in part, by a grant
from the Houston Endowment, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Front Cover: Frank Liberto and Angelina Rinando Liberto
on their wedding day) 1899
Back Cover: Frank Pizzini family and friends, 1913
THE ITALIAN TEXANS
I talians were on their way to Tex­as
almost as soon as Europeans
began sailing the Atlantic in
search of a route to the Indies. Ame­rigo
Vespucci probably viewed the
Texas coast in 1497, and his country­men
were with Vasquez de Coro­nado
in his epic journey across the
High Plains in 1541. For more than
three centuries Italians frequently
found their way to the northern prov­inces
of New Spain. Most of these
adventurers were from the northern
cities of Florence, Genoa and Venice.
All came in the service of a nation
other than their own. They joined
various armies which found Texas a
wide-open battleground. Vicente
Filisola, for example, was second-in­command
to General Antonio Lopez
de Santa Anna during the war for
Texas independence, while Prospero
Bernardi fought on the side of the
Texans at San Jacinto.
Italian family arriving in the U. s., 1905
Italian immigration greatly in­creased
after 1875, with the majority
of people coming from the impover­ished
areas of southern Italy and
Sicily. Northern Italians from the
Alpine provinces of Lombardy and
Tuscany arrived in smaller numbers.
Economic opportunity was the prin­cipal
motive for Italian immigration
to Texas, but the prospect of compul­sory
service in the Italian army also
inspired many to leave their home­land.
The Italian population of Texas
was small compared to that of the
Northeast and Midwest. By 1920
there were slightly more than 8,000
foreign-born Italians living in Texas,
mostly in the Galveston-Houston
area, in the Brazos valley between
Bryan and Hearne, and in the Dallas­Ft.
Worth vicinity. By the mid-
1920's, when restrictive U.S. immi­gration
laws dried up the influx from
southern Europe, Italians were well
on their way toward assimilation into
the Texas population. Still, through
their ethnic clubs and societies and
a strong sense of community with
others of like heritage, they have
maintained a distinct identity on the
Texas scene.
AMERIGO VESPUCCI
1497
Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine
whose name was given to the conti­nents
of the New World, may have
been one of the first Europeans to see
the Texas coast. In May 1497 he sup­posedly
sailed to the New World for
the Spanish king, Ferdinand of Ara­gon.
He sought to determine whether
the new lands were indeed a "new
world:' or a part of Asia. Vespucci
was then 43 years old and had been
working in Spain for five years. He
3
Amerigo Vespucci
was well known as an outfitter of
ships, banker, merchant, and more
than an amateur navigator and geog­rapher.
The commanders of the ex­pedition
may have been Vicente
Yanez Pinzon, captain of the Nina
on Columbus's earlier voyages; Juan
Dfaz de Solfs and Juan de la Cosa.
But Amerigo was the official observer
for the king and wrote an account of
this voyage and three later ones.
From Cadiz the explorers sailed
to the present coast of Honduras and
around Yucatan to the western and
northern coasts of the Mexican Gulf.
Thus, he and others on this trip were
possibly the first known Europeans
to see the coast of what is now Texas.
This occurred more than 20 years
before Francisco de Garay fitted out
the ships that sailed under the com­mand
of Alonso Alvarez de Pineda
in 1519. Amerigo's accounts mention
little of gold, but pay many compli­ments
to the beauty of the people and
the land of the New World. His
voyage is most readily confirmed by
the European maps which followed.
These indicated the outline of Florida
and the Gulf of Mexico long before
Pineda's map of 1519.
Amerigo Vespucci has been
cleared of earlier charges that he
plotted against his good friend
Christopher Columbus and con­trived
to have America named for
4
himself. T he naming was probably
the work of a cartographer who did
it without Amerigo's knowledge.
That the name '~ m erica" stuck is one
of history's curious accidents.
THE VASQUEZ DE
CORONADO EXPEDITION
1541
Italians m Vasquez de Coronado's
expedition of 1541 were among the
early Europeans who ventured onto
Texas soil. In those days the Italian
peninsula was broken into a number
of small duchies, kingdoms and
republics. None was strong enough
to mount expeditions of the size and
scope launched by Spain and Portu­gal,
so Italian soldiers and sailors in
search of adventure, glory and gold
often found service in the ranks of
those two 16th century superpowers.
,Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
assembled his expeditionary force of
225 horsemen and 60 infantry at
Culiacan, Mexico, in February 1540.
Although the leadership and many
of the soldiers were Spanish, a
number were Italian. They followed
the conquistador into New Mexico
and across the panhandles of Texas
and Oklahoma to Kansas. The Span­ish
government considered the expe­dition
a failure, but Vasquez de
Coronado and his men had opened
the door for many future explorations
and an eventual foothold in the
American Southwest.
HENRI DE TONTI
1686
Although he was overshadowed by
his commander, Robert Cavelier,
Sieur de La Salle, Italian-born Henri
de Tonti left his own mark on Texas
history. Symbolic of his role in the La
Salle story is the standard bearing the
king's arms which the Frenchman
had erected on the Mississippi delta
in 1682. Four years later Tonti found
it washed over on the beach and
planted it on higher ground. La Salle
had dreamed of establishing a colony
at the mouth of the river to serve as
a depot for furs and buffalo hides
which the Mississippi basin could
supply. But it was Tonti who became
the real pathfinder of the great valley;
his writings provided the first accu­rate
descriptions of its geography,
inhabitants and resources. His data
and sketches provided cartographers
with the necessary information for
the first regional maps.
This man of achievement was
born at Gaeta, near Rome, about
1650. His father, Lorenzo de Tonti,
soon became a political refugee from
"Coronado on the High Plains" by Frederic Remington
." . +01
~ 1.1.U:~ ' 1I'j~
." ,
the so-called Masaniello revolt. He
took his family to France, where he
became a prosperous banker. U nfor­tunately
he was drawn into an unsuc­cessful
plot against the king and was
imprisoned in the Bastille until pa­roled
in 1675. It was the elder Tonti
who invented and gave his name to
the tontine, a financial arrangement
whereby the survivor receives the
proceeds of a fund established by a
group of contributors.
At the age of 18 Lorenzo's son,
Henri, began a military career as an
army cadet. He served for two years,
then entered the navy as a midship­man.
In 1677 he took part in a
French campaign against the Span­iards
in Sicily. At Messina his right
hand was blown away by a grenade,
and while awaiting treatment he was
taken prisoner by the Spanish. Six
months later he was released in a
prisoner exchange and returned to
France, where the king awarded him
a compensation of 300 liures. Tonti
participated in yet another Sicilian
campaign, but the wars ended in
1678, and he found himself unem-
''Henri de Tonti in East Texas" by Bruce M arshall
ployed. He eased his physical handi­cap
by inventing and wear.ing an
~rtificial hand made of copper. H e
solved hi s employment situation by
joining La Salle on the latter's return
to the New World.
Tonti quickly became the
French explorer's devoted friend and
confidant. Soon after their arrival in
the upper Mississippi heartland,
Tonti and a motley crew of 30 built
the first ship ever to sail the Great
Lakes. In 1680 Tonti built Fort Cre­vecoeur
in the Illinois country. Two
years later he accompanied La Salle
to the mouth of the Mississippi and
then began construction of Fort St.
Louis near present-day La Salle,
Illinois. When the Frenchman tem­porarily
returned to his homeland in
1683, Tonti became the dominant
figure in the Mississippi valley and
remained so for the next 20 years.
La Salle returned with a large
number of colonists, heading for the
mouth of the Mississippi, but inaccu­rate
navigation, corsairs and ship­wrecks
forced his landing on the
Texas coast, where he established a
settlement in 1685. Tonti made his
first trip in search of La Salle in 1686.
He made a second effort in 1689, but
when he was within seven days'
march of La Salle's now-abandoned
settlement, his men deserted, and he
was compelled to return to his fort
on the Arkansas River. In the pro­cess
he was chased 80 leagues by a
party of Spaniards under Alonso de
Leon, who was attempting to keep
the French out of east Texas.
For another 17 years Tonti car­ried
on La Sall e's work. He lived
among the Illinois Indians until
1702, when he joined Pierre d'Iber­ville
in Louisiana. The people of
Arkansas also call him the father of
their state. Tonti died at Mobile in
1704, a heroic figure with qualities
of endurance, leadership and ability.
VICENTE MICHELI
1793
Vicente Micheli was one of the earli­est
Italian merchants to settle in
Texas. A native of Brescia, he arrived
at Nacogdoches in 1793. For a time
he was involved in the fur trade,
working for Barr and Davenport, the
only firm licensed to trade with
friendly Indians in east Texas.
In 1801, while living in Coahui­la,
Micheli received permission to
establish a cotton gin at San Antonio,
although it is not known ifhe actually
completed the project. He returned
to Nacogdoches and engaged in trad­ing
and farming until J anuary 1806.
That year he and his 15-year-old son
moved to the newly founded Villa de
Salcedo on the Trinity River. Accord­ing
to a census listing, Micheli pos­sessed
a rancho, 200 head of cattle
and a drove of mares.
When the Salcedo colony failed,
Micheli moved again to San Antonio,
where he became quite prosperous.
He owned the Rancho de San Fran­cisco
and later opened a general
mercantile store. In time he began
referring to himself as the "Merchant
of Venice." He died in his adopted
city of San Antonio in 1848.
5
Jose Cassiana by Carl von Iwanski
GIUSEPPE CASSINI
1826
When Ben Milam captured San An­tonio
from Mexican forces late in
1835, Giuseppe Cassini - known in
Texas by his Spanish name of Jose
Cassiano - furnished the Texans food
and supplies from his store. His
business was looted and his home
pillaged a few months later when
General Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna drove all Texas sympathizers
out of the area. Cassiano left town
one step ahead of the Mexican army
and fled to one of his ranches on
Calaveras Creek. When the Alamo
fell , he loaded his servants and his
remaining valuables on wagons, went
to the coast on a safe-conduct pass
provided by the Texans and caught
a ship to New Orleans.
Giuseppe Cassini was born in
the village of San Remo in the
Genoese republic in 1787. He left
home as a young man and soon was
in command of his own merchant
ship. In 1816 he procured a British
passport from the consul in Mar­seilles,
sailed to New Orleans and
went into the import-export business.
He made numerous trading trips to
Texas between 1816 and the mid-
1820's, when he settled permanently
in San Antonio. He established a
general mercantile store on Main
Plaza and began dealing extensively
in real estate. In 1826 Cassiano mar-
6
ried Gertrude Perez Cordero, the
widow of the last Spanish governor
of Texas.
