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# 77 MARCH 21 , 2016
Europe. Here in particular,
it was the southern part of
the State that was looking
for workers, around Lake
Village which is in Chicot
County. In Italy the Italians
were taxed very hard and
had a lot of uncertainty, so
they decided to come to
America. They arrived to
two different cities: New
York, through Ellis Island,
and New Orleans. Those
who came into New Orleans were a lot, and came
to Lake Village, mainly on
several barges: when they
arrived, they stayed in a
plantation called Sunnyside, in Arkansas.
These people that came
upon the barge to Lake
village were treated as slaves. They were promised
to have a land, but they
didn’t. They were promised to have clean water,
but there wasn’t: and a lot
of people died from malaria. Father Pietro Bandini came to Sunnyside to
check this out, and he saw
how this group of men
from Italy was being treated and he tried to get this
people out of here. So he
brought the people out of
Sunnyside to Northwest
Arkansas, Arkansas, to
places not much different
than the places they used
to live in the Italian countryside. So in this place called East Springdale there
was a little chapel and a
few acres, something like
forty acres, and these people started to live in that
church, that later became a school. They stayed
there, and Father Bandini
acquired land around those 40 acres. I think it was
1898.
So Father Bandini was the
founder of Tontitown. He
was the one who brought the Italian immigrants to Northwest Arkansas.
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