My great grandfather was named Mike Fragale. I have a photograph of myself, an infant, happily perched upon his lap. I wasn’t the first of his great grandchildren to sit on his lap, but I was possibly the last. I was named after him. Shortly after that photo was taken my father was stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, and Mike Fragale died during the following year, so I never knew him.

I did know my great grandmother Emma Fragale. When I was little she lived alone in a house on 18th Street, in Escanaba, Michigan. She was a stern looking woman, and the oldest person I had ever seen. The house was quiet. The master bedroom contained pictures from another era. I had no way of knowing that only a few years before she had shared that house with Mike. Sometimes after church on Sunday we would visit grandma Fragale: my parents, my sister Marge and I. Grandma Fragale often cooked scrambled eggs for us. She cooked them runny, and I was not allowed to complain. Or maybe I was just afraid to. Then we would usually go just down the street to visit aunt Harriet, actually my mother’s aunt, and her husband Dick. It was a much happier place for small children. There were toys and shelves full of comic books. Uncle Dick would perform small sleight of hand magic tricks, like pulling nickels out of our ears. We usually left with a few of those comic books, especially for the long ride home after we had moved away from Escanaba.

We moved to southeast Wisconsin about 1962, and after that no visit to my grandparents in Escanaba was complete without making the rounds to see grandma Fragale and aunt Harriet. Grade school and high school passed, and then during the 1980s all of those old ladies in Escanaba passed on too. In 2001 I moved to New Mexico, but before leaving I spent several afternoons at my parent’s house going through photo albums, copying many prints onto film and taking notes. My mother had saved Emma’s album, and Harriet’s album and, of course, her own mother Margaret’s album. In 2007 I finally got around to trying to organize the images.

What started as a project to make a digital album soon grew into this website, and over the following years it became an all-out investigation into my family genealogy. The Escanaba photos were most fascinating to me: Mike and Emma Fragale’s wedding photo, beautiful photos of their three young daughters, pictures of brothers and sisters from Germany and Italy. There were names from my mother’s memory, like Ewald, and Gusty, and Angelo and Kennett Square.

The project expanded to other branches of the family in Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky and elsewhere, but it’s now come back to Escanaba, to Mike Fragale who immigrated from Italy, and Emma Leisner whose family immigrated slightly earlier from Germany. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula had many German immigrants, but few Italians. Mike Fragale’s story intrigued me. What on earth brought a teenager from southern Italy to settle far away from his family, in Escanaba of all places, and what did he do there? As far as I can piece this together, here is the story of a man who I almost knew, and of his family.

The Fragale Name

My great grandfather was born Michele Fragale, and the Italian pronunciation is frah-gah-lay, the accent on the middle syllable. Our family always pronounced it fray-gul, and somewhere along the line the spelling changed to Fragile. The first instance of this spelling I know of is in the 1930 US census. The three daughters used this spelling for their entire lives after that, but the youngest, my grandmother Margaret, wanted the traditional spelling on her gravestone. Mike had no formal education, and Emma only got through second grade. The only signature of Mike’s I’ve seen, on his WWI draft registration card, had the Fragale spelling. It’s interesting that Mike’s brother, Angelo, has the same misspelling of the family name in the 1940 US census. While it might look odd to members of our immediate family, I have decided to use the original spelling, Fragale, throughout this account.

As for our pronunciation of the name, I had assumed that it was a peculiarity of the Escanaba family. I felt rather silly when Dolly, Angelo‘s daughter, told me that all of the Fragales in America pronounced it fray-gul, just like us!

Upper Michigan in 1900

Iron ore was discovered in the Upper Peninsula in the 1840s. You didn’t even have to dig for some of it: it was just laying on the surface, and it had the perfect constituency for the Bessemer Steel process. Railroads were built to get the ore to lakes Superior and Michigan. Huge ore docks were constructed to transfer the ore from train to ship. To negotiate the twenty-one foot drop in water level out of Lake Superior, the first boat locks were opened at Sault Saint Marie, the famous Soo Locks, in 1855.

All of these steps from mine to steel mill were in a state of constant upgrade: bigger ships; longer and larger docks; newer and larger locks. The ports along Lake Superior and Lake Michigan became very busy places. In 1888 a new international bridge opened next to the Soo Locks, and the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railroad (the Soo Line) could now take grain, timber and passengers from the Dakotas all the way to Boston and Philadelphia.

