Cesare Pilati was born in Tassullo, Tyrol onMarch 21, 1884 to Germano and Viola Zambiasi. He was the fifth son of a large family (eleven kids total) originally from the neighbor village of Nanno. He arrived in America in April 1905 after his cousins Agostino and Giuseppe Bergamo employed in the Victor American Fuel mine of Maitland, next to Walsenburg.

Soon he was working in Rouse  where his stay is documented through May 1908.

He was married with Luigia, and he had two daughters: Viola, born in Rouse in 1908 and Vincenza, born in Walsenburg in 1915.

He quit the miners life and moved to California where he was employed initially in a bar in Union, Ca and finally in San Francisco, where he died in 1924.

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Basilio Zanoni was born in Cloz on June 18, 1875 to Angelo and Luigia Franch.

He arrived in Colorado as a teenager in December 1891 and married Domenica Grosso  Trinidad  on December 2nd, 1896; he returned to Cloz where his first two children were born: Livio (Lee) in 1899 and Remigio (1906).

Returned to America, he was joined by his family in February 1907; another two kids were born in Colorado: Erma (born in Pictou in 1910) and Alberto Damiano (born in Walsenburg in 1915). He became a naturalized citizen in 1913 in Walsenburg, and lived the rest of his life in different locations: Silverton CO, Gallup NM, Cambria and Newcastle WY where he worked in a cigar store. He died in Wyoming nel 1940.

His employment in Rouse is limited to two months, March and April 1907.

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Amongst the large Tyrolean community living in Rouse at the beginning of the twentieth century,  the contribution of Segonzano and vicinity was particularly important . In fact from the various villages of the Cembra Valley , there were about thirty people employed in mining only in the period between 1906 and 1908; including as many as 6 children of Giovanni Battista Antonelli and Domenica Toller, born in Piazzo di Segonzano : Giovanni (1872), Guglielmo (1873), Giuseppe ( 1877) , Vittorio (1880) , Francesco (1883) and Augusto (1887) .

The first of the Antonelli brothers to arrive in Colorado, probably to Hastings, was Giovanni, circa 1892. He was married to Maria Rugera and they  had seven children between 1900 and 1915, all of them born in Rouse. In Rouse he worked from November 1904 until around 1917. He became a naturalized citizen in 1912 and died in an accident in the mine of Lester in July of 1920.

Vittorio followed his older brother to Hastings in the early 1900′s settling in Rouse shortly after. He was amongst the early immigrants founders of the Società di Mutuo Soccorso Dante Alighieri, he worked in Rouse starting from November 1904 through June 1907. He returned to Piazzo where he was enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army and sent to the front in Galicia with the first Regiment of the Tiroler Kaiserjäger; wounded in the early months of the war, he died in a hospital in Vienna in December 1914.

Giuseppe came after his brother Vittorio in 1907 aboard the ship of the Holland America Line “Potsdam” departed from Rotterdam, arriving in Trinidad in March. Few months later, he was joined by his wife Maria Andreatta  and had two sons in Colorado: Attilio (deceased as a baby ) and Silvio. In Rouse he worked from April of 1907 until the bloody strikes of 1913, left without a job and he returned with his family and remained there for the rest of his life.

Also Guglielmo arrived in America around 1907 and, as Giuseppe, began working in Rouse between March and April of the same until December of 1911 when he returned to Italy for good.

Francesco and Agostino came last (the first in 1909, the latter in 1911), both naturalized and ” Americanized ” becoming Frank and August, they  worked in various mines in Colorado and settled for good.

A big thank you to Gary Antonelli for Giuseppe’s picture

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Refugees from Tyrol

Giovanni Angeli was born in Tenna on Novembre 1st, 1874 to Dominico and  Teresa Passamani. He was a distant relative to my great grandfather Domenico (their fathers were half-brothers), and together they cross the ocean on the Red Line “Zeeland” from Antwerp to New York on December 1905, leaving in Tenna his pregnant wife,  Maria Valentini, whom he married in 1901.

His employment in Rouse is documented from February 1906 through October 1907, when he comes back to Tenna.

The two world wars marked dramatically Giovanni’s life. During the first one he was enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army and sent to the front line, while his wife and seven kids were deported to the camps of Pottendorf, Bruck am der Leita and Mitterdorf where, between 1915 and 1919 three kids and his wife Maria died of starvation.

During world war II, his son Ettore and his last son Mario (born from his second wedding with Maria Zurlo in 1921), died in combat with the italian Army.

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Lodovico, Luigi and Enrico Anzelini were three brothers born in the village Fondo, in the southernmost Austro-Hungarian Empire province of Tyrol (now Italy) to Nicolò and Caterina Graziadei.

Luigi was the first to arrive in USA, born on January 24, 1880, he traveled aboard the ship “La Champagne” from Le Havre on  December 2, 1902 and settled shortly after in Trinidad in 1902.

In February 1905 his younger brother Lodovico (born August 18, 1884) tried to reach him and their older brother Enrico (born on November 11, 1878 living in Trinidad and never employed in Rouse), but he was detained in Ellis Island for a week and finally deported since he declared to have a contract and that was contrary to the immigration laws (Foran Act o f 1885) to promise a job to a prospective immigrant, taking the opportunity away from an American citizen.

Somehow Lodovico managed to get to Colorado anyways, and he started in Rouse together with Luigi from August 1906 through November 1907. While Luigi returned to Fondo for good (he left Rouse in March 1907), Lodovico chose to stay in the US, and found employment near Florence, Walsenburg, and Louisville, alternating farming to mining.

He finally moved in 1937 to Longmont and retired from from work as a coal miner in 1946; he passed away in Longmont in December 1955, survived by his wife Maria and by a daughter, Catherine (Anzelini) Widmar.

