Meriden, Connecticut

1910 Census Statistics¹
Population: 32,066
29.3% Foreign Born
Native Born Italians: 928

After leaving the brick furnaces of Westfield, Vanzetti found employment in the stone pits of Meriden.

"Two years in the stone pits, doing the hardest unskilled labor; but I was living with an aged couple, both Tuscans, and took a great deal of joy in learning the beautiful Tuscan language...I made friends everywhere, never throwing myself at them, never consciously. Perhaps they who worked beside me in the pits and at the furnaces saw in my eyes the great pity I had for their lot, and the greatest dreams that were already in my imagination for a world where all of us would live a cleaner, less animal existence." ~Bartolomeo Vanzetti

¹Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1913).