The Italian Community at Roseville and the Bloody Section

A while back we looked at the "Italian Colony" that grew up near Wooddale, on the very eastern edge
of Mill Creek Hundred. It was comprised of Italian immigrant workers (and some of their families) employed at the stone quarry there. They were doing dangerous manual labor -- the kind often offered to immigrants. There was another kind of dangerous work common in the 19th Century, and when it came rumbling through New Castle County in the 1880's it gave rise to another Italian enclave on the other end of Mill Creek Hundred. This one was in some ways similar and in other ways different than the Wooddale community. Sadly, it also shows that the way immigrants are treated in this country has not changed much over the past 140 years.

Without question, one of the great engineering feats of the 19th Century was the construction of the railroad system. Being difficult, dangerous, mobile work, the building of the railroads was often given to immigrant workers, often Chinese in the western states and European (such as Irish) in the east. There were two major railroad lines that came through New Castle County in the 19th Century. The first was the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore, constructed in the 1830's (this line is now used by Amtrak). That was it for the next 50 years or so (with the exception of the smaller more local lines like the Wilmington & Western and the Wilmington & Northern), until the Baltimore & Ohio decided it wanted a northeastern route to compete with the Pennsylvania Railroad.

When the B&O came building their line through NCC in 1883/84, it seems that their workforce was primarily Italian. It's kind of funny -- I don't know about you, but when I think of railroads being built by teams of workers, I really only picture it in very remote places. Like through the prairie, or across mountains, or through forests miles from nowhere. I never really thought about a large cohort of men traveling slowly, working through a populated area like White Clay and Mill Creek Hundreds. Where would they stay while they did their work in an area?

This is where our story comes in. I can't say I know how it worked anywhere else, but recently I stumbled on the answer as to where the workers lived, at least for a time, while working between Stanton and Newark on what was known as Section 22. As noted in a couple posts from many years ago, the Roseville Cotton Factory operated along White Clay Creek east of Newark from at least 1816 until 1864 (on and off). Located just west of Possum Park Road, where Kirkwood Highway (well, Capitol Trail actually) crosses White Clay Creek, like many large mills of the time it was a community all to itself. In addition to the several mill buildings, by 1841 the complex contained about thirty small (15' x 20') stone and frame dwelling houses. These were of course built to house the mill workers.

Newspaper account of the Roseville
Community - Nov 20, 1875

As you can see from the November 1875 account above, by that time the factory was abandoned and the houses were "in the possession of negroes." I can't imagine the homes were in very good shape, but they were apparently better than nothing. The property was owned at the time by the Chillas family, and from what I've gathered about them my best guess is that they either allowed the squatters to stay, or at least didn't make much of a fuss about it. The first mention I found of the railroad's involvement was a note in late July 1883 that work had begun on Mr. Lumb's farm, that several houses had been leased at Roseville, and that the old mill was being refit as a stable. (The Lumb farm was directly across the creek from Roseville and the old house still stands, serving for decades as the home of Kirk's Flowers.)

A month later the old village of Roseville was completely repopulated by about 150 inhabitants, and "transformed into a genuine Italian hamlet." With that many people and about forty homes, it must have been quite a vibrant community. And when you consider that this was very early in the history of Italian immigration, it must have also seemed like a very exotic community to its nearby neighbors in Newark. Unfortunately though, I believe the thought that Newarkers saw them as only exotic is being somewhat optimistic. Then as now, many people saw new immigrants as representing some level of threat. The next stories perfectly represent two of the greatest fears of newcomers -- disease and violence.

In October 1883 it seems a rumor started racing through Newark that some of the railroad laborers had contracted smallpox. One can definitely understand how a story like this would come about. As the article notes, the workers lived "in any manner but that which would tend to check this frightful malady." In other words, with 150 people living in dilapidated shacks, sanitation was probably all but non-existent. And as the article also says there were "great numbers" of Italians in town (although I have to wonder what the threshold was for "great numbers" of Italians in 1883), the threat of the spread of disease was not a minor one. 

