Two museums document state's Italian past

Rebecca Howard, a member of the Tontitown Historical Museum Board, works Friday at the Tontitown Historical Museum in Tontitown.
Rebecca Howard, a member of the Tontitown Historical Museum Board, works Friday at the Tontitown Historical Museum in Tontitown.

TONTITOWN -- For decades, a hermit in Arizona hoarded a trove of things that had belonged to Father Pietro Bandini, a Catholic priest who led 40 families out of the malaria-infested Delta to establish an Italian enclave in the Ozark Mountains.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the Tontitown Historical Museum.

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The Tontitown Historical Museum is seen Friday in Tontitown.

As a young scholar, the man had worked on his doctoral dissertation and somehow accumulated glass negatives, maps and original documents about the founding of Tontitown in 1898.

In 2012, Jan McQuade, a genealogist with Tontitown roots, went to Tucson, Ariz., hoping to get a copy of the man's dissertation. Instead, she was surprised when he gave her two boxes of Tontitown treasures, including Father Bandini's photo album and negatives. One of the boxes was postmarked 1968.

"There were things he was pulling out of this box that were just disintegrating and flying across the porch," McQuade said. "I was just beside myself trying to figure out how to protect it."

McQuade gave the items to the Tontitown Historical Museum. But they're being stored elsewhere because there's no place for them in the small building that houses the museum, said Heather Ranalli Peachee, president of the museum board.

Peachee wants to expand the museum to twice its current size, or a least add a "safe room" that would be climate-controlled to help preserve old documents and photographs.

"What we need more than anything is safe storage," she said.

The museum has some money in the bank, Peachee said. But building onto the museum would require approval of its 10-member board, and that hasn't happened yet, she said.

There are two museums in Arkansas that preserve the history of the Italian immigrants who passed through Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County.

Both of those museums -- in different corners of the state -- are celebrating anniversaries this year. The Tontitown Historical Museum is 30 years old, and the museum at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Lake Village is 5 years old. Tontitown is in Washington County in Northwest Arkansas. Lake Village is in Chicot County, in the extreme southeast corner of the state.

Both museums are repositories for the communities they serve. When residents reach a certain age or die, families often donate their photographs and other memorabilia to the museums in Tontitown and Lake Village.

Identifying the people in those photographs is important while it's still possible, Peachee said.

Libby Borgognoni, 81, started the Lake Village museum in 2011 in five rooms of the parish house, which used to be the priest's home.

Borgognoni said 250 families came over from Italy in 1895, and another 100 families followed the next year.

New York banker and industrialist Austin Corbin and a few friends had purchased several thousand acres of land in Chicot County and began recruiting Italian families to move there to work in the cotton fields. Corbin called it Sunnyside Plantation.

There was a shortage of people willing to do hard labor in the fields, said Borgognoni. So promises were made to the Italian immigrants to entice them to come to Arkansas.

Rebecca Howard, a historian who has relatives from Tontitown, said the reality of Sunnyside was much different from the advertising. And it got worse after Corbin died in 1896.

"Wells were not dug, and the water was dirty," said Howard, who teaches U.S. history at Lone Star College in Montgomery, Texas. "Malaria and yellow fever wiped out about 300 people the first year, a lot of children. None of these people had ever grown cotton. They're unfamiliar with the climate. They don't like the climate. They're dying from disease. None of the agreements are being kept."

Borgognoni said the Italians of Chicot County abandoned Sunnyside and headed out in different directions. Some went home to Italy. Others went to Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Memphis and Pine Bluff.

The largest group -- 40 families -- went to Tontitown, leaving about 35 families remaining in Chicot County, she said.

Howard said Tontitown was a unique experiment -- building an Italian town from the ground up in the American heartland.

Father Bandini's theory was people who were farmers in Italy should be farmers in the United States, Howard said. And in Tontitown, the climate was a bit more like the Italian alps. There, at least, they could grow grapes.

Tontitown was incorporated in 1909, and Father Bandini became the first mayor.

In 1922, Welch's Grape Juice Co. opened a plant in nearby Springdale to process concord grape juice.

At the time, Tontitown had an annual Grape Day. The Welch's company wanted the town to expand Grape Day, so it became the Tontitown Grape Festival, which now lasts five days. The festival -- which includes carnival rides, entertainment and a spaghetti supper -- will be held this week, Tuesday through Saturday.

Every year, the title of Queen Concordia is given to the young woman who sells the most raffle tickets for the festival. The museum in Tontitown contains dresses and crowns from former Queen Concordias, in addition to a variety of other items, including farm implements, a violin salvaged from the ruins of a "bombed out farm house in Germany" and a "Holy Water Font from the old stone St. Joseph's Catholic Church."

With a population of 2,460, Tontitown is home to many businesses. For decades, it has been famous for its Italian restaurants, including The Venesian Inn, founded in 1947, and Mama Z's Cafe, founded in 1988.

The town is named for Henri de Tonti, an Italian who helped Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, explore the Mississippi River and later founded Arkansas Post in 1686.

To celebrate its 30-year anniversary, the Tontitown Historical Museum will hold a fundraiser on Sept. 10 at Tontitown Winery. The Tontitown museum is open three afternoons a week -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday -- from 1 to 4 p.m.

The museum in Lake Village is open from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Fridays.

Little Italy, a community in Pulaski and Perry counties, was founded in 1915 by a different group of Italian immigrants. But Peachee said the state's three Italian towns work together on family research and support one another's community efforts.

NW News on 08/08/2016

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