Antonio Pugliese, just off the British ship, off the coast of Montevideo together with his friend, jumped on an Austrian ship which took them to Buenos Aires. At the time his only possession was a pair of shoes tied to his neck so they wouldn’t get wet, and three pounds.
Antonio’s arrival in Buenos Aires took place in 1862 or 1863, as he was 15 years of age at the time.
The country he had arrived to had just concluded a series of civil wars that had continued uninterrupted since the country’s independence to the constitutional reform of 1860. Buenos Aires was a small city of a few thousand inhabitants that extended from the Garay Avenue to Retiro.
The port did not exist and both passengers and goods went from the ship to a row boat and from the row boat to a horse or oxen driven cart. The entire southern Argentina up to the middle of the province of Buenos Aires was Indian territory. It is hard to imagine how he was able to survive. His children as well as his grandchildren described him as a very kind man, and judging by his accomplishments he must have been a very intelligent man too, with a lot of character and a fierce ambition. He was blond, with grey eyes, slim and above average height. All available pictures of him are as an old man (always impeccably dressed), but he must have been very good looking as a young man.
We know that from the time of his arrival, he started to work in shipping related jobs. He did sufficiently well to allow him to start courting an Argentine girl only after a few years of his arrival. The girl was our great grandmother; Nicolasa Alegre. Imagine the picture; our great grandfather in addition to being good looking was romantic. With his lovely voice he used to serenade Nicolasa with this song that aunt Quita and Pococha sang to me on one occasion:
Nel slenzo della notte
ti sognai con bianco vello
come un angelo, come un angelo
ti presenti in anzi a me
Vieni o diletta! Che giunta e l’ora
vieni o bella! Vieni o bella!
a passeggiar…..
In the silence of the night
I dreamed you with white veil
like an angel, like an angel
you present yourself to me
Come oh delight! That's right, It's time
come oh beautiful! Come oh beautiful!
to walk ... ..
Incapable of resisting the charms of the italian singer, our great grandmother said yes, and they were married in the year 1868.
The marriage was a success and they prospered thereafter. I don’t know the place where they were married nor where their eldest children Antonio and Nicolas were born, but in 1875 they were living in Atalaya, Ensenada, partido de Magdalena. Their Maria was born on January 13, 1875, Amelia Victoria Monica on April 3, 1877 and Tancredo Pedro on June 18, 1880.
Our great grandfather had a shipyard, a warehouse and a leather tanning facility in Ensenada. This is where the ships that he was to gradually purchase used to dock: The “Nicolasa Madre”, the “Indiferente” the “La joven Gidldipa” and the rest of them until he acquired a fleet of 21.
Some time between 1880 and 1885 our great grandparents moved to Buenos Aires. During that period Gildipa (Gilda) was born, for whom we have yet to find the birth certificate.
As Captain of his port in Ensenada, our great grandfather hired an Italian, Captain Mancini. This captain, a frequent guest at the dinner table of the Pugliese family, had a beard parted in two (so called “chuletas”) and always wore a blue vest (which was ancient). For whatever reason, everyone thought he was very funny and rampant anecdotes were circulated about him. Aparently aunt Gilda was the one that had the most fun at his expense. The story goes that on one occasion, to make conversation, our great grandmother started to inquire as to his timetables. The captain let her know the time he went to bed and our grandmother, very formally asked “and you get up?” to which the Captain responded “well of course”
On another occasion aunt Gilda asked him if he had owned his vest for a long time and the old man responded “for fifteen years”
This last anecdote was repeated so many times to us by our aunts, that it became a phrase used on my brother and I. And to this day, if my wife asks me to throw out some old cloths, I reply “Quindici anni! – Robba buona! (fifteen years, good clothes)
Once in Buenos Aires our great grandparents moved frequently. First they lived on Chacabuco 740, where Josefa Delia (aunt Delia) was born on March 25, 1885 and Cricelia Angelica Maria (aunt Quita) on October 30, 1886. Later they moved to Chacabuco 1474 where Oreste was born on October 4, 1889 and presumably Beatriz (aunt Amanda) one or two years later.
When they moved to Buenos Aires our great grandfather was already rich. They led a life of luxury and socialized with people of the same level. Despite all this, our great grandfather always stayed connected to the Italian community, although none of his children married a person of Italian descent.
Dumas, Audiffred, Roux, Iriondo, Walder and Puig were the families that the Puglieses married into.
