 So, welcome to Champlain College's ninth annual local history event. It's so nice to see you all here. My name is Erica Donis, and I am the Special Collections Director here at Champlain. And I have the pleasure of organizing these events every year. We took a break from in-person events for the past two years, and I'm so pleased to welcome you all back here to campus this evening. Events like these require the behind-the-scenes support of so many people. And so I'd like to start this evening off with a few thank-yous. There are many Champlain College employees who made this all possible, including Susan Adkins, Michael Angel, Kristina Brooker and her events team, Emily Christ, Beth Dietrich, Nick Fock, Connor O'Brien, and his team from our physical plant department. Natasha Murray, Elizabeth Scott, Sarah Camille Wilson, and Sandy Euston. Thanks as well. Thank you, everyone. Thanks as well to our partners at Sodexo for this evening's reception and our students from media services who are here with us this evening. And a very special thanks to a Champlain College student, Abby Berger-Nor, class of 2024, who designed the event promotion for us on behalf of our student-run public relations group, Maple Street Media. So now I'd like to introduce to you our associate provost, Dr. Rosalyn Whitaker-Hec, who will share a few more words of welcome and introduce tonight's speaker. Thank you. I can't tell you how exciting it is to see you all in 3D, okay? The 1D experience can be underwhelming, so this is very exciting. So I want to welcome everyone to the ninth annual local history event. Welcome students, faculty, and trustees, and members of our local community. We are so pleased to have you here to discuss a topic that is not only important to our history, but also incredibly relevant to our community today. Champlain College Special Collections has hosted an annual local history event since 2012. And I teach an event management class, so my event management students have been involved with this event for the past two years or so. It's an event that demonstrates the importance we place in understanding and sharing both the history of Champlain and Burlington. And it reflects our community, our recognition that Champlain College is an integral part of the fabric of our community. First established in 1975, our special collections include the Champlain College Archives, the Llewellyn Collection of Vermont History, the Henderson Family Papers, and other collections pertaining to the history of the Burlington area. Since 2016, our local history events have been sponsored by Pat Robbins and Lisa. Now I asked Lisa, I said, Lisa, do you pronounce your name, Shamberg, or Shamberg? And she said both. So I think her mom preferred one way and her dad preferred the other. So I'm going to thank Pat and Lisa, Sham and Shamberg, on behalf of all of us. Thank you so much for your generous support, which really does make this event possible. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all that you have done over the years for Champlain College and our local community. Now I have the pleasure of introducing our speaker for the evening. Charlotte, not Charlotte, right? I'm just kidding. Charlotte Barrett is the Community Preservation Manager at Historic New England, a non-profit heritage organization. Charlotte manages Historic New England's Community Engagement Preservation Services and easement program work from an office in Burlington. Since 2016, she's collaborated with a network of partners to support the preservation of the buildings and stories that define the diverse history of the region. In 2018, she co-produced and co-directed the award-winning film Rooted, Cultivating Community and the Vermont Grange. She has a BA from Dartmouth College, an MS in Historic Preservation from the University of Vermont, never heard of it, and a certificate in museum studies from Tufts University. Charlotte's presentation is titled More Than a Market, Food, Community and Family in the Markets of Burlington and Winooski, Vermont. She will be taking questions from the audience at the end of her talk. Thank you and welcome Charlotte. Thank you very much for that introduction and for this opportunity to share a topic that is a passion and bordering on an obsession for me after working on this for almost four years. It's such a pleasure to be standing up here tonight after sitting in the audience over the past few years and joining this annual gift from Champlain College to the community. When I began to prepare this presentation back in April, I couldn't have imagined that I would be opening with mention of a current event. But I want to acknowledge the tragedy at the top's food market in Buffalo and how it speaks to the importance of local markets to communities. When this store opened in Buffalo in 2003, it didn't just provide food in a former food desert. It provided a place where people who for decades had faced racial discrimination and economic and political neglect and where they could find support and community with those of shared experience. It was more than a market. Over the past three years, I've had the honor of hearing stories from community members for whom food markets have been central to their lives, whether as customers or as owners or as children of owners. What rose to the top for me was this, that for people newly arrived in this country, whether as immigrants or as refugees, local markets provide more than familiar food. They are places of connection and support. And they offer owners and their families a path to economic independence. This was true in the past and it continues today. These conversations occurred as part of historic New England's More Than a Market project. The foundation of this project is oral histories, the voices of people who brought these markets to life. So you will hear me read their words throughout the program. Critical to this project as well have been the contributions of our partners, Gail Rosenberg and Elise Gayet whose research and knowledge of food history added depth to the content. Joe Perrin at the Winooski Historical Society who as a Winooski native and keeper of the local archives guided me in its history. The Vermont Folklife Center for its guidance on applying collaborative ethnography in our conversations with storytellers and AALV for helping us frame the project within the experiences of today's newest immigrants and refugees. These local markets are a source of emotional and physical sustenance woven into the daily lives of residents. Here customers can socialize, they can catch up on local and national news and hear gossip from back home, speak in a native language and purchase familiar foods. Technology and transportation have dramatically changed how people shop and socialize but markets remain an essential business for many immigrant communities and did so long before the term was coined