However justified or unjustified the perceived threat was, in this case it was thankfully a false alarm. The next day two physicians visited the camp, and though they found several sick men, none of them showed signs of smallpox. With the conditions they lived in, it would be more surprising if no one were sick. Besides being potentially diseased, another fear some people have of immigrants is the threat of violence. And sure enough, later the next month, a rumor started going around that a worker (presumably a non-Italian worker) had been murdered by his Italian navvy brethren. (By the way, "navvy" was a new word I learned in this. It refers to "a worker employed in the excavation and construction of a road, railroad, or canal.")

It turns out that this rumor, too, was unfounded, as you can read above. There was a violent confrontation between workers, but it was an attempted robbery. The rumor seems to have persisted, though, as another article a week later also debunked the fear of a murderer in Roseville. But "Hey", you might say (I mean, don't know you, but you seem like the type), "you're downplaying the fear of violence, but the report says a guy was robbed and stabbed!" Yes, that seems true, and it likely sprung from the way the navvies (see, there it is again) were treated, which is about exactly as well as you'd expect a a group of immigrant laborers to be treated.

The first problem was that they were housed in dilapidated shanties with no windows and varying degrees of roof. The winter of 1883/84 seems to have been particularly tough, as the article above from January 1884 describes. The B&O used different contractors on different sections of the railroad, and some of those contractors proved to be something less than reliable. It's heartwarming to see that there were those who were concerned with the Italians' plight. I don't know what became of the collection mentioned, but I'd like to think there were lots of participants. It was obviously a difficult life for these immigrant workers, many of whom were no doubt sending money back to the old country.

As Spring arrived and the work resumed on Section 22, so did the poor treatment of the workers. Things started coming to a head in late April, when small riots and talks of strikes began percolating through the Italian village. By early July, things started to look even more threatening. A group of about sixty men began drilling in a nearby field, using sticks and pickhandles for guns, as if it were some sort of navvy army game (ok, I was just waiting for that one). Even the charitable and kindly Mr. Chillas had had enough by then. 

Thankfully nothing too serious seems to have ever come of this, although a week or so later Sheriff Martin of Wilmington did have to force the men back to work at gunpoint. The Italians had refused to work until they were paid, but the lawman's two pistols convinced them to allow the work to proceed. In addition to protesting over their low pay in general, there seems to have been a consistent pattern of their being paid late. From what I can tell, this was more the fault of the contractors than of the B&O itself. The most egregious instance I found was also the last, when in October 1884 several of the contractors simply ran off with the payroll. This kicked off the final time of troubles along Section 22, and led to its infamous nickname.

There was a lot going on, but here's the short version: The B&O hired new contractors and began working on paying the Italians. The absconding contractors were captured and actions were taken to retrieve the money. The workers were given partial back-pay at first, but they refused to work until fully compensated. The problem for the railroad was that their state charter required the line to be completed in Delaware by the end of the year, and Section 22 seems to have been the last missing link. Still, the Italians refused to work.

On Monday, November 24, 1884, a trainload of new workers and armed deputies arrived from Wilmington to complete the work. The Roseville Italians descended upon the scene and the first shot was fired, striking a deputy sheriff in the arm. His comrades returned fire, and a furious battle ensued for about ten minutes. Several men on both sides were wounded, and three Italians arrested as the new workers and their escorts withdrew to the city. They returned to the Roseville encampment in the early morning hours and arrested 56 of the striking workers. They were taken to Wilmington, booked, and given the first good meal some had had in months.

A few days later 53 of them were released, but I don't know what became of the remaining three. All the men were given their full back pay a couple weeks later and "the bloody section", Section 22, was completed. Most of the workers moved on with the contractor to their next job, which seems to have been digging a tunnel near Darby, PA. Presumably the Italian village at Roseville, which had been inhabited for almost a year and a half, was abandoned once more. 

Unlike the so-called Italian Colony at Wooddale that existed for several decades, the Roseville encampment was only around for about 17 months. But like its counterpart it was inhabited by well over 100 new immigrants, most of whom spoke little English and had no roots or connections in the area when they arrived. Both must have been fascinating, if not slightly scary, places for local residents to see. Being migrant immigrant workers, the navvies at Roseville were often at the mercy of their employers, and sometimes felt they had to stand up for themselves in whatever way could. In the end they completed their work (which remains in use to this day) and moved on, I leaving I'm sure quite an impression on the locals for years to come.