Tontitown

Tontitown, Chicot County, Arkansas: the first Italian colony in the U.S.

In Arkansas, the first rural settlements by Italians occurred in the late 1800s. Generally in the United States settlements were rare for several reasons. First, because Italian emigration consisted, at the time, mostly of men without families who lacked the capital needed to purchase land, the cost of which rose continuously: virgin lands were now scarce while the price of those already under cultivation was prohibitive.
Tontitown lies on the edge of the Ozarks Plateau in the northwest part of the state, on the road from the city of Springdale to Oklahoma. Its history begins with that of Sunny Side, a colony located in an alluvial bend of the Mississippi River and born of an agreement between American entrepreneur Austin Corbin and the mayor of Rome, Prince Emanuele Ruspoli. The enlisted group of settlers consisted mostly of families from Veneto, with a few from Emilia and Romagna. It arrived in Sunny Side in 1895 but, as early as the following year, at Corbin's request and with the consent of the local church authority, Father Pietro Bandini took over leadership of the community. Malaria, floods, the death of Corbin and some of the settlers thinned the group. After two years of struggle, Father Bandini gave up and sought more suitable land. In April 1898, he purchased in the area of the future village of Tontitown the first acres of land. According to census data, the population did not vary greatly: slightly more or slightly less than 200.

Tontitown

In 1880 the scholar Egisto Rossi made a trip to the United States on behalf of Senator Alessandro Rossi, the well-known wool industrialist from Schio, to study the causes of agricultural competition with Europe and the transportation system. Statistics as of 1880 - which he cited - showed that the population of the U.S. was a total of 43,475,840 individuals, of whom 6,679,943 were foreign-born. Arkansas had a total of 792,175 inhabitants of whom 10,350 were foreign-born, and of these, only 136 were Italians. Although since 1890 the flow of emigrants from Italy to the U.S. had increased significantly, at the founding of Sunny Side the number of Italian emigrants could not have been more than a few hundred statewide. The low presence may also explain the attitude of hostility toward the Italian colony considering that, again according to the above statistics, foreigners were predominantly: Germans (3,620), Irish (2,432), English (1,176), Canadians (732) followed by, closely spaced, French, Swiss,Scots, Swedes, Poles and Italians. On the other hand, even then the state with the largest component of Italian immigrants was New York which, out of a total of 1,212,379 foreigners, saw Italians in sixth place (15,113) after Irish (499,445), Germans (355,913), English (116,362), Canadians (84,182), and Scots (28,066).
The colonization of Arkansas had begun in 1870 and was advancing rapidly because the area enjoyed a good climate, the soil was fertile, it was close to major commercial centers (St. Louis, Galveston, Memphis, New Orleans), and it was traversed by the Saint Louis Iron Mountain and Southern railroad. All kinds of fruits could be grown there besides wheat, hay, corn, cotton. Colonies of Venetians, at the time of Rossi's journey, existed in Orfeoville, not far from the capital city of Little Rock, growing fruit, vines and making cheese. [cf. EGISTO ROSSI, The United States and American Competition. Studies in agriculture, industry, and trade from a recent trip by Egisto Rossi, Florence 1884].
In Sunny Side, the lease terms were traditional cotton plantation terms: the landlord rented land, house, tools, advanced seed, and the tenant farmer returned what he had borrowed by surrendering a more or less substantial portion of the crop. Basic necessities were purchased in stores that were controlled by the landlord, at non-market prices. The typical homestead consisted of 12 acres, or about 5 hectares. In Tontitown, on the other hand, the land was owned even though the size did not exceed, if not rarely, 40 acres or so, a size that allowed cultivation without the help of laborers, who were absent in the area. The small extension delayed the rise of mechanization, which was imposed especially after World War II. The Italians, who formed cooperatives in the early 1900s, cultivated mainly fruit and devoted a smaller part of their fields to the production of wine grapes. With Prohibition, they turned to juice production after opening a plant in Springfield, of which they became co-owners in the 1950s.

MARIA ROSARIA OSTUNI