during the pandemic. Whether traveling by steamship in 1922 or by plane in 2022, the migration journey embodies both loss and opportunity. Immigrants and refugees leave behind family and friends, professions, money and belongings, traditional social institutions and an identity rooted in their ancestral lands. They arrive with a desire to build a better life for themselves and their families and markets can offer a safe place for connection with customers and owners who understand the experience. Newcomers can seek practical advice and form bonds through the universal language of food and owners can realize the desire to run their own businesses after perhaps years of having little control over their lives. Like many urban centers from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, Burlington and Winooski welcomed waves of immigrants from Eastern and Western Europe seeking a better life in America. Some fled religious or political persecution or economic disadvantage, others were just seeking adventure or they followed family and friends. In the 1990s, Burlington and Winooski welcomed Vietnamese and Bosnian refugees. And today, Somali, Bhutanese, Sudanese, Iraqi, Congolese and Afghanis among many other cultures call this area home. Today, many are settled here through the Vermont Field Office of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants. Burlington's location on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain and its position as a major railroad terminus fueled a booming lumber industry with mills and wood related factories springing up along the waterfront beginning in the early 1800s. On the other side of the city, textile mills flourished along both sides of the Winooski River in Burlington and Winooski. Immigrants provided critical labor for these industries. Irish and French Canadians arrived beginning in the 1840s to work for the railroads, lumber businesses and textile mills, Russian, German, Italian and Lebanese immigrants along with smaller ethnic groups followed from the late 1800s into the early decades of the 1900s. Many immigrants who began as laborers sought financial independence by opening their own businesses. Often this meant that they worked as a laborer and tried to run a business at the same time with the help of family members. In the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, neighborhood markets were everywhere in Burlington and Winooski. On street corners in the middle of blocks, some people even opened up markets in their living rooms. And before the automobile and refrigeration became widely available, people would shop daily within blocks of home. They would stop at the butcher shop, the bakery, a confectionery and fruit stand and the variety food market. Immigrant families owned many of these markets and they usually lived upstairs or nearby to serve customers while still involved in family life. They worked long hours and yet they still had the time to lend an ear or a helping hand to neighbors. And while men were typically listed as the market proprietors in city directories and the censuses, women were partners as clerks, bookkeepers and even butchers. Children clerked, stocked shelves and delivered to customers. The markets that you see here are our market partners, historical market partners, just from the upper left going clockwise, Iso's market, Chick's market, Epstein and Melnick, Roy's market, Kieslik's market, Rome's market which then became J&M Groceries, Dana's market and George's market. Since the 1980s, immigrants from Vietnam, Bosnia, Bhutan and Eastern and Western Africa had carried on this entrepreneurial tradition, some in the same neighborhoods or even storefronts, others in outlined suburbs where new Americans have begun to settle. They offer staples, spices, seafood, halal meats and other products and grains that are important to the many cultures that call the Burlington area home and they are a magnet for the growing number of people who appreciate cooking and sampling global cuisine. Here you see our six contemporary market partners for this project from the upper left, RGS Nepali market, M-square Vermont, NADA international market, Typhat, Halal Champlain market and Euro market. Markets provide immigrants with the foods that connect them to memories of their homeland, their traditions and to the cultural community in this new country. Goma Kodka, the co-owner of RGS Nepali market says, I just want to do what the people needs. These people are like starving. You know, sometimes even me, if I like my country's food and if I don't get it, I feel like I'm starving. I try a lot of different foods but I don't get full. They're not getting their food but since I'm here, I'm helping them. Like countless Bhutanese Nepali people, Goma and Ratna Kodka spent 20 years in a Nepali refugee camp after their expulsion from Bhutan in 1992. They lived in limbo there without opportunities for work or a future. In 2010, they decided to join their families here in Burlington. In 2015, they opened the Nepali dumpling house, a very popular spot on North Street and then under pressure from customers who wanted a bigger place, they opened a market in the former Morola's market on North Avenue in 2017. Much to their surprise, 95% of their customers were from African countries. So they had a lot to learn. They asked their customers to teach them about the different foods that they would want to see at the market. And with the language barrier, they used photographs, sign language, sometimes a customer would bring in a friend or family member who spoke English and then Goma and Ratna bring this information to the markets in New York City. In 1922, Louis and Conchetta Parada Iso and their five children, Silvio Alfonso, Mario Francesca and Filomena, traveled from their home in Civitaveccia, Italy to Burlington where Conchetta's brother, Alfred Parada, had already settled about 10 years earlier. And when the Iso's arrived, they went into business with Alfred as Parada and Iso at 77 Pearl Street. All the Iso children worked in the market and Conchetta provided some of the fruits and vegetables sold there from her large backyard garden. Iso's market sold Italian specialty foods as well as staples. In the early years, customers scooped macaroni and crackers out of barrels. People remember how the air was thick with the smell of Italian cheeses like mozzarella, ricotta and balls of provolone which hung from the ceiling and dripped wax in the heat of summer. Cheeses and other specialty items like pepperoni, salami, mortadella and sausage arrived from Boston. Mitchell Allen, a Lebanese resident and customer recalls, my brother would talk about going in the Merola's store down the street or Iso's and just a variety of Italian cheeses. This all came from Italy and they bring in big tubs of calamari around Christmas time and he says you could blindfold him and take him in any store