The Oldest Profession

Connection to an Ancestor Who Birthed a Town

My paternal great-grandmother, Fiore Alicia Toffanetti, left her village of Poia, Italy, an hour northeast of Lake Garda and just south of the Dolomites, to train as a midwife in Tyrol, Austria. Alicia got her diploma in 1903 and, for over a half century in her profession, she brought 4,500 babies into the world, 1,500 in the "old country," and 3,000 in Michigan.

As a midwife, Alicia not only delivered babies, but visited women daily for an entire week after they had given birth. Her responsibilities included seeing that the babies were healthy and nourished, helping women who were having difficulties with breastfeeding and generally tending to the well-being of the new mothers. She also nursed the sick, which sometimes required joining families in quarantine.

The village of Poia in the Trentino region of Italy.

My great-grandmother came through Ellis Island and settled in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1909, just before the United States' second largest wave of Italian immigrants between 1910 and 1914. Her husband, Basilio Paoli, first immigrated in 1901, two years after they married to find work. Most early Italian immigrants were men, and three-quarters of those in Michigan landed in this remote part of the state. They came to work in the copper and iron ore mines.

Basilio returned to Italy to start a family with Alicia. Five children were born in Italy, and three died before immigration. In 1909, they traveled with their two surviving daughters to Michigan. Once in the United States, Alicia's name changed to Alice. The couple had four more children: Three daughters and one son. My grandmother, Armeda, was the youngest child.

Basilio became ill with black lung disease caused by the dust in the iron ore mines. He died at the age of 48 when my grandmother was a young girl. My grandmother's older sisters, Emma, Enrica (Re), Dosalia (Daisy), and Julia (Jay), would help raise her, which was necessary because Alice was frequently away from home delivering babies. My grandmother recalled neighbors checking on her and her siblings when their mother was away. She remembered going with her sisters to the houses where Alice worked and knocking on the window to say goodnight.

My great-grandmother worked as a midwife for a half-century, and many people from Iron Mountain and the surrounding towns had stories about her. My grandmother did not know many of these stories, so I knew little of Alice. One story I heard from a man who grew up next to my mother was how Alice treated a woman's burns with raw potatoes and wax paper applied to the wound. She also used this remedy for nursing women with mastitis, a painful condition where the milk ducts are blocked and can lead to infection.

My grandmother told me how her mother stood up for women with abusive husbands. Once, Alice challenged a priest who counseled a woman to return to her violent husband because of the prevailing morality of religion. (It was not until the 1990s that the Catholic Church took a position that women were not bound to remain in abusive relationships.)

The story told to me by my grandmother that most intrigued (and frightened) me was of Alice's caring for a large family of ten children where the mother died of a contagious illness. Before she died, she told her husband that he could not take care of all the children on his own and that she would take half of them with her. According to my grandmother, soon after, five of the children also died of the same illness.

Alice was the Woman of the Year for Dickinson County for her contributions as a midwife. However, her highest honor was the way in which the community she served held her with gratitude in their hearts. In the early 90s, I visited my grandmother in Iron Mountain, and we went to the “northside,” an area a couple of miles from her house where Italian immigrants had once clustered. She pointed out a small memorial to Alice on the side of the local high school, and there were fresh flowers next to it. Four decades after her death, townspeople still brought gifts to her memory.

I expressed surprise because I knew so little about my great-grandmother. When I asked my grandmother whether she knew that people still brought flowers in remembrance, she responded affirmatively and casually that her mother was well-loved.

Alice Paoli with her children during her Woman of the Year celebration.

Growing up in Chicago's suburbs, I did not have much of an ethnic identity, nor did I feel I was missing a deeper connection to my ancestors. I knew I was a “euro-mutt” with ties to Austria, Germany, England, Bohemia, Scotland, Canada (French-Canadian), and a drop of Irish. My only direct known descendants from Europe were Alicia and Basilio. The occupation listed on Alicia's passport, issued from Austria, was "mammana," which translates to "one who brings life into the world."

I was in my late forties when I forged a stronger emotional connection with my great-grandmother. Since my twenties, Italy has felt like a heart home, and I've traveled there repeatedly. It was only relatively recently that I discovered my family comes from what is now Italy.

Ten years ago, my sister, Michelle, did some detective work after my mother gave her a copy of a letter from a distant relative in New Jersey. Addressed to my grandmother's sister, it explained some of my father's family history. My sister hit a roadblock in her search because the documents from Ellis Island listed my great-grandmother's place of birth as Godingo instead of Godenzo. Godingo does not exist. Michelle persisted, making inquiries on the internet, and on her family vacation to the area, she met relatives from Alice's side.

A year after her visit, I visited Alicia's birthplace with Michelle and my other sister, Teresa. While the area around the Dolomites remains both culturally Italian and Austrian, the villages we visited are decidedly Italian. I did not anticipate how emotional the experience would be of visiting the place where my ancestor was born, since she was the only one whose history I know going back beyond three generations.

My sister entering the house in Poia where my great grandmother was born.

I wonder how Alicia imagined attending school in Austria and consequently made it happen. Where she came from, 70 percent of her community could not read or write. I reflected on what it was like to leave your country of origin. In those days, immigrating meant a permanent separation from family. When I visited Poia, some elders who were my distant relatives remembered her name but knew of her only as the woman who sent money and medicine from the United States.

The region of Italy where Alicia came from, Trentino and South Tyrol, has been identified as a hotspot for plant medicine and healing waters since the 14th century. My great-grandmother likely had a connection to this plant medicine tradition and brought it with her to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

As I've evolved in my understanding of what it means to heal and my identity as a healer, I've reflected on being the great-granddaughter of Fiore Alicia Toffanetti. I find comfort in the idea that traveling to Italy is a way to visit my ancestral home and connect with my great-grandmother.

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