In 1893, Ashland, Wisconsin was the second busiest port on the great lakes, behind Chicago. In 1896, the new Poe Lock opened at the Soo, the largest boat lock in the world. The new ore docks were huge, up to seventy or more feet high, sixty feet wide, and some jutted nearly half a mile from the shore. Trains dumped ore into pockets high above the lake, independent of the ore boats, which could be loaded later through huge chutes which swung out over their cargo hatches. The latest “laker” ships were so big that they couldn’t reach the Atlantic Ocean if they tried, since the Saint Lawrence Seaway locks were too small. The hatches on the newer ships were spaced at the same twelve or twenty-four foot intervals as the pockets on the newer ore docks. The process had been streamlined by the industrial revolution.

The biggest bottleneck in the process, unloading the boats, was then overcome with the invention of the Hulett unloaders in 1898, gigantic machines spanning up to four railroad tracks and cantilevering far over the harbor. They scooped the ore out of the ship’s holds in huge gulps and cut unloading times by two thirds. By 1910 there were dozens of these machines in destination ports such as South Chicago in Illinois, Gary, Indiana, and Cleveland and Lorain in Ohio.

In 1899 there were twenty-two ore docks servicing the mines in places like Duluth, Ashland, Marquette and, on lake Michigan, Escanaba.

There was a bustling little town a few dozen miles from Escanaba called Manistique, at the intersection of the famous Soo Line railroad and the newly built Manistique and Northwestern railroad. A man named Elijah Westen had built the railroad in 1896, as part of a dream to move both lumber, the region’s other great industry, and iron ore on the same railroad. Weston wanted to carry ore to his Manistique ore works, hardwoods to power those ore works, and softwoods for export. He operated a stone quarry, and had plans for ferries across Lake Michigan. But he died in 1898, and his grand schemes were never fully realized.

Elijah Weston’s railroad survived, barely, and did carry lumber from the remote logging camps to Lake Michigan. The railroad underwent several ownership and name changes over the next decade, finally becoming the Manistique & Lake Superior, the M&LS, known locally as the Haywire, and sometimes as the Muck & Loon Sh*t.

It was into this turn of the century environment that not one, but three Fragale immigrants arrived.

John, Frank and Mike

Mike’s cousin John Fragale may have been the first person in his extended family to arrive in America. I’m assuming that he was born as Giovanni Fragale. The 1930 census says that he arrived in 1894. What drew him to Manistique, Michigan is anybody’s guess, but there were a lot of jobs in the area for immigrants, mostly in the lumber industry. What drew him to America itself might have been another story altogether. He was married in Italy, and had a daughter named Maria (Mary, when she later came to America). He probably had no plans of sending for his wife at some later date. Angelo’s daughter Dolly relates that John’s wife led a “risqué life”, and John probably came to America for both economic and social betterment. Maybe he just ran away.

Whether he worked in the lumber industry is unknown, but by 1910 John Fragale described himself as a farmer, and the 1920 and 1930 census documents show the same occupation. Farming was about all that many of the Fragale immigrants knew from the old country. John lived in Thompson Township, just southwest of Manistique, with a French-Canadian woman named Agnes. They eventually had seven children, beginning in 1900 with the birth of daughter Irene Lucille Fragale, and followed in 1901 with son Albert.

Next to come to America was Angelo Fragale, although he was using his birth name Francesco at that time. Ellis Island documents show him arriving in the states in 1897. When he arrived in Upper Michigan is unknown, but Dolly believes that he lived there around the turn of the century. She says that he definitely worked in the lumber industry. Whether he lived with his cousin John is also unknown. Often, lumber men lived in camps up north in the woods much of the time. Dolly told me that her father more than once mentioned Sault Ste. Marie at the Canadian border, so he definitely visited there, perhaps either on the way to Manistique, or while returning to the east coast. The new lock, the huge ships and the international bridge must have been quite awe inspiring in 1900; they're impressive even today.

I have to wonder how these men from southern Italy reacted to an Upper Michigan winter or two!