and he could tell you where he was just from the smells, the cheeses, the cold cut meats. The importance of meat to the American diet and many other food traditions granted the butcher or meat cutter an important position in communities in the first half of the 20th century. Customers often chose a market based on the butcher who could cut, grind or trim the meat most skillfully for traditional recipes such as Lebanese kibbeh or French Canadian tortilla or who could make the most savory sausage or grind the most flavorful hamburger. The Danish family's arrival in Vermont was typical of many French Canadians seeking better job opportunities in America. Louis Danes, his wife, Victorine and their eight children settled in Queen City Cotton Company housing in the Lakeside neighbor around 1910 and many of them worked in the mill there over the next few decades. Arthur Danes who's pictured on the left with his family opened the market in 1926 and it became the social center of the community. Over the years, a hall on the second floor served the community as a billiard hall, a school, a church and the home of the St. John's Club, a French Canadian fraternal organization not to mention local graduations, weddings and other celebrations. Arthur's brother, Dona, was the butcher. He's pictured on the right. He cleaned the meat from pig's heads for head cheese, a jellied cold cut, made boudin or blood sausage and ground the meat for tortillas, a meat pie and the ever popular hamburger. In winter, his wife Beatrice made tortillas to sell in the store and their daughter, Val, has carried on the tradition of making those at holiday time. She recalls, my father would get up early and being a good Catholic, he always set his prayers on his knees in front of the couch. His shoes were polished and he wore a white shirt and then he'd go to the store. He was the one who opened the store in the morning and put on his white apron, rolled up his sleeves and then that was the beginning of the day there. Georgie George's family hailed from a small village in Mount Lebanon, a district of Greater Syria until Lebanon won independence in 1943. Like many new arrivals, Georgie's father, Daniel, worked in a mill to save enough money so that he could open a market in 1920 with his wife, Remy. After taking over the business, Georgie leased the old Iso's market space at 38 Pearl Street and operated it with his wife, Isabel. Photos of Georgie were hard to come by but he's pictured in this wedding photo on the far left. The Iso brothers and their families lived in apartments above this market so this block was like one big family home. Mario Iso's wife, Jeanette, operated a beauty salon above the market adding foot traffic to a busy street corner. In 1962, urban renewal leveled much of the neighborhood including George's market. Customers said George D or Georgie George ground the leanest, freshest kibbeh, a Lebanese dish. Kibbeh is made with ground beef or lamb, bulgur, onions and spices. It's traditionally eaten raw so fresh lean meat is important. Monica Simon Farrington, a Lebanese customer remembers, he'd go behind his counter into this walk-in freezer and come out carrying this humongous leg of beef. He'd flop it onto this big wooden block cutting table and sharpen his knives. His trick was to grind it twice and it was so tender it was unbelievable. Just a note on how food traditions change and adapt. Monica is a vegetarian now, correct? And so she uses beyond beef for this traditional dish. While meat is certainly a part of more recent immigrant diets, vegetables and fruits feature prominently. Market customers care about the source of their food and owners will spend hours finding a source for products. African customers at RGS Nepali Market for example favored dried fish from specific familiar locations. Halal Champlain Market customers prefer the flavor of free range halal meat sourced from Australia. The owners of this market butcher the meat in a small back room and people carry away large plastic bags of chicken, lamb, beef, goat and camel meat. Vermont based Green Mountain Cassava supplies many markets with cassava in its many forms. Entrepreneurs like Eddie Abenetto, the company's founder are filling the gaps by growing or sourcing foods that are essential to different cultural cuisine. Markets are often the center of the social and civic life of the community. Customers arrive to shop and then they linger to pass the time. In the first half of the 20th century, residential and commercial life mingled in city centers. And some of these markets were designated voter registration and polling places in their city wards or they hosted civic meetings. In this photograph here of Martell and Lavalli market, Arthur Martell and Octave Lavalli who owned this market were probate commissioners and they held their meetings in this store. And also I wanted you to, I'm not sure how easily you can read this, but this on the right is an article from the Burlington Free Press letting people know that they should make sure that they're registered to vote. And I think every single place listed is a market within the wards. So just an example of how important they were. Like many immigrants, Edward Roy, who is pictured on the photo on the left, he's the shorter man standing there, juggled several jobs to support his wife Laura and their seven children. At various times, between 1903 and 1923, he was a weaver at the American Willow Mill, a clerk at a local market and a milk dealer. Edward and Laura purchased the weaver street market in 1923 and raised their family in the rooms behind the store and upstairs. When Edward died in 1954, three of his seven children, Emil, Irene and Bernard shared management. Emil was the meat cutter, Bernard handled deliveries and advertising, and Irene clerked and did the books. Emil is pictured on the right hand photo to the right, standing up there. Emil's son Larry says, our store was a hub of activity. We had a couple of guys that would come in every day and they would go into the cooler and grab their beer. And then they'd sneak around the corner so they could talk to my father. And they would sip on their bottle of beer. The mailman would come in and they would buy stuff, open up a jar of sausage or a jar of pickled eggs, then leave it there hidden in the shelves. Us young kids would go in there and talk with them. And they always had a lot to say. Chick DuPont, whose family emigrated from Quebec to Vermont in 1905, left school after the eighth grade to help support the family as a weaver at the American Woollen Mill. In 1945, he opened a market at 60 Hickock Street. From there, he presided over the daily comings and goings of residents of the flats, the neighborhood by the mills along the Winooski River. Chick was active in local politics and he was the mayor for eight years. One Winooski resident recalls, there were always men gathered at