Christmas Memories

Larry Summers is the grandson of Carl Gerhardt, proprietor of Gerhardt Mercantile, and remembers Christmas as a youngster during the Depression. “Mrs. Metzger was a Sunday School teacher who organized the children's program on Christmas Eve at St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church. Everyone had a few lines to say and some was in German. Afterward, we each got a little bag with an orange and a pyramid-looking chocolate with cream inside. I think Grandpa Gerhardt and Mr. Schaffer probably supplied most of the stuff inside the bag."

Globeville's Poles would celebrate with a special dinner on Christmas Eve known as wigilia with mushroom soup, boiled potatoes (kartofle), pickled herring (sledzie), fried fish, pierogi, beans and sauerkraut (groch i kapusta). A lighted candle in the windows symbolized the hope that the Christ child, in the form of a stranger, would come and an extra place was set at the table for the unexpected guest.

Southern Slavs enjoyed homemade wine and delicacies not eaten at other times of the year, such as smoked meats or potica (pronounced po-tee-sa), a Slovenian nut bread.

Using the old Julian calendar, Globeville's Orthodox Slavs observed Christmas on January 7th. Elaborate church services, feasting and visits with family remained the same when the switch was made to the Gregorian calendar in 1968.

Bea Trevino's Hispanic Christmas traditions are those her family observed growing up in New Mexico. "For Christmas and Easter we make meat empanadas. For New Years a lot of us make a chicken mole, or we make menudo with hominy. In New Mexico, we do hominy with ham or pork."

Commemorative Christmas plate, a gift of the Gerhardt Mercantile. Photo Larry Summers.

Southern Slavs

Most of the Southern Slavs in Globeville were from Slovenia and Croatia but were citizens of the Austrian empire, which had absorbed their homelands, as well as those of Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Macedonia. They began arriving in the 1880s, attracted by political and religious freedom and by jobs in the Grant and the Globe Smelters.

Work in the smelters was hard and dangerous with men risking death or disability from extreme heat, toxic fumes and dust from heavy metals. To provide financial security for themselves and their families, Slavs formed fraternal societies or lodges that offered sick and death benefits while seeking to preserve the language, culture and heritage of the home country. The lodge was like a clubhouse where members felt at home and Globeville's residents had many choices: St. Jacob's Croatian Society, the American Fraternal Union, the Slovene National Benefit Society, the American Slovenian Catholic Union or the Western Slavonic Association (Zapadna Slovanska Zveza). Croatians met in St. Jacob's Hall, now the Sidewinder Tavern at 4485 Logan, and many of the Slovenian lodges held their activities at the Slovenian Home at 44th and Washington. Weddings, funerals, labor rallies, Catholic Mass and confession were held in the lodge halls until Holy Rosary Church was built. Members of the fraternal organizations petitioned Bishop Tihen for permission to build a church and then set about raising the funds. Holy Rosary was dedicated in July 1920 with Reverend Cyril Zupan as the first pastor. The church, convent and school received state historic designation in 1999.

Holy Rosary Church and convent about 1930. Photo June Jackson Egan

In 1919, Slovenian Societies hold a fund-raising bazaar 
outside the unfinished church. Photo Joseph Yelenick.

Orthodox Slavs

Carpatho-Russians came to Globeville for the same reasons as the other Eastern European immigrants: religious freedom and economic opportunity. Living in territory ruled by Roman Catholic Austria or Protestant forces in Hungary, the Carpatho-Russian's Orthodox religion was suppressed and they were treated as second-class citizens. Hearing of jobs in Colorado's mines, smelters and railroads, and of a climate similar to the Carpathian or Tatra mountains of home, many flocked to Globeville in the 1880s. Helen Kohut Capron recalled, “My grandfather Peter got a job at the smelter and it must have been a difficult job because it made him sick. The children would come home from school and find him lying on the couch in pain."

