Lindsay Marie Morris

Known for its now-defunct sardine canneries that inspired John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, Monterey, California, has a rich history as a fishing community. Communities have fished the area for thousands of years, with contributions spanning from indigenous communities to Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Italian (primarily Sicilian) fishermen. The latter of whom are celebrated by the Italian Heritage Society of the Monterey Peninsula.

Founded in 1975 and currently led by President AnnaMarie Della Sala Stanton, the organization aims to honor and preserve the stories, traditions, and culture of Italian families who immigrated to the Monterey Peninsula and Central Coast of California more than a century ago.

The Italian Heritage Society has published three books celebrating local Italian American history, culture, and community contributions: Italian Fishing Families of Monterey, Italian Fishing Families of Monterey (second edition), and Italian Americans—We Don't Just Fish! 

Since 2002, the organization has recognized notable individuals connected to Monterey's Italian Community at its annual Honoree Dinner fundraiser. In the past four years, the group has awarded $25,000 in scholarships.
 

Recognizing the city's deep connection with the Sicilian community of Isola delle Femmine, from which many early Italian Monterey residents emigrated, Italian Heritage Society members Gasper Cardinale, Peter Coniglio, Peter Davi, and Sal Ferrante were instrumental in establishing a sister-city relationship between the two locales in 2017.

In December 2023, the organization launched a joint effort with the Monterey History and Art Association to present a display titled "Bounty of the Sea" at the city's Stanton Center. The exhibit presents stories, photographs, and fishing paraphernalia gathered from various groups that have fished in Monterey Bay throughout its history. 

I had a chance to speak with Mike Ventimiglia, the organization's vice president and webmaster, who shared more about Monterey's past and Italian contributions.

How and why did the organization start?

The idea behind it was, and still is today, to preserve the local history of the fishing industry in Monterey. We have written three books about the history, capturing the fishing industry and the people who fished in the fishing industry; we went beyond that with the last book we published, We Just Don't Fish! It's taking the people whose parents had ties to the fishing industry that, as the fishing industry became depleted, had ventured off into different professional organizations that still help the Italian community, the largest community in Monterey then.

The Italians realized they had to get involved in the community if they were to make changes. They felt it was very important to get involved with politics and change the course, which they did and changed for the better.

The Italian community's predominance in Monterey went from the early 1900s to probably the 1960s and early 1970s. And then it started changing. Different people got elected to office. The Italians weren't on the city council, so it just started diminishing. We don't want to lose the history behind what the Italian community did for the city of Monterey.

The Italian Heritage Society at the three-day Monterey Fisherman's Festival.

Tell us about Monterey's connection to Isola delle Femmine.

My great-grandfather came from there, and then they left because of the hardships there at that point in time. While doing my genealogy, I realized I had six uncles who came here, and I found out more about them. But I also had two aunts back there who never came. Their father migrated to Martinez, where other Sicilians came at that time. They used to fish the Martinez Straits in the Sacramento River, and many of them came into what they called Black Diamond (Pittsburg, California, today) at New York Landing.

Before the Sicilians, the only people who really fished in Monterey were the Chinese and the Japanese. They mostly did shellfish, and salmon was a big thing then. But salmon gave way to learning about fishing for sardines. 

In about 1905, they started fishing sardines in Monterey. Frank E. Booth was the main cannery owner at the time, and he called on a man named Pietro Ferrante for his expertise in fishing. Pietro realized they were using the wrong fishing nets. They weren't using a lampara net, which is a close-fitted net. And so he recommended and brought forth what was a really small net compared to the gill net they were using. And they started getting more of an abundance of fish. Booth transitioned from doing salmon to canning sardines, which started the escalation of "How do we get more people here?"

So, Pietro Ferrante called his friends in Martinez and Pittsburg and told them they needed fishing in Monterey. People in that area were used to fishing off the coast of Africa.

Word got out that there was an abundance in Monterey, and people started migrating here. They'd send notes back to their family members and friends in Sicily. And they started migrating because they had an opportunity here.
 

They felt quite at home when they came to Monterey because it reminded them of their old country. It just continued to prosper and went through generations of different types of boats they used and canneries.

