First Immigrants For This Season Times Picayune May 17, 1903 Submitted by Larie Tedesco ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ The Manilla Brings Over Eight Hundred From Italy, And They are a Healthy and Likely Lot. Collector McCall Conducts the Inspection in Person. A Remarkable Record in the Number of Cabin Passengers, All to Become Citizens With 879 Italian immigrants in the steerage, 42 cabin passengers and 4 stow-aways, the steamship Manilla, of the Italian Navigation Line, arrived in port yesterday, and cast anchor in midstream opposite the Point below Algiers, where she was boarded at 10 o'clock in the morning by the customs and immigration officers of the United States Government: Messrs. Henry McCall, Collector of the Port; Henry W. Robinson, Deputy Surveyer of the Port; D. S. Sholars, Assistant Appraiser; United States Examiner Kerwin, N. L. Marks, Assistant Deputy Collector of Customs; George Howard, Immigration Inspector; Dr. George Sladovich, Assistant Immigration Inspector; Mr. Longley, Assistant Inspector of Immigration; Interpreter Plaggio, Customs Inspectors H. C. Bartlett, A. C. Stuart, E. L. St. Ceran and D. Q. Campbell, and Dr. Jos. T. Scott, United States Marine Hospital Surgeon. This was the first time in many years, and perhaps in the history of the port, that the United States Collector of Customs in person had taken to trouble to personally superintend the inspection of an immigrant ship. Hon. Henry McCall took a lively interest in the proceedings, and found much of a novalty in the sights and scenes attending the arrival of a vessell laden with immigrants. The first thing done was to see after the cabin passengers, who were more numerous this time than has ever happened since Italian immigration began to seek these shores. The list comprised forty-one men, women and children. Their names are: Rosa Bologno, Giuseppa diLeonardo, Giovanna Cutatollo, Rosalia Bonura, Ignazio Bonura, Francesca Petrosi, Andrea LaGreca, Raffaela del Bueno, Rosa Manfre, Nisifa Mercale, Vincenza Aloisi, Giuseppa Compichi, Margareta Picha, Luigia, Antonina and Giolania Accuso, Rosalia Picone, Antoninia Coronna, Anna Glaccomino, Conalla di Mare, Rosina Bertucci, Giovanna Cavatollo, Gaetano Bertucci, Salvadore Palmisano, Gaetano Palmisano, Stella Palmisano, Gaciapo Manfre, Calogero Lazzaro, Francesco Asunto, Picho Asunto, Salvator Biancha, Vincenzo Aloise. There were ten men, seventeen women and fifteen children in the cabin. The men were all well provided with money, two of them proudly exhibiting documents showing that they were "proprietors," a term equivalent in a small way to "capitalist" in this country, and they said that they were on their way to join relatives at Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish, and to invest in agricultural lands. The majority of these first-class passengers are people of more than average intelligence, the women and children being either with their parents who are about to elect domicile in this State, or they are going to complete some family circle that was broken when father or brother or uncle or some near relative came to this country in the past years. Twenty-five will remain in New Orleans, seven are going to LosAngeles, Cal., one to Galveston and two to Birmingham. The immigration officers completed the inspection of these forty-one cabin passengers in short order, no fault being found either in their papers or in their eligibility for admission to land. They were first to leave the ship on a tug specially chartered by the ship owners for that purpose. The examination of the immigrants and of their baggage by the customs inspectors and the immigration agents after the United States Marine Hospital Surgeon; Dr. Jos. T. Scott, had passed them as free from contagious or infectious diseases or from any physical disfigurement or disability, was commenced, and up to nightfall, when the inspection was adjourned to the next day, about three hundred immigrants had been accepted. The Manilla remained at anchor during the night, and at daybreak she will seek the New Orleans and Northeastern fruit wharf, where the inspection of men and of baggage will be resumed. The Government officers expect to get through with the job before twilight to-day. The men outnumber the women and children four to one. They are mostly peasants, healthy, sturdy agriculturists, who are seeking in the new world more elbow room and a chance to earn a better living than they ever would have dreamed to earn in Italy. One of the men said that the poorer classes were no better than slaves and bousts of burden in Italy, and that their mental and physical vision was bounded by the hills of their native village or the spire of the little church on the slope of the mountain. The eagerly jump at the chance to get out of their quasi thraidom?, and to leave their painful fields of toil and suffering and exchange the miseries of the present for the roseate? hopes of plenty and of perhaps fortune in the land of "the far Americas," where they shall be free to do and think and act like human beings. The destination of about three hundred of the immigrants is the city of New Orleans. About two hundred of the immigrants is the city of New Orleans. About two hundred are going to the country towns and to plantations, and the rest will scabter? in various parts of the South. Some, however are "billed" for Chicago, some for Birmingham, Ala., others to St. Louis, Mobile and Thomas, Ala. They have not the remotest idea what those names of cities man, or where they are situated; but they hold fast to the piece of paper on which the name of their prospective domicile is written, and keep repeating it over and over again, not always with understandable pronunciation. Some of the Louisiana towns which are to be gratified with the citizenship of the newly-arrived are: Patterson, Napoleonville, Homer, Thibodaux, Baton Rouge, Hanson City, Centerville, Berwick, Patoutville, Independence, Hester, Alexandria, St. James Ppstoffice, Fordoche Postoffice, Hohen, Solms, Lutcher, Smoke Bend, etc. There are four stowaways; Ignacio Lamantia, 33 years of age; Salvatore Taranturo, 40 years of age, who smuggled aboard at Palermo, and Carlo Montecatini, 33 years old, and Patricio Ramone, 24 years of age, the former from Morocco, and the latter from Tangiere, Africa, who concealed themselves on board the Manilla when she touched at Gibralter. The four delinquents wer a sorry-looking and very penitent quartette as they faced the United States Inspectors, and judging by their terrified looks, it was evident that they expected instant decapitation as a penalty for their misdemeanor. But when they found out that they were only to be kept under survellance until the Special Board of Inquiry shall have investigated their case, and that if they proved healthy and able-bodied they might have a chance to land, they were overjoyed and their olation went up in proportion that they have been previously apprehensive and nervous.