Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article

August 8, 1993
By Deborah Curtis Drummy
Vigo County Historical Society

Immigrants’ photo tells difficult story

On the north wall of the Francis Vigo Room of the museum hangs a framed family photograph, circa 1915. In the photo stands Antonio Rodi, an Italian immigrant who came to America around the turn of the century; in his arms he holds his 2-year-old daughter Marzia (her name later Americanized to Martha); to his left are his sons Savario (Samuel) Guisseppi, Francesco (Frank), and Carmelo (Charles), and his wife “Peppina” Europoli. The men had returned from a hunting trip to find an itinerant photographer in the Ledford, Ill., mining camp they called home.

Dates and names, sometimes places, are as far as most of the Historical Society’s photographs go in telling their stories. Luckily, however, the little girl Marzia, now well-known by many as Martha Daniel, herb grower and gardener extraordinaire, still lives in the Wabash Valley and is willing to share the bittersweet details of her father’s immigration experience and her family’s struggles to find the good life in America.

As Daniel tells it, it was hard for anyone, including Antonio Rodi, to make a living in southern Italy at the beginning of the 20th century. The great dream of most was to earn enough money to buy land for farming. So when the rich coal company representatives came to the ancient town of Cimini and told Antonio Rodi of the opportunity to mine coal in America where the “streets [were] paved in gold,” Rodi seized his chance. He left his wife and young son and traveled to a distant place called Pennsylvania. There he lived not in a house on a golden street, but in a mining camp, where conditions were harsh.

Rodi managed to save enough money to return to Italy for his wife and child, returning to live and work in Vigo County for a while before heading to mines in southern Illinois. Rodi’s Illinois mining experience proved harsher still. Not only did he find himself working on his knees in two feet of water, but he was also required to purchase provisions and services from the company store, maximizing the coal company’s exploitation of the immigrant workers. Rodi returned with his family to Vigo County, settling in Seelyville.

The Rodi’s eventually had 10 children, although as in most large families living early in this century, all did not survive to adulthood. Except for the first son, Samuel, all were native-born Americans. Yet living in a home with a mother who spoke very little English, the children grew up bilingual.

When asked if there was a particular Italian “district” in Vigo County, such as those made up by Romanians and Hungarians in Terre Haute, Daniel recalls no, not this side of Clinton which is heavily populated by descendants of immigrants from northern Italy. There was, though, a natural gravitation toward fraternizing and doing business with those other European ethnic groups such as the aforementioned Romanians and Hungarians, as well as Syrians and Slavs, perhaps because of the common trials and dreams they all shared.

In the interests of preserving their heritage, Daniel and others of Italian descent in the area several years ago organized a local Italian-American Club. The group is a benevolent society whose chief function is to educate. Members share anecdotes about why their parents came here; a professor from ISU has been giving lessons in speaking standard Italian. The group has also created a brochure about Col. Francis Vigo, the Italian explorer and merchant who cleared the way for the settlement of this area, and for whom the county is named. The Vigo Room at the museum, with its oil portrait of Vigo and special display cases, was funded by the Italian-American Club.

The Francis Vigo Room and the Rodi family photograph may seen at the museum.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

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