• Sunday-What'sUP February 17 - 08:19 pm

In the course of making today's Pasty Cameo about Atlas Powder, I stumbled across the newspaper clippings in the Wesley Williams collection from the 1913 strike, kept at the Calumet School library. On the same page as the strike-related dynamite incident, I found the note about Annie Clemenc, the wife of a Croatian miner who helped organize the Woman's Alliance in support of the miners' cause. Interesting to note that the dynamite incident and Annie's march occurred in the same week. Those certainly were explosive days, in more ways than one.

Just a side - while reading the daily newspaper clippings which Mr. Williams so diligently preserved, I was struck by the polarization of the pro and anti-union forces, again from articles which appeared the same week as the 2 above:

In supportIn opposition

We had Klobuchar's living in Dowagiac

wow funny this is posted here for today. i was just talking about the strike last nite and the italian hall disaster that left a lot of people dead. this is kind of scary...like someone was reading my mind lol good to see that these memories aren't forgotten.

Thanks for the history lesson. Strikes are not good whether they were long ago or now.
The Essex Wire strike in 1962 in Hillsdale Michigan got bad enough that the National Guard was call out to stop the violence. I remember this strike very well as I was 12 years old and the child of one of the company guards that had to cross the pick line every day to go to work during the strike.
mrs. jwahtola

Look at the Treasurer from Butte, MT. All this time I thought the Beetles came from England.

The Italian Hall Disaster was truly an unfortunate incident during the strike. As Charlie has highlighted, the community was polarized as a result of the dispute. Was the Citizens' Alliance responsible for intiating the cry of fire that Christmas Eve in 1913 or was it just a terrible accident? Plenty has been written, but I'm still not convinced which it was...an accident or the result of evil design. The polarization at that time was clearly an impediment to an objective review.

The impact was far reaching for my relatives. My great-grandmother's sister-in-law, Sanna Aaltonen, perished in the disaster along with two of her daughters. Her two sons survived, but would be later given up for adoption by their father Oscar. One would be adopted by a Kallio family and the other by a Kokkola family. I'm not aware of what became of either of them. Their father was lured to the workers paradise in the USSR and was executed there. (My great-grandfather Sillanpaa's half-brother would meet a similar fate in the USSR)

The memorial to the Italian Hall Disaster in Calumet is nicely done http://gallery.pasty.com/keithinks/albuq37/a24.jpg.html but, unless something has changed in recent years, the victims rest in a largely unmarked mass grave.

And, strangely enough, I'm just reading a biography of Big Annie.
I hear you Danielle. Weird coincidence.?

Wished I knew more about this smiling lady..."big Annie"? Who was she, involved with the striking miners? All I see is a lovely looking woman. Kinda resembles Laura Bush with her smile. I'm sort of a fan of hers. Just not her spouse.

Just watched the Senter site, thanks, saw my old friends Fred,Geeka{SP}, Margaret, and Mike Zieminick. Just one of the nicest families that I knew in Hubbell. I am going to try to get the pictures on my printer, hope I can figure it out. Will probably have to get Andrea the Irish Dancer over to help grandpa do it.

Anna Klobuchar Klemenc Shavs was born about 1888 in Calumet to George Klobuchar, born in Crnomelj, Slovenia. Anna always has been and always will be Slovenian. She married Josef Klemenc at St. Joe's in Red Jacket on May 26, 1906. She divorced her husband, a Slovenian miner from the Crnomelj Parish in Slovenia and he left for Detroit, Michigan. Annie married Frank Shavs in 1914 and moved to Chicago, Illinois. They have a child Darwina Shavs, born abt. 1914 in Chicago, Illinois. Anna had three other siblings at least George, born about 1897 and Joseph born about 1901, and Frank born about 1906 in Calumet, Michigan. My cousin is related to this family and we are tracing their history.

On the Atlas Powder Cameo-great pictures, great presentation, and great voice narration. WOW!
The very last picture of the white "office" building behind the Atlas Powder sign has been our family home since about 1962.
Cindy(Smith)Barth