Little Italy in Cleveland, Ohio is one of the earliest and longest lasting Italian communities in Cleveland. When we look at the microcosm that is Little Italy, we can see an establishment that informs us that early Italian immigrants managed to move inward from the coast early on. Records repeatedly give the impression that, while Cleveland's Italians had their share of hardship and stereotyped suspicions given to them, they managed to have much better quality of life and social acceptance than those Italians in other cities.

“Even though some individuals of Italian descent in Cleveland were involved in crime or were implicated in anti-social behavior, the city's Italians rarely brought disgrace upon themselves, their city, or their newly adopted country. As a group they had possibly the lowest crime rate for Italians of any major city in their country. Statistically, Cleveland's Italian population was consistently ranked among the lowest in terms of welfare relief among all groups, native and foreign born” (Gene P. Veronesi, Italian Americans and their Communities of Cleveland, p. 168-169).

When compared to accounts of the Italian immigrant in general, there is an obvious distinction:

“[Italians] performed the lowliest tasks for meager wages and lived in clannish isolation, with standards of sanitation that were shocking, to say the least, to their more fortunate neighbors. The second generation, born and reared in such environments and under great economic stress, broke with many of the old traditions, and their names began to appear on the lists of criminals and delinquents. Crimes ranked especially high among them. […] In New York, Italians lived for a time at a density of 1,100 to the acre […]. The disease and death rate from tuberculosis was especially high. […] The padrone system, by which boys were imported illegally to work for their employers under conditions suggesting feudal serfdom, aroused great antagonism, and immigration officials found it difficult to break up the practice.” (Carl Witted, We Who Built America, p. 437-440).

Italian immigrants in the United States were not as numerous before 1880 and it may come as a surprise, but more Italians immigrated to South America in the 19th Century than to North America. Hundreds prior to the 1861 Risorgimento were political exiles. As for Cleveland Italians, the 1870 census lists 35 Italians in Cleveland, but it must be noted that the Cleveland City Directory 1864-1865 already had over 20 Italian surnames listed. This makes the data from appraisal cards for Italian communities and, the focus of this project, Little Italy, more coherent.

Data below shows that the center of Little Italy—Murray Hill Road—already had parcels of land being built upon as early as 1850 and having a large number of constructions during the 1880's.

Note: Little Italy also includes Mayfield Road, but the focus of this research centers on the “heart” of Little Italy—Murray Hill. Data presented here only takes into account those parcels located on Murray Hill Road.

Note: Data provided in the above graph does not include 85 parcels that had no remodeling date on appraisal cards.

The “transformation” period (1930-1945) saw a great influx of Italians to the Cleveland area. Seven Italian neighborhoods eventually were established and typically were differentiated by occupation. Little Italy's Italians become known for their stonecutters (Lake View Cemetery providing great opportunity for work) as well as gardening and tailoring. Remodeling dates offer a look at how Little Italy expanded upon property following this period and can be attested to the strong community network made possible through hometown societies and settlement houses.

Suggested Links:
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History – Italians :http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=I7
The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History – Little Italy: http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=LI1
Italian Americans and their Communities of Cleveland - http://site.ebrary.com/lib/clevelandstatedr/docDetail.action?docID=10395171
Risorgimento - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/504489/Risorgimento

In 2013, Pursue Posterity was provided with the opportunity to create an extensive inventory and physical exhibit of artifacts pertaining to the history of The Lincoln Electric Company. Lincoln Electric is a multi-billion dollar corporation located in Euclid, Ohio and the “global leader in the design, development and manufacture of arc welding products robotic arc-welding systems, plasma and oxyfuel cutting equipment and has a leading global position in the brazing and soldering alloys market” (http://www.lincolnelectric.com/Pages/lincoln-worldwide.aspx?locale=1033).

There are a plentitude of perks pertaining to my profession: preserving and promoting history, access to rare and valuable artifacts from the past and being afforded the opportunity to meet unique and extraordinary individuals. The Lincoln Electric project afforded me the chance to experience all of the aforementioned perks. My greatest pleasure however was derived from meeting a unique and extraordinary individual named William Isaac Miskoe. He was the longest tenured employee in the year history of The Lincoln Electric Company, having worked there in a variety of capacities in his 61 years of invaluable service to the company.

