Pioneers of the Twentieth Century - Anthony & Catherine Franze

(Taken from the writings of Mary Winness)

 

Submitted by Janice C. Schultz - grandaughter of the late Catherine Franze - jschu9014@aol.com - Added January 24, 2001

In 1915 stories of the Seaway in Duluth, Minnesota and the steel plant opening there prompted Anthony Franze (Frangiosa) and his wife Catherine to seek greener pastures. There was even talk of Duluth becoming a second New York! Anthony sold his bakery business in Red Granite, Wisconsin and moved his wife and young family to Duluth where he rented a building at 107 North Central Avenue.

Once again Anthony and Catherine opened up a store and bakery shop. They worked day and night to make a success of it. Often, on busy days, when Catherine did not have time to go upstairs to cook lunch for Mary, Bill and Lena, she gave them the pies and cookies from the bakery and lots of milk from ten gallon cans. Mary began to clerk in the store, standing on gal lon fruit cans to reach the counters while Lena played with dolls behind the oven. In a building next door was an old studio, which was used for storing flour, sugar and other supplies needed in baking.

The new business prospered. Every Italian family in Duluth knew of the new baker who made delicious round Italian bread. Anthony delivered bread from "Little Italy" on Eleventh Avenue West to New Duluth and Gary. First by horse and wagon and then with the new truck in 1917. Catherine worked in both the store and the bakery frying donuts, making pies and bread and doing any other work, much of it at night.

On October 12, 1918, the night of the big Northern Minnesota forest fire, which threatened for a time to destroy all of Duluth, Bill and Mary were in the truck with Anthony delivering on Raleigh Street. Visibility was so bad from the smoke, Anthony ran into a telephone post. Thankfully, no one was hurt. The next day he donated one hundred-pound sacks of oatmeal, flour and sugar to the people in the Armory who had been burned out.

By 1918 the business had outgrown the Central Avenue shop and Anthony and Catherine, wanting a place of their own, bought the building on 59th and Grand Avenue in West Duluth. It was only a wooden frame building, built in 1905, so a concrete part was added to the house with a new modern steam boiler controlled oven and a garage in back.

The West Duluth Home Bakery, as the new shop was called, had three bakers, one apprentice, Catherine, a helper, a clerk, three truck drive rs and four trucks--a Reo, Republic, Cadillac and a Ford. It was the largest bakery in West Duluth competing with Grand Bakery on 57th Avenue West. There was also a part time bookkeeper in a little office near the garage.

To help finance the business, Catherine held a $6,000.00 first Mortgage note on the corporation, which later proved a very lucky thing. Anthony worked long hours and had little sleep. On the morning of October 29, 1919 a streetcar hit his truck, loaded for deliveries to Gary, while he was at the wheel.]

The accident happened near Smithville and he was taken to the Morgan Park Hospital. Catherine and Mary went by streetcar to see him and he joked about his injuries. But his injuries were far more serious than anyone knew. He slipped into a coma and died on November 1, 1919. He was buried on November 3, 1919 at Calvary Cemetery from the Italian Church at Eleventh Avenue West because in those days there was no priest during the week at Good Shepherd Church on 59th.

Now grief stricken , Catherine was left with three children, ten, eight and five years old, and a bakery business with a heavy debt and no manager. The bakers and the helpers ran it for a month before they decided to close the doors of the shop, rather then go deeper into debt. Catherine sold much of the one hundred pound burlap bags of flour, sugar and other bakery supplies to friends the day before the lawyer took over the place for the trustees. Creditors settled for a fraction of the amounts due them. Catherine gave the attorney, Hugh J. McClearn, power of attorney to settle the tangled mess.

After the tragic accident, Catherine's father wrote a very sympathetic letter. He asked her to return to Italy with the family if she thought that best. But Catherine was no quitter and she knew the children would not like it in Italy.

In 1919 there was no financial help for a widow and her three children. She had ownership of the building and could not qualify for any type of aide. She rented two apartments upstairs while sh e and her three children squeezed into four small rooms. She found work at F. A. Patrick Woolen Company on 29th Avenue West in West End, sewing woolen things on sewing machines doing piecework. The faster she sewed the more mittens, coats, etc. were added to the pile and the more she could earn. Since she could not read, it was the best work she could find. Som e weeks she earned as high as $13.00 which was tops. Streetcars had names on them and the first few weeks she would get the wrong one, lose her way, and not get home until 7:00 P.M.

Now all the money she could save went to pay off the liens on the building and the debts of the bakery. The bakery shop was empty for almost one year.