Reading the history of women working at the canneries in Carol Lynn McKibben's Beyond Cannery Row, Sicilian Women Immigration, and Community in Monterey 1915-1999 was quite an eye-opener for me. Many of my aunts worked on that, and she interviewed many of them, allowing me to see some things that I never knew about.

Women were the backbone of the Italian fishing industry because they were the ones running the households while the men were out fishing. They were the ones that basically, in the future years, were making investments in property as canneries closed and the fish industry started depleting. So they were not only doing the canning but also taking care of the household because the husbands were gone all the time.
 

How can the community get involved?

We're always looking for members and community support. We get a lot of that during our fundraisers and when the community comes out to honor the four individuals we nominate to attend the annual dinner.

The support of the Italian community has fallen to a certain degree. We used to have a lot of community involvement when we were involved with the city and its politics, including the mayors and city council members, as well as many individuals serving on various city boards. That has given way to the modernization and the different needs of people in various sectors living here on the peninsula.

There are people who can't afford to live here, but they want to. So the direction has gone towards other things, like the tourist industry. Monterey's tourism is one of the biggest fundraisers they have. And then the events that have come into play here. A lot of city direction is geared towards that, but we always look for their support. 

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates! 

Frank Bruno grew up in Pittsburg, California, hearing his grandmother's memories of Isola delle Femmine, a fishing village outside Palermo, Sicily. But he knew very little about the place and didn't think much about it. That was until 1992, when his friend, Vince DiMaggio, shared that he'd returned from his godparents' wedding vow renewal in the same town. Vince had spoken with Isola delle Femmine's then-Mayor Vincenzo DiMaggio about possibly having a Sister City relationship with Pittsburg.

Frank and Vince weren't alone in their ties to Isola delle Femmine; most of Pittsburg's Italian American population shared that connection. As President of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, Frank was in a good position to take action. He asked Pittsburg's mayor, who agreed to the proposal, and then he reached out to officials in Sicily.

When Isola delle Femmine's mayor came to Pittsburg, he saw its iconic fisherman statue, sculpted by local artist Frank Vitale, whose grandparents came from Isola delle Femmine. He wanted one for his town, so Pittsburg community members raised funds to make it happen.

The sculptor still had the mold he used to build a replica that the Americans sent to Sicily. Today, you can find that statue at Isola delle Femmine's Piazza di Pittsburg, named for the town's original sister city.

That would have been the end of the story: a lasting connection made in honor of shared heritage. Frank moved to Novato, California, in 1997 and lost track of many of the people who were involved until 2017, the 25th anniversary of the Isola delle Femmine-Pittsburg delegation's first visit.

Frank and Vince returned to the fold, and a group from Isola delle Femmine joined the community for a reception. Two years later, Frank, Vince, and Vice President Mary Coniglio co-founded Friends of Isola delle Femmine with a mission statement to preserve, protect, and promote Sicilian-American heritage within Isola delle Femmine's California sister cities, which today number three after the 2017 and 2019 respective additions of Monterey and Martinez.

Frank, who serves as Friends of Isola delle Femmine's President, shared more about how and why Isolani emigrated to the U.S. and first landed in Pittsburg. We also discussed the organization's events, outreach, and evolution, as well as its challenges for the future.

Friends of Isola delle Femmine 1994 trip - Sal Caccaroni, John Buffo, Vince DiMaggio, Sculptor Frank Vitale, Frank Bruno, Mary Coniglio, Rocco Battaglia, and Vince Coniglio

How and why did Isola delle Femmine residents find their way to Pittsburg?

Back in the 1860s, when Garibaldi unified Italy, it did little to help the people in Sicily. They were still starving, and there was no work. One story was that they were so hungry they resorted to eating wheat plaster from the walls.

In 1862, two brothers from Isola delle Femmine with the last name Aiello came to New Orleans, where a big influx of Sicilians lived in the French Quarter.