When the Texas Revolution
ended, he returned to San Antonio
and resumed dealing in real estate.
An inventory compiled in 1842
showed that he held property in
Bexar County, south Texas and New
Orleans valued at more than $18,000.
Cassiano died on January 1, 1862,
just as he was completing plans to
buy the entire village of Piedras
Negras, Mexico, opposite Eagle Pass.
VICENTE FILl SOLA
1836
When General Antonio Lopez de
Santa Anna came to Texas in 1836
to quell the rebellion against Mexico,
General Vicente Filisola came with
him as second-in-command. Santa
Anna dangerously overextended his
forces when his main column chased
across the prairies after Sam Hous-
"ton's little band of soldiers. Filisola's
. troops were left behind on th~ Brazos,
unable to rescue the self-styled
"N apoleon of the West" after his
defeat at San Jacinto.
General Vicente Filisala
At first Filisola tried to resign
his command, but in accordance
with Santa Anna's instructions he
signed the Treaty of Velasco, then
withdrew Mexican troops from
Texas. Fellow generals attempted to
make him a scapegoat for the disas­ter.
When he was subsequently re­lieved
of his command, he countered
by publishing a pamphlet "in defense
of his honor and explanation of his
operations as commander-in-chief of
the army against Texas!'
Filisola was too experienced a
survivor in warfare to be sidetracked
by self-seeking fellow generals. Born
in Ravello, Italy, in 1789, he moved
with his family to Spain, where he
joined the army in 1804. Six years
later he was commissioned a second
lieutenant "because he had conducted
himself with valor in over 20 battles."
Filisola was sent to Mexico in No­vember
1811, while the Hidalgo revolt
was under way. In 1815 he hitched his
career to the rising star of Augustin
de Iturbide. When the latter became
emperor of Mexico in 1821, Filisola's
position took a gigantic leap forward.
As a brigadier general he was sent to
bring Central America into the Mex-
ican empire. He was victorious in his
mission, but Iturbide was soon over­thrown.
In 1823 Filisola issued a
decree freeing Central America from
its Mexican ties.
Back in Mexico Filisola got
along well with Iturbide's successor,
General Santa Anna. In 1831 he
received a colonization grant in
Texas, but there is no evidence that
he ever made an effort to fulfill the
contract. Two years later, at Mata­moros,
he became acquainted with
Stephen F. Austin, who was en route
to Mexico City bearing a grievance
petition to Santa Anna from the
Texas settlers. Austin described
Filisola as "a blunt, honest, candid
and prompt soldier. He has been over
30 years in service, with important
powers entrusted to him-and what
is rather uncommon, he has not
made a fortune. He is the friend of
the farming and agricultural inter­ests
- a decided enemy of smugglers
and lawyers, for he thinks they de­moralize
the community by placing
temptations before weak or avari­cious
persons."
Later that same year Filisola
became ill and retired briefly from
military life. By 1835 he was recov­ered
and ready to join Santa Anna
for the invasion of Texas. After the
battle of San J acin to Filisola re­mained
in northern Mexico. His
standing improved considerably
when his principal detractor, General
Urrea, initiated an unsuccessful revo­lution
of his own. Filisola was now
on the winning side. In 1839 he
supported the abortive "Cordova
Rebellion;' by which Mexico hoped
to incite native Mexican and Indian
forces against the Texan government.
During the Mexican War of 1846 the
old soldier served again, this time in
the state of Chihuahua. He died as
the result of a cholera epidemic III
Mexico City on July 23, 1850.
ORAZIO DE ATTELLIS
After 1816 a number of Italians who
had served under Napoleon visited
El Correo Atlantico
or settled in Texas. One of these was
Orazio de Attellis, a hearty adventur­er
enthralled by combat in both war­fare
and politics. Born in the Italian
province of Campobasso in 1774, he
had been with Napoleon on the
h!.mous retreat from Moscow in 1812.
After the emperor's fall, he was ar­rested,
sentenced to death, pardoned
and finally exiled from his native
land. On leaving the army, Attellis
worked at one time or another as a
newspaperman, law clerk, public offi­cial
and teacher of French. In 1824,
at the age of 50, he arrived in Amer­ica,
where he taught, wrote and
founded schools in both New York
and Mexico.
H e stayed in New York for only
a year before going to Mexico City,
where he became politically involved.
The adventure soon palled, and
Attellis went back to New York City,
where he taught school from 1827 to
1832. Santa Anna summoned him
again to Mexico City, this time to
found a college. The two parted com­pany
when the Italian began a news­paper,
El Correo Atlantico, in which he
advocated Texas independence.
Attellis continued printing his
paper in New Orleans, publicizing
the Texan cause in Spanish, English,
Italian and French. On April 4, 1836,
he published Colonel Travis's letter
of March 3 from the Alamo in both
English and Spanish. When the war
was over Attellis was said to have
received a substantial land grant
from a grateful Texas government.
After 12 more years of writing and
lecturing in defense of various politi­cal
causes, he returned to Italy in
1848. By that time he was an Ameri­can
citizen, 74 years old and as bel­licose
as ever. He died in the land of
his birth in 1850. His writings and
speeches are credited with attracting
other Italians to Texas.
PRO SPERO BERNARDI
Prospero Bernardi was the only Ital­ian
known to have fought with the
Texans at the battle of San Jacinto.
Born in Italy in 1794, he immigrated
to Texas early in 1836. On February
13 he enlisted with Captain Amasa
Turner's New Orleans Volunteers. At
that time he was described as being
43 years of age, five feet eight inches
tall, with dark hair, eyes and com­plexion.
His land grant record states
that he was discharged at Galveston
a year later. For his service he later
received two land grants - one in San
Patricio County, the other in present
Somervell County.
"Prospero Bernardi at San Jacinto"
by Bruce Marshall
7
THE REVEREND
BARTHOLOMEW
ROLLANDO
1845
The first Italian-born missionary to
Texas came in 1845. He was the Rev­erend
Bartholomew Rollando of the
Lazarist missionary order. Father
Rollando worked as assistant to the
Reverend John M. Odin, who later
became the first Bishop of Galves­ton
-a diocese which included all of
Texas at that time. The two men had
differences of opinion, and Father
Rollando moved to Houston, where
he served in 1846. The following year
he returned to Galveston, and died
on October 11 at the age of 35.
DECIMUS ET ULTIMUS
BARZIZA
1857
Lawyer and banker Decimus et Ulti­mus
Barziza is remembered as the
greatest criminal lawyer in the Texas
of his time and as author of a vivid
Civil War memoir, The Adventures oj
a Prisoner oj War. His unusual name
was derived from his position as the
"tenth and last" of his parents' chil­dren.
He was born in Williamsburg,
Virginia, in 1838. The family had
long been prominent in that colony
and had traveled comfortably in the
highest circles of English and Ameri-
D.U Barziza
8
can society. Barziza's father, an Ital­ian
viscount, had come to America
in 1814 to take possession of an estate
left him by his wealthy American
grandmother. He renounced his Ital­ian
citizenship and gave up his title
in order to claim the land, but ex­pensive
and unsuccessful litigation
cost him nearly everything. He made
a good marriage, however, and set­tled
down to make the most of his
situation. He found employment at
the local insane asylum and managed
to give his sons fine educations at the
College of William and Mary.
In 1857 Decimus et Ultimus
followed three older brothers to
Texas. He studied law at Baylor Uni­versity
in Independence, then began
a practice at Owensville, the old seat
of Robertson County. The Civil War
interrupted his career, and he was
commissioned a first lieutenant in
Hpod's Texas Brigade. Captured at
Gettysburg, he was later imprisoned
on Johnson's Island but escaped by
.. diving through the window of a mov­ing
train near Huntingdon, Penn­sylvania.
He made his way to Can­ada,
then was smuggled back to the
South by sympathetic Canadians.
His recollections of wartime experi­ences
were published in Houston
several months before the war's end.
Barziza reentered the practice of
law by acting as defense counsel in
a murder case stemming from an old
Waller County feud. After he made
an impassioned plea for his client's
life, the defendant was acquitted, and
Barziza's reputation was firmly estab­lished.
He turned briefly to politics
and was elected to the 14th Texas
Legislature in 1873, which marked
the end of Reconstruction rule in
Texas. A contemporary historian
viewed him as "black-eyed, black­haired
and ofItalian descent; he was
bright, energetic, eloquent and
heterogeneous ... fiery, impetuous,
bold, quick and ready of speech, with
a clear, ringing voice and the dra­matic
quality highly developed."
Barziza resigned from the legis­lature
in 1876 in protest over a bill
which would have given the Texas
and Pacific Railroad additional time
in which to perfect a land grant. He
returned to Houston and continued
his law practice. He also devoted time
to the Houston Land and Trust
Company, which he and five lawyer
friends had organized in 1875. Bar­ziza
died at his home on January 30,
1882, "after a lingering illness." He
was only 43, but he had left his mark.
Today there is a Barziza Street in
Houston, and members of the family
still reside in that city.
FATHER AUGUSTINE
D'ASTI
1860
Father Augustine d'Asti, pastor of St.
Vincent's Catholic Church in Civil
War Houston, spent his last years
secretly distributing food, clothing
and money among the needy people
of his city. More than a century later,
similar gifts are quietly dispensed
each day in memory of this native
Italian priest.
Father Augustine was born at
St. Damiano d'Asti in Piedmont. His
background is obscure, but he began
his novitiate in the order of St. Fran­cis
at the age of 16. In 1856 he and
four members of this order came to
America and established a Francis­can
house in New York. In 1860
Bishop Odin of Galveston requested
Father Augustine d'Asti
that (he Franciscans reestablish
themselves in Texas, where they had
not been since the revolution of 1836.
Father Augustine was appointed
Superior. His post was the Church
of St. Vincent.
His gift giving was actually
accomplished through an interme­diary,
one John Kennedy, a trader
known for having the strongest whis­key
in town. Father Augustine is also
remembered for having blessed the
flag which Dick Dowling and his
men carried into the battles at Gal­veston
and Sabine Pass. The priest
died at age 39 in the spring of 1866
and was buried in Holy Cross Ceme­tery.
Every store in town closed for
the funeral. More than a hundred
years later d1\sti House at 603 Irvine
Street was still carrying on the chari­table
tradition of this compassionate
Italian priest.
