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6
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2016
the
Italian
issue
J
oseph P. Rouse immigrated to America from Sardinia, Italy’s
second largest island, in 1900. He arrived at Ellis Island, New
York, accompanied by his parents, Anthony and Marie, and an
older brother. He was barely one.
The Rouses were part of the New Immigration of Italians. That
period between the 1880s through 1920s saw the arrival in America
of more than four million mostly southern Italian immigrants who’d
left their homeland in search of work and a better life.Many arrived
wide-eyed and anxious, having left family back in their Italian
homeland.
The Port of NewOrleans was amajor gateway for Italian immigrants.
Sicilians had been coming to New Orleans in significant numbers
since the 1830s.New Orleans was America’s second biggest port for
the Sicilian citrus fruit trade. Many immigrants were fruit traders
who set up shop on Decatur Street working as produce merchants
and brokers. But the Sicilians and Sardinians and other southern
Italians who arrived around the turn of the century were not citrus
traders; they were poor immigrants escaping corruption and danger
in a newly unified Italy. Some were financed by
padrones
(labor
bosses) in Italy who served as middlemen for Southern plantation
owners looking for inexpensive labor.
Nearly three-quarters of those who arrived during the New
Immigration were farmers and laborers. Those whose passages to
America were paid by
padrones
went to work in the cane fields of
South Louisiana.
Sugarcane was the main crop in Louisiana, but the lumber business
was significant in areas like St. Tammany. And there was money
in vegetables. Italian truck farms operated all over the West Bank
of New Orleans, Harahan, Little Farms (now River Ridge) and
St. Bernard Parish, growing herbs, beans, peas, tomatoes, zucchini,
eggplant and cardoon, which are similar to artichokes.The produce
was trucked to New Orleans public markets where Italian farmers
sold wholesale.
Lauricella Family Farms and Picone Family Farms were two of the
larger tracts in what is now Harahan. Kenner was mostly farmland.
Produce grown in Kenner’s “Green Gold” fields was ferried to the
French Market via the OK Street Car Line, which ran between
New Orleans and Kenner from 1915 to 1928. Many Italians settled
in Kenner, buying land and raising families.The city still has a large
Italian population and still celebrates St. Rosalie, the patroness of
Palermo, with a procession every September.
A teenage J.P. Rouse got a job at a truck farm in Marrero raising
potatoes and cabbages.
The railroads helped immigrants establish Italian communities
all over the Gulf Coast. The New Orleans to Jackson route of the
Great Northern Railroad went straight through Tangipahoa Parish,
the heart of Louisiana’s strawberry industry. Newcomers settled
in cities and towns like Ponchatoula, Independence, Amite and
Hammond. By 1910, so many Sicilians inhabited Independence it
became known as “Little Italy.” The name still resonates today —
[LEFT] Circa 1906. Decatur Street in the New Orleans French Quarter
[RIGHT] Vintage photos of Ponchatoula Strawberry farmers
The
New
Immigration
by
Marcy, Rouses Creative Director