My name is John C. Macone. I was born in West Acton November 14, 1892.
...And what about your parents, what can you tell me about them?
My parents Alessandro and Maria Macone were born in Gaeta, Italy near Naples. They landed in this United States I would say about 117 years ago.
... Did your father come right to Concord and Acton from Italy?
No, when he first came, he lived in Woburn, Mass. for a short
while with his brother. Then he left there and moved to Acton near
Fort Pond. I think it was 1893 that he bought the farm on
Strawberry Hill Road in Concord, Mass. and went into farming. He
bought the farm which was 57 acres of land and of course, he got it
pretty reasonable. It was around $3,000 for 57 acres of land but
there was a devil of a lot of work there to level hills and
everything and he raised zucchini squash, basil, Italian beans, and
finocchi. Then he would take them to market in Boston by horse and
wagon and sell them.
...You told me that when he first came here that he left his wife and children back in Gaeta for a while.
He left five children until he could bring them over. He went to the western part of the state and worked until he made enough money to pay their fare over.
...So do you have any idea when your mother joined him?
She joined him and the whole family joined together. There were five children born in Italy and after they came to the United States there were seven more, seven sons and five daughters and I'm the seventh son and the only one left.
...And Peanut Macone?
Peanut is my nephew. His father was one of the oldest boys in the family. He's one that was born in Italy.
Nicholas Macone was Peanut's father. You want the names of the boys that were born in Italy.
...Sure, and did they all come to Concord too?
Yea, Ed moved up to Acton here and two of them used to work in the cigar factory up here in the square.
...It would be interesting to know what all of them did when they grew up.
Right next to the cigar factory up Rte. 111 here, there is an apartment there on the left, the cigar factory was right next to it and two of the daughters worked there just to help out when we were up in Acton. We didn't live in Acton long.
...How long did your father have the farm on Strawberry Hill?
He had it until 1921, when he died at the age of 76.
...So he had the farm until he died.
My mother died the next year in 1922. It's quite a thing to talk about. I'm the only guy surviving and I'm telling you I do a lot of thinking.
...What did all your brothers do for a living besides the two that worked in the cigar factory?
Well, my oldest brother did stone work and the next oldest was the mechanic that started the shop in 1910 down at the old Concord dump. Everybody dumped right there where that Star Market is.
...And that's where your older brother set up shop?
Nicholas Macone, Peanut's father, went in that business there. He stayed there from April 1910 until the fall then he gave it up. Of course, the building was left with the folks there so we rented it out. In 1913 I left Middlesex School there with my other two brothers, we opened a place up and went in business and we stayed in that business until 1964. We started with a Ford car and then the next car we had was a Maxwell. Chrysler bought the factory. And he bought the Chalmbers, we sold the Chalmbers car and eventually sold a Franklin car, Cadillac, Will St. Clair and the Case automobile. We didn't have all these at once, this went along in years. But we were there in business. In 1959 we gave up the Chrysler franchise and put up that gas station that's there now, from 1959 to 1964 and then we sold out the whole darn place. Did Krist Andersen give you any information?
...Oh, he told me about his Chrysler business over in West Concord and he also talked about growing up on a farm over there in West Concord.
Did you show him the picture I gave you when he worked down at my place?
...No, but he did describe working down there. He talked with me about being together with you and about the Arkin brothers.
Max Arkin was the guy that made a suit for me that didn't fit me. You mentioned something about the different nationalities and how they got along in Concord. What did you want to know about that?
...Well, one of the things that I'm interested in learning about is when some of the groups first came to Concord, such as when the Irish first came to Concord.
Oh, they were here before.
...Oh, yes. When they came during the potato famine, way back in the 1840's and the '50's and the '60's, they had a pretty hard time.
Oh, yes. They had more fights in Concord over school committees, selectman or anything. But that's all calmed down.
I'm going to give you something that you'll think you know. You know where the Concord Lumber Company is there on Lowell Road? Well, that was a railroad station and a depot. So one year I was told that story by this old fellow - the guy is 93 years old, an old Yankee - that Masons came on a big pullman train and landed there and the Irish blocked that train with rocks and everything.
... I've heard that story.
I think they called them PA's or something.
...Yes, the American Protective Association. 1894.
They raised the devil with that train. They never came back.
...The McHugh brothers told me about that story too.
They had different quarters, the McHughs were in one quarter in the town. Did you go to the McHughs?
