FRANCESCO SECCHI DE CASALI
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...With uncontrived
naturalness,
Eleonora approached the second, heavier set man with a smile of
recognition:
she had heard this gentleman speak in his Piacentine accent at a
rally before
Margaret was born, one organized by the philanthropist George
Hay Stuart from
Philadelphia. She hadn’t realized he was Secchi de Casali.
“I am Eleonora Whiteside….Eleonora…Serlupi.” She extended her hand. "The angel of patriots." |
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...“Three thousand copies aren’t enough to put bread on the table. On the other hand, our competitors fold almost immediately. They write for those who are determined to go back to Italy, while we try to inform those who want to—or who have no choice but to—stay in this country. And thanks to our school, we get the children off the streets. We teach English reading and spelling, grammar, Italian, history, geography, and addition and subtraction, just like Public Schools during the day....." |
A
tailor standing
on the threshold of his shop heard her say that and asked what
they were
looking for.
“The Eco d’Italia offices, thank you.”
“In the tall brick building that will—well, it will rise before your eyes when you turn the corner,” he said.
It literally did what he promised; it imposed massiveness and purpose on a landscape of hovels. In large letters over the front door was written 'Five Points House of Industry'.
“The Eco d’Italia offices, thank you.”
“In the tall brick building that will—well, it will rise before your eyes when you turn the corner,” he said.
It literally did what he promised; it imposed massiveness and purpose on a landscape of hovels. In large letters over the front door was written 'Five Points House of Industry'.
If you want to learn more about the Italian quarter of Five Points and
the Italian school run by A.E.Cerqua, accounts of which were published in Eco d'Italia by Francesco Secchi de Casali, here is a link to a PDF file with a chapter from a 19th-century book re-published by the Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33431 |
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| excerpt_from_the_project_gutenberg_ebook_of_the_dangerous_classes_of_new_york.pdf |
A short biography of Francesco Secchi de Casali by Gayle Ridinger
Francesco Giovanni Bernardo Mario Secchi de Casali was born on April 25, 1819 in Piacenza, Italy. He entered the seminary at the age of 12, but five years later was forced to flee when he and a group of others were charged with “conspiring” against the Church. From 1836 to 1843 he lived in Algeria (with a group of French Zuoaves) as well as in Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Upon his return to Italy, he discovered that the Austrian police were looking for him and so fled to Paris.
There he met George H. Stuart of Philadelphia, who was destined to become chairman of the United States Christian Commission, which was organized by the YMCA to recruit. Evangelize, and support Union troops in the Civil War. Stuart told him that in his country there were no secret police or anciens regimes to counter, and the 24-year-old Secchi de Casali had no doubts that America was the place for him. By 1846 he was there—having found room and board in the boarding school run by Rev. Williamson on Murray Street in New York City.
As a teacher at Williamson’s school, Secchi de Casali worked 17 hours a day, for three dollars a week. His contract specified that he was to teach Italian language and literature, French, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Geography, as well as declaim passages from the Bible at least three times a day.
After making a name for himself as a teacher, Secchi de Casali began working in 1848 as a free-lance journalist for American newspapers. While acquiring this professional experience, he began to see that there was a need for a newspaper for Italian immigrants that was not a political manifesto but helpful and informative as regarded their everyday problems. L’Eco d’Italia began publication in 1850, thanks exclusively to the efforts of its sole editor and owner who, in order to pay for the first three editions, had to sell his gold watch and his wife’s earrings. He kept moving the newspaper’s offices from one street to another, a trick that worked until one particularly zealous judge impounded his printing machine because he hadn’t paid his landlord the rent.
In a relatively short time, Secchi de Casali became one of the most influential leaders of the Italian community in New York, to the extent that he succeeded in getting them to vote en masse for the first time during the 1858 elections, thus ensuring the victory of Daniel E. Sickles in the third precinct of New York as representative in the United States Congress.
