A stone carver's death cut deeply
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Elia Corti’s monument in Hope Cemetery in Barre is an eloquent symbol of loss. Jeb Wallace-Brodeur |
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By MARK BUSHNELL - Published: December 7, 2008
In a city full of monuments, two stand out. One reveals the cultural riches that immigrants brought with them to Barre during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the other reveals the extreme tensions they also carried with them.
Both monuments involve master stone carver Elia Corti. He helped create the first monument. The second marks his grave.
Immigrants flooded Barre during the last two decades of the 1800s, swelling the city's population from roughly 2,000 to more than 10,000. Most of the new arrivals were Italian, like Corti, but many others came from places like Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Canada.
Most came for work in the city's granite industry. Many worked in the quarries. The more skilled gravitated to the granite sheds, where the massive chunks of rock were crafted into monuments.
Among the most gifted was Corti. So when members of the city's Scottish community wanted to erect a monument to their countryman, famed poet Robert Burns, they commissioned Corti and his partner Samuel Novelli to do the work. While Novelli carved the likeness of Burns, Corti took on the more intricate panels depicting scenes from Burns' poems that would adorn the monument's base. The resulting work is widely admired within the granite-carving community. At one point, The New York Times called Corti the country's best granite carver.
The Robert Burns Memorial stands in front of the former Spaulding Graded School, now home of the Vermont Historical Society. It also stands as a symbol of what was lost when Corti, only 34 years old, was gunned down on Oct. 3, 1903.
That night, the noted socialist and journalist Giacinto Serrati was scheduled to speak at Barre's Socialist Party Labor Hall. Though socialists had built the hall, it served as a cultural and community hub for Barre's Italian-Americans.
Some saw Serrati's visit as inflammatory. Barre had long been a hotbed for anarchists, who generally believed that all forms of government were despotic and should be abolished. Serrati, an avid anti-anarchist, had long attacked anarchists in the pages of the Socialist Labor Party's weekly newspaper, Il Proletario.
Serrati had visited Barre a year earlier to debate Luigi Galleani, an internationally known anarchist who was living in the city under an assumed name and publishing his newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva (or Subversive Chronicle).
Barre's Italian community was divided between anarchists and socialists – though presumably many Italians didn't actively support either faction. The political activity of the immigrants had brought benefits to workers by defending their rights through unions. By 1900, 90 percent of workers in Barre belonged to unions.
The hurly-burly of local politics, however, sometimes triggered violence. In December 1900, anarchists ambushed the local police chief, a sturdy Irishman named Patrick Brown, shooting him twice. He was struck in the abdomen but survived.
The following year, in a similar attack, an anarchist killed President McKinley in Buffalo, N.Y.
Anarchists didn't take kindly to Serrati's arrival and allegedly planned to disrupt it. Serrati was supposed to speak at 7 p.m. But the hour came and went, and no Serrati. Perhaps he feared for his safety.
Anarchists, who had packed the Labor Hall in hopes of giving Serrati a rough greeting, began to taunt the socialists present. The taunts led to a scuffle and soon a full-scale brawl. Men threw punches. One was struck over the head with a chair. The socialists should be killed, some anarchists allegedly shouted.
At this point, a 39-year-old socialist named Alessandro Garetto, who had been sitting and waiting for the speaker to arrive, entered the fray. At his trial later, Garetto claimed he had been trying to leave the building when he was attacked. Others claimed he joined the fight willingly.
As he stood in the midst of the brawl, Garetto pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired at least twice. One shot grazed one of the anarchists he was fighting. The other struck Elia Corti in the stomach. Corti slumped to the floor as Garetto charged down the stairs and into the night.
What Corti had been doing just before being shot has been debated ever since. Some claim he was among the anarchists in the melee. His political beliefs at the time are difficult to reconstruct. After arriving in Barre in 1892, Corti had served as secretary of the city's anarchist club. But in more recent years, as he grew more successful and became the father of three daughters, his interest in politics seems to have waned.
Some witnesses said Corti had been playing the role of peacemaker. Still others said he had just entered the building when Garetto fired.
Fearing that a mob would kill him, Garetto ran to the nearby offices of a judge, who turned the frightened man over to the police. Realizing that Garetto was in danger of being lynched, Chief Brown decided to transport him by wagon to the jail in Montpelier. Along the route, Brown had the wagon stop to pick up a patient who needed urgent medical care at Heaton Hospital in Montpelier.
Thus it was that Garetto came face to face with his victim. Author John Stark Bellamy II describes the bizarre scene in his 2007 book, "Vintage Vermont Villainies." Chief Brown held up a lantern so Corti could see Garetto's face. "You are the man who shot me," Corti said twice.
At these words, Corti's partner, Novelli, who was also in the wagon, became enraged. He grabbed the lantern and threw it toward Garetto, but it struck Brown in the head instead. Novelli then tried to grab Brown's revolver but was subdued and pulled from the wagon by police.
Despite the efforts of three surgeons, Corti was doomed. The bullet had passed through his stomach and lodged near his spine. He lingered about 30 hours before dying. At his request, he was buried the next day.
Hundreds of people attended the service at Hope Cemetery. His death stunned the people of Barre and led to a temporary truce between anarchists and socialists.
Today, his grave is marked by a remarkable monument carved by his brother and brother-in-law. It shows Corti dressed dapperly and seated with a hand on one knee, the tools of his trade at his feet. The other hand rests on a broken column representing his life, cut short. In granite, Corti wears a pensive, perhaps confused look, as if he were trying to figure out what had happened.
In December 1903, Garetto was tried and convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 to 12 years of hard labor at Windsor Prison.
Three decades later, as part of the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project, an old Italian granite worker was asked about his long-dead friend, Elia Corti. The old man, whose name was not given, remembered learning of the verdict just before midnight on Dec. 23. Soon afterward, he walked up the street by the Robert Burns Memorial.
"It was snowing and not many people were out on the street," he recalled. "When I got close to the statue I saw a man there. It was Corti, plain as day I saw him. Just standing there, his head down a little, and looking at those panels he carved. Sad, he looked, standing there in the snow.
"It seemed natural he was there. I had been thinking all day about him. … I wanted to say something but he was gone – just like that! But I saw him. It was Corti all right. And it was one Christmas Eve I can't forget."
Mark Bushnell's column on Vermont history is a weekly feature in Vermont Sunday Magazine.
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