Help for men and their families came from the ethnic fraternal lodges. In Globeville, the oldest of these Carpatho-Russian lodges was the Russian Orthodox Society Transfiguration of Christ, connected to the Russian Orthodox Catholic Mutual Aid Society founded in 1895 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In addition to providing insurance and moral support, the society’s goals included “the spread and preservation of the Orthodox Faith in America” and members of this lodge founded Holy Transfiguration of Christ Cathedral in 1898. The church has survived and prospered for over 100 years and received state historic designation in 1998.

The church about 1902, photo courtesy of Steve Klimoski.

One of the Orthodox Fraternal Societies, Sjedinjenih about 1905, photo courtesy of Steve Machuga.

The Poles

In the 18th century, Poland was carved up by its jealous and powerful neighbors when, in 1772, Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria annexed sections of Poland. By 1795, the once-great nation had almost disappeared from the map. The next century saw a relentless attack on Polish identity with restrictions to Polish language, culture and religion, as well as the conscription of their young men to serve in the armies of their oppressors. As conditions grew worse in the last three decades of the 19th century, legions of Poles fled to America.

Poles began arriving in Globeville during the 1880s to work in the nearby smelters. As people became established, they encouraged friends and relatives to join them and a small Polish community developed in the 4500—4800 blocks of Washington, Pearl, Pennsylvania, Logan and Grant Streets, and on Emerson Street near the Platte River.

Poles in Globeville formed organizations that would provide financial help in the event of sickness, injury and death and offered the comfort of old-country customs as they eased into American life. In 1889, Globeville's Poles organized Towarzystwo sw Marcina (St. Martin’s Society), Lodge #134, as part of the national Polish National Alliance.

Since they had been persecuted for their religion in the old country, lodge members then began to raise money for a Polish church and, in 1902, built St. Joseph's Polish Catholic Church.

Poles moved up the economic ladder, assimilated and moved to better neighborhood in Arvada and Wheat Ridge. Yet the "Polishness" of St. Joseph's persists as immigrants have arrived after the fall of communism and a younger generation calls St. Joseph's their spiritual home. The Polish lodge survives as well and makes its home in Wheat Ridge.

Father Jarzynski, pastor from 1902 to 1922, and a class of first communicants in 1914. Photo from Andy Jackson.

http://www.pnadenver.org/

http://www.swietyjozef.org/

Germans from Russia

German-speaking people who began arriving in Globeville in the 1880s came, not from Germany, but from villages along the Volga River in Russia. Their odyssey began some 120 years earlier when they emigrated to Russia to escape the poverty and devastation that followed the Seven Years War (1754—1763). Germans settled the along the Volga in Russia at the invitation of Empress Catherine the Great, who promised free land, and freedom from taxes and military service (privileges not given to Russian citizens). In return, the settlers secured Russia's western frontier and provided the country with grain. 100 years later, Czar Alexander II rescinded those special rights and Germans began to emigrate to America.

There was a substantial community of German Russians in the Globeville area by 1887, with many of them coming from three colonies along the Volga — Norka, Beideck and Doenhoff. Since Germans had been persecuted for their religion while in Russia, they were quick to form their own churches in Globeville, with congregations corresponding to those of their villages in Russia. First German Congregational Church was founded by settlers from Norka, St. Paul's Lutheran Church by people from Beideck and the Friedens Evangelical Lutheran Church by immigrants from Doenhoff. As in the old country, life for German Russians centered around the family, church and work. Leaders in the community were those who were active in the churches, business owners and those who helped others to emigrate.

The Wolf family about 1914: first row, from left,grandfather Peter Wolf, David, father John Wolf Sr., Sarah, Ann Marie, nee Kilthau . Second row, from left, Christine, Katherine, Adam, John, Hulda.

Carl Gerhardt, owner of Gerhardt Mercantile, extended loans to citizens of Globeville and sponsored many events in the community.

