TONTITOWN — Food may be the focus, but it’s family that keeps folks coming back each year for the Reunion and Polenta Smear.
People from down the street and across the country fill the St. Joseph Catholic Church parish hall annually for the gathering that features a traditional Italian dish and a chance to celebrate community history.
Susan Young, outreach coordinator for the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale and author of the book “So Big, This Little Place,” told an audience of about 200 Sunday that the community is a special and amazing place.
“Heritage, for Tontitown, is something you live,” she said.
As she spoke, members of the crowd paused from looking at historic photos and enjoying polenta (a cornmeal mush) topped with a ragu sauce known as umedo.
The community was established in the late 1800s by Italian immigrants, led by Father Pietro Bandini. In the book’s introduction, Young wrote that the time period chosen - 1898 to 1917 - mirrors the time spent in Tontitown by Bandini, the town’s spiritual and secular leader. “Bandini’s role in the establishment and early success of Tontitown cannot be overstated, but the story is not certainly his alone,” Young wrote. “Many Italian families helped lay the foundation for the thriving settlement with a rich heritage that survives today.”
Descendants of those early families were in full force Sunday as Young called o◊the immigrants’ names and asked for a show of hands of those related to the community’s founders.
Jan McQuade-Sturm, a genealogist who has tracked records for Tontitown families, has information on more than 4,200 individuals and has listings for almost 1,000 surnames. She provided a genealogical register for “So Big, This Little Place.”
McQuade-Sturm made the trek from Golden, Colo., to Tontitown on Sunday. It marked her fi fth visit to the community in a little more than a year.
She encouraged families to contact her and help maintain accurate records. She also urged people in their 30s, 40s and 50s to be writing down their memories and thoughts about the events in their lives for future generations.
“Your children and your children’s children are going to want to know,” she said.
McQuade-Sturm’s own family tree includes Maestri lineage, and she’s been intrigued with the Arkansas community’s history since a discovery following the death of her grandfather, Benjamin Bean. She found clipped newspaper obituaries for people from Tontitown tucked away at her grandparents’ Tulsa, Okla., home. She asked her grandmother, Genevieve Maestri Bean, why her grandfather had taken such an interest. Her grandmother responded that most of the people mentioned were related or connected to their family in some way.
McQuade-Sturm traveled with her sister to Italy for two weeks this year. They were able to see the places familiar to their ancestors, Pietro Antonio and Melania Serri Maestri.
Her sister had the same feeling she did on her first trip to theEuropean country.
“You just feel so at home,” she said. “It’s just so familiar.”
And that sense of being connected to her family’s past is what inspires her to continuing tracing and recording the Tontitown families’ genealogies.
“That’s what makes doing this so rewarding,” she said.
Carmelita (Franco) Newquist was among the scores of guests seated around the long tables to sample polenta.
Dining and mingling with others descended from the Italian settlers has become a kind of tradition, she said.
She recalled her mother making polenta when she was growing up. The dish was inexpensive to make and could be produced in large quantities, she said.
Her mom was a wonderful cook, Newquist said, and life was centered around family and cooking. Something like the polenta smear tradition allows her to reconnect with that heritage, she noted.
“That’s why it means so much to me.”
Young’s book was available for sale Sunday with the proceeds benefiting the Tontitown Historical Museum.
Entertainment, Pages 10 on 11/11/2009
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