THE BRUNI FAMILY
1862
Antonio Bruni -a San Antonio busi­nessman,
politician and public bene­factor-
was encouraged by his own
success to invite other Italians, espe­cially
his relatives, to settle in Texas.
He left his native Italy in 1858,
landed at Galveston, then proceeded
to San Antonio, where he opened a
grocery store on Main Street in 1862.
His business prospered, and in 1872
he established a general store on
Military Plaza.
Bruni quickly became a leader
of the Italian colony in San Antonio.
In 1880 he helped found the first
Italian mutual aid society in Texas­Societa
Italiana de Mutuo Soccor­so
-and served as its president for
many years. His political career
began in 1879, when he was elected
alderman. Bruni retired from busi­ness
about 1908, and died at his
Laredo Street home in 1918.
His nephew, Antonio Mateo
Bruni, was a dominant business and
political figure in south Texas for a
quarter of a century. He had come
as a 16-year-old from Italy in 1872.
Antonio Mateo Bruni
After an apprenticeship in his uncle's
store, he took the stagecoach to
Laredo, where he opened his own
establishment in 1879. He invested
wisely, expanded his business and in
1892 was elected a Webb County
\,ommissioner. Four years later he
was elected treasurer, a post he held
l,mtil his death nearly 40 yeal's later.
He was the largest landowner in
Webb and Zapata counties: the town
of Bruni was established on one of
his ranches to provide a shipping
point for his agricultural produce.
With Bryan Callaghan and James B.
Wells, he effectively controlled poli­tics
from San Antonio to Corpus
Christi to Laredo. Time after time,
Bruni rallied massive Democratic
victories in his home county.
Front-page editorials, flags at
half mast and lengthy obituaries
marked his passing on August 18,
1931. He was genuinely mourned by
thousands of ordinary citizens whose
lives he had touched by his kindness
and generosity. Today his memory is
perpetuated in Bruni Park in Laredo.
ANTHONY GHIO
1873
Anthony Ghio achieved his greatest
success as a town builder on the
northeastern Texas frontier in the
1870's. Born in Genoa in 1832, he
came to America at age 17. Soon he
was representing a New York firm as
a traveling salesman in the southern
states and various Caribbean ports.
After a brief business venture of his
own in St. Louis, he returned to New
York as a salesman. He married in
1862, moved to Illinois for a time,
then came to Jefferson, Texas, where
he opened a mercantile store.
In those days Jefferson was the
state's leading inland port. Ghio pros­pered
with the town, but there came
a time in the early 1870's when the
residents refused to permit the entry
of a railroad. Ghio could foresee the
town's decline and in 1873 made his
way through the forest to the site of
Texarkana, where town lots recently
had been surveyed. He purchased a
tract, on which he soon built a house,
at the corner of Third Street and
Texas Avenue. Among his first efforts
was the organization of a Catholic
Church. He also worked for the
advancement of parochial education.
In 1877 Ghio and a partner
built a brick opera house, the first
structure of its type in Texarkana. He
opened another theater in 1884 with
a performance by the renowned Bos­ton
Opera Company of Gilbert and
Sullivan's Iolanthe. The event marked
Anthony Chio
9
'70
]1: 1t1r
(/J~ I (/dill,;;/"
"The Murder of Cardis" by Jose Cisneros
a cultural high point in the history
of northeast Texas. Three years later
he opened Spring Lake Park two
miles north of the city. His civic
endeavors continued as he built an
artificial gas plant and brought the
first railroad to that corner of Texas.
In 1880 grateful citizens elected
Ghio to the first of three terms as
mayor and subsequently as alderman
from his ward. He and his wife were
the parents of eight children. A
granddaughter, Corrine Griffith­Marshall,
became an early silent­screen
star. Ghio died in 1917; his
wife outlived him by 20 years.
LOUIS CARDIS
1877
Italian-born Don Louis Cardis be­came
a tragic casualty in the EI Paso
Salt War, one of the unsavory chap­ters
of Texas history. Cardis was a
native of Piedmont and had served
as a captain in Garibaldi's army
before moving to the United States
in 1854. Ten years later he came to
EI Paso, learned to speak fluent Span­ish
and won the confidence of the
Spanish-speaking citizens. He oper­ated
the stage line to Fort Davis and
quietly used his spare time to build
a political power base. Beginning in
10
1874, he served two terms in the state
legislature, where one of his col­leagues
was D.D. Barziza.
In those peaceful days Cardis
was described as a delicately featured
.. individual with a black moustache
and chin whiskers. He habitually
. wore a Prince Albert coat, immacu­late
white linen shirt and black bow
tie. Not a good public speaker, he
preferred to work behind the scenes.
His friends considered him persua­sive,
witty, intelligent and suave.
In 1866 he had connived with
half a dozen other local figures to take
control of the Guadalupe Mountain
salt beds, which had long been re­garded
as public property. Their ef­forts
were unsuccessful until 1876,
when an aggressive newcomer named
Charles Howard claimed the entire
tract for himself. Cardis was booted
aside. He now joined those who
wanted to keep the salt beds in the
public domain. In October 1877
Howard shot and killed Cardis in an
El Paso saloon. Further threats of
violence, gunplay, mob action and
ineffectual intervention by carelessly
recruited Texas Rangers were added
elements of the story.
Two months after Cardis's death
the mob got Charley Howard in a
showdown at San Elizario. The Salt
War proved only that "good men can
die bravely in a bad cause." Today the
case is regarded as an early growing
pain of the EI Paso Southwest.
BRAZOS VALLEY
ITALIANS
1880
Italians began arriving in the lower
Brazos valley as early as the mid-
1870's when a few families settled
near Bryan. Businessmen in that area
had long advertised in European
newspapers for immigrants to come
and help revitalize the local economy.
The Italians did not begin respond­ing
in numbers until about 1880.
Those who did come were mainly
from impoverished Sicily. They ei­ther
harvested Louisiana sugar fields
or labored on shares in the Bryan
area until they accumulated enough
money to buy their own farms.
They bought flood-prone land
in the Brazos bottoms between
Hearne and Bryan. Earlier settlers,
including Germans and Czechs, had
avoided it, but the Italians were will­ing
to gamble with disaster in ex­change
for fertile soil that would nor­mally
produce abundant crops. They
lost badly in 1899 and again in 1900,
when devastating floods struck the
region, but most of the immigrants
stuck it out.
By the 1890's Brazos County
had one of the largest concentrations
of Italian farmers in the United
States. In 1905 the Italian ambas­sador
visited Texas and was told that
Bryan had 3,000 of his countrymen
and that the citizens wished there
were ten times that number. Very
early J.M. Saladiner and other lead­ers
organized the Agricultural Benev­olent
Society to aid newly arrived
immigrants, but the group also spon­sored
instruction in the latest farming
and soil conservation methods. By
1910 adjacent Burleson and Robert­son
counties also had significant
numbers of Italian residents.
For the most part, the farmland
of these early Italian arrivals has been
retained in family hands. Rural mail­boxes
reflect such names as Cotropia,
De Stefano, Ferrara, Perrone, Resti­no,
Varisco and Salvato. Business and
civic leaders in Bryan and Hearne
also include individuals with Italian
surnames. But cultural identity goes
little further; the younger generation
is not familiar with the Italian lan­guage
and does not observe Old
World customs. Little is left but
loyalty to the Roman Catholic reli­gion
and the traditional spaghetti
dinner on Sunday.
THURBER, TEXAS
1880's
The Texas Pacific Coal Company
recruited immigrants in the 1880's to
work its rich coal mines at Thurber.
Many diverse ethnic groups inter­acted
to make Thurber a lusty,
brawling industrial town which stood
out strangely in the middle of a
farming and ranching country. At its
height Thurber had a population of
10,000. Poles and Italians did most
of the mining; both groups lived on
Hill Number 3. A railroad to the
mines bisected the hill, with the Poles
Antonio and Dortea Varisco and family .
on the south side of the track and the
Italians on the north. The Italians
wt:l'e clannish to the point of dividing
their own group according to their
place of origin in Italy.
Perhaps their most outstanding
contribution was to the musical life
of Thurber. The Italians were gener­ally
conceded to have the best band;
members often played at the Dallas
Fair. In its heyday the town had an
opera house, where major companies
liked to perform because of the de­monstrative
Italian audiences. Equal­ly
appreciated were the culinary skills
of these people. Each home had an
outside oven and a cellar dedicated
to the concept of ample "new bread
and old wine:' The more elaborate
cellars had coolers for cheeses and
meats. Carloads of grapes were
shipped in from California for the
production of homemade wine. Ital­ian
children were always the envy of
others because they had such deli­cious
grapes in their lunch boxes.
Food was a featured attraction
at the elaborate Italian weddings.
The specialty of these occasions was
a rice dish called risotto, which was
served with a salad, a variety of meats
and barrels of wine. As the wine kegs
were emptied, they were stacked up.
The success of the festivity was mea­sured
by the height of the pyramid .
The eve of the Lenten season
was marked with a miniature Mardi
Gras-type celebration. Men bedecked
in outlandish costumes would go
house-to-house entertaining the chil­dren.
At each home the mother
would serve a pastry called crostoti
and, of course, the inevitable wine.
The homemade wine was some­times
a problem - not for the Ital­ians,
but for federal agents who were
Italian Club picnic at Thurber
11
trying to enforce national prohibi­tion.
If there were sufficient advance
warning, the residents of Hill Num­ber
3 moved the home brew to secret
hiding places. Otherwise, they simply
poured it on the ground. When law
enforcement personnel arrived, the
houses were empty of liquor, and no
one knew anything about the aro­matic
rivulets trickling down the hill.
In 1918 oil strikes in the nearby
Ranger field marked the end of
Thurber as a mining town, since oil
was a cheaper fuel than coal. Most
of the mines closed in 1921, and the
Italians either scattered to nearby
towns or returned to their homeland.
Today Thurber is a ghost town.
COUNT TELFENER AND
THE "MACARONI LINE"
1881
In 1880 Count Giuseppe Telfener
and several European, New York and
Texas financiers developed a grand
plan to link New York and Mexico
by rail. The New York, Texas and
Mexican Railroad Company was
chartered in Paris in October 1880,
and construction began about a year
later. Count Telfener was no amateur
in the field; he had just completed a
350-mile rail line in Argentina.