...Yes, they lived in the east quarter.
We went to see Tommy in 1925. The oldest one lived in California in San Francisco on a hill. We went out there to see him.
...You and Tommy?
They used to have districts in town. Say, there was a football gig or something, or a bus, in those days a horse and wagon.
We were out weeding the garden when we were four years old.
...Is that right?
The funny thing, I want to go see the McHughs. They had a nice place there. They sold it to the town, I guess.
...The land across the street. But they still live in the same old farmhouse where they were born.
I'm going down to see them. I think I went to school with Frank McHugh.
...And where did you go to school? Can you tell me about that?
I just went to school in Concord here. I spent six months at Middlesex School.
...And how come you went to Middlesex? Why did that happen? Did the headmaster ask you if you wanted to go to school there? How did you end up taking some courses there?
I don't know. I never studied anything, you know. I had the
opportunity. Mr. Winsor, the headmaster there, wanted to pay my
tuition to go to college, and every summer, down at the Cape he had
a place down there, he'd stop in and see me, want to know how I was
getting along. You know the Winsors, don't you?
Mr. Winsor was a wonderful guy. My brother Joe, graduated from Massachusetts State College in 1913. He came home and he took care of the farm with his father.
...So your mother and father encouraged all of you to get an education?
The biggest thing my dad worshipped was the soil. He had all these hot beds where he'd raise his seed, and one time the roots of the pepper plants had something wrong with them and so he had a big can in the ground, and he got it heated and put seed on there and cured the disease of the pepper plant.
He had some squash, some that grew that high, they'd climb like a vine. You see them in the markets today.
I don't think the Irish ever tasted spaghetti or anything way back that I know of. Or zucchini. Today it's all zucchini. They make everything out of it.
...Your older brother that went to Mass State, was that to learn more about agriculture?
Yes. He had a chance, when he got through, of getting a State job, but he took the farm over and where my dad had fields for cows and everything, he put in orchards and raised McIntosh apples.
...On Strawberry Hill?
Yes. Then down cellar in the barn he had a place where he could store them. It was ventilated so they wouldn't rot. Then he gave that up. Of course, father died in '21 at 76 and my mother in '22. She was 69. She raised 12 kids.
...That's a big family. Were you members of St. Bernard's Parish?
I was for a while. I enlisted in the army and I took my mother to that church steady while I was home. I got into World War I and they had a big plaque up in the church of the guys that went there. The Macones were not on it because they didn't go to church. My mother bought a window down to West Concord when they built that catholic church, Our Lady's, and she bought a window with Andrew Macone's name on it and everything. And the place caught fire and Ralph Macone was one of the firemen, and he took that window home and he's got it up to his brother's place. Isn't that a funny thing, though? My mother was very religious.
Marion Macone (wife of John)- She was a saint. And you asked about did his parents encourage education. No! The father thought nothing but work for the boys, but the mother was brought up differently in a parochial school, I guess, and she did want the children to get an education, but the only one that did was Joe.
...And he's the one that went to Mass State?
Marion – He's the one that went there and then took over the farm. His father was a wonderful farmer, but of the old school, you know. Everything was done the hard way.
...I see, but they weren't involved in St. Bernard's?
My dad never went to church. He could swear like the devil. But the first time my mother went to church, you know where the first catholic church for West Concord was at the Reformatory.
...Oh yes, before Our Lady's was built.
Then they went down to West Concord. There was a hall there and the catholic church was there, and then, of course, my mother, right off, poor as we were, they built that church right there near the school there, she had the first window on the right of the church with her dad's name on it. That was Andrew Macone. And he could swear like a trooper. He never went to church.
Marion – Well, you know the Macones weren't too welcomed in Concord when they came because they were Italians and John can tell you who signed for their farm on Strawberry Hill Road. Tell Mr. Bailey who helped your father get the loan for your Strawberry Hill Farm? Who helped him get the mortgage and such, the bankers?
I don't think I know that.
Marion – Mr. Heywood. Ralph Waldo Emerson's father.
... Is that George Heywood, the Town Clerk?
Marion – He was a banker.
Old Heywood was a banker there at the Concord Savings Bank.
Marion – What was the first bank called?
Concord National Bank. And Heywood was the president of the bank.
Marion – It has the Greek columns outside now.