Globeville: the Melting Pot

The arrival of so many immigrants to Globeville was the product of perfect timing. The rapid growth of industry in Colorado during the 1870s and 80s motivated employers to recruit people who would work for less than American-born workers even as economic, religious and political unrest in eastern Europe and Russia led hundreds of thousands to emigrate. Agents from the railroads and the Gilpin County Cheap Labor Bureau distributed fliers that promised lucrative jobs on the railroads and in the mines; smelters welcomed those who would endure the gritty, dangerous work near furnaces. These factors led to an explosion in the number of immigrants arriving during the 1880s, and by the mid 1890s, one in four people in Denver was foreign-born.* Then the bottom fell out.

The nation’s economy collapsed in 1893, which hit Colorado’s mining-based economy particularly hard. Late arrivals found themselves competing with American-born workers, as well as with earlier groups, for fewer jobs. The newcomers were resented because they would work for lower wages, had large families, and didn't speak English. Settling near their countrymen, they created ethnic enclaves within a larger neighborhood, and did not assimilate as easily as the earlier immigrants had done. Although Globeville was called a “melting pot,” the term is not an accurate description since each group tried to maintain its own language, religion and cultural traditions. These groups include:

• The German-speaking group, who came not from Germany, but from a region of Russia along the Volga River.
• The Poles, who began to migrate to the United States following partitions of Poland among Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary that began in 1772. More political unrest in the 1870s and 1880s brought large numbers to Globeville.
• Southern Slavs, including Slovenians, Croatians, Macedonians, and Serbs, who came from an area that had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
• There were also Russian, Slovak, Czech and “Carpatho-Russian” families, whose countries had been annexed by Austria-Hungary or Russia.
• Hispanic settlers, some who can trace their family's presence in America to the 16th century, began to settle in Globeville after World War II.

*Leonard, Stephen J. “Denver’s Foreign Born Immigrants, 1859-1900,” Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, 1971

A printed advertisement from the turn of the century announces, “The Slovenian Singing Club will sing Slovenian folk songs in the City’s Fourth of July program.” The women are left, Carrie Grugan, and right, Mollie Zalar. Photo courtesy of Betty Zalar Paprocki

Shorty Maynard, Circus Clown, 1882 - 1950

He was born to strict Catholic parents in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1882 and, at thirteen years of age, was expected to work in a shoe factory for 10 cents a day. At that point, Rudolf E. Pigeon did what most young people only dream of doing: he ran away and joined the circus.
Pigeon began performing with the Menard troupe of acrobats, traveling the East Coast with the Hagenbeck Wallace Circus. In 1906, he moved out West and joined the Sells-Floto Circus, owned by Frederick Bonfils and Harry H. Tammen, co-owners of the Denver Post. Known professionally as Shorty Maynard, Pigeon developed routines that drew on his acrobatic ability and love of animals. The mule hurdle had him riding atop the animal’s head, then hanging on to its tail to be dragged around the sawdust ring several times. Pigeon created an audience favorite with Bill, the Trained Goose, and the duo performed tricks for a dozen seasons.
During the off-season, performers found other jobs and pursued other interests. For Pigeon, that interest was Ada Morgan, and they were married on December 28, 1912. By the time Pigeon joined the Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Baily Circus in 1916, he and Ada had started a family.
After years of circus life and travel, an exhausted Pigeon retired in 1920. He operated John’s Pool Hall in Sterling, which became a casualty of the farm recession after World War I. Pigeon then moved his family to Globeville and sought out his old friend Harry Tammen, who arranged a a job for him with Swift and Company. He worked there for more than twenty years.
Daughter Carol Christensen recalls, “I remember my dad walking across that bridge at 46th Avenue every morning at 5 am to go to work in the packinghouse. He didn’t make much money, but we always paid our bills on time.”
Pigeon lived quietly with his wife Ada, daughters Florence and Carol, and son Charles in  Globeville, where he died on August 14, 1950 of heart failure.
The man who had “dedicated his life to making people laugh” would be pleased to know that he is still entertaining crowds. His gravestone, Block 13, Lot 9, at Denver's Riverside Cemetery is engraved with his image as a clown, and is a popular destination on tours.

Photo courtesy of Carol Christensen 

Photo ® Mary Lou Egan