Family from Calabria, circa 1900 [Internet]

Not much is known about his family in Italy, or his exact date of birth, from his employment records and the census data it is likely he was born between 1882 and 1884.

He did arrive in Colorado probably around 1896, a little more than a boy, following two older brothers: Tommaso, who become a rancher in La Veta and with whom he would share lodging in 1910, and Francesco who did settle in Trinidad with his family

Although he would not spend much time in Rouse (he is recorded only for the month of  July 1906), Michele worked several years for the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, finding employment in the mines of Hastings, Berwind and Primero, all within Huerfano County.

He died in 1918 in Walsenburg and he is buried at the Saint Mary Cemetery next to his brother Tommaso.

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The first to arrive was Silvio, departed from the French port of Le Havre aboard “La Gascogne ” he arrived in New York on May 24, 1903 along with two fellow countrymen: Emilio Alessandrini and Felice Passamani. Silvio began working at Rouse in November 1904 and the following month also came Felice Passamani with his brother Anselmo who in the meantime had arrived from Tenna in February.

Silvio worked in Rouse all 1905 and, in October, he paid for the trip across the ocean to his brother Valentino who, having completed the three-year service in the Austrian army, retraced the footsteps of his older brother ( same port, same ship , same train ) to join him in Colorado working both as a miner and as a maintenance worker for the tunnels.

In January 1906 Valentino was joined by his cousin Domenico Angeli , and in April by his third brother Giovanni who travelled with Luigi Alessandrini.

None of the brothers Anesi remained in America. Silvio went back to Tenna the first half of 1906 and in 1908 he married Valeria Erspaner having three daughters in the following years; Giovanni, who at the time of his trip to America was married and already had three children, returned to Tenna in 1907 to his wife Rosa Alessandrini and had more 4 children. Valentino left  Colorado in 1910 and in October of the same year he married  Angelina Alessandrini in Tenna, and had three children.

The First World War divided again the brothers Anesi: with their families evacuated near Vienna, Silvio and Valentino were recruited and sent on different fronts while Giovanni was stationed in Levico .

Silvio was captured by the Italians and spent several years in a prison camp in Italy , Valentino was instead captured by the Russians in Galicia in 1914 and confined to Omsk in Siberia . Eyewitness of the Russian Revolution, Valentino returned permanently to Tenna only in 1920 from Russian port of Vladivostok.

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Panorama on the Berwind mine in 1923. Courtesy Glen Aultman.

Davide, Napoleone and Edoardo were three of the eight kids of Antonio and Caterina Bernardi.

Born in Lases in the Cembra Valley in Tyrol respectively in 1867, 1872 and 1876 they ventured to America at different times. First was Edoardo who arrived in Trinidad from Antwerp in December 1900, where in October 1902 he married Fiorentina Anesi.

Edoardo did not work in Rouse but while in Trinidad, he was joined by his older brother Napoleone, who arrived in America from the French port of Le Havre in October 1901. Napoleone returned to Lases and married Rosa Dalvit and they had his first son Agostino in 1906. With Rosa pregnant of his second son Giuseppe, he ventured back to Colorado in March 1907 arriving to Berwind from the German port of Bremen; his employment in Rouse is documented starting May 1907 through October 1907. After that date he returned home, had a third son, Albino (1908) and never came back to the Colorado mines.

His brother Davide arrived in New York on April 13, 1903 on board of the “La Lorraine” traveling from Le Havre, he met Edoardo in the Berwind mine and his employment in Rouse is documented starting from February 1906 through October 1907. Davide was married to Fortunata Dalvit before his first trip to Colorado, after 1907 he returned to Lases and stayed with his family.

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Main Street in Murphy NC, ca 1860

Samuel Jack Anderson was born in Murphy, Cherokee County, NC on August 5, 1869 to John Anderson and his second wife, Mildred Dugger.

He lived his first years in Tennesse where his family resided in 1880 and where he enlisted in the US Army in 1893; being discharged in 1896, the same year married Henrietta Rush (Etta) in Ducktown, Tennessee where his first two daughters were born: Gracie (1897) and Mae (1898)

In 1900 he farmed in Deer Creek, Oklahoma where is first son Homer was born the same year. Shortly after the family moved west to Colorado where Samuel finds employment in the mines working in Primero, Hastings and Rugby. More kids arrived during those years: Theodore (1902), Mollie (1903), Floyd (1905 died infant), Sylvester (1907) and Arthur (1910).

Rouse registers record his presence as S.J. Anderson between June and November, 1906.

In 1911 Samuel worked as a farmer in Ignacio, La Plata County, where his last kid Eugene was born in 1912. Ignacio will be his last residence, in March 1918 after a few months illness he died in Pueblo.

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Miners in Rock Springs, WY

Amongst the Tyrolean community who worked in the Southern Colorado mine fields there are two possible matches with Eugenio Andreatta, both born in 1884, both baptized in Segonzano, and both working/residing in Rouse at some time.

One, Eugenio Giovanni, was born on May 25, 1884 to Domenico and Teresa Zancanella; the other one, Antonio Eugenio, was born on August 11, 1884 to Antonio and Maria Antonelli.

Eugenio Giovanni appears to be traveling to Rouse with his sister Maria in December 1907, Maria had married Giuseppe Antonelli who worked in Rouse.

About Antonio Eugenio, he arrived with another group of Tyroleans in 1903 to Trinidad, his work card document his employment in Rouse up to 1904, then Lester, Rockvale and Rock Springs where he resides all the remaining of his life, dying in 1963.

According to his obituary, at that time his only living relatives were a cousin (Clementina) in Las Animas, and a niece in Italy.

The payrolls in mine document only one entry in 1907, as Jim Andreatta.

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