Mary Ann Lamantia

Mary's Story: A girl's journey from an Appalachian coal mining town to New York City and back again in the early 1900s. Mary Ann Lamantia

After living with her Baba for the first five years of her life, Mary was sent to live with her mom who was pregnant with her fourth child. It was the 1920s and Vintondale's coal miners were on strike as they tried to unionize with the help of the United Mine Workers Union of America. Food was hard to come by and violence was rampant in this little town isolated in Pennsylvania's Appalachian mountains. At 13, Mary was put on a bus and sent to New York City where a stranger would meet her and help her find a job. It was 1932 and the country was in the grip of the Great Depression. Mary's mom desperately needed the $5.00/month that Mary earned in her first job just to keep her family alive. In 1942, with her mom enduring her sixteenth pregnancy and awaiting the birth of her ninth child, Mary went back to Vintondale to help. World War II was in full swing. Mary would never leave western Pennsylvania again.