From The Peopling of New York City
The Search for the Elusive Immigrant is a topic characterizing one of the goals of The Peopling of New York. The immigrants our class went in search of were not well known. They were ordinary people seeking better lives for themselves and for their children. The stories of these immigrants are difficult to unravel because they often get lost in the historical record. Their names are not famous enough for the documentation on their lives to be better preserved. It is hard work trying to uncover the lives of ordinary people, but it is doable and proves to be extremely rewarding when hard work and persistent scavenging produce results.
For my research project, I wanted to delve into the lives of some of the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I started by reading Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle. As the author wrote, Triangle "is one more attempt to open up the horror of the Triangle fire, to gaze intently and unflinchingly at it, and to settle on the facts and their meaning" (p. 5). In Triangle, Von Drehle explored the years before and leading up to the fire, the parameters revolving around the fire itself and some of its victims, and the aftermath of the fire. At the end of his narrative, the author, in an appendix, attempts to compile a correct listing of the 146 fire victims, their ages, cause of death, address, and whom they were identified by. I chose the victims I was interested in researching from this list.
On Saturday, March 25, 1911 at around 4:45 P.M., a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that engulfed the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the building. The factory, the present biology and chemistry building of NYU, was owned by Isaac Harris and Max Blanck. Most of the employees were young immigrant women, largely of Italian or Jewish descent. (Some men also worked at the factory.) The fire claimed 146 lives of hardworking immigrants who came to the United States of America in search of a better life. Many of the immigrant workers had only come to the U.S. a few months before their tragic and untimely deaths. The fire was “the deadliest workplace disaster in New York History” (Von Drehle 3) until September 11, 2001 when terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Towers. What makes the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire such a tragedy is that it could have been prevented.
Workers labored under unhealthy and even inhumane working conditions. Workers were crowded around cutting tables. There was no ventilation and the heat generated from the sewing machines and presses created a stifling environment. Fabric scraps and tissue paper could easily catch fire as eventually happened and started the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Also, there were workers on the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the building. Fire engine ladders during the early part of the twentieth century only reached up to six stories. If a fire were to erupt in the factory above the sixth floor, it was impossible for firemen to reach those trapped. This is exactly what happened and this could have been prevented. Even the fire hoses, located in the stairwells of each floor, did not work. There was no water pressure so the factory employees could not even attempt to put out the flames before the fire department arrived on the scene. Locked doors did not help the situation. Workers could not escape. The flames engulfed the factory floors. Some workers jumped to their deaths while others burned inside the building.
The burned bodies that were found were placed in numbered, open caskets and taken to the Charities Piers on Twenty-sixth Street in Manhattan, the morgue. Survivors and loved ones gathered at the morgue daily in an effort to identify the victims. Those victims who were fortunate were identified and properly buried. Others, however, were not so lucky. Some of the dead were so badly burned that they were unrecognizable. These victims were buried respectfully, however, they were never identified. Their death certificates read “Unknown Woman” or “Unknown Man.”
The victims I chose to investigate were Rosie Bassino, Morris Bernstein, Rosie Grosso, Pauline Horowitz, Catherine Maltese, Lucia Maltese, and Rosaria Maltese. I found more information about some than about others. The only information I was able to find on Morris Bernstein, Rosie Grosso, and Pauline Horowitz was the information given on their death certificates which I found at the Municipal Archives.
I was able to find more information on Rosie Bassino and the Maltese family, aside from the information provided by their death certificates. I found Rosie Bassino in the 1910 Federal Census on ancestry.com as well as how much money her sister's (Irene Grameatassio) family and her family received in aide from the Emergency Relief Fund of the Red Cross. I found this information at the New York Public Library in the pamphlet Report of the Red Cross Emergency Relief After Washington Place Fire. I found much more information on the Maltese family partly because the family is in politics. The grandson of Catherine Maltese is Queens District New York State Senator Serphin Maltese.
I started my research on ancestry.com looking for anything and everything from passenger manifests to federal census records. I also the Italian Genealogical Society’s search engine, italiangen.org, to find the death certificate numbers of the fire victims. When I found all of the certificate numbers I followed up with a visit to the Municipal Archives at 31 Chambers Street, Room 103. There I scrolled through microfilm rolls and found the death certificates I was looking for. I recorded all of the information they provided including where the bodies were found, their marital status, country of birth, names of parents and their place of birth, cause of death, address, date and place of burial, and name and address of undertaker.
After my trip to the Municipal Archives, I decided to go to the New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, on 5th Avenue. In the Main Reading Room I read through Red Cross relief pamphlets, a book of poems honoring the victims of the Triangle Fire, and a book compiled of articles and pictures of the fire by a grandson of one of the victims (NYS Senator Serphin Maltese). At the library, I also scrolled through microfilmed city directories but hit a dead end when I did not find any of my victims listed.
I continued my search by looking for descendents and family members of the deceased. I, again, used ancestry.com for preliminary research. Finding passenger manifests, naturalization records, military records, and death records I proceeded to search for the genuine documents at the National Archives at 201 Varick Street. There I was able to look through microfilmed naturalization records. I was unable to view military records due to privacy issues. I later returned to the Municipal Archives after finding marriage certificate numbers for the descendents of the Maltese family on italiangen.org.
One of the hard parts of tracking down information on my victims was that since they are immigrants, their names are often spelled differently in various sources (passenger manifests, death certificates, census, newspaper articles, and obituaries). Often names are misspelled in census data as was Rosie Bassino's name; it was written as Bassano. Much of the fruit that I found was at the Municipal Archives.
Upon visiting the National Archives, I was happy to find the naturalization petitions and declarations of intention for both Serafino and Paolo Maltese. I was unable to find the naturalization petition or declaration of intention for Vito, though.
I found the Italian Genealogical Society's website, italiangen.org, extremely helpful in that it provided the death certificate numbers of Rosie Bassino, Morris Bernstein, Rosie Grosso, Pauline, Horowitz, Catherine Maltese, Lucia Maltese, Rosaria Maltese, Serafino Maltese. It also provided the naturalization petition numbers for Serafino and Paolo Maltese. Having these numbers made it much easier and faster to look up the information that I needed at the Municipal and National Archives.