Then came Mike. The 1920 census lists his arrival in America as 1900. The 1930 census lists 1902. In 1900, Mike’s brother-in-law Serafino Leo was working in eastern Pennsylvania , and by 1902, Mike’s sister Maria (Mary) and brother Antonio had joined him. It’s probable that Mike spent time in the Kennett Square vicinity before moving on to Upper Michigan. He obviously knew of his cousin up in Manistique, but exactly when he got there is uncertain. My guess is somewhere between 1901 and 1904. his obituary later reported that he arrived in Escanaba in 1903. Mike’s stay with John Fragale may have been short.

There are two stories told in my family which come into play here. The first comes through my grandmother Margaret Fragale-Williams. It seems that there was a tarp pulled over a well to keep the water from freezing, a dog which pulled the tarp off of the well, and a woman who then shot the dog dead. The woman would likely be Agnes, John Fragale’s wife. Margaret believed that this upset her father, a quiet gentle man, enough to make him move on from Manistique.

Mike’s daughter Irene tells the other story, which was probably the bigger factor. Mike didn’t know that his cousin had a new family in Michigan until he got there, and was very upset to find out that John was a bigamist. Angelo’s family had further contact with John for years after Angelo left Michigan, but when Mike moved on to Escanaba he never talked to John again. Mike’s daughter Irene never knew that there was a little girl named Irene Lucille Fragale who she might have been named after, since Mike would have met the child during his time in Manistique.

Emma Maria Leisner

Between 1881 and 1885, two brothers and a sister named Giese, and two brothers and two sisters named Porath all immigrated to the United States from Germany and settled in Ford River, Michigan, seven or eight miles south of Escanaba. They were farmers. Each of them came with a spouse, and there were children, as well as grandmother Porath and grandfather Giese. One of the Giese brothers was married to one of the Porath sisters, so all of these immigrants probably knew each other in the old country. The woman named Giese was Ernestina Giese, and she was married to a man named Frederick Leisner. Three of their children immigrated also: Herman, Augusta and Bertha.

I know nothing about their lives in the old country, and there are almost no documents surviving before the 1900 census. There was a vague story about another sibling who had drowned after diving into shallow water. That’s it. The 1890 US census was destroyed in a fire, and the lack of any ship’s manifests leads me to think that those records were also destroyed, in another fire at Ellis Island.

My mother was told that Emma Leisner was the only Leisner child born in America, but her brother Ewald was also born here. The only immigration dates I have for any of these Leisners, Gieses and Poraths are from the sometimes contradictory census pages of 1920 and 1930.

I suppose that this is as good a place as any to mention that Emma rarely smiled. Emma’s granddaughter Pat tells the story that near the end of her life, in 1982, Emma took Pat’s husband Wayne’s hand and gave him a big smile. A week or two later Emma was dead. Emma’s son-in-law Brendan used to say that Emma smiled like she had a…well, we’ll leave what Brendan said for another time.

At the turn of the twentieth century a trip into Escanaba was an all day affair. So how did Emma Leisner and Mike Fragale meet? My mother was told that Emma worked in Escanaba as a household servant for a time. My guess is that the following often told family tale happened then:

Emma was riding the carousel at the Escanaba fairgrounds. Every time the carousel came around, a young Italian man bopped her with one of those paddleball toys which I suppose he had gotten right there at the fair. Did he get a smile out of Emma? We’ll never know, but on March 4th, 1908, Mike Fragale and Emma Leisner were married.

They lived with the Leisners for a while, down in Ford River, but Mike got a job at the ore docks, so soon they were living in Escanaba.

Irene, Harriet and Margaret

Mike and Emma named their first child Irene Ernestina Fragale. She was born in Ford River. The name Ernestina was definitely after Emma’s mother. I speculate that the name Irene came from the name of John Fragale’s first daughter. Mike may never have wanted to see John again, but the name Irene might have appealed to him, and for all we know he was enamored by the little girl he had no doubt met in Manistique.

Their second child was named Harriet Bertha Fragale. Bertha is easy to account for, since Emma had an older sister named Bertha. That story of Emma working as a household servant before her marriage included a young girl in that house who took sick and died, affecting Emma deeply. That girl was named Harriet.

The third child was my grandmother, Margaret Regina Fragale. The only instance of the name Margaret in the family at that time was Mike’s sister Josephine’s daughter, Mary Margaret Citino, who had been born about two years earlier. The Escanaba Fragales had some German immigrant friends who lived for many years across the street, named Hubert and Virginia Bubser. Virginia was godmother to Harriet and Margaret, and she was listed as Regina Bubser on the documents, possibly her middle name.