Meanwhile, L’Eco d’Italia also continued to grow, thanks to the investment of Italian business leaders in its advertizing space, and to the newspaper’s policy of taking the concerns and problems of its readers directly to the competent authorities, at the cost of battling with the often inefficient functionaries at the Italian Consulate. The other fixed priority of the newspaper, no less important, was the monitoring of (and support for) the public schools for second-generation immigrants, like that of Five Points in Manhattan, where up to a hundred poor youngsters at one time were taught a trade that keep them from a future of begging or selling trinkets on the street.
On April 22, 1865 the newspaper’s front page was draped in mourning for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. For the Presidential funeral, Secchi de Casali organized a constituency of 500 Italian Americans in New York (in addition to 300 in Washington), who for the first time in an American city carried the tri-colored Italian flag in their procession.
The first mention of plans to create an ‘agricultural colony’ in Vineland, New Jersey, appeared in L’Eco d’Italia in 1869, accompanied by a notice that land plots were available at low cost. The community of Vineland had been chartered in 1861 by a certain Charles K. Landis, who had bought up 20,000 acres of farmland in an area near Millville, New Jersey with the idea of creating a sort of utopian settlement based on agriculture and progressive thinking. As of 1873, Secchi de Casali and his newspaper provided constant updates on the project (including the price per acre, which was going for about 25 dollars) and encouraging Italians in New York and Philadelphia to move to Vineland. Above all, Secchi de Casali thought this sort of community would appeal to the many Italians who had done farming in their home country, the skills for which went unrecognized in the city factories where they worked at present. He made friends with Landis and promoted Vineland in any way he could.
During the summer of 1884, Secchi de Casali waged a successful, long-distance campaign to get the city of Forlì in Italy to organize the return and burial of the body of the Italian patriot Pietro Maroncelli, who had died in Philadelphia. Here was finally an occasion for Secchi de Casali to make a visit to his home country, the first in forty years. In the same period, he began a fund drive for the construction of a Giuseppe Garibaldi Hospital in America. Not long after his return, however, he was stricken with an incurable illness and died at midnight on June 10, 1885. He is buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
It is sad to note that the town of Vineland, New Jersey, pays no tribute to Francesco de Casali but only to Charles Landis. There is no justification today for this omission, and moreover, one wonders why the good people of Vineland have never puzzled over the reason for their having a Piacenza Avenue in their town. It seems that the last official American source of recognition of Secchi de Casali’s importance in the history of Vineland dates back to 1921, in the book by Alfredo Bosi, Cinquant’anni di vita italiana in America, published by Bagnasco Press in New York, and available today on the Internet (only in Italian) at:
http://archive.org/stream/cinquantannidivi00bosiiala/cinquantannidivi00bosiiala_djvu.txt
The newspaper article announcing the death of Francesco Secchi de Casali - by courtesy of Passerini - Landi Library (Piacenza)
Francesco Giovanni Bernardo Mario Secchi de Casali was born on April 25, 1819 in Piacenza, Italy. He entered the seminary at the age of 12, but five years later was forced to flee when he and a group of others were charged with “conspiring” against the Church. From 1836 to 1843 he lived in Algeria (with a group of French Zuoaves) as well as in Greece, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Upon his return to Italy, he discovered that the Austrian police were looking for him and so fled to Paris.
There he met George H. Stuart of Philadelphia, who was destined to become chairman of the United States Christian Commission, which was organized by the YMCA to recruit. Evangelize, and support Union troops in the Civil War. Stuart told him that in his country there were no secret police or anciens regimes to counter, and the 24-year-old Secchi de Casali had no doubts that America was the place for him. By 1846 he was there—having found room and board in the boarding school run by Rev. Williamson on Murray Street in New York City.
As a teacher at Williamson’s school, Secchi de Casali worked 17 hours a day, for three dollars a week. His contract specified that he was to teach Italian language and literature, French, Ancient Greek, Latin, and Geography, as well as declaim passages from the Bible at least three times a day.
