North Adams Notes 7-19-2000
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Dr. John Moresi of North Adams gave a presentation July 16 to more than 80 people in a North Adams Historical Society program, "Immigration to North Adams: Our Italian Heritage."
"I'm going to take you on a little trip ... to a region in Northern Italy called Tremosine. It's a region from where many of our ancestors, many of the natives of North Adams, came from," Moresi said. "I want to share with you some of the trials, the tribulations. I want to show you where they came from, the hardships they put up [with] and perhaps put in perspective why they came and why they brought their ethic with them."
Tremosine is located in the Southern Alps; the area is halfway between both Milan and Venice to the west and east and, closer in, between Brescia and Verona to the west and east. The area sits by Lake Garda, a large lake called "the Little Sea of Italy." The biggest lake in Italy, it's up to 1,000 feet deep.
Villages up on a plateau high above the lake are separated and almost isolated by steep, rocky, majestic cliffs from villages on the lake shore below. The mountains are not wooded, roads are few and not of the highest quality. A significant number of the Northern Italians who came to North Adams were from this area: Ghidotti, Leonoso, Faustini, Fachini, Milesi, are the family names of some, said Moresi, a North Adams dentist.
His father, Louis Moresi, was Swiss, from Canton Ticino, an area with many Italian customs which borders Italy. His mother was Italian. Her maiden name was Ida Roncetti; she was from a little town called Vesio in the Tremosine region. Louis and Ida met in the United States in North Adams.
Moresi showed slides from his trips to Italy over the past 40 years and from books.
"Before I start any of my talks on Italy and Italian cultures I always like to respect and to honor our ancestors when I say that I was privileged to be born the son of Italian immigrants," he said. "[I] only realized that when supposedly I became an educated man. One does not realize, until you've lived it, the courage, the innate genius that many of these people had."
Moresi spoke of Arturo Cozzaglio, the ancestor of many people by the same name in our area. Cozzaglio, was a civil engineer who, along with much of the clergy, came up with a design for a road leading from the local port on up the difficult terrain to the villages above.
"He was a man who was considered a genius," Moresi said. Among Cozzaglio's many works was to find ruins in the area of the ancient Etruscan civilization, which predates the Romans.
In fact, Moresi has a book written in Italian about Cozzaglio's interesting life "Il Mono Di Arturo Cozzaglio: The World of Arturo Cozzaglio."
Showing slides of an old village, with narrow streets and stone buildings preserved, Moresi said, "One thing Italians really do is they really respect the past and antiquity and really do quite a job on restoring these buildings.
"They go through real extensive efforts to make sure that everything is well taken care of."
He said later, "I love side streets over there. They're so enchanting; they're so romantic. It almost seems like you can communicate with the spirits."
Moresi has researched the history of the Tremosine area back several centuries.
"This area came under various governments. It went from the city-state of Venice to the French to the Austrians to the Italians," he said. "And you literally go a distance of from here to Adams and you'll see a very, very, very different architectural scheme. You'll see a very, very different historical scheme."
Moresi showed some slides of the large and ornate church in his mother's hometown of Vesio, a town now of 800 people. When the church was built in the 1600s, the population of the entire area of 16 hamlets was only 853 people, he said.
"Hard to believe, this is not a famous church in Venice or in Verona or in Rome, and ... what is hard to believe is that each one of these little hamlets had their own church," he said. "I can proudly say my grandparents were married there in that church, my mother's first communion and confirmation."
Showing small plots of land devoted to gardens, "I wish I had my grandparents' way with the soil. It's amazing what these people can do to this very day in the small amount of land that they have," he said.
Moresi show slides of the town of Limone on the shore of Lake Garda.
"Limone's very interesting because ... the people live to a very, very old age. They have cholesterol levels that are right through the ceiling ... [300], 400-plus. Enough that would make American doctors really go nuts. But you know what, they hardly have any cardiovascular disease," Moresi said.
A study of the people of Limone found out that they have a special enzyme in their blood, which some biotech companies are trying to synthesize. But people from the town attribute their health and longevity to "the oil of Limone" — an local olive oil of which they are very proud, he said.
Higher up in the area, the olive trees won't grow, he noted. Showing a slide of small villages up in the mountains, a scene somewhat similar to our area, he said, "this is where many of our folks came from. See a parallel with North Adams? See why maybe they came over here? The geography is very similar."
He noted that one can find similar gardens among families of Italian ancestry on Walnut Street in North Adams.
Moresi came to two slides particularly poignant for him, one a farewell message to his mother when she emigrated to America in 1930 from a female cousin.
"When people came to this country, the immigrants, they left behind their life, their friends and relationships," he said.
Friends and relatives typically gave those emigrating a prayer book. The prayer book was from Ida Roncetti's cousin, who wrote on the inside the cover, "May God accompany you, my dear daughter, throughout your life, and we wish you the best of luck. Your cousin ... "
"They always cherished these prayerbooks, these words of encouragement from their families and their friends," he said. "Very, very poignant. I mean, can you imagine the courage these people had and how sad they must have been, especially with the uncertainty of what they faced here?"
At the end of his presentation, Moresi said, "I hope that I have in some little way given you appreciation from whence our ancestors came, what they had to face, and I think we should get a little bit of appreciation for what they did when they came over."
Elizabeth Winthrop, a new summer resident of Williamstown and daughter of the late political journalist Stewart Alsop, attended Moresi's presentation. She is working on a short historical novel for children. The story is based during the Great Depression era in North Adams. The main character is young immigrant girl who is exchanging letters with President Franklin Roosevelt. She was seeking background from those who lived through the Depression or whose parents lived through it. She had a short questionnaire that people could fill out and send back to her.
Also available at the meeting was a flyer from the North Adams Sons of Italy soliciting support for the organization's two-year project to preserve Italian culture through increasing organization membership, the publication of an Italian cultural book where local residents of Italian ancestry can record their family heritage, and the construction of a new Sons; hall.
A room in the new hall will be dedicated to the Rosasco Memorial Library in honor of the late Judge Ernest Rosasco. This library is intended to help preserve Italian culture and will be the focus of the campaign to raise more than $450,000.
Also coming up from the North Adams Historical Society: "Expedition: North Adams," a walking tour of downtown North Adams will take place Friday, July 21, at 6:30 p.m. Walk with them and experience the history, sites, and natural beauty of North Adams. The guide/lecturer will be Robert Campanile, museum director. The program begins at the North Adams Local History Museum, Building 2, Western Gateway Heritage State Park.
Northern Berkshire Health Systems has a new website: www.nbhealth.org. I checked it out and found much interesting and useful information, including information about members of the health system's medical staff.