There was a story which might have involved Mike’s desire for a son to carry on the Fragale name. This story was that Mike, upon learning that he had yet another daughter, got a bit inebriated and emotional, and comically tried to wrestle a baby carriage up the basement stairs.

427 South 18th Street

The house was built in 1917, and Irene told me that it cost $2000. To put things in perspective, Mike Fragale made two dollars a day down at the ore docks. Mike and Emma lived in that house for the rest of their lives. There were two bedrooms along the left side, the master bedroom and the girl’s bedroom behind it. The living room was in front, and behind that on the right were the dining room and the kitchen. From there, stairs led up to the attic, which was unused, and down to the basement, which had rough stone walls and was where Emma had a wash tub, scrub board and chair. The front door to the house opened into the living room, and Mike’s favorite chair sat near to it. There was a rear door which led from the kitchen to the side yard.

The family had an upright piano, and Irene had a real talent for playing it. She studied piano for eleven years, but when they looked into professional lessons for her, well, the fee of fifty dollars per hour put an end to that!

In contrast with his wife, Mike was always smiling, and even had a silly side. Irene told me that when her mother made doughnuts, her father would waltz around the house with one on each finger, eventually eating them all.

The Fragales also owned the lot next to the house, the corner lot. They never built on it, and despite offers, they never sold it. The 500 block of 18th Street had no houses back then, so in addition to a sunny southern exposure, you could see more than a block without any obstruction. The family kept a large garden on that lot, big enough that a horse and plow were used to break the soil in the spring. My mother remembered seeing this operation when she was young, so the garden existed at least into the 1940s, but Mike’s granddaughter Pat (Irene’s daughter) remembered the side yard only having a bench in it, so the garden was gone by the late 1940s. Irene said that she and her sisters sold bags of tomatoes up and down the street to the neighbors out of a small wagon.

It seems that the Fragale family had farming in their blood. Mike’s brothers and sisters out in Pennsylvania were all involved in growing things. The Kennett Square Fragales eventually specialized in mushrooms. Mike’s brother Louis grew Roses. Pat remembers that the back yard in Escanaba was Mike’s pride and joy. He filled that yard with flowers that he tended, either gladiolas or irises. He often earned ribbons for them at the Escanaba Fair. Emma had a skill indoors with African Violets of all colors. Pat said that she thought that her grandma knew magic, starting new plants from fallen leaves.

Working for the Railroad

Mike worked for the railroad, on the massive ore docks in Escanaba. Which railroad? Probably several of them, since the railroads were constantly being bought, sold or merged. His 1917 draft card says that he worked for the Chicago, Milwaukee and Northwestern Railroad. The 1910 census lists his occupation as “top loader”, the 1920 census says that he was a “top dock worker”, and in 1930 it was “freight handler”, and I suspect these were all names for the same job. While I’m sure that seniority counted for something, it was still basic physical labor.

Ore was dumped from the rail cars into “pockets” high up over Lake Michigan, and when the ore ship was in position, large chutes, sometimes called spouts, were swung outward from the docks until the ends were in position over the cargo hatches on the ships. Typically, I have learned, every other chute was deployed, so ore was dumped into the ship at twenty-four foot intervals. Ideally, gravity did most of the work. In practice, however, the ore might arrive as a wet or frozen-solid mass in the rail cars, or become a wet or frozen-solid mass in the pockets. It would be nasty work freeing up the ore, using sledges and long poles. After the pockets were empty, the ship would be winched along the dock a number of dozens of feet until different chutes could empty different pockets into the hold. Irene told me that her father would have to clean out the chutes on occasion. When Mike got home from work, he was often so filthy that Emma sent him straight to the basement to strip off his clothes before entering the rest of the house.

Mike must have seen both the worst and best of times on the docks. During 1931 and 1932, great depression years, there was a fifty percent drop in shipments. In 1900, there had been 500 or more men working for the Chicago & Northwestern railroad in Escanaba out of a total town population of 9000, and by 1930 the numbers were similar. In 1932 there were over a thousand men unemployed in Escanaba, most of them the sole wage earners for their families. It got so bad that the Milwaukee Road closed its two ore docks and transferred all of its business to the Chicago & Northwestern docks. The Milwaukee Road docks never really recovered, became neglected and were torn down several years later. It’s a good thing for Mike that he worked for the right railroad, on the C&NW docks.