Texas was chosen for the start­ing
point because the state offered 16
sections of land for each mile of track
completed. Construction on the run
between Richmond and Brownsville
began with two crews working
toward each other from Rosenberg
Junction and Victoria. Telfener paid
passage for 1,200 Italian laborers,
mostly from the northern province
of Lombardy-who, he hoped, would
eventually bring their families to
Texas and settle on land along the
right-of-way. Because macaroni was
a staple of the laborers' diet, the
enterprise soon became known as the
"Macaroni Line!'
Within six months difficult
working conditions and sickness
caused half of the Italian work force
to quit. A plan to increase the num-
12
Italian railroad workers at Victoria
ber of workers to 5,000 was never
realized because construction was
halted inJuly 1882 after the state had
repealed all land grants to railroad
builders. Inadvertently Texas had
issued certificates for 8,000,000 acres
more than was available for distribu­tion.
Ninety-one miles of the New
"York, Texas and Mexican Railway
had been completed between Victo­'
ria and Rosenberg at a 'cost of
$2,000,000.
Telfener operated the railroad
until 1884, when he sold out to a
brother-in-law, John Mackay, the
Nevada "Bonanza King." The rail­road
was sold to Southern Pacific
interests in 1885. The only reminders
Early Italian home at Montague
of the original builders and their
grand design are in various town
names along the route. Leaving Vic­toria,
one comes first to Telfener
(misspelled Telferner); then Inez and
Edna, named for the count's two
daughters; Louise, Telfener's sister­in-
law; Mackay, commemorating the
silver baron; and finally to Hunger­ford,
named for the count's father­in-
law and partner.
Count Giuseppe Telfener's most
important contribution to Texas is
represented in the Italian families
living in Victoria, Houston, Galves­ton
and elsewhere who are descended
from the Italian workmen who built
the "Macaroni Line."
THE ITALIANS OF
MONTAGUE COUNTY
1882
Italians from the Alpine provinces of
northern Italy began arriving in
Montague County, northwest of
Dallas, in 1882. Three Fenoglio fami­lies
and the Raymondi family arrived
in Texas by way of the Illinois coal
mines in the late 1870's. They first
settled near Pilot Point in Grayson
County but discovered in 1881 that
they had been swindled; they did not
have title to the land that they had
cleared and worked. So, dispossessed,
discouraged and almost penniless,
they headed west.
Antonio Fenoglio and his broth­ers
settled near Montague on sandy
loam earth that was perfect for vine­yards,
orchards and vegetable farms.
Antonio declared that the soil "tasted"
right. By 1900 many families from
northern Italy had settled in the
vicinity of Montague, Bowie and
Nocona. They produced luscious
Concord grapes, apples, peaches and
a variety of vegetables.
The Fenoglios of Montague
County have an affinity for the name
Antonio or Anthony. The first Anto­nio
was a founder of the colony. One
of his nephews, nicknamed "Tony
Jack:' was - at the time of his death
in 1972 - the last living disciple of
Thomas V. Munson, the famous
American viticulturist. It was Mun­son
who was credited by the French
with saving their vineyards from
destruction by phylloxera, a type of
plant lice. Antonio's son and grand­son
also bear the same given name.
The grandson served in the legisla­ture
from 1951 to 1961 and is famil­iarly
known as "Tony the Rep:' to
distinguish him from similarly
named cousins.
The Carminatis are also a large
family, and many of them are named
Pete. For a while the Montague tele­phone
directory listed three Pete
Carminatis: "Middle Pete," a town
dweller; "North Pete:' who lived on
his farm north of Montague; and
"South Pete:' whose land lay in the
other direction. The Italian colony
at Montague has never been large;
it reached a peak of 69 foreign-born
persons in 1910. And these fair­skinned
blue-eyed Texans of northern
Italian stock never did fit the dark­featured
stereotype from southern
Italy and Sicily.
Recently these Italian-Texan
truck farmers have discovered anew
the wisdom of their ancestors in
choosing this sandy plot of ground
on which to settle. The land was
originally purchased for $6.00 to
$8.00 an acre, with mineral rights
---------------------------------- --
included. Oil discoveries on several
of these tracts have enhanced proper­ty
values considerably.
FREDERICK RUFFINI
188.3
Architect Frederick Ruffini lived in
Texas only eight years, but he left his
trace against the Lone Star skyline.
He arrived in Austin from Cleveland,
Ohio, in 1877. Within four years he
had designed a large number of pri­vate
and public buildings such as the
courthouses at Henderson, Long­view,
Georgetown and Corsicana,
jails at New Braunfels, McKinney,
Franklin and Groesbeck, and the old
State Deaf and Dumb Asylum in
Austin. Millet Opera House and the
Hancock Building in Austin were
also his handiwork.
Ruffini's last project was prob­ably
hi~. most imposing. In 1883 he
was chosen as the architect, in an
eight-entry competition, to design
the,.Main Building for The Univer­sity
of Texas at Austin. In accordance
with then-fashionable trends; he
chose Gothic frosting for the edifice,
but he lived to see only the west wing
completed. He died in 1885 during
an epidemic which swept Austin.
SALVATORE LUCCHESE
Salvatore Lucchese was born into a
bootmaking family near Palermo,
Sicily, in 1866. In 1882 he landed at
Galveston and settled a year later in
San Antonio, where he opened a boot
shop. The business grew until he
became one of the best-known cus­tom
bootmakers in the United States.
The business continues today uI1der
the direction of his grandson, Sam.
Lucchese customers have included
movie stars, soldiers and U.S. presi­dents.
Salvatore made boots for
Theodore Roosevelt when the latter
was in San Antonio with the Rough
Riders in 1898. Sam made a pair for
Vice-President Lyndon Johnson.
The original Lucchese also
made boots for Francisco Madero,
Salvatore Lucchese
leader and tragic victim of the Mexi­can
Revolution. One day, while the
rebellion against dictator Porfirio
Dfaz was in progress, Salvatore re­ceived
a call to meet a customer at
the store. When he arrived there was
Madero in revolutionary garb with
bandolier, guns and worn-out boots.
He told Lucchese that he needed
boots that were easy to get into,
because he might have to make a
quick escape. Salvatore complied but
said later that Madero "didn't get
away quick enough the last time."
Luccheses made boots for other
well-known personalities, such as
Gene Autry, General "Hap" Arnold,
Lieutenant George S. Patton and
General Dwight D. Eisenhower. A
pair made for actress Anne Baxter
were decorated with a pattern of but­terflies
reproduced in authentic
colors. For many years Luccheses
made riding boots for graduating
cadets of the old U.S. Army Air
Corps. But the air corps quit wearing
riding boots in 1934, and the army
followed suit in 1938. The cadet corps
at Texas A&M University has always
included loyal Lucchese fans.
Salvatore Lucchese died in 1929,
but the firm he founded remains an
honored name in boots.
13
Qualia wine press brought f rom Italy
THE QUALIA'S
VAL VERDE WINERY
The oldest licensed winery in Texas
is operated by the third generation
of the Qualia family on Hudson
Road in Del Rio. The enterprise was
started in 1883 by Frank and Mary
Qualia, who wanted to make wine for
family consumption as they had done
in their old home near Milan, Italy.
As of the mid-1980's about 6,000 gal­lons
of wine are produced annually
from 30 acres of vineyards.
Qualia's first vines were the
Lenoir grape. In the 1930's he
brought the Herbemont grape to
Texas and began making Dry and
Sweet Amber, which are popular
with Del Rioans. His original hand­press
and huge oak casks brought
from Italy have been replaced by the
latest in technological innova tions,
but the aging process takes place in
the cool interior of the original win­ery
with its 18-inch adobe walls.
Following the retirement of
Frank's son, Louis, in 1973, grandson
Thomas Qualia became proprietor,
while his brother, Robert , assumed
control of the family's sheep and
cattle ranches in Texas and Mexico.
14
Today the Val Verde Winery
produces eight different wines, from
the dry red Lenoir to Dry Amber
and Sweet Amber from the H erbe­mont
grape. With grapes purchased
from vineyards in Pecos County, the
winery produces Johannisberg Ries­ling,
as well as Cabernet Sauvignon
and Rose of Cabernet. The list is
topped off by quality dessert wines
from the Lenoir grape.
CHARLES A. SIRINGO
1885
"M y excuse for writing this book is
money-and lots of it:' After admit­ting
his motive, Charlie Siringo pro­duced
his roll icky autobiography, A
Texas Cow Boy. Published before he
was 30, it was the first - and remains
the best - of the personal range nar­ratives.
H e wrote nothing more for
thr.ee decades, then produced anoth­er
half dozen titles before his death.
According to author J. Frank Dobie,
.. "No other cowboy ever talked about
himself so much in print; few had
more to talk about."
Charles Angelo Siringo was
born in Matagorda County, Texas,
in 1855. His mother was Irish, his
father Italian. Young Charlie became
a cowboy at 11. By the spring of 1871
he was working for tough, loud­mouthed
"Shanghai" Pierce. Siringo
drove the Chisholm Trail in its hey­day
and later drifted into the Texas
Panhandle with the first LX herd. At
Old Tascosa he made Billy the Kid's
acquaintance and later helped law­man
Jim East track the young outlaw
to his New Mexico hideout.
After 15 years with the trail
herds, Charlie wrote and published
his first and most successful book. In
1886 a Kansas City phrenologist
studied the bumps on Siringo's head
and advised him to become a detec­tive.
The ex-cowboy joined the Pink­erton
National Detective Agency, and
for the next 22 years he led a danger­ous
and adventurous life. A friend
who knew him during the bloody
Coeur D'Alene strike of 1891-1892 re-membered
him as "a slender, wiry
man, da rk-eyed, dark-moustached,
modest. Lately recovered of small­pox,
he was noticeably pitted. This
would be an undisguisable identifica­tion
in a tight place, but he did not
seem to mind. He was the most inter­esting,
resourceful, courageous detec­tive
I ever dealt with:'
In 1912 Siringo's second book,
A Cowboy Detective, appeared. The
Pinkertons reacted strongly against
its publication and resorted to legal
harassment to prevent its circulation.
Apparently they objected not so
much to what old Charlie said about
them, as to his description of their
methods, which -at times - included
bribery, perjury, brutality and pad­ded
expense accounts. The last years
of his life were spent fighting back at
those who tried to suppress what he
had to say.
In 1927 he saw the best of his
writing assembled into a dignified
and handsome volume by the emi­nently
respectable Houghton-Mifflin
Company. Again the Pinkertons
raised legal barriers, and its sale was
stopped while substitute material was
inserted. Charlie Siringo died at
Venice, California, in 1928. His
stories, while not polished works of
art, were always honest.