the oil stove in the store, talking, sharing stories and talking politics. All opinions were welcome. Today, owners Sonny and Pam Vazina called themselves curators of this community market. Chick was beloved by the neighborhood children who played hopscotch and jacks out in front on the pavement and the store was home-based for games of hide and seek. Many children stopped by to pick up groceries for their parents and when they returned home they would find penny candy at the bottom of the bag. He kept an eye on the children while their mothers were running errands and he proudly displayed school pictures behind the counter. Today, some customers live farther away from markets in neighborhoods or suburbs where there is available housing. They may shop less often and they might arrive by bus or car now but for immigrants and refugees the personal connection at small markets remains an important part of their lives. The daughter of Ahmed Araf, manager of NADA International Market in Winooski says, it's something that reminds customers of home when they come in and see some products in Arabic. It just helps them find their culture and they know that they belong somewhere maybe even if it's a small supermarket. Moisa Matume arrived in the U.S. in 2000 at the age of 19 from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He joined a brother living in Worcester, Massachusetts where there are several wholesalers supplying restaurants and markets with global foods. In 2007, he moved to Vermont and he worked as a vendor for one of those businesses before opening his own market in 2020. One of his first steady customers was RGS Nepali Market when the Codcas were just beginning to learn about African food. Moisa says, I want my customers to feel home and I can tell if they're speaking French or Swahili or Lingala, then I'll catch up from there because I speak all those languages and make them feel at home where they can do a shopping as if they were doing it back home. Between 1993 and 2005, about 1700 Bosnians settled in Vermont due to the war. Dato Vujanovich left his home near Sarajevo in 1998 with his parents and his wife and he settled in Vermont through the refugee resettlement program. A student in Bosnia, he spent several years working for Rhino Foods before opening the market in 2004. Euromarket serves an Eastern European clientele. One of the market's regular customers, Vladimir Selik, said, usually you meet some people from your country. Not everybody have time now to meet, I guess. They meet at home or parties. You come here, you can speak your own language, which is nice, so it's a piece of home. Customer service in local markets is more than a business transaction. Many market owners are community leaders. They mentor children, help the elderly and the housebound, provide rides to those without cars and deliver food. Customers often seek help navigating an unfamiliar bureaucracy, whether that's completing legal papers, paying a parking ticket or finding work or housing. I love this advertisement from Epstein and Melnick. I don't know if you can read it, but at the bottom it says, this is not a chain store. This store has been a service store for the past 17 years. We give you free delivery. The families of John and Mildred McLaurin were part of the great migration of African Americans who left the South between about 1915 and into the 1970s for better economic and education opportunities and to escape racial violence. In 1965, John moved his family from Queens to Burlington to take a job as a mail order foreman at a clothing company here. He purchased Rome's groceries from Morris and Shirley Rome in 1975. The market had been in the Rome family since 1924. In the early years, Mildred managed the store while John held part-time jobs to make ends meet. Over the years, John's investment in rental properties in Burlington strengthened the family's financial situation and also opened his eyes to the issue of homelessness in the city. He provided rooms or apartments for little to no rent to people facing homelessness. In 2005, he received the Neighborhood Improvement Award for his work to provide stability and hope for people. His daughter, Judy, who now owns the store says, my father was very helpful. Anyone that needed it, he would do his best to help out. He always told us to be kind to the less fortunate because there was a very thin line between them and us. At any given time, we can be in that position and what you put out, you will get back. Abdi Noor Hassan and his family arrived in Syracuse in 2006 after spending years in a Kenyan refugee camp. In 2007, they moved to Burlington and by 2008, they had purchased a store from another Somali refugee. This market recently changed its name from Community Halal Market, but the spirit of the former name continues. Ahmed Omar, a customer and the owner of Kizmayo Kitchen, says, Abdi, he spent hours and hours to help his community. You can go there, if you have a letter, if you don't speak English, he can translate for you. Send your applications. When I look at him, I think, wow, this guy is something else. He's doing an amazing job for his community. Market proprietors were in a unique position to identify those customers who were struggling to make ends meet. Extending credit was one way they could help and sometimes that meant forgiving the debt entirely. Whether saving baloney ends for children, discreetly adding extra items to a grocery bag, or dropping off a box of staples to a hungry household, market owners supported the welfare of the community. Lou Iso recalls the informal credit system at his family's market. You didn't have to go through a credit check to get the food. A little slip was made. It was all done discreetly and my father, my uncles knew who needed the credit. The slip would be put on a nail, not to sophisticated an accounting system. And eventually when the person could pay, they would come back in and it was a trust system. Mitch Allen remembers George's market as a second home. He and his friends stopped in to buy peas and pea shooters for neighborhood games or maybe a Coke to drink while listening to the grownups. Remembering Georgie, Mitch says everybody who walked in the store would visit with him and he made a good neighborhood center point. All the salesmen would come in and visit. They'd be talking about all kinds of community things and activities. As a kid, it was good to listen to and they were good role models. This photo on the bottom there in center is Mitch as a boy and then the one in the upper right is probably some of those neighborhood kids who were buying those pea shooters. Lou is the little boy sitting down on the left and Mitch is the little boy standing in the back row on the right. Let's see. Med refs, oh, let's just see. Sorry. Family is the heart of many small markets. Generations pitch in on the tasks required to feed the