They were trying to make a living fishing and cooking. After a Yellow Fever outbreak, they left Louisiana for Oregon, where they fished for salmon before seeing an advertisement from California. The state was looking for fishermen to come and help fish the delta to feed the people who came in for the Gold Rush. So the Aiellos got on a train and ended up in what is now called Pittsburg, California, on the Sacramento River. They started fishing and called for their family, saying, "Here in Pittsburg, the weather is like home. The fishing is abundant, and we're making money."

A lot of people started to come, and many of them worked and stayed here. Then, a lot of them went back home. Pittsburg was the fishing area, but there was seasonal fishing. So when the seasonal fishing went to the wayside, they went to Martinez and Monterey, and many of them stayed there while others went back to Pittsburg. So that was the influx, which is why we have three Sister Cities with Isola in our organization.

Describe your cultural exchange and promotion efforts.

Back in 1994, we started a student exchange program. We only did it twice. We sent high schoolers back there, and they went to school. Isola delle Feminine sent college students here, which became a vacation for them. And I said that's not what we really wanted to do as a student exchange program.

My idea, and we're trying to start this now, is to have something similar to what I'm involved in with the Rotary Club: a group study exchange. There would be dentists or any occupation that is here that wants to go. We would supplement, coordinate their stay over there, and have a little bit of money to help them there. But they would pay for their trip. They would go over to Isola and the Palermo area and vice versa.

We can do it with contractors, dentists, doctors, and many professional business people who would come back and forth. As for the cultural heritage stuff, we're working on doing what I call an ancestral fair, having an area where folk music and heritage stuff are going on, and then having booths. 

How have you connected with younger generations?

We're giving scholarships to our members' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who are going to college. We give out six; two years ago, we gave out 10. They would have to qualify normally by having a grade point average acceptable for college and writing a statement about what it was like growing up Italian. Then we have a picnic and give out our scholarships.

One of our roadblocks is passing on our cultural heritage to the younger generations. It's very difficult. They're proud to be Italian American, but that's where it ends. Now, all of us old-timers look at this as memories. Growing up in Pittsburg was one of the greatest childhoods anybody could have. I mean, it was just full of family everywhere.

We have functions, but not many younger people have come. Instead of trying to decide how to capture the younger generation and have them tell us what they're looking for, we're going to have a discussion and invite a number of our younger members who are 40 or 50 years old to ask them.

If we're going to succeed as a cultural heritage organization, we need to replace these people. I can't do this forever.

Scenes from Friends of Isola delle Femmine picnics

Tell us about your events.

We've had some fundraisers to fund administration, scholarships, and anything else we want to do. We've done pretty well. 

We started with a program back in 2019 called That's Italian. We had some opera singers, and we sang show tunes at a place called the Colombo Club in Oakland. About 565 people could sit down for dinner, and then upstairs, there is a banquet hall, bar, and stage. We had 200 people, and they went downstairs and had a nice Italian dinner. And then they came up, and we had this big show and a live auction.

After the pandemic, when the British Queen passed away, one of our members said, "Why don't we have a High Tea but Italian style?" We had one in Monterey and one in Pittsburg. We're finishing up our third one, which will be the last, and we're going in another direction.

Our summer picnic was designed to be something we used to do as kids and families. Here in Northern California, we have Mount Diablo, where we had Camp Curry and Marsh Creek, and we could swim and play baseball as a family. We wanted to do something similar and said, "Why don't we just give our scholarships out then?"

We are getting about 250 people, and we can showcase what we do and get new members out of that. We have an Italian who lives in Martinez and owns a catering company. He comes and does the pasta and salads, and then we cook sausage. The mayor of Martinez and the city council people come out, and they do the serving. 

What do you ultimately want to share with your community?

There are Italians and Sicilians from Isola here in Pittsburg, California, but not many. They've branched out to the other areas. What I want to accomplish for the community is to bring back our pride and heritage and continue to have that. We all want to remember what our nonnas and nonnos did for us when we were growing up. We're trying to put together a cookbook per se with all these recipes in our newsletter. But we want to do more cultural stuff to remember our grandparents and great-grandparents; hopefully, the next generation will be appreciative.

Frank Bruno with family at the celebration and unveiling of the Fisherman Statue and sister city in 1994

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more content and updates!