Montemilone to The Crossing: The $1,500 Ledger
The story of the Montreal and Cicchelli families is a journey that spans from the dry hills of Montemilone in Southern Italy to the industrial heart of upstate New York.
Michele arrived first in 1907, carrying the hope of the New World.
By 1913, his wife Giovanna—who would come to be known as Anna—and their young son Giuseppe followed, sailing alongside Michele's brother-in-law, Giovanni Cicchelli.
They settled down in the Village of Solvay, New York, a place where immigrant dreams were fueled by factory smoke and the relentless rhythm of shift work.
Michele, now Americanized to Michael Montreal, found steady work as a steelworker at Halcomb Steel.
It is hard to fully grasp the sheer grit it took to survive that environment in the 1920s. The deafening roar of the furnaces, the suffocating heat, the air heavy with soot and burning metal. Despite the grueling physical toll of his labor, and navigating the hazardous factory floor with sight in only one eye, Michael did what he came to America to do: he provided. He and Anna built a life, eventually raising six children in the shadow of the mills.
After six days of deafening steelwork, Sunday was the sole sanctuary.
October 10, 1926, was supposed to be a quiet autumn morning.
Michael and John Cicchelli piled into a sedan with three friends—Angelo Serio, Olinpio Sicblia, and Phillip De Mascio—heading out for a hunting trip.
(1926 Train Accident Newspaper page story.)
But as their car reached the Belle Isle Road crossing near the State Fair Grounds, the morning shattered. They were struck by the "Transatlantic Limited," a New York Central train tearing down the tracks at 60 miles per hour.
The disaster was one of the most appalling the region had seen in years. The violent impact hurled the sedan into a 50-foot gully, scattering the men up to 500 feet along the tracks. One man was found submerged in the cold waters of Nine Mile Creek.
In the span of a single heartbeat, Anna was left completely alone to care for six children in an industrial town, with the Great Depression looming just a few years away.
Amidst the chaos and grief, the legal echo of the tragedy eventually reached its cold conclusion in a Syracuse courtroom. Surrogate John W. Sadler authorized the settlement of negligence actions against the New York Central Railroad.
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| (1928 News Story of Accident Settlements.) |
The final ledger was devastatingly brief.
Anna Montreal was granted permission to settle the claim for her husband’s death for exactly $1,500. Luisa Cicchelli was allowed to accept $441.68 for the loss of her brother, John.
These modest, calculated sums represented the final official acknowledgment of the lives lost—lives that had begun with hope in Montemilone and ended violently at a railroad crossing.
But the true ledger was carried by Anna, who had to forge ahead in a foreign land without the man who had brought her there.