From Veneto to the Ozarks: The Italian Roots of Tontitown, Arkansas

Dear Henry,

While I hesitate to call here home, since we’ll be moving on again, I’m currently staying in a wonderful little town with an equally wonderful story.

Let me tell you all about Tontitown, Arkansas.

The story of Tontitown begins in the Veneto province of northern Italy, once part of the great Republic of Venice, a maritime empire whose inland “terraferma” cities of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and Treviso supported one of Europe’s most advanced agricultural systems.

The farms of the Veneto were known for their grain, wine, silk, olive oil, and cattle, which were sustained by careful irrigation and centuries of expertise.

But, as in so many places, most of the work was done by tenant farmers who labored under the control of wealthy landlords. Under the Venetian Republic, the system was bearable; after Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797 and transferred the region to the Austrian Empire, it became far less so. Taxes rose, rents increased, and farmers began to struggle.

The hardships worsened after 1815.

The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia triggered the infamous Year Without a Summer, bringing crop failures and famine to Europe. Veneto’s farmers were hit hard, and environmental problems kept coming, alternating floods and droughts along the Po River, including a devastating flood in 1839 that submerged parts of Turin. Then came the silkworm plague, pébrine, which destroyed the region’s most profitable industry.

By 1850, tenant farmers could no longer produce enough to feed their families and pay rent and taxes.

The revolutions of 1848 briefly freed the region as the Republic of San Marco, but Austrian troops soon returned. After another war in 1859 freed Lombardy, Veneto remained under Austrian rule until 1866, when Italian forces allied with Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War. Following Austria’s defeat and a peace settlement with Napoleon III, Veneto was formally annexed to the new Kingdom of Italy after a public vote on November 4, 1866.

And, unfortunately, that didn’t help any of the farmers.

The new Italian kingdom was broke after years of war, and raised taxes even higher. Military conscription became mandatory, and the old landowning elite kept their estates. For the peasants, life under Italy turned out to be just as hard as life under Austria.

Many saw only one way out: leave Italy altogether.

Enter Austin Corbin and the Sunnyside Plantation.

Sunnyside was a cotton plantation near Lake Village, Arkansas, operated by Corbin and the Calhoun Land Company after the Civil War. In 1895, Corbin, through Italian agents, offered immigrant families from northern Italy a chance at “land ownership”: twelve-and-a-half acres after twenty-one years of labor, with 5% interest.

It sounded promising, but it was, quite frankly, a trap.

The financial arrangement amounted to peonage, debt-based labor that is enslavement, and is technically illegal under U.S. law.

The Italians also discovered that cotton farming was nothing like the vineyard and orchard farming they knew, and that the mosquito-filled Arkansas Delta was a far cry from the cool, hilly Veneto. Many became sick with malaria, and the promised freedom never arrived.

Then, in 1897, the story changed.

Father Pietro Bandini, an Italian-born Jesuit priest, had already founded a mission for Italian immigrants in New York City. Believing that rural communities could offer his countrymen a better life, he moved to Sunnyside as a chaplain and was horrified by what he found.

Outraged by the exploitation and poor conditions, Father Bandini organized an exodus.

In 1898, he led about forty Italian families, most from Veneto, some from Emilia-Romagna and Marche, northward into the Ozark hills. There, he purchased land, divided it into ten-acre plots, and encouraged families to grow grapes and fruit. Crops that were more suited to the soil and their skills.

They named their new community Tontitown, in honor of Italian-born explorer Henri de Tonti, who helped explore the Mississippi Valley and established a trading post on the Arkansas River in 1686.

The first years were difficult. Many men traveled to the coal mines of southeast Oklahoma to earn extra money, while the women and children tended to their families' gardens and vineyards. But the community endured.

In 1899, they held their first harvest picnic. This joyful celebration evolved into what is today’s Tontitown Grape Festival, a three-day party of music, grape stomps, and spaghetti dinners, as well as the crowning of Queen Concordia, a yearly tradition since the first queen, Albina Montegani, was crowned in 1932.

By 1909, the town was incorporated officially, with Father Bandini as its first mayor. Prosperity followed in 1912, when the Arkansas, Oklahoma & Western Railroad connected Tontitown to new markets, and again in 1922, when Welch’s opened a juice processing plant in nearby Springdale.

The settlers also built St. Joseph Catholic Church, which remains the spiritual heart of Tontitown, with a rich history that deserves its own post. And for those who want to walk through history, the Tontitown Historical Museum, located in the former home of sisters Maria and Zelinda Bastianelli, daughters of original settlers, offers a treasure of artifacts, letters, and photographs. The museum opened in 1986 and is free to visit on Wednesday–Saturday; the hours vary.

I even picked up a great book there, Tontitown: The Story of an Italian Settlement in the Ozarks by Sarah Young, and I can’t wait to read it.

If we’re still here next summer, I hope to catch the Grape Festival, held the first week of August.

Something tells me it’ll be a great party.

xoxo,

a.d. elliott

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller based in Tontitown, Arkansas.

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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