8/19/13 Alisa Zahller; the following is the result of my collaboration with members of the Zanetell Family. See object file for hard copy that includes endnotes and names of family members that I worked with.
Joseph and Emma Zanetell Biographical Sketch Final Text
Alisa Zahller
7/17/2013
Final Text relates to History Colorado Collection 87.292
One of eight children, Leonard Joseph Zanetell was born in New Mexico in 1883. Known as Joseph, he was the eldest son of German emigrants Antonio (Anthony or Tony) and Anna Zanetell. In 1887, Joseph and his family moved to Trinidad, Colorado where his father worked as a miner and blacksmith. Additionally, Antonio worked as a prospector, seeking gold and silver in the Silverton area October through April. By the age of 14, Joseph Zanetell was also working in the mines; as a mule skinner. In 1899, Joseph’s father Antonio died of a heart attack in Silverton, Colorado, he was 49. After his father’s death, Joseph, his mother and siblings moved to Engle, Colorado where Joseph continued to work in the mines. It was in Engle that he likely met Emma Oberosler, his future wife; Emma was living with her family in Engel in 1900.
Emma Oberosler was born on March 24, 1893 in Trinidad, Colorado. The oldest of six children, her parents Giuseppe “Joe” and Fortunata Oberosler emigrated from Austria around 1885. Her father, a coal miner worked in the mines for many years. Sadly he developed lung congestion. To help the family survive financially, Emma’s mother started a small farm (milk cows, garden and chickens) and took in boarders. Emma and her sister Mary (one year younger) helped on the farm by caring for the cows, milking the cows, churning butter and delivering milk and eggs to their customers. Boarding house chores included scrubbing the coal dust off the work clothes of the boarding miners. Around 1907, Emma’s father died and shortly after, her mother married John Myer, a miner and the best friend of her deceased husband. In 1910, Emma is listed as living in Forbes, Las Animas, Colorado with her mother, stepfather and siblings.
On July 3, 1913, Joseph Zanetell married Emma Oberosler in Trinidad, Las Animas, Colorado; Joseph was 30 and Emma 20. The courtship of Emma and Joseph Zanetell likely began in 1912 in the Forbes Coal Camp located north of Trinidad. At Forbes, Joseph was an established miner and pit boss for the Forbes Coal Mine; as a pit boss his company house was larger and included a dining room. As an early wedding present to Emma during their courtship, Joseph purchased a dining room set—now in the History Colorado collection.
In late September 1913, as part of the Coal Miner’s Strike of 1913, Union organizers established a small tent colony (less than 15 tents) at the base of Forbes Canyon. This colony was a place for Forbes miners and their families to live after being evicted from the mining company housing. Initially Joseph remained at Forbes as a pit boss, but eventually he resigned from his position because of concerns over hiring scabs and because he supported the union and miners. As a result, he and Emma, who was pregnant at the time, moved to the Forbes Tent Colony. When they moved, Emma said she would not leave her new furniture behind, and so it went with them to the tent colony.
To make the new—smaller—tent a home, Emma used drapes as light curtains to separate the living quarters. One side of the tent had a bed, dresser and foot locker. The other side the table and hutch. At the back of the tent was a stove. While pregnant and living in the Forbes tent colony, Emma’s days were filled with housework, cooking and sewing, including making baby clothes and table linens with fabric purchased from Jameson & Company, a department store in Trinidad.
The Zanetell tent became a delivery room when on March 7, 1914 Emma gave birth to a set or twins. The baby girl and boy lived only a few days. Shortly after, family and friends from the Forbes Colony traveled to Trinidad to bury the twins. Emma too sick to go, stayed behind in the tent. On March 11, 1914, with most of the Forbes tent colony residents away, the Militia entered the colony, tore down the tents and burned most of the colony’s belongings. The reason: on March 10, 1914 the body of a strike-breaker (scab) had been found near Forbes by the railroad tracks and as a result the National Guard ordered the colony to be destroyed. All but one tent in the Forbes colony was destroyed; the Zanetell tent with Emma inside was spared. According to the Zanetell family “Two Militia men entered Emma’s tent and demanded that she leave and told her that they were going to tear the tent down. One of the men started to tear the tent down with Emma inside, but the other man threatened to kill the first if he destroyed Emma’s tent.” Emma’s family also noted that every day in the years that followed March 11, 1914, Emma prayed for the man who saved her tent.
After the destruction of the Forbes Tent Colony, Joseph and Emma remained in the area. This was a difficult time for the couple. As a union sympathizer, steady and full employment in Company owned mines was not an option for Joseph. The family struggled financially. Hardship continued when on October 24, 1914, Emma gave birth to a second set of twins, another boy and girl that did not survive.
In the spring of 1916, things improved for Joseph and Emma when they settled into a newly constructed house in Aguilar, Colorado. In 1920, Joseph was working for the city. By 1924 Joseph was again employed as a miner, a profession he remained in until 1948. Emma and Joseph Zanetell had nine children that survived infancy: Violet, Leonard, Evelyn, Annabelle, Velma, Richard, Robert, Frank and Joseph Alan. Joseph Zanetell died in 1972 and Emma in 1985; both are buried in Aguilar, Colorado.
Side bar:
Joseph’s sister Elizabeth Zanetell Festi helped in the aftermath of the Ludlow Massacre on April 20, 1914. After the death of twenty-five persons (including two women and eleven children who died in a cellar from heat and smoke from a fire) Elizabeth was called from Delaqua to administer help to the injured at the Ludlow Massacre. Of the event she recalled "I went down the ladder to the cellar where the women and children had taken refuge. They were dead-- all dead when I got to them." Elizabeth Festi
Photo:
Zanetell Tent, Forbes Tent Colony, March 1914, History Colorado, PH.PROP.14552/10026199 (DPL # X-60448)
Photo Caption with names:
This photograph was taken at the Forbes Tent Colony by Lewis R. Dold in March of 1914. At the time the photo was taken, Emma Zanetell was inside the tent recovering from the birth of twins. Outside the tent from left to right: Mr. Prescar, Angelo Mosher standing behind the Prescar brothers, George and Martin Prescar, unidentified man in dark hat, Joe Zanetell wearing lighter hat standing in front of chimney, Mrs. Mosher with tie and apron, Mr. Mosher, Irene Micheli (later Dotson) young girl in white dress with her mother, Mary Oberosler Micheli (Emma Zanetell's sister) holding her baby Charlie Micheli, John “Jack” Zanetell, Mrs. Johnson wearing a white shawl over her head, Clarence Johnson young boy in front of Mrs. Johnson and Sarah Johnson.
NOTE: The above names provided by Joseph Zanetell (youngest son of Emma and oseph Zanetell) and Zanetell descendant Linda Duhon (mother is Evelyn, oldest daughter of Emma and Joseph Zanetell)
NOTE: Per Joseph Zanetell a good many of the end-note references are by way of third generation family and relate accounts that are recollections from persons other than Joseph or Emma. It is important to note that citations from Joseph, Evelyn, Robert and Frank are from the children of Joseph and Emma Zanetell.