...Was his name George Heywood, or was it George Heywood's son, do you think? There was a man who was George Heywood who was the Town Clerk until around 1895 or so. It could have been him, but he was the Town Clerk for 50 years so perhaps it was his son.
Is there a "C" in front of Heywood?
...George C. Heywood maybe? [It was C. Fay Heywood, son of George.]
Marion – And what about Emerson? Ralph Waldo Emerson? He had a daughter, Ellen, and a son, Edward. The story was there was some difficulty getting the mortgage because it was an Italian immigrant that wanted to buy the farm?
I never heard of that, no.
Marion – I think he's forgotten. You had three backers in Concord that really wanted the Macones in town. I've heard that from you and several people and one was the banker that helped you.
Oh, I tell you who it was, it was a priest. I forget what his name was.
...Was it Father McCall maybe?
Father McCall. I'm pretty sure.
...He was the priest at St. Bernard's.
Oh, he helped out. And then when we came to put the building on the dump, the Wilson Lumber Company helped us out on the building. They took the mortgage to pay for the land.
John Keyes was a great friend of mine.
... John was? As well as Prescott?
We traveled everywhere. The only Jewish people who were in the town were the tailors, and Maxie Arkins was wonderful with the people here. We went fishing with him. One time we went, with my brother, fishing up at the pond up at Middlesex School, and he used to wear a wig. And my brother went to cast for a fish, and the hook caught his wig, and we never knew that Maxie Arkins was baldheaded.
...He bought his tailor business from a man named Samuel Jacobs.
Yes. He was the first tailor that I know of. Then the Arkins came.
...And bought his business out when he died.
Phil Nabors was in the big wool business. He was another wealthy guy and he gave me this wool to make a suit and I brought it up to Maxie Arkins to make the suit and it didn't fit me so I gave it to one of my brothers. It was small. But Maxie was pretty friendly. But there was a lot of friction in the town, like elections.
...What can you tell me about that? What kind of friction?
Well, you'd think if the Irish were running something, there'd be trouble, school committee or anything like that. But lately it's all Democrats and it doesn't make any difference.
But even at schools, say I went from a grammar school into high school, they'd lay there and wale the hell out of you, or if there was a snowball fight, the different localities where the Irish lived, they'd have a fight in the school's barge, they called them a barge, they didn't have any busses.
...Was it the Irish mostly against the Yankees or against the Italians too, or what?
Marion – I think the Yankees were against the Irish. That's where it started because the foundation was Yankees first, and once a train came out with Catholics from Boston, and they stoned them, didn't they, on the Fitchburg line?
...It's the other way around. The APA who were anti-Catholic came out and they got stoned by the Irish.
But I want to tell you about this Warren, the guy that died at ninety-three years old. His father made shoes in Waltham, and he was a very peculiar guy and he ducked the Civil War and everything, and then he got consumption and his father got him a piece of land across Lexington Road near the Unitarian Church. He dug a big hole like a grave and he cured himself. He'd go in there nude on a Sunday. He died at 93 years old. When he died, I was an appraiser for his furniture, and he gave me this table. When we were appraising his furniture, I said, "John, I'd like that table." He said, "You can't have it; my wife left it to her sister up here in Acton." So, when he died, he put my name on the thing. He took his sister-in-law's name off.
...How long ago did he die?
You know where the priest lives on Lowell Road?
...Where the Middlesex Hotel is?
Yes.
... Is that the old Middlesex Hotel?
They were pulling that down when I just went to school. I must have been in the first grade.
Marion – It was a great place on Saturday nights, I hear.
There used to be stage coaches there, but that was before my day.
...I borrowed a magazine from Gladys Clark. She's your age too. You must have gone to school with Gladys.
Yes, she was my neighbor up there.Marion – She was our next door neighbor. We moved ten years ago from our place, and she moved a couple of weeks ago down to a condominium. She's downtown now.
We went to school when we were seven years old. Today they go to school when they're five years old.
Marion – Gladys first went in Bedford. They moved over. Glady was a year younger than John.
Gladys' father was an engineer on the railroad.
Marion – She knows a lot about history but she's called him up when she wanted to know about the old red bridge on Lowell Road. She couldn't remember.
...But getting back a little bit more to being Italian, some of the things that I have read indicate that the Italians had a hard time when they came to Concord too, that there were a lot of people who were unkind.
