{"id":1928,"date":"2012-10-17T17:01:57","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T17:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=1928"},"modified":"2023-02-17T13:09:39","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T18:09:39","slug":"italian-immigrant-ancestor-helped-carve-mount-rushmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/italian-immigrant-ancestor-helped-carve-mount-rushmore.html","title":{"rendered":"Italian Immigrant Ancestor Helped Carve Mount Rushmore!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: In this article, Scott Phillips shows what he found in newspapers about a friend\u2019s ancestor who helped carve Mount Rushmore. Scott is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past\u00ae genealogy services.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Almost all of us have stories of immigrant ancestors who came to the United States and toiled to make a better life for themselves and their families. Many, like mine, did so in relative anonymity. However, not too long ago I came across one immigrant to America who did his toiling in plain sight\u2026and I mean really in plain sight!<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Luigi Del Bianco carving the left eye of Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Photograph credit: Windows Live Photo Gallery.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few weeks ago I was working on my wife\u2019s Italian ancestry, especially her immigrant grandparents who came to America from the Molise district of central Italy. As I was working on this, I received an email from Lou Del Bianco. Lou\u2019s family also came from Italy to the United States in search of the proverbial \u201cbetter life.\u201d While my wife\u2019s ancestors were miners and agricultural laborers, Lou\u2019s grandfather, Luigi Del Bianco, was different. He was a classically-trained sculptor, who as a young man studied in Austria and Venice.<\/p>\n

Lou had quite a story to tell and he was interested in having it promoted on my website (http:\/\/OnwardToOurPast.com) and on my Facebook page (http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/OnwardToOurPast). Once I heard the basics of Lou\u2019s story, I was hooked!<\/p>\n

So naturally the first thing I did was click over to GenealogyBank.com<\/a> to see what I might find on Lou\u2019s grandfather, Luigi. As usual, I was not disappointed and I was able to add to Lou\u2019s knowledge about his grandfather and his work.<\/p>\n

The first story that I found was an article explaining Luigi\u2019s arrival on his job: as Chief Carver on Mount Rushmore! Yep, the<\/em> Mount Rushmore! As I said, this story is about one immigrant who \u201cdid his toiling in plain sight\u201d!<\/p>\n

According to the newspaper article, Luigi was the right-hand man to Gutzon Borglum, the driving force and lead on the Mount Rushmore project.<\/p>\n

\"Borglum<\/a>
Aberdeen Daily News (Aberdeen, South Dakota) 4 May 1933, page 10<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While there were over 400 men working on the giant carving, Luigi was one of only two trained sculptors, and as a result was named as the Chief Carver by Borglum. He spent an amazing seven years carving on the Mount Rushmore monument from 1933 to 1940.<\/p>\n

As I continued to search in GenealogyBank.com\u2019s online newspaper archives, I found some great stories about the carving of the Mount Rushmore memorial. I enjoyed an old news article published in the Tampa Tribune<\/em> from 1927, when the Mount Rushmore project was still little more than an idea in Borglum\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

\"Start<\/a>
Tampa Tribune (Tampa, Florida), 31 March 1927, page 23<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The following historical newspaper article reports the hilarious exchange of telegrams between Borglum and President Calvin Coolidge regarding the history that President Coolidge wanted carved on Mount Rushmore, and Borglum\u2019s attempt to cut the wordy President\u2019s text down to size.<\/p>\n

\"For<\/a>
Seattle Daily Times (Seattle, Washington), 29 May 1930, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here is an old news article reporting that Luigi kept a life-size cast of the fist and arm of famed Italian heavyweight boxing champion Primo Carnera in his studio\u2014a\u00a0 model which folks often mistook for a sledgehammer!<\/p>\n

\"Hills<\/a>
Aberdeen Daily News (Aberdeen, South Dakota), 29 June 1933, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have since learned even more about Luigi Del Bianco, this amazing Italian American immigrant, who\u2014although \u00a0not well known\u2014accomplished some of the best known work in our entire nation, artistic carving that millions of tourists have viewed with awe and wonder.<\/p>\n

In addition to reading about Luigi on GenalogyBank.com you can also discover more about his life and work at http:\/\/www.luigimountrushmore.com<\/a>, or you can see how the hit television show Cake Boss<\/em> recently baked a Mount Rushmore cake in honor of Luigi on Lou\u2019s website at http:\/\/www.findlou.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Scott Phillips shows what he found in newspapers about a friend\u2019s ancestor, Luigi Del Bianco, who helped carve Mount Rushmore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[12,35003,2020],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-genealogy","tag-mount-rushmore-national-memorial","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/photo-1017-2012-featured-graphic-mount-rushmore.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89605,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions\/89605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}