Title page of Siringo's best-seller
I
FRANK TALERICO
1888
Frank Talerico arrived in San Anto­nio
in 1888 and opened a fruit stand
in the business district. In a short
time he owned 15 such stands, all
operated by friends and relatives he
brought over from his native Italy.
Eventually he built a substantial
warehouse from which his chain
stores were supplied.
Talerico was born at Spezzano
della Sila in 1860. Correspondence
from a friend in Texas inspired him
to seek his fortune there. In addition
to his business endeavors, Talerico
organized the small Italian colony in
San Antonio and for years was one
of its most prominent leaders. He
died in 1934 at the age of 74.
ADAM E. JANELLI
1889
Adam Janelli, a native of Parma,
brought the Salvation Army to Texas
onJune 12, 1889, when he preached
his first sermon at the corner of Main
and Ervay streets in Dallas. Born in
1851, the young man went to sea in
search of his fortune. He advanced
from an ordinary seaman to the rank
of captain, serving in both the Italian
and the English merchant marines.
On one of his long voyages he docked
at Calcutta, India, where he attended
several of the Salvation Army's street
meetings. He became interested in
its work among the poor. On his
return to England he left the sea and
became friends with General William
Booth, the founder of the Salvation
Army. Hoping to further this good
cause, Adam J anelli entered the
United States in 1888. A year later
he went to Dallas.
The ex-sailor settled there per­manently
in 1891 and operated a bill­posting
agency. But his real interest
was the work of the Salvation Army,
which he served as local treasurer
until his death. He was a familiar
sight at street meetings for more than
a quarter of a century. It was J anelli
who was largely responsible for the
erectiOl) of the Salvation Army Hall
on Federal Street.
When the Italian-language
newspaper La Tribuna Italiana began
publication in 1913, J anelli contri­buted
time and money to make it
self-sustaining. He translated English
into Italian and occasionally lent the
paper money to tide it over its fre­quent
crises. When this immigrant
humanitarian died in 1925, his funer­al
was held at the Salvation Army
Hall, the services led by the Dallas
district commander.
ST. JOSEPH'S ALTAR
The custom of celebrating, on March
19, the Feast of St. Joseph - with St.
Joseph's altar, or table-was brought
to Texas by Sicilian immigrants dur­ing
the late 1800's. The celebration
itself is peculiar to a single region of
the island from which many Italians
in Houston, Galveston, Bryan and
Hearne came.
St. Joseph is the patron saint of
Italy and particularly of Sicily. Since
the celebration was held during Lent,
the feast had to be prepared without
meat. Dishes of fish, a Sicilian-style
pizza and spaghetti were served to-
Mr. and Mrs. Adam E. Janelli
gether with fancy biscuits, cakes, pies
and vegetables. On the day before the
feast the priest was called to bless the
food and drink to be used.
On the feast day itself families
would go out, find the poorest people
in the community and bring them to
their houses. The master of the house
and his family would bathe the feet
of the guests, just as Christ did to his
disciples before the Last Supper.
Then the visitors would be seated at
the table. Those served were required
to take at least a taste of all the food
and drink offered, following which
the family and invited guests could
eat. At the end of the feast the left­overs
were gathered up and distrib­uted
to the poor.
When the Sicilian immigrants
reached Texas, most could speak no
English and so felt awkward about
choosing poor people who did not
understand the language or the cus­tom.
Consequently, they selected '
children of the family, and children
of friends, to represent the apostles.
The ceremony remained unaltered,
with the exception of the foot­washing
ritual. Instead, the children
would stand on benches or chairs,
and those present would kiss their
feet as an act of humility. Afterward
15
the host, his family and friends would
carry baskets to the poor in the
neighborhood. The celebration of St.
Joseph's Alter is still observed among
a few Sicilian families in Texas, al­though
the custom is vanishing.
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS
ITALIAN SOCIETY
1890
The Christopher Columbus Italian
Society of San Antonio has, for years,
been a focal point of the city's Italian
colony. Founded in 1890 by Cavaliere
Carlo Alberto Solaro and 15 of his
compatriots, the organization was a
combination of benevolent society
and fraternal association. In the early
years it loaned money to Italian fami­lies
in need, furnished advice and
counsel in business matters, taught
English to new arrivals and provided
a framework for social activities.
By 1950 the society had changed
to some extent: 20 percent of the
membership could be non-Italian. It
continued, however, to meet the
social needs of its members and ren­der
numerous charitable services
throughout the city. At one time the
Christopher Columbus Italian Soci­ety
was instrumental in building the
Italian community church of San
Francesca de Paola. More recently it
has donated a children's room at
Santa Rosa Hospital, and the ladies'
auxiliary has outfitted the children
of St. Peter's Orphanage.
The society's headquarters, lo­cated
at Christopher Columbus Hall,
was completed in 1928. The statue
of the New World explorer standing
in the adjacent park was presented
by the society to the City of San
Antonio in 1957. The old neighbor­hood
was carved up by urban renew­al,
and Italians joined the exodus to
the suburbs, but Christopher Colum­bus
Hall- stilI famed for its spaghetti
suppers - continues to provide a link
to the old country and between old
friends and acquaintances.
16
FATHER CARLOS
M. PINTO
1892
There was only one small chapel for
the entire Roman Catholic popula­tion
of EI Paso when Father Carlos
M. Pinto arrived there in 1892. Dur­ing
his 26 years in the border town
the priest was personally responsible
for building six parish churches­including
one in Ciudad Juarez­and
three parish schools.
Pinto was born at Salerno, Italy,
in 1841. At nine he entered the Col­lege
of the Jesuit Fathers, and when
only 14 he asked to be admitted to
the novitiate of the Society of Jesus.
When it came time for him to pro­nounce
his final vows, he was obliged
to wait a year until he reached the
proper age. Pinto was not yet 20
when the revolution of 1860 drove the
Jesuits from Naples. He studied in
France and Spain before coming to
the United States in 1870.
Father Pinto arrived at Pueblo,
€olorado, in 1872 as priest of a parish
that stretched nearly 175 miles.
There was no Catholic church in the
town, so he held mass in a school and
later in the courthouse. In 1873 he
built the first church in Pueblo, nam­ing
it after the founder of the Society
of Jesus, St. Ignatius Loyola.
Pinto was not the first Jesuit to
serve in EI Paso, but he probably was
the most effective. Fathers Carlos
Persone and Joseph Montenarelli
arrived at the ancient mission of
Ysleta in October 1881. They minis­tered
to the needs of the Indian and
Mexican populations until Father
Pinto arrived. Pinto set out to accom­plish
two things immediately. First,
he would provide a school for the
children of Spanish-speaking Catho­lics;
second, he would build parish
churches for both English- and Span­ish-
speaking Catholics. Sacred Heart
School opened in October 1892 in a
new building with four classrooms.
The Sacred Heart Church for Span­ish-
speaking Catholics was dedicated
on April 30, 1893. About a month
later Immaculate Conception
Father Carlos M. Pinto, Sf
Church for the English-speaking
Catholics was dedicated. Pinto served
as the first pastor of Sacred Heart.
For a time, beginning in 1895,
Father Pinto also served as pastor of
Our Lady of Guadalupe in Juarez.
During one of the Mexican Revolu­tion's
anticlerical phases in 1912
Father Pinto was kidnapped as he
was leaving the church. Colonel An­tonio
Rojas, the abductor, demanded
a $3,000 ransom. Father Pinto re­fused
the demand, mainly because he
did not have the money. Rojas finally
settled for a $100 ransom, to be paid
by check as soon as Pinto was safely
back across the border. True to his
word, the priest went back to EI Paso
and wrote out a check to Colonel
Rojas for the agreed sum.
Father Carlos M. Pinto, SJ.,
died in EI Paso on November 5, 1919,
worn out by his many years oflabor­ing
for the English- and Spanish­speaking
Catholics of the trans-Pecos
region of Texas. .
LOUIS COBOLINI
1894
Louis Cobolini, an Italian from
Trieste, was largely responsible for
the port development of such coastal
cities as Corpus Christi, Rockport
and Brownsville. Born in 1845, he
fought as a young man in Garibaldi's
army during the wars to unify Italy.
When those wars ended Cobolini was
forced to seek refuge in the United
States. In 1867 he came to Galveston,
where he peddled fish and fruit on
the streets. He grew prosperous and
soon acquired his own fishing
schooner, the Henry Williams. He be­came
a leader in the Galveston fish­ing
industry and later established
fisheries at other points along the
Texas gulf coast.
Almost from the beginning
Cobolini took an active part in the
organization of Texas labor. In 1894
he was elected president of the State
Federation of Labor. He was recog­nized
as a self-taught expert in the
field of labor relations and industrial
progress, and was frequently called
upon to lecture on these subjects in
various parts of the United States.
After 26 years in Galveston
Cobolini moved to Rockport, where
he continued development of his
extensive fishing interests and worked
incessantly for harbor improvements.
His efforts continued when he moved
to Brownsville in 1907. He devoted
much attention to compiling data for
a proposed Brazos,santiago Harbor.
He was elected to present the Valley's
Louis Cobolini
case in Washington in 1916, but the
project was rejected by the federal
government. Undaunted, Cobolini
returned home to continue his fight
for a port that could handle the Rio
Grande Valley's abundant fruit and
vegetable output.
During the early 1920's this
Italian Texan served on the Browns­ville
city commission. He was a
staunch supporter of the municipal
ownership of utilities and led the fight
to prevent the sale of the Brownsville
electric plant in 1922. When the port
project was revived in the late 1920's,
Cobolini was chosen to present argu­ments
to a visiting team from the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. His
vast store of technical knowledge, his
enthusiasm and his broad grasp of
local problems provoked favorable
comment from the engineers.
Louis Cobolini died in 1928 of
overexposure at the age of 84, after
leadin'g an inspection team of U.S.
Army engineers through Brazos Pass.
Ii,is dream of a deepwater port for
Brownsville was finally realized eight
years later.
FRANK LIBERTO
1899
At different times Frank Liberto
owned grocery stores in three Ameri­can
cities and effectively served the
Italian community in each. He came
from his native Sicily in 1890 and
settled first in New Orleans, where
he opened a small grocery. In 1899
he moved to Beaumont and estab­lished
the Crescent City Market on
the Houston highway. He also helped
organize the San Salvadore Society,
which assisted newly arrived immi­grants
in finding jobs, loaned them
money to start businesses and pro­vided
burial expenses for members.