When the Irish came here, they worked digging ditches for the sewers and all that stuff. And the Italians came. The Italians got the reservoir up there. They build the Middlesex School. Big Italian contracts. They lived in the woods up there. I think the Irish were here long before the Italians came here because they had a potato famine in Ireland.
...I guess what I wondered is were there conflicts between the Irish and the Italians or did they get along pretty well?
Well, I know I got along good with them at school.
... And with the Yankees?
Oh, yes. At my time, toward the end of school, I was very well respected.
Marion – John was doing everything on the town committees.
But I'm going to tell you, at the farm every friction we had up there was my father. Next to our place there was a big place as big as the Colonial Inn. People would go there hunting, and everything. Some Jewish people came up there after their place burned down, a big building, and they put up a Cape Cod house and they manufactured peanut butter. And one day my dad and the old Jewish grandfather were fighting like hell. And my dad was saying, "Rags, rags" and the other guy calls back, "Macaroni, Macaroni
Marion – He called his father "Macaroni" and his father called him "Rags, rags" because the Jewish people had the rags.
...That's right. They always bought and sold rags.
Marion – I want to tell you. That's older than Max Arkin because he came to Concord in my time and this was the farm up there before Arkin came to Concord, so there was that Jewish family in Concord, but you don't know their name, do you?
It almost came to me. They moved to Boston. They went to school with us on the bus. We got along fine. But this grandfather was an old guy and I don't know what he was doing on our land.
...But you don't remember his name?
The name was Lipson. There's some in Boston today.
...How long did they live there, do you have any idea?
They must have lived there for seven or eight years and then the place was sold.
...And do you have any idea when that was? What year? Was that about 1900?
Well, the days that Lipsons lived there, we went to school from Strawberry Hill Road in a little bit of a wagon with a horse, so it must have been in the early 1900's. When did we get married.
Marion – Well, we didn't get married until '27 but the thing is that you went to school in the last of 1800.
That must be way in the first part of the 1900's because I was in grammar school.
Marion – And I don't think many people knew about that family up there. They were out in the wilderness. My father was biased. He wouldn't let me marry an Italian or go with an Italian.
He was a Nova Scotian. Nova Scotians were against the catholics too. But I'm glad to know there's a McHugh down there. I want to go down and see them.
Marion – Well, we went there one day and we couldn't get in. We went to the door. Someone said they are very hard of hearing.
Well, my dad had a wagon with one horse and all those vegetables. Sometimes the wagon was so heavy that he wouldn't make that hill, going up Lexington Road way up, there was a hill there. He'd have to hitch another horse and then he'd get into the bar room near Faneuil Hall and sleep on a pool table. But he'd sell that Italian stuff like that.
...Why would he sleep there, and then come back the next morning?
He'd leave the next day but he'd stay there overnight.
Marion – He certainly didn't go to a hotel.
...Did he learn to speak English well, Mr. Macone?
Marion – No. His mother neither.
Here's the whole Macone family. There's only one missing. Here's my mother, and here's my father. And these are grand-children. There's a sister. This fellow died. That guy died. This fellow and I and him went into business.
...Which is you?
Right here. There's Augie. That's the last one that died. And this is the first one that died, a younger sister. She was born at Strawberry Hill Road.
Marion – Is this the first Macone that you've interviewed of the first generation? The rest of them are all gone.
Near the McHughs. There was bicycles racing all the time. And Judge Keyes had the police go there and arrest them for going too fast on bicycles.
There was Judge Keyes and Prescott Keyes was his son. Old John Keyes lived near where the Country Store is. And John Keyes and I were pals. We went all over. We'd go to Canada on a vacation to get liquor.
...John S. Keyes?
John M. Keyes.
...Oh, I see. He's still another Keyes.
You know why they named him "M"? Because of Maynard Keyes, and there's another one, John S., I think. He was raised with the Shepherd woman that got caught up there in Littleton somewhere.
John M. Keyes used to be selectman, he was the head of the roads and bridges. And we chummed together. We'd go to Canada every year.
...But the Nova Scotians, you were saying, because I'm going to be interviewing some of them. And I had heard that the Nova Scotians had a lot of antiCatholic feeling.
Marion – Oh, yes, they did. My father was too. And he married a catholic.
...Your father married a catholic?
Marion – Oh yes, he did.
...So were you raised a catholic yourself?
Marion – No. I was christened a catholic and then I was baptized a protestant, so I have it both ways.
...Were you raised in the West Concord Union Church?
