52 Ancestors Week 36: Working

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Monday was Labor Day in the US, so what better time to explore how our ancestors earned a living?

They work hard for their money!

    The daily grind can be enough to get anybody down and I can say with absolute certainty that things were not always easy for my ancestors. Whenever I would I ask my father how work was, the answer was always the same. "Work was work". That's true for anything you do even if you love your job. As I said last week, my parents valued hard work and education as things weren't always easy for their parents and grandparents when it came to making a living. Let's explore one example of why that was shall we.

Giuseppe and Clementina

    My great-grandfather, Giuseppe Carrabs ,was a prime example of an immigrant trying to make a living in the early 20th century while supporting his wife Clementina and their five children. He worked as a custodian at Pentucket bank for many years and while it may not seem like he was living the high-life of swimming pools and movie stars, it was what was available at the time because when he came to America in the early 1900s with his wife and  daughter, he did not have much in his pocket and was already a skilled laborer.

    Fortunately for him laborers were in high demand in the city of Haverhill. Mills and factories employed many Italians, French-Canadians and other immigrants from all corners of the globe. In the 1920 census, he was listed as a shoe worker. That tracks because many Italians did a LOT of hard labor in factories in their first few years of working in America.

    It was during this time that Giuseppe helped to form the Haverhill Italian American Credit Union, an organization which was dedicated to helping Italian immigrants such as him succeed in monetary issues and lend money when it was hard to come by as most banks were uneasy about lending immigrants money. Such a union came in handy during the most depressing days of the Great Depression. He wasn't just a member. He was also a past president!

    After the stock market crashed in 1929, we see Giuseppe and his family living in a five thousand dollar home in the 1930 census. This was a big deal. However, it had its drawbacks. Giuseppe at this point started working at the bank as a janitor. Clementina and Jenny, the oldest sibling, were taking care of the kids while they attended school.

    Luckily they managed to keep the house they were living in until 2010 when my great-aunt Louise passed away. How they accomplished this when many lost their homes and livelihood in the Depression is a bit of a mystery. However, I can safely say that perhaps the union and the bank he was working at helped the family during those times. That's just a theory I have and it makes the most sense now that I think about it.

Important historical artifact or battlefield between 
two warring factions of transforming robots. You
decide!

  Evidentially, my great-grandfather was well-liked at the bank because when he retired he was given this really awesome conference table that was converted into a coffee table. It's not a bad table and growing up I played on it not knowing the significance of it for many years.

    I remember one time I was rolling the heroic Autobot Optimus Prime on the table and grandma Ollie was watching me and smiled. I asked her why she was smiling and she told me the story behind the coffee table She said the table represented a lot of work her father put at the bank and that he would have appreciated me putting it to good use.

    She then told me more about her parents and being a kid I just listened intently.

The Carrabs house (1925-2010)

    My grandmother was right of course and she too knew the value of hard work as she worked for the phone company. But, here's the thing. She never brow-beat those values into my brother and I. She learned from her father that with hard work a lot can be accomplished and Giuseppe did accomplish quite a bit even though he was a custodian.

    He was well-liked, well-respected and was an important member of the community. He was president of a credit union! So, that was a big deal! You might say he "pulled himself up from his bootstraps". While that may be true, he had help along the way. After all the union provided assistance to him so that the family could stay in that house on Bartlett street for over eighty years. Did he show gratitude? Oh, no question! 

    Despite being a janitor, he showed some pride in his work and helped immigrants like him through the union. He was basically paying it forward as he didn't want them to struggle in the way he did. Sure it may seem like he didn't struggle. This was only a glimpse. There were still things he had to deal with and he came from a region of Italy that was still struggling at the time. 

    That is the crux of why Italian immigrants and immigrants in general worked so hard to better themselves and the lives of people around them. They did their best to ensure no one else would have to suffer as they did. Was it easy? Nope. Was it worth it? Probably. I mean we're here aren't we? They came to help make a better life than what was available back in the "mother country". They didn't ask for much and today's immigrants share the same sentiment. After all history has a way of repeating itself.

    So you could say that as an immigrant he improved his life greatly after coming to America. Was it glamorous? Probably not. Was it worth it? Definitely! His hard work helped other people in the long run and that's why helping people is probably more of a key to happiness than say wealth, power and prestige. 

See ya next time!

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