After making a name for himself as a teacher, Secchi de Casali began working in 1848 as a free-lance journalist for American newspapers. While acquiring this professional experience, he began to see that there was a need for a newspaper for Italian immigrants that was not a political manifesto but helpful and informative as regarded their everyday problems. L’Eco d’Italia began publication in 1850, thanks exclusively to the efforts of its sole editor and owner who, in order to pay for the first three editions, had to sell his gold watch and his wife’s earrings. He kept moving the newspaper’s offices from one street to another, a trick that worked until one particularly zealous judge impounded his printing machine because he hadn’t paid his landlord the rent.
In a relatively short time, Secchi de Casali became one of the most influential leaders of the Italian community in New York, to the extent that he succeeded in getting them to vote en masse for the first time during the 1858 elections, thus ensuring the victory of Daniel E. Sickles in the third precinct of New York as representative in the United States Congress.
Meanwhile, L’Eco d’Italia also continued to grow, thanks to the investment of Italian business leaders in its advertizing space, and to the newspaper’s policy of taking the concerns and problems of its readers directly to the competent authorities, at the cost of battling with the often inefficient functionaries at the Italian Consulate. The other fixed priority of the newspaper, no less important, was the monitoring of (and support for) the public schools for second-generation immigrants, like that of Five Points in Manhattan, where up to a hundred poor youngsters at one time were taught a trade that keep them from a future of begging or selling trinkets on the street.
On April 22, 1865 the newspaper’s front page was draped in mourning for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. For the Presidential funeral, Secchi de Casali organized a constituency of 500 Italian Americans in New York (in addition to 300 in Washington), who for the first time in an American city carried the tri-colored Italian flag in their procession.
The first mention of plans to create an ‘agricultural colony’ in Vineland, New Jersey, appeared in L’Eco d’Italia in 1869, accompanied by a notice that land plots were available at low cost. The community of Vineland had been chartered in 1861 by a certain Charles K. Landis, who had bought up 20,000 acres of farmland in an area near Millville, New Jersey with the idea of creating a sort of utopian settlement based on agriculture and progressive thinking. As of 1873, Secchi de Casali and his newspaper provided constant updates on the project (including the price per acre, which was going for about 25 dollars) and encouraging Italians in New York and Philadelphia to move to Vineland. Above all, Secchi de Casali thought this sort of community would appeal to the many Italians who had done farming in their home country, the skills for which went unrecognized in the city factories where they worked at present. He made friends with Landis and promoted Vineland in any way he could.
During the summer of 1884, Secchi de Casali waged a successful, long-distance campaign to get the city of Forlì in Italy to organize the return and burial of the body of the Italian patriot Pietro Maroncelli, who had died in Philadelphia. Here was finally an occasion for Secchi de Casali to make a visit to his home country, the first in forty years. In the same period, he began a fund drive for the construction of a Giuseppe Garibaldi Hospital in America. Not long after his return, however, he was stricken with an incurable illness and died at midnight on June 10, 1885. He is buried at the Evergreen Cemetery in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
It is sad to note that the town of Vineland, New Jersey, pays no tribute to Francesco de Casali but only to Charles Landis. There is no justification today for this omission, and moreover, one wonders why the good people of Vineland have never puzzled over the reason for their having a Piacenza Avenue in their town. It seems that the last official American source of recognition of Secchi de Casali’s importance in the history of Vineland dates back to 1921, in the book by Alfredo Bosi, Cinquant’anni di vita italiana in America, published by Bagnasco Press in New York, and available today on the Internet (only in Italian) at:
http://archive.org/stream/cinquantannidivi00bosiiala/cinquantannidivi00bosiiala_djvu.txt
The newspaper article announcing the death of Francesco Secchi de Casali - by courtesy of Passerini - Landi Library (Piacenza)
From Progresso Italo-Americano 10 July, 1892, unfortunately not mentioning Secchi De Casale.