In 1909 Liberto contracted ma­laria
and moved to the drier climate
of San Antonio for his health. He
established Frank Liberto and Com­pany,
the first to deal in imported
Italian foods and spices, and operated
the business until his death in 1940.
In 1927 he was one of four founders
of the Italian parish church of San
Francesco de Paola. From Beaumont
and from San Antonio Liberto wrote
friends and relatives in Sicily, urging
them to come to Texas. Many heeded
that advice.
Frank's oldest son, Sam, was a
pioneer in radio. In 1921 he opened
his first radio shop in San Antonio,
and in 1926 he established KGCI,
the third radio station in the city. Sam
was instrumental in putting Texas's
first all,spanish-language program on
the air in 1928. Another of the Liber­to
sons became the first priest to
emerge from the San Antonio Italian
colony. Vincent Liberto was ordained
in the Order of Oblates of Mary
Immaculate in 1929.
DICKINSON, TEXAS
1900
Italians from southern Italy and
Sicily began settling on the Galveston
County mainland before 1900. Many
were brought there by the Stewart
Title Company and still others by the
active Italian consul at Galveston.
Clemente Nicolini, an ex-sea captain,
had acquired considerable acreage
near Dickinson. For a time he oper­ated
what amounted to a one-man
immigration bureau and land devel­opment
company. He steered recent
arrivals to Dickinson and even man­aged
to entice away some Brazos
valley Italians. Soon there were more
than 200 of these people living in the
neighborhood. Families bought the
fairly inexpensive land, wrote for
friends and relatives to join them,
and began raising fruit for the com­mercial
market.
During the first and second
decades of this century, Italians in
Dickinson shipped tens of thousands
of cases of strawberries in refrigerated
boxcars to markets throughout the
Midwest. Then in the 1920's they
began raising figs commercially. Be­fore
the decade had ended, however,
the produce of the Rio Grande Valley
farmers began undercutting the
17
. .,
JII
Loading strawberries at Dickinson, 1909
Dickinson truck farmers, and they
gradually abandoned their efforts at
large-scale truck farming.
Until recently the Italian pres­ence
in Dickinson was felt through
the celebration of St. Joseph's Altar.
And many older residents remember
the brick beehive ovens sitting in
front or in back of Italian homes,
where the womenfolk used to bake
the weekly bread supply. But in the
mid-1930's the economy of Dickinson
began to revolve around oil, and
many of the residents, Italians
among them, became refinery work­ers
or sought employment in Galves­ton
or Houston.
POMPEO COPPINI
1902
An amazingly high percentage of the
outstanding statuary in Texas parks,
cemeteries and public buildings is the
work of a single gifted Italian immi­grant
- Pompeo Coppini. Born in
Moglia, Italy, his family moved to
Florence in 1871, when he was a year
old. He ran away from home to be­come
an- artist rather than the civil
engineer that his parents had wanted
him to be. Finally, with parental con­sent,
he was allowed to enroll in the
Academy of Fine Arts at Florence,
where he finished the normal eight-
18
year course in three. Thereafter, he
followed various pursuits until he
could save enough money to start his
own ,::;tudio in Florence. He soon
became known as one of the best
portrait sculptors in Italy.
In 1896 Coppini sailed to New
York, where he eventually opened his
Own studio. In 1902 he accepted a
commission for the five statues which
compose the Confederate monument
on the State Capitol grounds at Aus­tin.
The sculptor liked Texas so much
that he established a home and studio
in San Antonio, where the terrain
and climate reminded him of his
native region of Italy. His next im­portant
work of art was an equestrian
statue honoring Terry's Texas Rang­ers.
He won the competition for the
contract from no less eminent a col­league
than Elisabet Ney. The proj­ect
was plagued by accidents -an
infected blister on Coppini's hand led
to severe blood poisoning; the dry
Texas weather played havoc with the
clay model; then a fire almost de­stroyed
the artist's studio. But, on its
completion in 1907, the work was
widely acclaimed.
Also in 1902 Coppini was com­missioned
to design a monument to
President Rufus C. Burleson of Bay­lor
University. The only suitable
model he could find for the devout,
teetotaling Dr. Burleson turned out
to be a drunken bum. The derelict
seemed perfectly happy and at ease
holding a Bible in his hand. When
the statue was completed Mrs. Burle­son
declared that it looked exactly
like the good doctor. In 1917 Coppini
executed a similar memorial to Gov­ernor
SuI Ross on the Texas A&M
campus. The sculptor's name is
doubtlessly remembered by several
generations of freshmen who were
required to clean the mud-daubed
figure. The letters COPPINI, en­graved
deeply in the base, surely left
a lingering impression.
This Italian Texan also executed
the monument at Sam Houston's
tomb in Huntsville, the Texas heroes'
memorial at Gonzales, a series of
statues on The University of Texas
at Austin campus, the Alamo ceno­taph
and another series in the Hall
of Texas Heroes at Dallas. He headed
the art department at Trinity Univer­sity
in San Antonio from 1942 to
1945, at which time he returned to
New York. He died in 1957 and was
buried in San Antonio, where Dr.
Waldine Tauch, his adopted daugh­ter
and pupil, administered the Cop­pini
Academy until she died in 1986.
Coppini working on the Alamo Cenotaph
JOE GRASSO, SHRIMP
INDUSTRY PIONEER
1910
Joe Grasso from Ase Costello, Sicily,
pioneered in the Texas gulf coast
shrimp industry. Born in 1883,
Grasso sailed early in life to Florida
but stayed only a short time. In 1906
he arrived at Galveston harbor
aboard a small steamer. After work­ing
as a fisherman, then as a long­shoreman,
and saving a little money,
he returned to Sicily, married his
childhood sweetheart and brought
her back to Galveston.
Joe Grasso began his fishing
business with a single small boat. He
bought a barge, anchored it at the
foot of Pier 20 in Galveston and was
soon one of the larger wholesale fish
dealers in the city. For the first 15
years Grasso sold what shrimp he
caught as bait. In those days virtually
no one ate it. Then, in the late 1920's,
Grasso began freezing shrimp for ex­port
to Japan. For the next few years
almost his entire catch was contracted
to the Japanese. Joe Grasso died in
1936 at the age of 53.
His son, Joe Jr., assumed con­trol
of the operation. He expanded
the business and, in 1948, moved the
Shrimp boats at Grasso's Pier 9
company to Pier 9. He built a large
modern plant, installed almost a half
mile of piers and dredged one of the
la.rgest slips in Galveston.
During the 1970's Joe Grasso
al).d Son, Inc., operated only five
boats of their own; they bought al­most
all of their shrimp from inde­pendent
operators. Grasso also ex­panded
into other fields. Marine
Mud, Inc., had offices in Galveston
and Sabine Pass, supplying drilling
mud and other materials to offshore
drilling sites.
Joe Grasso Jr. died in 1975, and
his businesses were sold in 1979 by
the family.
CHARLIE PAPA AND
THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
1913
For almost 50 years La Tribuna Italiana
kept alive the glories ofItalian culture
among the Italian residents of Texas,
Oklahoma and Louisiana. The news­paper
was founded in June 1913 by
Charles Saverio Papa, an immigrant
from Cefalu, Sicily.
Papa came to the United States
in 1904. For four years he operated
barbershops in Baltimore and Rich-mond.
He arrived in Dallas in May
1908 during the height of one of the
city's worst floods. As he jumped
from dry spot to dry spot along the
flooded streets, he got the impression
that Dallas was America's answer to
Venice with its waterways. Until 1913
he operated a barbershop, the type
that today would be called a hair­styling
salon.
Papa began his weekly news­paper
with nothing more tangible
than its motto: JUSTICE FREE­DOM
OPPORTUNITY AMERI­CA.
He had no press, no printer, no
staff and no money. Papa was ad
solicitor, business manager, editor
and janitor. Then in 1916 Louis
Adin, a printer of some experience,
arrived from Italy by way ofEI Paso.
Adin became a full partner in the
venture. He could write editorials
and news columns; more important­ly,
he could operate the linotype
machine. He often translated, com­posed
and set type all in one process,
an achievement few could equal.
Until the mid-1930's Charlie
Papa and Louis Adin maintained
close ties with Italy, but as the mother
country began its imperial expan­sion,
those ties loosened. When Mus­solini
declared war on the Allies in
1940, Papa and Adin changed the
name of the paper to The Texas Tribune
and began publishing entirely in
English. Louis Adin had often joked
that he could speak and write five
languages, and of the five English was
his worst, so he retired.
Charlie Papa published the pa­per
in its weekly format until his
death in a 1947 auto accident. For a
time Mrs. Bab Langley edited the
paper. In 1951 Joe Genaro became
editor. Together he and Mrs. Langley
continued The Texas Tribune in Charlie
Papa's tradition until December 1962.
In their last editorial they noted that
the paper had always stood for the
advancement of the Italian commu­nity-
socially, econoD;lically and
politically. "The amalgamation of our
people into the whole American
society has been our aim." Now that
19
the amalgamation was completed,
the oldest Italian newspaper in the
Southwest ceased publication.
ENRICO CERRACHIO
1914
Enrico Cerrachio contributed many
pieces of sculpture to the Texas scene,
including the famous equestrian stat­ue
of Sam Houston in Hermann
Park in Houston, a bust of Governor
Miriam A. Ferguson in the State
Capitol and a statue of President An­son
Jones on the courthouse square
at Anson in Jones County, Texas.
Cerrachio was born near Naples
in 1880. As a boy he played hooky
in order to make clay figures of the
saints. He once molded a small stat­ue
of a local nobleman and, as a
result, was sent to study at the Insti­tute
of Avelliono, where he worked
under Rafael Bellezzo for three and
a half years. He spent another two
years learning to cast bronze and
carve marble. By then Cerrachio was
almost 21 and was facing three years
of military service, so he booked
passage to New York City, arriving
in 1900.
Cerrachio first saw America as
an undeveloped land of opportunity.
Enrico Cerrachio
20
He was so overjoyed at the sight of
the New York skyline that he threw
his tools overboard, believing that he
could soon purchase better ones. H e
was quickly disillusioned. He spoke
no English and had no money, and
people were unimpressed with his
credentials. For a time Cerrachio
slept on a park bench and ate at a
Bowery soup kitchen. He finally
joined a work gang clearing land for
a railroad. Eventually he was able to
resume sculpting.