By 1942, there had been a complete turnaround. The war effort resulted in the busiest years the ore docks had ever seen. Improvements were made in Escanaba because the United States was worried about German sabotage to the Soo Locks. Escanaba had held most of the ore shipment records anyway, since boats which didn’t have to go through the locks could carry heavier loads.

Through all of these times, Mike Fragale rode to work each day on his bicycle.

Getting Around, Trips out East, and Learning the Language

Neither Mike nor Emma had a car, or learned to drive. In those days you could still live that way. Escanaba is still a small town, but the little neighborhood grocery stores and such are mostly gone now. It also helped if you knew neighbors and friends who did have cars. The Fragales occasionally got out of town in the early days with one such neighbor I know of, and his wife, on day trips and picnics.

In 1926 they took a real trip, however, to visit the Fragales in Pennsylvania. Mike had not seen any of these folks for a quarter of a century, I’m fairly certain, and the rest of the family had never met any of them. Mike’s job came with a railroad pass, a free ticket to just about anywhere the railroad went. His daughter Margaret later related how warmly the relatives out east embraced the family, actually running out of the house with open arms upon their arrival. It was quite a contrast to the staid habits of the German relatives in Upper Michigan.

None of Mike’s relatives ever came to visit in Escanaba, though, and Irene told me that they never went out east again as a family. Mike and Emma did return to Kennett Square around 1950, but that appears to have been the only other time. I have photographic evidence that Mike’s niece, Lucie Leo, and her sister-in-law Mary visited Escanaba in the late 1950s, but I’m not certain who else might have been with them. Relatives in Pennsylvania remember Margaret and her husband Brendan, and Harriet and Irene, from at least one other trip to Kennett Square.

An interesting story came out of that 1926 trip. My grandmother Margaret told my mother that Mike had more or less lost the ability to converse in Italian. There had been no one who spoke it in Escanaba. My grandmother said that Mike had needed an interpreter to speak with his sister. Josephine Fragale-Citino’s daughter Helen told me that her mother managed to speak English well, so that leaves Mike’s other sister, Mary Fragale-Leo. Mary’s granddaughter Melania said that her grandfather Serafino Leo spoke English well enough to get along, but her father Archie Ruggieri really mastered the language. Perhaps Archie served as interpreter.

Mike spoke in broken English, and he had learned it from a wife who had grown up with Germans, and I’m sure he picked up more than a bit on the ore docks. Someone gave Mike some remedial children’s grammar books at one point, but Emma took them away from him. Not that he swore a lot, and by all accounts he was a quiet man, but my mother distinctly remembers him invoking the names of certain religious figures, in Italian.

Ed, Brendan and Dick

The three Fragale girls married three local Escanaba boys.

Irene married Edward James Stratton, son of Edward Mitchell Stratton and Nora E. Mogan.

Harriet married Leon Richard Schram who went by the name of Dick. He was an athlete in college, and competed in the pole vault at Marquette University, winning second place in the NCAA championships in Chicago. Dick hitchhiked from Escanaba to California in 1931 for the Olympic tryouts, since the Olympic committee did not have the money to pay his way. He lost seventeen pounds during the trip, and didn’t make the team.

Margaret married Brendan Roger Williams, son of Roger Nicholas Williams and Leah Elizabeth Laviolette. Brendan was also an athlete, and he had starred on the high school football team with his brother Marlin. He won a scholarship to play football at Marquette University, but was forced to leave school early after a family member from the Williams side revealed to the Jesuits that he was married to a Lutheran.

Emma’s family was German Lutheran, but both Irene and Margaret converted to Catholicism when they married. Emma had never wanted Mike to go to the Catholic church. The Lutheran minister in town started his sermons with “Thank God you weren’t born a Roman Catholic!”, and even Emma eventually stopped attending the services. Years later on his death bed, Mike asked Irene to bring a priest so he could go to confession and be reinstated in the church. Irene did as he asked, and as far as I know, Emma never knew about it.