community. Ordering and picking up food, stocking shelves, butchering, clerking, accounting and legal paperwork. Many family owned markets treat customers like family, sharing time inside and outside the business. On the left is Ratna and Goma Khadka with their son, Sohan and Syel and their friend, Emmanuel Braxton has decided he's part of the family. He's sitting down there on the left. And then to the right are three generations of the Kieslik family and the center is Albert, the son of JV who founded the market and to his left and right are Dick and Jeff who ran the mark. Dick worked with Albert and their Jim's son, Jim and this market was definitely of a family market. Everybody worked there off and on. And the bottom photo is a backyard picnic probably in the neighborhood of Isos and Georgia's markets which were across the street from each other. I know that Lou and Mitch are in this photo as well as their parents and I would guess that there are French, Canadians, Lebanese and Italians all gathered together here. Isaka Kunta, a customer at RGS Nepali Market speaks to this idea of the market family. He says, as soon as I get into the door, they say, oh, where you been? This mean they looking for me and care about me and it's nowhere, no place that you can go and people care about you just for shopping. So I love them, they are my brother and sister. Ahmed Araf's extended family owned a very large successful market in Baghdad, Iraq. In about 2005, militia targeted the market as symbolic of the wealthy class placing the entire family in danger. Ahmed's father moved the family to Amman, Jordan in 2005 where he opened another market. And then in 2009, they followed family to Vermont where his father opened yet another market. His daughter says of this tradition and her father, Ahmed. This store is more than a way to make money to live. It's our background and our history and keeping the tradition going by having a supermarket. But first thing is that he loves that job. It's his passion. It's what he grew up to do and what he got from his father. So it's not easy to let go. On the lower right is Thamer who is a uncle of Ahmed, the owner or the manager of this store. Thamer also worked at the big market in Baghdad. Mayor and mini Melnick Epstein emigrated from Russia to the United States around 1900. They joined Epstein family in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania before moving to Burlington where Minnie's brother Samuel Melnick lived. The Jewish community was closely intertwined in those days. Marriages frequently occurred between families from the same stettles or villages in Eastern Europe. Mayor was a clerk at Sager's grocery and department store on North Avenue and the family lived in an apartment above the store. Eventually, Mayor and Sam, his brother-in-law opened their own market in 1910 at 27 Main Street in Winooski. All five Epstein children, Louis, Sam, John, Eva, and Sophia worked at the store and lived in the apartment upstairs off and on until the store closed. Mayor and Minnie's grandchildren, Merrill and Judy, fondly recall spending Sunday afternoons in the apartment upstairs with their aunts while their father, Sam, did inventory before they went out for a Sunday drive. Sadly, like George's market and many others in traditional immigrant neighborhoods, this market was a casualty of urban renewal. The pictures of Sam and Eva in 1973 is right before they had to leave the store. The Kieslicks were a prominent family of craftsmen and contractors in Burlington's thriving German community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite this family tradition, John or J.V. Kieslik gravitated to the food business. In 1911, he opened a small grocery at 18 Ward Street and then in 1914, he opened a much larger market at 203 North Avenue with a spacious apartment upstairs for his family, his wife, Marie, and sons, Albert, Arthur, and John. His sons all clerked there into the 1950s and when he passed away in 1960, his son, Albert, and grandson, Dick, took over the business until it was sold in 1983. Sister Marie Kieslik, J.V.'s granddaughter, was part of the family work crew. She says, in the fall, everybody would gather together and make the sauerkraut. As children, we had little tasks to do. You had to cut all that cabbage and then the spices, the vinegar, and by the end of the day, the barrels were already in the cellar, filled with their ingredients and then sealed because sauerkraut for ments. I just wanted to point out J.V. in the center of the photo. He's wearing his butcher cuffs, which he's wearing in a lot of the photos and I had never heard of butcher cuffs until that was explained to me as a way to protect your arms. Market ownership offers a path to independence and economic security for newly arrived families. Owners work long hours, often juggling two jobs to create a better life and a future for their children. Early market owners worked second jobs in textile and lumber mills and other industry. Today, many owners work late shifts in service or manufacturing businesses so they can be in the market during business hours. John and Wong Tran and their children arrived in 1994 after years in a refugee camp. In their village of Bien Ho in Vietnam, they grew rice, fruit and coffee. So it was a natural step to purchase Thai fat from another Vietnamese immigrant in 2007. Despite 15 years in the business now, the family continues to work incredibly long hours. Each Tuesday, John and Wong leave well before dawn for the Chelsea market in Boston to buy items that their supplier can't deliver to Vermont. In addition to managing the market, their oldest son Anthony operates Saigon Kitchen a block away. He puts in 14 to 16 hours a day in order to provide a future for his daughters. His daughters are pictured on this poster on the door there. This is a poster announcing the opening of his new restaurant. He says, I need to think for my children's future too. I don't expect my children, they need to do everything what I already done. If they want to continue the work I already done, they continue, but if they don't want it, they have their own choice. I want them better than me and I want them to do something different. The stories of markets established by immigrants and refugees embody timeless values of hard work, resourcefulness, resilience and commitment to family and community. These are values that bind across time and across cultures. Dato Vyanovic says, I wish people would understand how hard immigrants work. I came to this country with no English and $45 and now I have a successful business and that's because I worked and worked and worked and I pay my property taxes and my school taxes and this is what my life is like. So there are a lot of ways you can still explore this topic if your interest is peaked. You think of this as sort of the appetizer and the main course and dessert are a web app that