Marion – Right.
Marion – But then I transferred to the Congregational one in Concord when I got married.
You want to see something, when we bought the farm, we used to have reformatory officers come there to buy arrowheads, then my brother when he died... You go down to Joe Dee's downstairs and see the arrowheads. My brother built the cabinet and everything. It's loaded with arrowheads.
...That he found in the soil there?
Around our place on the hill up there. Indians lived all around in Concord and that book will tell you all about it.
Marion – It's a beautiful display and you can see it any time you want if you go to Dees downstairs. And let me tell you he first offered it to the Concord Library but they didn't have room for it. Isn't that true, John?
Yea, the library said they have didn't have room. You know David Little and his father built this house here on Nashawtuc Hill. He'd go away summers. My brother and I now and then would go upstairs and sleep in his porch so nobody would break in there. Little's father was a damn good fellow.
Marion – I was curator of the Old Manse. I was there for years and ran it. We had access to all the letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ripley that were left there but now they have taken them, I think, and put them in the library at Harvard.
Here's another thing I didn't tell you about. You know where Lake Walden is? Well, near the cove we'd go there swimming nights without any clothes on, and way back my dad would come from Boston with a horse and wagon and they had a big place where they had big times certain times of a year, the Italians and everything. He'd bring those barrels of beer up there for them, you know. The train used to stop there like the Concord station. They used to have big times; they had a pier going over the lake. It's only lately they pulled those big posts out.
...But Italians would come up there for a party?
The Italians or the Irish or anybody, they'd have big times up there.
Marion – What I don't understand is how your father could bring the liquor and the food there because he had a horse and team and it's across the water.
Well, they had boats. But it had nothing to do with him. But they had a pier that went way out. It was only a few years ago that they took all those big piers out.
...Do your own children and grandchildren try to learn about the Italians and the culture and so on?
Marion – We have a son that has written books and has copies of everything. Both sons are but one lives now in the Virgin Islands but the other son is in Florida now. He tried writing but he couldn't make a living at it but he has written a few things and did it in California and he's still writing up the history of the Macones. So if he's around sometime maybe you can get some information from him. He used to talk with Tony a great deal, that's Alessandro, but I'm talking about Sandy.
Another thing I didn't tell you, my dad couldn't read or write. Brown's father ran a grain store and everything up there at the station and if he wanted to buy a buggy off old man Brown, he'd come up there and my dad would put a cross on his name and he'd pay him the next time in the summer when his crops come in. But he couldn't read or write.
... How about your mother? Was she able to read or write?
Well, she could read Italian, she read the Bible all the time. She was more educated. But he never followed religion, my dad, but I think he belonged to the masons when he was in Italy.
...There were a group of Italians who did that.
I've read about them, who belonged to the masons and who rejected the catholic church and didn't want any part of that.
My mother had a half sister, I think, that was a nun. She came up to the farm to live but she didn't stay long, she couldn't stand it.
Marion – She couldn't stand the Katzenjammer kids!!
...Which are the other Italian families in Concord that go way back? Are there any that go back before 1900?
Bartolomeos ran a fruit store, that was way back. You know where the 5 & 10 is down in West Concord, well he built all that building and they had a store in there.
Marion – I think my mother and father went there when they were first married and had an apartment up over the store. It was the grandest thing there was, big bay windows and all. Then they went to Derby Street.
Another thing I didn't tell you, he was friendly with Bartolomeo.
...Who was, your dad?
My dad, when he got the farm he went up across there, you know, where the liquor store is in West Concord, he ran a fruit store of his own and he made his own charcoal to roast peanuts. One of my oldest brothers would give the stuff away on him so he quit the store. But my dad would make these big things like a wigwam with oak timbers and bury them and light a fire and get his charcoal to work his peanut roast.
...Are there Bartolomeos around now that I could talk to?
Marion – No, they are all second or third generation. They were here
as long as your father was, John. They really settled in Concord
and West Concord. They had a fruit store in Concord right opposite
the depot and the other one was in West Concord where the 5 & 10 is now. I don't know who the best Bartolomeos would be for you to talk to. There's one that came to see us who lives around here but I can
find out for you.
I don't know his first name now.
I call him "mail box" becausehe blew up my mail box on 4th of July night.
...When he was a kid?
When I was on Lowell Road. The night before the 4th; I always
blamed him so I call him "mail box".