The artist came to Houston in
1914. Soon he had commissions for
a Doughboy statue, which the city
presented to General John J. Persh­ing,
and for busts of Governor Fer­guson,
"Cactus Jack" Garner and
Albert Einstein, as well as statues of
Sam Houston and Rudolph Valen­tino.
One of Cerrachio's most inter­esting
pieces was a bronze portrait
heag of Christ, two and a half times
life-size. He displayed it in a velvet­lined
case so designed and lighted
.. that the head seemed to turn with the
motion of the viewer, facing him or
. her directly at any angle. Actually the
portrait was the reverse, or concave,
side of a relief mask. The rotating
effect was derived from a shifting
light which created the optical illu­sion.
The tip of the nose, which
appeared to be against the front
glass, actually extended back to the
center of the box.
Cerrachio returned to New York
City in 1944 and practiced his art
there until his death in 1956.
JOSEPHINE LUCCHESE
DONATO
1922
Josephine Lucchese began her career
as a coloratura soprano with aNew
York debut in 1922. This daughter
of Sam Lucchese, San Antonio boot­maker,
soon became popularly
known as "the American Nightin­gale:'
She received her training in San
Antonio and New York, at a time
when it was considered impossible to
achieve success as a serious artist
Josephine Lucchese Donato
unless one had studied in Italy. She
was the first to disprove this assump­tion,
winning fame in the United
States, Europe and, finally, in Italy
itself. Mme. Lucchese made her
stage debut in Rigoletto at the Man­hattan
Opera House in New York.
Subsequently she was soloist at the
Pilgrim Tercentenary Festival in Bos­ton
and was featured at the Teatro
Nacional in Havana, Cuba. She sang
opposite some of the leading tenors
of the time, including Tito Schipa
and Giovanni Martinelli.
In 1930-1931 she toured North
America for six months, then traveled
to Europe where she gave 150 operat­ic
and concert performances in Hol­land,
Germany, Italy, Denmark,
Czechoslovakia and Switzerl and.
Mme. Lucchese appeared with the
San Carlo and Milan Opera compa­nies,
among others. She returned to
become the leading coloratura so­prano
of the Philadelphia Grand
Opera Company. She was on the
music faculty at The University of
Texas from 1957 until 1970, when she
retired. Mme. Lucchese gave private
voice lessons to a highly select group
of students until 1971. She died in
San Antonio in 1974.
THE VALDESE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
1929
In May 1929 the Italian-speaking
Protestants of Galveston organized
the Valdese Presbyterian Church
with 35 charter members. Although
the church was officially a mission of
the Brazos Presbytery, the member­ship
identified themselves as belong­ing
to the Waldensian Church, which
originated in 1170-1176 along the
Rhone River valley. The founder of
this sect was a Lyons merchant
named Valdes (also referred to as
Waldo). The early Waldensians were
essentially a lay group who practiced
poverty and obedience to the Sermon
on the Mount.
The first Italian Protestants
began coming to Galveston about
1890. Most were from the province
of Tuscany. They had no minister
and worshipped under the guidance
of lay leaders. In 1927 the Reverend
Arturo D'Albergo arrived to serve
these people. D'Albergo was a native
of Pachino, Sicily. He had come to
America at an early age and had
been educated at the New York Pres­byterian
Seminary. He held a num­ber
of pastorates in the United States
before World War 1. During the war
UAlbergo served in the Italian armed
forces and later became pastor of the
Waldensian Churches of Pachino and
Syracuse in Sicily. He returned to the
United States in 1920 and reached
Galveston in 1927.
D'Albergo served as the first and
only pastor of the Valdese Presbyte-
Pastor and members oj Valdese Church
rian Church. Services were bilingual:
older members generally attended
Italian language worship, while the
younger people participated in the
English language service. In 1943 the
Reverend D'Albergo retired. The
Valdese Presbyterian Church was
dissolved in September 1943 and its
membership accepted into the First
Presbyterian Church of Galveston.
The 01der generation no longer felt
out of place, and the younger one felt
perfectly at home as members of First
P;esbyterian. The Reverend Arturo
U'Albergo, who had helped the Ital­ian
Protestants make the transition
from the old world to the new, died
in 1944.
FATHER CARMELO
TRANCHESE
1932
On July 17, 1932, in the depths of
the depression, Father Carmelo Tran­chese,
SJ., first entered the run-down
church of Our Lady of Guadalupe
on San Antonio's west side. His pa­rishioners,
some 12,000 Mexican
Americans crammed into one square
mile of slums, were desperately poor,
often hungry and living in squalor
which Father Tranchese had thought
impossible in the United States.
Carmelo Tranchese was then 50
years old. Italian by birth, he had
become a Jesuit priest when he was
quite young. He was a recognized
scholar and had held a high position
at the University of Naples before
coming to the U.S. as a missionary.
He first served at Denver and later
at El Paso, working among the Indi­an
and Mexican populations.
At the San Antonio parish house
on the evening of his arrival, he sat
on an empty apple crate - there were
no chairs - and took stock of his new
situation. The church building was
a wreck, the parish deeply in debt,
and there was not even a broom with
Father Tranchese performing a wedding ceremony
21
which to sweep the dirty quarters. In
1933 things got worse. Most of the
parishioners eked out a living shelling
pecans. When the National Indus­trial
Recovery Act put a floor under
wages, many pecan shellers were
dismissed from their jobs and thrown
onto an already glutted labor market.
There had never been money for lux­uries;
now there was none for essen­tials.
Tranchese begged donations for
people on the verge of starvation and
despair. San Antonio Mayor C.K.
Quin sent squad cars to collect the
staples. The priest set up a distribu­tion
system in the churchyard and
provided food and fuel to some 7,000
people for more than four months.
But the parishioners also needed
jobs and decent shelter. Tranchese
began campaigning for public hous­ing
to be built with laborers from his
congregation. His efforts went unre­warded
until one day a young man
from Washington arrived at the par­ish
house, saying, "I am the answer
to your letters:' After other visits and
other letters the proposal was finally
approved. But there were disappoint­ments
ahead. The Supreme Court
declared the national housing pro­gram
unconstitutional. Later the
court reversed its decision, and the
plan was reapproved. Land was ac­quired,
and construction was well
under way when the federal govern­ment
realized that it had paid far too
much for the run-down slum dwell­ings.
The director of the National
Housing Authority cancelled the
project, and Father Tranchese's hopes
for the future of his parish were
blasted again. Not quite defeated, the
priest sat down and wrote a letter. It
began: "My dear Mrs. Roosevelt. ... "
In time public housing was built.
This was, perhaps, Tranchese's
biggest venture. But he worked con­stantly
to improve the daily existence
of his flock. He organized a mutual
burial society, established a commu­nity
welfare center, set up a children's
health clinic, constructed a play­ground
and opened a nursery schoo!.
He also helped form a class in which
22
the neighborhood girls were taught
their national songs and dances.
Around Christmas time he led the
rehearsals for the traditional Los
Pastores pageant.
In 1953 Father Carmelo Tran­chese
retired to the Jesuit house at
Grand Coteau, Louisiana, where he
died three years later. He had started
at the top and worked his way down.
In the process he became a hero to
the people of San Antonio's west side.
THE FRANK AND JENNIE
INGRANDO FOUNDATION
1951
On Saint Patrick's Day in 1950 a
childless couple, Frank and Jennie
Ingrando of Houston, established a
foundation to provide for the care of
neglected children. They were about
to begin construction of a home on
the Gulf Freeway when Jennie be­came
incurably ill and plans had to
be postponed. After her death in
May 1951 Frank decided to carryon
alone. He was the architect, foreman
and contractor for the building,
which was designed to house 100
children. As Frank said after Jennie's
death: "We both wanted to see chil­dren
with lots of ground around
them. We wanted them to have a few
ponies, flowers, chickens and a gar­den,
maybe:'
The home was dedicated in the
summer of 1954 and was opened in
1955, but Frank Ingrando did not live
to see the first children move in; he
had died the previous December.
The Ingrando home operated until
1962, when the original structure was
sold and a smaller, more economical
place was purchased. The new quar­ters
were operated until 1969. By
then, the state and county had as­sumed
responsibility for the care of
the children the Ingrando home was
intended to help. The foundation
continued to donate money to orga­nizations
already taking care of chil­dren.
It made gifts to the City of
Houston for a park to be named the
Frank and J ennie Ingrando Park. It
gave property to finance an intensive
care unit for children at St. Joseph's
Hospital. It also contributed to the
Houston School for the Deaf, to the
Boy Scouts, to the San Jose Clinic
and to other children's groups.
One of the more unusual gifts
was to Dominican College in Hous­ton.
The gift provided for continua­tion
of a special mass recited each
year on September 8. The mass had
its origins in the 1900 storm which
destroyed Galveston. Frank's father,
Ignacio Ingrando, had vowed that, if
his family survived the storm, he
would mark the occasion annually.
The family survived, and the mass
has been observed with only a few
exceptions ever since.
Sicilian-born Frank Ingrando
was two years old when his parents
immigrated to Texas in 1888. Jennie
Barbera was born in America to
Italian parents who had settled in
Houston shortly after the Civil War.
As a boy Frank worked in his father's
store, then opened his own paint
shop. All the while, he was buying
property whenever he could. By the
late 1920's the Ingrandos possessed
all the material comforts they felt
they would ever need, so they turned
their energies toward saving and
investing for the children's home.
J ennie kept the books, collected the
rents and counseled with Frank in
real estate investments.
As a result of the tax reform act
of 1969, it became uneconomical to
operate the foundation, and the final
gifts were made in 1973. But the
memory of Frank and Jennie Ingran­do
will live on in the park and in
other good works provided for the
children of Houston.
TEXAS COMMITTEE
ON ITALIAN MIGRATION
1955
In 1955 the American Committee on
Italian Migration formed its Texas
chapter with General Vincent Chido
and Mrs. Bruno Bagnoli as cochair­men.
More than 300 families immi-
grated to Texas under the auspices of
this committee. These families were
of varied nationalities-Czech, Hun­garian,
Romanian and Yugoslav­but
all were either skilled craftsmen
or professionals. The committee pro­vided
them assistance in obtaining
housing and a job.
