Asturian-American Migration Forum

Carol, Welcome to the forum and thanks for all your memories of both Donora and the trips to Asturias. As you probably saw when you checked the forum, I have a Donora connection too, including some relatives named Garcia, so I read them with interest. I think my grandparents came over about the time...

This is the first time I have checked out the "languge vs. dialect" section of the forum in al the time I have been a member. Perhaps I stayed away from it because linguistics was the only course I ever failed in college. (Not good for an English major, I had to repeat it.) But what struck...

Sonia,
Let me add one more Donora name that came to mind. A very close family friend was Cirillo Rodriguez. He retired in the 1950s, moved back to Piedras Blancas in Asturias, and opened a small grocery store, getting his US Social Security.
David

Sonia, Many, many thanks for your post about growing up in Donora. I have been working off and on for while trying to track my mother's family, and since they lived many years in Donora, your information was very helpful. We may be related. My mother's maiden name was Puente, and her mother's maiden...

Hi botheration, Welcome again. Let me echo the request of Art to send in some of those photos from Donora. As my previoius posts have noted, my grandparents, with all their kids including my mom, lived in Donora about the same time as you have described for your inlaw grandfather. That would be from...

Angie, Thanks for the info on Depue. My Puente relatives had left there long before you were born, but it is good to know that there are some Asturiano families still there. I suspect I will have to make a roots trip back east and spend a day or so in Depue trying to find the old Spanish families to...

Ola' Cousin Art I just saw the photo of the Donora soccer team. One of the players, 4th from the left on the bottom row, with the kid in his lap, is my uncle Jack Puente. After seeing this I called his son, my cousin Mike, who confirmed that it is definitely his dad, and told me that he (Jack) was a...

Like many of us, my grandfather came from Asturias to the US to work in the zinc and steel mills. My question to anyone is: do you know if American steel companies had a formal program to recruit workers from Asturias? Did they actually go over to Asturias to find people? If so, did they help pay pa...

Cousin Art et. al., Have you thought about doing geographical subgroups within the Immigrant Stories topic? That is, a subtopic for each of the cities where Asturianos lived such as Denora, PA; Wheeling, WV; St. Louis, MO, etc, etc.. To a certain extent this has already happened on the immigrant sto...

Marleen, Thanks for the reply, I will be interested to hear what you find out about the East St. Lousi zinc plant. You might want to start a separate topic for it. I will try to find out from my cousin if he remembers the guy's name whose family changed it from Puente. I am pretty sure that my grand...

Bob, That sounds right, the St. Louis connection. As I found out after getting the census info, one of my cousins years ago met someone in the army from St. Louis who had noticed his Puente last name. This guy said that his father was named Puente, but had changed it because of descrimination. I wil...

Donna,
Thanks, that would be very helpful. Those are definitely the right names.
David

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Trans. Ana

Donna:

Gracias, eso me resultaría de gran utilidad. Desde luego son sus nombres.

David

Let me give an update on the search for Puente roots with a tip that may help other forum readers who may be looking for Asturiano relatives who worked at the Zinc plant in DEPUE, ILLINOIS. I have been in touch with the Bureau Country Geneological Society, which has a small web site: http://www.root...

Art: Let me note not a website but a book, though I hesitate to write this since it is out of print and probably very hard to find. I happened to spot it in a used bookstore a year or so ago. It is ARTE PRE-ROMANICO ASTURIANO by Antonio Bonet Correa, Ediciones Poligrafa, Barcelona, 1967, part of the...

Art: Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, I have used the Ellis Island website to try to track down the Puentes, but with no success. I used every combination and pemutation of names that I could come up with, but to no avail. I cannot help wondering if they came in through another port, like Baltimore ...