609 South 18th Street, the War Years and Beyond

There was another house in the family, just down the street. It had started out as a tiny place and was built by the Leisner family, the city of Escanaba says in 1920. My guess is that after the death of her husband in 1915, Ernestina needed to be closer to her kids in town, not out in the country at Ford River. Irene tells me that German tradition forbade ownership of the house by a woman, so the title was probably in Ewald or Herman Leisner’s name, but I’m pretty sure that it was Ernestina’s house. She lived alone there through the twenties, a block down the street from her daughter Emma, and only two or three blocks from her son Herman. In 1931, there was a fire, and Ernestina died there. Mike Fragale then bought the house and made additions to it which possibly doubled its size.

From the early 1930s to about 1949, Irene and Ed rented 609 South 18th Street from Mike and Emma for twelve dollars per month. The Stratton children were born while they lived there: Joan, Jim, Don and Pat, four of Mike and Emma’s eventual eight grandchildren.

Brendan and Margaret rented a house one street over, at 427 S. 17th Street, until Brendan joined the army and left to fight in Europe. Margaret and her two children, Harriet (my Mom) and Mike, moved into the Fragale house until Brendan returned. There was a frightening time when they were notified that Brendan had been wounded in the war, because at first they were not given any details. It turned out that Brendan had been shot clean through the forearm, and he made a complete recovery. When Brendan Williams returned to Escanaba, he bought a house at 324 S. 17th Street, still only two blocks walk from the Fragale house. This was the house my mother grew up in.

These must have been fine years for the Fragales, with Irene and her family just down the street, Margaret and her family only a few blocks away, and Harriet and Dick renting a second floor apartment on Ludington Street, downtown. Pat says that the kids were always welcome visitors, and were met inside the back door with hugs. Grandma Fragale almost always had bananas in the fruit bowl. She pronounced it “banano,” which became a silly family tradition. Pat says that the kids would tear through the Fragale house in a circle, living room, dining room, spare bedroom, bathroom, bedroom and living room again. Grandpa Mike, wearing his usual suspenders and sitting in his usual chair would joke, in broken English, “Stop that running, or I’ll cut off your feet!” My mother told me that one weekend morning she woke up hungry, and since her parents were still asleep, she roller skated over to her grandparents house with a frying pan and eggs. Grandma Fragale did make her breakfast, she got into a small bit of trouble over it, and another little story was born.

Ed Stratton worked for the phone company, and starting about 1949 he was transferred here and there. First it was for about four years in Sault Ste. Marie, then a short time in Marquette, followed by about three years in Menominee, and finally back to Marquette. They would drive to Escanaba often after moving out, and that was always an occasion for Margaret, Harriet and Irene to convene for a gabfest with their mother, seeming to all talk at the same time, while Ed sought out chores to get away from the women. All the Stratton and Williams cousins would play, and often Irene and Harriet would perform duets on the piano. Pat remembers sometimes visiting alone by train, and when she was picked up at the station it would even be reported in the local newspaper.

After the Strattons left Escanaba, Harriet and Dick moved into 609 S. 18th Street. Dick purchased that house from the Fragales.

After Brendan returned from the war, he and Margaret had two more children, Mary and Brendan Junior, giving Mike and Emma a total of eight grandchildren. Eventually, in the mid 1950s, the Williams family built a new house on Lake Drive.

The Final Decades

Mike Fragale died on June 2, 1960, at the age of 76. Emma lived alone at 427 S. 18th Street long after that, and was visited often by her children, grandchildren, and eventually many great grandchildren.

Some time in the late 1960s, maybe the early 1970s, Harriet and Dick had a big falling out, which led to divorce. Harriet moved in with her mother Emma, and bought the Fragale House from her. Dick continued to live in the other house, and did so until his death, I believe it was in 2003 or 2004.

Our family didn’t see much of Dick after the divorce, except for Harriet. As I‘ve said, the Fragale house was near the end of the 400 block of 18th Street, with an empty lot next to it on the corner. The 500 block had no houses on it at all. The house at 609 S. 18th was the second or third house from the corner. While that house was not visible from where Emma and Harriet were, Harriet could see Dick come and go, or at least see whether or not his car was down there. I have to chuckle, thinking of those two old ladies in that house, with Harriet peering out of the bay window in the dining room, keeping tabs on “Unk the Skunk.” Dick had to have felt their eyes upon him!