In early fall of 1920 Catherine sold the building to a man who wanted to start a bakery. He came from the range towns with three other men who formed a company selling $50,000.00 of $1.00 shares to many of the Italian immigrants. Since the building, tru cks and baking equipment were bought for only $15,000.00, they should have done well. However, after two years the man took most of the money and ran off to Arizona. The three men tried to carry on, but the firm went bankrupt and Catherine foreclosed the mortgage and the building came back to her.

The trucks were sold at auction. The machinery went with the house so in 1924 Catherine rented the bakery shop to Bjorlin\rquote s who made hard toast and hardtack sold in boxes. They were there until they moved to West End in 1928.

Now the place was empty, with no basement an d the water pipes often freezing. Catherine put a stove in and kept it going on cold nights and tried to keep things repaired as best she could. All this time she worked, changing to Klearflax Rug Company on 63rd Avenue West when F. A. Patrick Woolen Company closed in 1928. At the Klearflax Company she sewed the binding on rugs as they were put on machines and run past her sewing machine. This was piecework too, so the faster she worked the more she earned. No w she walked back and forth the four blocks and she liked the work and her bosses. \par \par Mr. & Mrs. Andrew Mattson rented the corner store as a grocery store in 1923 to 1932. She was very good to us, always looking in on us when we were sick and bringing some fruit. We also got candy or fruit when we paid the grocery bill.

Catherine decided it was time to tear down the two ovens left from the bakery days. The bricks were used to build garages on 69th Avenue West. A partition was put up between the wood frame building and the concrete part of the building on 59th & Grand Avenue. Then she rented the concrete garage to various people: The Grenan Cakes Company, Victor Olson Garage, and for beer storage and finally Winness Cabinet Shop in 1953. \par \par In 1935 Catherine hired Carmine Priola to dig the basement under the wood frame building. A good furnace, stoker and radiators were also installed making the entire house on 59th and Grand Avenue warm and snug. She spent many happy hours in that basement shoveling coal, sweeping, washing clothes, watching the boilers, cleaning the flues, greasing the cogs and acting as general fireman, caretaker, and janitor. She always said it was the best thing she had ever done. She could tell whether the stoker was running correctly by listening to it from her bed.

Her three children grew and prospered and she was very happy and proud to have two of her children interested in College. She gladly paid for their education even though a very good friend of hers said she was foolish to use her money for the purpose. E ducation was so important to her since she lacked it and wished so many times she could have gone to school.

She did learn to read a primer when she was about sixty years old and also learned to write her name and became a U.S. citizen in 1945. She could do addition faster in her head than most people could with a pencil and she always knew her financial situation.

Her daughter Lena and husband Ralph Johnson bought "The House on Roosevelt Street" and it became a great joy to Catherine. She loved to go there after her retirement from the Klearflax Company in 1943. She planted a large vegetable garden in the sandy soil and increased the raspberry patch from a few too many bushes. Each summer she picked and sold crates of berries. The last years she l oved to lay on the ground and take a nap as she said the ground and the sun made her feel good and cured any ills she had.

In 1958 Catherine's grandson, Dale, began his tile business in Catherine's bedroom and she was proud and excited about his new business venture which soon outgrew the small room. So, when Dennie's store closed, she decorated and fixed the corner store for " Johnson's Tile and Linoleum" . Catherine took telephone calls when Dale had to go out and was so happy to be busy and helping. She now had her Grandson' s business on one side of her and her son-in-law's cabinet shop on the other side. There were cars, trucks, and customers coming and going constantly and she would sit on the little porch or look out from her window at all the activity. Of course, in her hands was always an afghan or some sweater she was working on.

Her friends were numerous, but Providence Puglisi, one of the first bakery customers and a mother of twelve children, was her friend until death parted them on April 9, 1966.

It was a clear cold sunny day in Duluth on Tuesday, April 12, 1966 when she took her last ride from Filiatrault's Funeral Home to the cemetery. This ride seemed as though it had been planned as a final tour of the scenes and places that had so much meaning for her in life: first down Central Avenue past 107 North the location of Anthony and Catherine's first bakery; down Raleigh Street, where so many of her early friends and bakery customers had lived, while even on that day one of them, Providence Puglisi, too ill to attend the funeral, watched the funeral procession pass with tears streaming down her face; on to Good Shepherd Church for the funeral services; down Grand Avenue past the Klearflax Rug Company where she had worked so many years; past the empty lot where the old building had been demolished at 59th and Grand Avenue, where she had spent some sad and many happy years, and finally to Calvary Cemetery to join her husband Anthony Franze.

Return to St. Louis County MNGenWeb page