LIGHT D'ALBERGO
BAILEY
1966
Light D'Albergo Bailey dedicated her
adult life to fostering an understand­ing
of the Italian language and cul­ture
in Texas. Lasting evidence of her
dedication is the Clay and Light Bai­ley
Collection of Italian Culture at
the University of Houston, which she
and her husband gave in 1966. She
shared her enthusiasm with many
church, civic and social groups, but
always her favorite audience was her
students. They responded to her
efforts by performing at the level she
set for them.
Light D'Albergo was born in
1908 in New York, where her father,
the Reverend Arturo D'Albergo, was
serving as a Presbyterian minister.
She spent her early years in Sicily at
Palermo and Pachino. Then she re­ceived
her bachelor of arts degree
from The University of Texas at
Mrs. Light D'Albergo Bailey
Austin in 1930. That same year she
married Clay Bailey, then began
teaching Spanish, Latin and Italian
in the Galveston public schools. From
1936 to 1951 she taught Spanish at
Southern Methodist University in
Dallas and also introduced Italian as
a regular course. In 1951 Mrs. Bailey
dme to the University of Houston
and began the regular instruction of
Italian there. .
She was constantly engaged in
efforts to preserve the Italian heritage
in the United States. In 1961 she was
awarded the Cultural Medal by the
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Four years later The University of
Texas requested her translation of
Annibale Ranuzzi's Il Texas to be
placed in the Texana Collection. She
was further honored in 1969 by Uni­co,
the Italian national service orga­nization.
Light D'Albergo died in
] anuary 1972. Three months later
the President of Italy posthumously
conferred upon her the decoration of
Knight Officer in the Order of Merit
of the Italian Republic.
FOSSATI'S RESTAURANT
1973
Fossati's Restaurant and Delicatessen
is the oldest business in Victoria,
Texas. It was founded in 1882 by
Frank Fossati, a 30-year-old Italian
immigrant from Brescia. As a youth
Fossati's Restaurant at Victoria
he was apprenticed as a stonecutter
and spent ten years in Austria learn­ing
the fine points of the art. In 1880
he came to America through the
gates of Ellis Island. From friends he
learned that Texas was building a
new state capitol and that expert
stonecutters were much in demand.
Frank traveled to Austin, only
to learn that he was five or six years
early; the project was still in the plan­ning
stage. He hired on as a laborer
with the Southern Pacific Railroad,
building the high bridge over the
Pecos River in west Texas. After that
he found work in Victoria, cutting
stone for the excellent wage of three
dollars a day. Then, for health rea­sons,
he entered another line of bus i­ness.
On March 1, 1882, Frank Fos­sati
opened a chili and sandwich
stand on Market Equare. He also sold
imported cheeses, sausage and olive
oil. Gradually the business grew, and
Fossatl's became a popular meeting
place for the Italians of Victoria,
especially the new arrivals.
After several moves Fossati's
finally came to rest at its present loca­tion
on South Main. In 1910 Frank's
son, Caeton J. (Kite), entered the
family business. Under his manage­ment
Fossati's began its evolution
from a mere restaurant to a tradition
and an institution. Public officials
made a point of being seen in Fos­sati's.
Countless political campaigns
23
I,
:1
I'
I
were organized there, and the owners
aired their own political opinions as
well. During the "free silver" cam­paign
of William Jennings Bryan,
Frank began using silver dollars
exclusively to transact business. The
restaurant became known locally as
"the silver dollar place."
At Fossati's a man's station in life
was not important. Through its doors
came lawyers, gamblers, doctors,
mechanics and politicians. All that
was required by the management was
that they act like gentlemen.
After Kite retired the business
was subleased, then closed for a time.
The Fossati Family Corporation
bought the building back in 1985 and
reopened Fossati's in 1986.
ITALIAN TEXANS TODAY
Today's Italian Texan bears little
resemblance to his forebears . Many
Town Square at Thurber about 1910
24
of the cultural characteristics that
once distinguished him have disap­peared.
The "little Italys" in urban
areas have been fragmented by urban
renewal or decimated by the subur­ban
exodus. Except among members
of the older generation, the language
has largely fallen into disuse. The last
newspaper directed solely at Italian
Texans ceased publication in 1962.
The beehive ovens of Thurber and
Dickinson have given way to store­bought
bread.
Despite this trend toward assim­ilation,
there remain many visible
signs of an Italian presence in Texas.
In Montague one can still buy fruits
and vegetables raised by the descen­dants
of those early pioneers from
northern Italy. The Qualia winery in
Del Rio has expanded its production.
Italian service organizations, such as
UNICO, remain active in charitable
and civic affairs. In San Antonio the
Christopher Columbus Italian Soci­ety's
spaghetti dinners attract hun­dreds
of second- and third-generation
Italian Texans, as well as non-Italians
who appreciate fine food .
Italians are still coming to
Texas. The immigrants who have
arrived since World War II are
trained professionals or skilled work­ers
who are almost immediately as­similated
into the fabric of American
life. No matter when they came, all
Italian Texans remain proud of their
ancestry. They are also proud of their
contributions toward making Texas
a better place in which to live.
PHOTO CREDITS
All photos are from the collection of The University of Texas Institute of Texan
Cultures at San Antonio, courtesy of the following lenders. Credits from left
to right are separated by semicolons and from top to bottom by dashes. Copies
of these photographs may be obtained from the ITC Library.
Cover
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 23
Page 24
Back cover
Sam Liberto, San Antonio.
George Eastman House Collection, Rochester, NY.
Frederick J. Pohl, Amerigo Vespucci, Pilot Major (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1944) - Collier's
Magazine, December 9, 1905.
The Institute of Texan Cultures.
Gilbert Perez, San Antonio-Museum of History,
Castillo de Chapultepec, Mexico, D.F.
William Morrow, Houston -The Institute of Texan
Cultures.
Harris County Civil Court Building, Houston;
Catholic Archives of Texas, Austin.
A 20th Century History oj Southwest Texas, vol. II
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1907) - Frank W.
Johnson and Eugene C. Barker, A History of Texas and
Texans, vol. V (Chicago: American Historical Society,
1914 ).
C.L. Sonnichsen, The El Paso Salt War; 1877 (El Paso:
Texas Western Press, 1961).
Brazos Varisco, Bryan -Texas Pacific Oil Co., Inc.,
Dallas.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles Innocenti, Victoria; copy
courtesy Henry Hauschild, Victoria-Mrs. C.P.
Nabours, Montague.
Lucchese family, San Antonio.
Val Verde Winery, c/o Thomas M. Qualia, Del Rio;
Charle~ Siringo, A Texas Cowboy (Chicago: M.
Umbdenstock & Co., 1885).
Mrs. E.T. Crosson, Dallas.
Sister Lilliana Owens, Carlos M. Pinto, Sj (El Paso:
Revista Catolica Press, 1951).
Texas State Archives, Austin.
Beulah Owens Hughes, Dickinson - Coppini
Academy, San Antonio.
The Institute of Texan Cultures.
Houston Public Library, Houston; Florentine Donato,
San Antonio.
Clay Bailey, Houston - Saturday Evening Post, August
21, 1948.
Robert W. Shook, Victoria - Clay Bailey, Houston.
Joe Martin, Sinton.
Henry Guerra, San Antonio.
25
Italic numerals identify illu strati ons.
Adin, Louis 19
Agricultural Benevolent Society 10
Agriculture 10-11, 13, 17-18
Attellis, Orazio de 7
Bailey, Light D'Albergo 23 , 23
Barbera, J ennie
see Ingrando, J ennie Barbera
Barziza, Decimus et Ultimus 8, 8
Bernardi, Prospero 7, 7
Brazos County, Texas 10-11
Bruni, Antonio 9
Bruni, Antonio Mateo 9, 9
Cardis, Louis 10, 10
Carminati family 13
Cassiano, Jose
see Cassini, Giuseppe
Cassini, Giuseppe 6, 6
Cerrachio, Enrico 20, 20
Christopher Columbus Italian Society 16
Cobolini, Louis 16-17, 17
Coppini, Pompeo 18, 18
El Correo Atlantico 7, 7
Customs, Italian 11, 15-16, 18
D'Albergo, Arturo 21, 21
D'Albergo, Light
see Bailey, Light D'Albergo
d'Asti, Father Augustine 8-9 , 8
Dickinson, Texas 17 -18, 18
Donato, Josephine Lucchese 20, 20
Fenoglio, Antonio 13
Fenoglio family 12-13
Filisola, Vicente 6-7, 6
Fishing industry 17, 19, 19
Fossati, Caeton J. (Kite) 23-24
Fossati, Frank 23-24
..
Fossati's Restaurant, Victoria, Texas 23-24, 23
Ghio, Anthony 9-10, 9
Grasso, Joe and Joe Jr. 19
Immigration 3, 3, 10, 12 , 17 , 22 -2 3, 24
In gran do, Frank 22
Ingrando, Jennie Barbera 22
J anelli, Adam E. 15, 15
INDEX
La Salle, Rene Rubert Cavelier, Sieur de 4-5
Liberto, Angelina Rinando front cover
Liberto, Frank 17, front cover
Liberto, Sam 17
Liberto, Vincent 17
Lucchese Josephine
see Donato, J osephine Lucchese
Lucchese, Salvatore 13, 13
Lucchese, Sam 13
Micheli, Vicente 5
Montague, Texas 12-13, 12
New York, Texas and Mexican Railroad 12, 12
Nicolini, Clemente 17
Papa, Charles Save rio 19-20
Pinto, Father Carlos M. 16, 16
Pizzini (Frank) family back cover
Qualia family 14
Raymondi family 12
Religion:
see d'Asti, Fr. Augustine; Pinto, Fr. Carlos M.;
St. Joseph's Altar; Tranchese, Fr. Carmelo; Valdese
Presbyterian Church
Rinando, Angelina
see Liberto, Angelina Rinando
Rollando, Rev. Bartholomew 8
Ruffini, Frederick 13
St. J oseph's Altar 15-16
Saladiner, J.M. 10
Siringo, Charles Angelo 14, 14
Talerico, Frank 15
Telfener, Giuseppe 12
The Texas Tribune 15, 19-20
Thurber, Texas 11 -12, 11, 21-
Tonti, Henri de 4-5 , 5
Tranchese, Father Carmelo 21-22, 21
La Tribuna Italiana
see The Texas Tribune
Valdese Presbyterian Church 21, 21
Val Verde Winery 14, 14
Varisco (Antonio) family 11
Vasquez de Coronado, Francisco, expedition 4, 1-
Vespucci, Amerigo 3-4, 3
27
..
One oj a series
prepared by the staff oj
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
AT SAN ANTONIO