is linked here as well as a walking tour that I will be offering once a month from July through October and then we have an exhibit that opens on June 27th at the Old North End Community Center. So I also encourage you to visit historic New England's website to explore our many programs and events as well as visiting our 38 historic properties open to the public. I imagine that many of you have memories of markets you used to go to growing up or that you patronized today and I hope that you'll all share your experiences with us tonight. I can say that a few of the people whose words I read are here in the audience and so if they want to share more, that would be great. Not, I'd love to hear all your stories. Thank you very much. Oh, did you want to use that one? You should have the two. Okay. I'll take that one too and then we'll put the podium mic up. Okay. So we are here to facilitate questions that you may have and we can pass the microphone to you so we make sure we get your voice and the recording. That was a fascinating presentation and I love the way that you weaved in historical stories of markets that are no longer in existence all the way to the ones that exist today. I shot at the Asian mart behind the big lots in Essex Junction and the food is wonderful. You mentioned one of the store owners has to travel to Boston to bring back food and I was curious if you talked with other store owners and how they acquire their inventory. Yeah, they, I don't know if this is working, but I, all the market owners do travel to pick up food. I mean, they get some delivered, but for example, Dotto at Euromarket, it's less expensive for him to go pick up things himself and Moisa as well drives down to Worcester where he used to live to pick up items. And some of it has to do with just their, that it saves them money and it's also a case of foods that they just can't get shipped up here. And so that's why these visits to, for example, the Codcas going to New York City, there are an abundant markets down there and they can go around and show a photo to somebody and hopefully bring back the right thing. They don't always, but they try. Yeah. Thank you. That was great, Charlotte. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about any markets that closed in the last few years because for various reasons, partly because there weren't as many immigrants coming, do you have information about stores that had to close and they moved into different states over the last few years? In this area? Yes. I don't really, you know, of the ones that we all talked about early on, I haven't been that aware of markets that have closed. I mean, certainly during COVID, some markets closed briefly. Typhat was the one that stayed open through it all. They didn't want to close at all. There are, the African market, Mawuhi has now moved to another location on North Manuski. I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about or... I thought there was a Nepali market that had to close and they moved somewhere, Detroit or somewhere? Oh, I know that, but I do know that a lot of the Nepali people are moving to Ohio and Pennsylvania. Because we don't have the influx of immigrants anymore. And also just, that is, I think it's the largest Bhutanese Nepali community, certainly in the country, but the one in Columbus, Ohio. And actually, sadly, Goma and Ratna are opening a market in Pennsylvania. So they're going to be selling their market. And I worry, I wonder about the next owner, because they were so willing to respond to who their customers were and what their customers wanted. And so, hopefully, whoever takes that market over will do the same. Okay, thank you. I think Gail has a question. Thanks. In doing the research, we saw that the owners of the groceries at the markets would say that if they had food from the markets, they had food for their families and that meant everything. What we learned that I was really touched by were how the wives made sure that they shared with the community so that they had the food and they would have dinners on Sundays for 25, 30 people, family, but also they included people who they didn't know in the community. And then they invited them in. So people who didn't have other family members or didn't have the food were invited and given food. And I also wanted to say that some of the markets had some social, we talked, you talked about the social value. We know about one marriage that started in a market and I see Sylvia Holden here. Yeah. Sylvia met her husband of how many years? 60, 70 years, Clem at the Key Slick Market when she came in and was asking if somebody could wax her cross-country skis and Clem wax the skis and that was their beginning. So. So. Oh, right. Did any of the grocers happen to mention that on account of COVID, they were unable to get supplies and provisions for Montreal over the past several years? That didn't come up in my interviews with the owners, but one of the customers at, I believe at M Square, Vermont, said that they used to go up to Montreal and that they were really grateful to have these markets now. And in fact, Moise opened that market. It was terrible time, it was in 2020. So it was right during COVID, but he's still operating and I think that that's a relief to not have to go to those big cities yourself. That being said, people still really love, there's nothing that beats going to New York or Montreal for some of the spices and really special ingredients. So I'm sure it still happens. I posted, when I was doing research for this project, I posted a lot of questions on Burlington Area History Facebook page and it was incredible. I would ask a really specific question and nobody ever answered my question, but they were often running with a story about one of their favorite markets. They're like, I remember Mr. So-and-so, he used to sit me on the counter and give me a lollipop. So I'm not sure I really got a whole lot of tangible information from there, but it really was great for starting conversations. And of course, these aren't just markets for immigrants. I mean, growing up, I remember going this particular market that my mom always used to go to that was little. So I think, and if it's not these days, we find those kind of places in a coffee shop or a library reading room. There's all sorts of places that are beyond our homes or our workplaces that we kind of go and we see the same faces and we get to know them by name. Very important. Hi, Charlotte. We met and talked about this project when you were starting. And one of the things that always impressed me about some of the local market owners in the old North End, I got to know Dickie Allen and Bev Allen on the corner of Pitkin Street and how much they trusted their customers to keep track, but Dickie knew exactly how much everybody owed him. When you'd sit with him in his store, he knew and he didn't say anything. He just sort