In 1933, he embarked on his illustrious career at Lincoln Electric, after many years of studying engineering at the University of Virginia and John Huntington Polytechnic Institute. He started his lengthy tenure as a Sales Engineer in Illinois and retired as the International Vice-President. As per the philosophy of the founders, John C. Lincoln and James F. Lincoln, salesmen at Lincoln Electric were expected to do more than simply schmooze a customer and close the deal. That was how William Miskoe was taught and that was how he conducted himself when on a sales call. “Now in welding,” he emphasized, “it’s always been said that it can’t be sold by talking. It’s sold by showing.” Every time he went on a sales call he would pack his gloves, welding helmet, and coveralls in his car so that he could showcase the superiority of Lincoln Electric arc welding products via a live demonstration. His exemplary work ethic and dedication helped advance his career and quickly lead to him securing a position as branch sales manager in Peoria, Illinois and soon thereafter a lucrative promotion overseas.

The Lincoln Electric Company had an extremely gradual shift from simply a domestic manufacturer to an international enterprise, spanning the globe. Founded in 1895, it wasn’t until 1938 that the company ventured outside of North America with construction of a plant in Australia. In 1940, Mr. Miskoe went to Australia to manage the plant, whereupon he introduced the concepts of piecemeal for production jobs and an annual bonus. When he first arrived in the land down under the total number of employees at the plant was a paltry fifteen, but due in large part to his diligence and determination it rose to one hundred and fifty. Despite Australia’s reputation as one of the most pro-union nations, Miskoe’s early implementation of the work incentive program proved extremely advantageous for the initial employees and their endorsement encouraged future hires to accept the program as well.

For 28 years, from 1940-1968, he was the face of the Australian subsidiary acting as chairman and managing director. Under his superlative supervision the Australian subsidiary competed with its’ American counterpart in sales to world markets. In the 1940s, Mr. Miskoe was responsible for starting their export operations. This was groundbreaking for Australian manufacturing as Mr. Miskoe observed in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald: “Lincoln Australia can claim to be one of the pioneers in the export of Australian manufactured products,” ( http://goo.gl/T8iyMD).

After 28 years in the Outback, Miskoe returned to the United States in 1968 as the newly crowned international vice-president. He spent his final twenty-six years of service with Lincoln Electric stationed in the U.S., but traveled much for work and pleasure. During his travels he helped broker a deal for the Australian subsidiary to be responsible for marketing Lincoln products to Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Mr. Miskoe led an incredible life peppered with a vast array of achievements, adventures, travels and travails. One such adventure occurred while journeying from Australia to the United States in 1943 on what should have been a relaxing cruise with his beloved soul mate and wife, Dorothy Lee, a fire ignited creating the necessity for ship to be evacuated. Always fast on his feet, Miskoe leapt from the fiery Swedish motor ship with the aid of rope into a nearby raft whereupon he briskly maneuvered it to the side of the ship. He then helped numerous injured passengers from the burning vessel into the safety of the raft. Luckily there were no casualties in the fire due to the quick and heroic responses of men and women such as Mr. Miskoe.  

On March 2nd, 2014 William Isaac Miskoe relinquished his mortal coil after 101 years brimming with adventure, and equal doses of devotion to his family and career.  A life he once declared during his later years was filled with nary a regret. My major regret in the context of completing our project with Lincoln Electric was missing out on the opportunity to conduct an oral history with Mr. Miskoe, for he passed away prior to the details being worked out. The legacy left behind by Mr. Miskoe is vast, and it is unlikely that The Lincoln Electric Company could have gained such a strong global presence without his ambition and tireless work ethic.

Sean Dolan is a student in the MLIS and IAKM programs at Kent State University.  He possess a BA in History from Cleveland State and a great deal of respect for the events of the past and what they can teach us.  He is completing this Cain Park Theatre digital web exhibit on the Cleveland Memory Project as a Practicum under the instruction of Preserve Posterity.

I recently began the daunting task of creating a digital web exhibit for the Cain Park Theatre which will, when completed, be available for the public to view on the Cleveland Memory Project website.  The Cain Park Theatre has a long and storied history, one which the city of Cleveland Heights, Ohio has been inspired to tell by the 75th Anniversary of the venue this past summer.  Any institution which has been in near-constant operation for that many decades will have collected an abundance of documents, records, photographs, slides, press clippings, and assorted ephemera.  Therefore, I was not surprised when Kara O’ Donnell, City Planner at the Department of Planning and Development, led me into the basement of Cleveland Heights City Hall to see a long row of shelves lined on both sides with boxes.  It quickly became apparent that some of these containers had been well-organized, whereas others had only the vaguest of labels to guide me.  It would take me my entire first day just to pull all of the boxes down from the shelves and quickly browse through their contents in order to try to understand what materials were available for me to work with in developing this project. 