Emma Leisner-Fragale died in in 1982, at the age of ninety-two, and Harriet lived in the Fragale house until her death in 1984. Harriet had willed the house to the two younger Williams children, Mary and Brendan, her niece and nephew. Mary had died of complications from diabetes in 1980, so the house went to Brendan Willliams, Jr.

Brendan sold the house in 1988, and that owner still lives there, as of 2010. He has made many renovations, and the house should be in fine shape when it becomes one hundred years old in 2017. The house at 609 S. 18th street is now owned by the son of a woman that Dick Schram was with for twenty-five years until his death.

After my grandmother Margaret Fragale-Williams died on June 13, 1986, there were no more Fragales in Escanaba, Michigan.

Afterthoughts

I grew up in a little Wisconsin town called Port Washington, on the shore of Lake Michigan. On any morning you might spot one of the giant ore ships, miles out near the horizon, and they were so huge that they were still easily visible. Perhaps later in the day it would still be out there, but in a new location, further along on its journey to Gary, Indiana, or, if it was headed north, maybe to Escanaba.

When my father got a job in the Milwaukee area in the early 1960s, my parents felt at home in Port Washington, with familiar Lake Michigan to the East and the big ships coming in, just like at Escanaba. The ore ships went right on by, but other large ships came into the harbor delivering coal to Port’s Wisconsin Electric power plant.

There was actually an operational and scenic little train station in Port Washington in the 1960s and 1970s, and at least once we picked up a traveler from up north, perhaps aunt Mary, perhaps grandma Fragale. I think old Emma Fragale was still using Mike’s railroad pass.

As kids, we often hiked across a farm on the west side of town to a place we called “Black Bridge.” We’d catch frogs, dare each other to cross the namesake railroad trestle and place pennies on the tracks for the freight trains to squash. There were little clay balls called taconite pellets, maybe ½ inch across, scattered along the tracks. This was the form they transported the mined iron in at the time, and many of those trains were coming from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, speeding southward through Milwaukee and beyond.

Down at the lower end of Lake Michigan, and over at the rusting steel mills of Ohio, the old ore unloaders are now obsolete scrap metal. The new generations of ore ships unload themselves. Most of the old tall ore docks along Lake Superior are either gone, or viewed as relics. The new docks at Escanaba are lower and sleeker and the ships are loaded by conveyors. I find myself wondering what my great grandfather Mike Fragale would think of that. Last year at Sault Ste. Marie they broke ground for a new “super-lock.” When it’s finished, there will be two locks capable of handling “laker” ships for the first time. I wonder what Angelo Fragale would think of that.

All in all, Escanaba and Manistique are not much bigger than they were when Mike died, fifty years ago, or when Mike and Angelo first knew those towns, over one hundred years ago. For such a sleepy place, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has always had big thoughts. In 1957, the Mackinac Bridge was opened to link Upper and Lower Michigan by car for the first time, a dream which went back to when Mike Fragale was a child living in Italy, and Emma Leisner had not yet been born. If Mike had lived long enough to make a third trip back to see his Pennsylvania relatives, they could have used that bridge. But the Fragales never had a car, or learned to drive, so they would have taken the train.

Mike Spieth

August, 2010

Acknowledgements

This account is dedicated to Irene Ernestina Fragale-Stratton, our family’s “Energizer Bunny”, the best source of family information I could ever have hoped for, and just plain fun to talk to.

Big thanks also to my mother, Harriet Marie Williams-Spieth, not only for her stories, but those of her mother Margaret Regina Fragale-Williams.

And thanks to Patricia Louise Stratton-Polazzo for her wonderful memories from the houses on 18th Street, and for working with her mother Irene to make this story so much richer.

Thanks to Helen “Dolly” Fragale-Citino for all the help with Angelo Fragale’s story, and for pointing me in the right direction to find Mike’s cousin John.

Thanks also to Melania "Lonie" Ruggieri-Eapen, Mary Fragale-Leo’s granddaughter, whose account of her grandfather’s life inspired me to write this one.

This story is not written in stone, and I welcome and encourage any additions and corrections to it. If you have more to tell about Mike and Emma Fragale, then it belongs here. E-mail me. I’ve tried my best to label any speculation as such, but if any of my facts need to be redirected into that category of speculation, then speak now, folks, speak now.

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