Mining for Ancestors

I have been snooping through the civil records of Cintano. The recordset that I am currently obsessed with is the civil registrations of Cintano from 1866 to 1930. Specifically, the Allegati or supplemental records for births, marriage, and deaths from 1914 to 1924. This record collection contains the supporting documents used for transcription of registration of births, deaths, and marriages that took place outside of Cintano. I originally started looking at the records for the registration of the birth of my great aunt Margarita Rolando Troglia’s children, Pietro, Dorina, and Giuseppe, who were born in Kansas, but returned to Cintano and lived out their lives in the area.

As these records are unindexed, I have to look at each record in the set. It is fun to be looking through Italian records and find documents from Kansas, Montana, and Arizona. I have even had some surprises as I found a death record from the Dominican Republic in this record set! I am not sure why these events were registered in Cintano, but possibly when they returned home after working abroad, they needed to register these events for them to be legal in Italy. In the case of the Troglia children, they were born in Kansas, but returned to Cintano and lived the rest of their lives in Italy.

I found two records that really tugged at my heart. Both were young men, probably in Butte, Montana, temporarily working. One was James Chiuminatto who died in the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, which is especially poignant now. The other was a young man from Cintano that died in the Speculator Mine disaster.

Albino Dante Massa was born in Cintano in 1897. His baptism certificate from the parish of San Giovanni Battista in Cintano shows his baptism on the 18^th of February. Babies in Cintano were nearly always baptized the day of their birth, so he was most likely born on the 17^th or 18^th of February. His father was Giuseppe Massa, who was the son of Giovanni Massa, and his mother was Caterina Bigando, the daughter of Pietro Bigando. His godparents were Antonio Zucco Alberto and Francesca Bigando.

Albino left Cintano to join his father Giuseppe in Butte, Montana when he was 15 years old. He sailed aboard the S.S. La Savoie, from Havre, France to New York, departing on 23 November 1912. He listed his nearest relative in Italy, his mother Caterina, as living in Cintano, and he was traveling to his father Giuseppe at box 1093, Walkerville, Montana.

In 1917 Albino was living at 211 West Daly in Walkerville. His brother John lived at 301 West Daly and several other members of the Massa family also lived in Walkerville and McQueen.  A Joseph Massa lived at 20 Gladstone Terrace, next to my grandma’s Aunt and Uncle, Teresa and Antonio Chiuminatto, who were also from Cintano. I don’t believe that this was his father, as his obituary states that his father was living in Italy at the time of his death.

I am not sure which mine Albino was working in at the time of the disaster. The two mines involved were the Speculator and the Granite Mountain mine. On the evening of June 8, 1917, a fire ignited in the Granite Mountain mine shaft at 11:30 pm. While half the men working in the mines that night escaped, Albino did not. Many of the men did not die immediately, they survived for a day or two in the mine shafts. A few survived by barricading themselves behind bulkheads and were rescued several days later.

On the morning of June 12, Albino was still listed among the missing. When they located his body the coroner ruled his date of death as June 9. He died the same way as many of the other men, from “asphyxiation from gas and smoke in mine fire.” The Granite Mountain/Speculator Mine disaster remains the worst disaster in metal mining history, 168 men died that night.

His funeral was held on June 18 at the home of his brother John. His obituary credits him as being “one of the most popular young men of Walkerville” It also states that he has a brother in Butte and his parents and another brother in Italy. Albino was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Butte.

His family in Cintano must have registered his death with the municipality of Cintano. I am not sure if there was a legal reason to do this, or if it was just something that the family wanted. When I was in Cintano March of 2019 I visited the cemetery. It was so beautiful, and I documented as much of it as I could by taking pictures of the memorials. Luckily, I found a picture of the memorial for Albino, with his brothers Giovanni (John) and Pietro. I am so glad that he found his way home.

Here is the Allegati.