Based on everything I have heard, the impression I have is that our great grandfathers character did not reflect that of the stereotypical Napolitan; he was phlegmatic, nearly imperturbable, sarcastic and was never known to have outbursts of anger, that through his children we all seem to have inherited.
I’ll tell you an anecdote: As it is common amongst adolescents uncle Orestes started to smoke. In truth he used to steal cigarettes from his French teacher. For what ever reason his father found out. When they had finished lunch, he invited uncle Orestes to his study where he told him: “Orestes, now that you are grown up it is time that you start to smoke like a man”. After which he produced a case of cigars and offered him one. Orestes ramblingly declined the offer. Our great grandfather firmly insisted “have a cigar”. Poor Orestes was left with no choice but to smoke the cigar under the gelid look of his father. As one can assume, he never smoked again in his life.
Regretfully I’m afraid that with the exception of these rare cases, our great grandfather did not interfere with the education of his children, which remained exclusively in the hands of our great grandmother.
Uncle Orestes told me that when they turned a certain age he would take them to his tailor to get their first smoking, and I suppose he also made sure someone guided them in the area of sex education. (these things are not spoken of in the family). But educate, what you would really call educate, that was great grandmother’s thing.
It is indubitable that our great grandfather had a strong sense of family and that he loved his children very much, in particular his daughters. But perhaps having spent such a short time with his own father, who between being a sailor and dying when he was thirteen, turned him into a father that very rarely intervened.
In the late 1880’s or early 1890’s our great grandparents had a house built on Santiago del Estero 924. This is the house where most of the family stories take place and it is still standing. I have sent you all a copy of the picture I took of it during my last visit to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately there was no one at home on the day of my visit, so I was unable to see the interior.
I is a large house with many bedrooms and three patios. A famous Italian painter was hired to paint frescos on the ceilings of the dining and living rooms. He even had a gymnasium built with a boxing ring because his sons enjoyed boxing. The whole family lived in that house and even some relatives such as Eduardo and Enrique Alegre (brothers of our great grandmother), her sisters Maria Teresa and Lucrecia and Ercilia Iriondo, some nieces of our great grandmother and a nephew of our great grandfather who was kicked out of the house for being a <bum>
It has to have been a pretty special house and full of people. Our aunts told stories of dinner tables of 20. Being 10 siblings and seeing how all the women played an instrument and sang, coupled with relatives, visitors and all the servants, there was no time for boredom.
The Iriondo aunts tell a story of debauchery and this house being a monument to overspending and luxury. Despite our great grandmother’s tight fisted ruling of the house, all the servants that did not live-in, left the house every night with bags filled with goods. Everything was bought on a wholesale scale and there wasn’t much control over what was consumed.
Shipyard was the principal activity of our great grandfather as all papers list him as ship owner. He was also a co-founder of the Buenos Aires stock exchange. I had the opportunity to see an old magazine that aunt Quita kept with a photo of our great grandfather with his unmistakable mustache on the occasion of a stock exchange anniversary. Not bad for the boy that swam a shore with a pair of shoes and 3 pounds in his pocket.
Until 1910 at least, when my grandparents married, our great grandparents lived in the house on Santiago del Estero.
The fall started when our great grandfather started to lose his sight. According to our aunts, he suffered from cataracts, but based on other stories and the fact that at the time of his death he recovered his vision, we have concluded it was glaucoma, which afflicts several members of the family. What ever the reason, the fact is that he was rendered blind.
Our great grandfather’s business was the only source of income of the family. Despite the fact that his sons were grown up, there is no information indicating that any one of them ever attempted to take over the business. On the contrary, to continue their lifestyle, they sold out the ships one by one.
I have little information on the later years of our great grandfather. Between his sight loss and the fact he suffered from feet pains, he always went around with a walking stick. It is a lovely cane with a silver handle that aunt Quita gave me and which is completely restored and kept at my house in Sabadell. I know he had his children and grandchildren read to him, specially Dante.
His death was peculiar; especially for the present time when we end up hooked up to a bunch of tubes and cables. He recovered his sight, looked at his wife and children that were surrounding him, and asked aunt Quita to play Beethoven’s “claro de luna” on the piano. As she played, he passed away. It was February 12, 1928. The day of his 81st birthday. He was registered on the 13th because Nene Roux and Marta Puig also had their birthdays.