EUGENIA TIROCCHI VALCARENGHI

Like her sisters, Eugenia Tirocchi was born in Guarcino. As a young mother, she was widowed, and remarried Luigi Valcarenghi who painted murals in Italian churches. Following Frank, Anna, and Laura the Valcarenghi family immigrated to New York and arrived in Providence by 1907.

Eugenia and her young family were much happier in Providence, settling in the Silver Lake District, an Italian neighborhood, and housing Anna and Laura with them. This was typical of recent immigrants. Single adults tended to live with extended family until they married and could seek their own living quarters. Ida was Eugenia's daughter from her first marriage, and she and Luigi had five children together. Anna and Laura continued to live with Eugenia's family until 1914.

Luigi Valcarenghi was an artist, but there were no church murals to be painted in Providence–or at least not enough to support his family–so he worked as a house painter and wallpaper hanger. His daughter Emily, who spoke with the curators, lamented the waste of his talent and compared him to Anna Tirocchi: "She . . . and my father were the brains. Well, my father was the artist in his way. And she was an artist in her way."

Eugenia and Luigi also owned a grocery specializing in Italian foods, which Eugenia operated successfully for many years after her husband’s death. She needed to provide for her children, of course, but she also displayed skill as a small businesswoman, like others in the Tirocchi family. Although she, too, could sew, she did not join her sisters in their dressmaking business. Her daughter Emily said that she sewed all her life for the family, and that "she had hands of gold," apparently talented like her sisters Anna and Laura. Unlike them, she remained in Silver Lake all her life, nurturing the roots she and her husband had put down in a new land so many years before.

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The STORIES
  Immigration
  The Family
      Frank | Anna | Laura
      Eugenia | Louis
      Anna's Invesments
      the Business Home
  Providence
  Dressmaking
  Fashion
  The Business
  The Clients
  The Workers

The EVIDENCE

TIMELINE
IMAGE ARCHIVE
NOTES

See the Providence pages for an overview of the history of the city, including its long history of welcoming immigrant groups.