of, there was this trust and he once sort of basically told me that I trade in trust. That's sort of what I do here. And did you find any of that in today's markets? That seems to be something that maybe is a little bit of an old approach to trade. I would, I actually posed that question and they looked at me like I was a little crazy. You know, I mean, we have credit cards now, there's EBT. So yeah, that doesn't, you know, I'm saying that they didn't say that, but I honestly believe that it still goes on with people, they're just not gonna say that because they don't wanna have everybody coming in and saying, oh, you can, you know, if you push hard enough, you can, you don't have to pay right away. But just given the relationships I observed, I'm sure that if somebody, you know, is a little short, they'll come back and pay. That, where's Sister Marie? There you are. When I was doing research at Special Collection at UVM, we came across the receipt box from Key Slicks. And it was incredible. It was just this packed box of receipts that you could see where somebody had bought like a carton of milk and some cigarettes and a can of something or other. And that was added up and then it was like paid this much. And you just saw all this math and it was just, I don't know, you know, how they kept track of that. But as Lou Iso said, you know, at the end of the year, his family just tore them up. But they just emptied the nail and started over. So. Hi Charlotte, over here, sorry. Where? Here. Oh, hi. Hi, I just wanna say this is such a fantastic project. I use this in some of my classes at Champlain College and it's been amazing for my students to see a history of markets that's different than them going to pick up their food at Target or Walmart. And I'm also a longtime resident of the Old North End. And so I went on your walking tour last year and it was really amazing to see the history of buildings that I have seen for many years and to see their own history. I'm curious in your research, how you made decisions about which markets to research and how you went about finding out the background. The background of the markets. And how you chose which markets to look at. Chose the markets? Is that what you're asking? Yes. Yeah, well Gail and Elise were integral to that. They actually did all the research in Burlington. They had a lot of familiarity with food history in Burlington from their business, their edible history tour. And I, do you remember how we, I'll tell you what I did in Winooski because I did Winooski. I went through and looked at city directories starting at a certain date and looked for the markets that had the most staying power because we wanted to be able to find as much material as we could on a market. So like if there was a market that lasted 30 years versus 10 years and we knew we'd probably get some really good material. And then the second piece of that was, are there any, then you had to go on to do research on ancestry. See if there was any family around. Sometimes you could, you know, somebody knew that there was somebody around. So it was digging back and you could, why don't you say what you, like the research, how you went about it? We also looked at newspapers.com. Going back over the stories. So you find out about things like how the stores had the election registration list and that people were probate commissioners or they worked on alcohol board and were involved with the police. So you found out which groceries had telephones and how the people in the community would use that as the central point for the phone calls. So news stories were fabulous to add to the information, advertisements both in the city directories and the newspapers also told us about the sauerkraut that was made and then you had the stories to ask the descendants. So again, the mystery, the detective work, we would just get lost in special collections. And obituaries. And obituaries, absolutely really helpful. Obituaries are the ones where you find the descendants. The obituaries are great. But the other question about how to decide which markets were on the tour. So we did the same thing that we did with the Burlington Edible History Tour when we were looking at places for the historic New England tour of the Old North End. What fits in in a certain time? You wanna have people not walk too, too far. You wanna have something that's an hour, hour and a half, something that people will sign up for. And so we started with like four miles on this and what, four hours on this tour? And then you have to say, okay, key switch is a little out of the way so we're not gonna go there. So how do you tell the German story? How do you tell the Jewish story when the markets are a little further from where you're walking? So you figure out ways to tell the stories within a given space and you just work it out and are they telling enough of the story? Telling enough about the different ethnic groups giving enough variety. And then you get your tour and it's always three hours and five, six miles too short. Thank you. Hi there, just to comment. Oh, there. My name's Erin Goldberg. Oh, yeah, hi. Just to comment on city directories and grocery stores, often some of the families not only had the good fortune to have rental space but sometimes they were able to own the building. And when they own the building they often had rentals upstairs. It wasn't just their family. So other family members you can trace from city directories either as students or young couples but then releasing space from them upstairs above the market. So the markets also became a source of housing for the broader family group. The other thing I wanted to mention was that my family's market was next door, next door Kieslich's in the old North End and then I'm sorry, on North Avenue. And we were talking about supplies or supply chains and often it was called Rosenberg's Meat and Grocery Market. And often when the Rosenbergs ran out of something they would run out the back door through the screen while the customer's standing at the counter run around to Kieslich's, go on the back of the airs get the product and come back and sell it and settle up with the Kieslich's afterwards. And the Kieslich's did the same thing. And so you had this Jewish market in the German neighborhood but they all got along with each other. In fact, I've heard from many family members that they taught each other language, they taught each other to drive, they worked on their citizenship papers with each other. There's a fascinating dynamic that begins with markets and how communities get involved with each other. And that's all I wanted to offer. Thanks so much. That was a market that it would have been, it was so hard to choose our markets for the level of walking tour of course is challenging but just in general for this project that your family's market has such a wonderful story too. And yeah, it was just, it