A few months previous, I had met with Kieth Peppers, Calvin Rydbom, and Thomas Kubat of Pursue Posterity to discuss the project.  At that time, gave me a book to look over entitled Cain Park Theatre: The Halcyon Years, by Dr. Dina Rees Evans.  I had also done some research online, so I had a basic idea of the history and timeline of events surrounding the venue.  However, seeing actual letters composed by manual typewriter on onionskin paper dating from  the World War II era conveyed a much greater sense of meaning.  This is what draws people to archival work, the opportunity to work with primary source materials, preserving and organizing them in a way that allows others to experience the same joy of discovery.  I soon realized that my first challenge with this project would be deciding which of the many stories of Cain Park I wanted to tell with my limited time and resources.  

As I looked through box after box of materials, I realized that a large portion of them were from the “modern” era of Cain Park, the 1990s-2010s.  Almost immediately, I decided that this material was too current to be of historical interest, and also in such good condition that it was not a high priority for immediate preservation.  These boxes could afford to wait for the attentions of a future archivist.  Moving down the shelves, I also found that the late 1970s and 1980s were fairly well-represented.  As child of the 1980’s, it was tempting for me to want to go through and work with the material of that time period, but I decided that the general public might not find it quite as interesting as me and my fellow Gen X-ers.  These boxes, too, could wait.  The chronologies of Cain Park had prepared me to expect a notable gap of boxes from the 1960s and early 1970s, a period during which the Park was mostly not in operation. 

Finally, I located the oldest collected materials which represented the first twenty years of the theater venue, 1938-1959.  I was both pleasantly surprised and a little intimidated by the volume of materials from this era.  Fortunately, I soon learned that I would not have to start my project from scratch.  My predecessor, Emily Smith, spent the summer of 2012 organizing a good deal of the material from this time period.  Unlike the materials from the other eras of Cain Park, the photographs from this period were organized by year, production,and personnel.  Where it was not possible to be this exact, they were  placed in general folders by decade.  Emily also organized the scrapbooks by year, scanned a lot of photos into the computer in JPEG and TIFF formats, and organized the program booklets by year and decade.  It appears that she did not have the time to work the boxes containing other written materials, such as inventories, attendance and box office records, and correspondence. 

The work Emily had done allowed me to quickly see that this early period of Cain Park, particularly the 1940s, was the most well-represented, both in terms of quantity and quality of materials available.  However, even this narrow window of time presented numerous compelling stories to tell. 

The historical narrative of Cain Park begins in the mid-1930's, as the country struggled to emerge from the Great Depression.  This is when Mayor Frank Cain and Captain Harvey Hecker (of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Relief Commission) built the park with the labor of disabled veterans, funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and donations from individuals such as John D. Rockefeller, Jr.  Around this same time, Dr. Dina Rees Evans (the first person in the country to earn a doctorate in Theatre Arts), began to envision Cain Park the perfect location for an outdoor civic theater.  A drama teacher at Cleveland Heights High School, Dr. Evans would serve as director of Cain Park Theatre for several decades.  It is hard to imagine how large her influence must have been on our nation's drama programs through her work in the classroom as well as the summer Children's and Youth Theatre programs at the Park.  The success of Cain Park's Theatre's adult productions during this era is also remarkable, considering that the population faced the trials of war and the theater directors had to compete for an audience's attention with no less a rival than the “Golden Age” of Hollywood.  The 1940s were by far the most active period of Cain Park Theatre, with an amazing 80 plays staged (more than a third of total productions over the entire history of the venue).  In addition to being prolific, the Theatre also turned a profit every year.

When I told Calvin, who is advising me on this project, what materials I had discovered and the various stories I would like to tell on the Memory Project exhibit, he cautioned me about trying to tackle too much.  While I was a little bit reluctant to narrow the scope of my project, I recognized that it would be necessary in order to make sure I would be able to complete it by the end of the summer.   I also realized that this approach would allow me take more time and show greater respect for the materials and era which I chose to focus on.  After some thought, I decided to focus on the time period from 1938-1950, with special emphasis on the mid-1940s and WWII.  I have also decided to focus on the adult theater productions, because of the quality of the photographs and programs which Emily had already started to organize.  These are the materials that are of the greatest historic importance and widest interest to the public and, as the oldest materials in the collection, represent a high preservation priority.  For now, the story of the Children's Theatre and the 1950's will have to wait for the next student looking for an internship in archival work.