was tough to choose from. In doing your research and interviewing the store owners, did you get a sense of how the new foods that they're offering might impact the culture in Vermont whether there are farmers who are trying to grow unfamiliar foods? I know that climate has an issue, there's an issue but I was just wondering if there has been an impact? Well, I know that's happening. I can't give you a ton of examples but I do know that one of Goma's customers at RGS, Nepali really want, they became friendly because I think Goma helped her out. I forget which African country she's from but she helped her out when she was getting settled. Goma helped this woman out and then this woman wanted to start growing things. And she now grows these small egg plants that are sold at some of the markets. And she's tried other things that people have suggested to her that haven't, I don't know if she has anything else that she's kind of known for but I remember that Goma told me that she shipped, somebody in Texas ordered 700 pounds of these egg plants from this woman. So they're not just staying in Vermont. The other thing is there are some community farms like there's new farms for New Americans which is operated by AALB so people do have places where they can get a plot and grow their own family food as well. But Green Mountain Cassava gets, I'm not sure where he sources his things but I know for example goat meat which is so important to a lot of diets. Moise has been looking for more of a, he's been talking with a farm down in the Grattleboro area about raising goats halal. So it's happening and I'm sure it's happening more than I am aware of. Now since Iso's and bows were across the street from each other, it would make sense that bows was the customer of Iso's for pasta, cheese, salumi, produce, some renaled tomatoes and so forth. Did you have you confirm that speculation on my part? That would be a really good assumption. Do you know Baylor at least? Did you ever hear anything about that? You know the Isos were not the dinner at Boats but you know, they were the office at the time. I'm guessing they ordered, they needed big quantities so they were probably ordering from the same place as the Isos were ordering just for the restaurant but I don't know. They did get, the Isos imported a lot from Massachusetts, a lot of the pasta so that would be really interesting to find out, good question. My comment is a little broader. It's a little bit focused on how many people rose up out of these hardworking families where people were putting in 100 hours a week and the parents said, we want something better for our kids and late in life I came to know a guy named Ed Galadney whose parents ran a small market on the corner, Hayward Street and Howard Street, not the big Galadney market on North Street, a little small one. And Ed and his sister were great students at Burlington High School, their parents believed that education would give you the way forward. He went on to University of Rochester where he ended up as chair of the board subsequently and on to Harvard Law School and then started US Airways and then he came to Burlington and ran both the hospital and the University of Vermont at the age of 75. He's now coming up on his 96th birthday and it's just fine and loves Burlington. But there were so many of those stories of people whose parents said, education is the way out of this kind of slavery and there's great stories all over town about this. Everybody, families can mention it. It's not uniform, but it's impressive. It's the great American way when you see it. Right, yeah, it was really, I mean, a lot of the markets, so for example, Lou Iso, Dave Doedon, UDM, there were some families where they went to college, others where they definitely just stayed and worked in the market and that was probably just between the family. Interestingly, the current, the contemporary markets, you just don't have that saying, I wasn't really, I was aware of where certain families were still working in the market but you definitely didn't see the teenagers in their work the way you would have seen back in the older markets. There are things that definitely shifted more that direction now. Charlotte, just want to say thanks for a great talk. I really enjoyed it and I just want to, not a question to comment. By the way, I have to add to the Ed Coladney story. My friend Austin here and I were partners in the law firm and Ed Coladney late in life was also of counsel at that law firm, a remarkable guy. Just wanted to comment that this talk has really peaked my interest in trying to patronize and go to some of these contemporary markets. I mean, we can't, obviously can't go to Kailash's I guess or Iso's, but it's really interesting. Some of these ethnic markets now, like I can walk to the Euro market but I go to the price chopper. So maybe I should go to the Euro market and have a go. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. You know, these market owners too, I just can say that they love showing you what they have to sell. And you know, if you just ask them, like Mary Rizos who did the contemporary photographs of it, she, you know, some of the owners who were more reticent and didn't want to be recorded. If she asked them about products they were, they wouldn't stop talking, how to make this coffee, how to cook goat meat, you know. And so if you go into a store and ask, I went into not a market for, pick up one thing and I ended up coming out with like about eight things. Because they're not, you know, because they say, try this, try this. So it's definitely worth going in and just not being afraid of asking what to cook and how. Yeah, they're giving recipes and they're so happy to have people asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Hi Charlotte, Megan Humphrey. I run an organization called Hands and we're just about to expand. We get food to seniors who are low income and we're just expanding to start to try to include more of their refugee population and BIPOC communities. And so in response to the question about are things being grown, even farmers like Diggers Murth that farm is doing really specific spices and herbs and vegetables. There's another African farmer. We saw his place along the Winooski River in Colchester just growing this huge field of African eggplants. So lots and the new farms for New Americans certainly, but lots of people are starting to grow it around here. So that's great. Yeah, I know that also Fede Chitenden is trying to get more foods donated for immigrant refugee populations too because you know, what they sell is pretty basic American type items. So everybody's trying to, you know, I think we're sort of evolving in terms of being helping us a lot to make these foods more available locally. Well, thank you so much Charlotte. Wonderful presentation. And thanks to all of you for coming. Have a good evening.