Peter Nicholas Madamas (1890–1949)
A Trusting Cobbler with a Disability
Let me tell you about Peter Nicholas Madamas, Mary Strattos’s husband. He was born on June 15, 1890, in Metaline, a small farming village in Greece. Life there at the end of the 1800s centered on farming and close-knit families, and there wasn’t much chance of schooling or factory jobs. Villages like Metaline lived mostly by subsistence farming, which means growing just enough to feed your own family, along with raising animals and a few small local trades. The land was worked together, and the seasons set the rhythm of daily life. There was very little work to be had beyond the village, and boys often did hard physical work to help their families get by from an early age. So when a young man left for America, people didn’t see it as abandoning home. Everyone understood it as a sensible way to help the family and build a future the village couldn’t offer.Peter was still a teenager when he set out. He arrived in New York on April 22, 1906, only fifteen years old. Imagine crossing an ocean on your own at that age! His first years in America were about work, getting used to things, and not giving up. He had to learn a new language and a new way of life while finding his place in a tough job market. Like most young immigrants, he got ahead little by little, through steady effort and not a lucky break. And his success is all the more remarkable because Peter was hearing impaired. He may even have been completely deaf. His speech was fine, though, and he was a good lip reader.By the mid-1910s Peter was building both a family and a living in New England. His firstborn, a son named John, was born in Springfield around 1914 and died within days. His first child to survive, Charles Peter Madamas, was born on March 26, 1915, in Springfield, a growing factory city whose mills, shops, and immigrant neighborhoods offered jobs along with plenty of challenges. Around 1917 his daughter Bessie was born in Connecticut. In those years Peter went wherever the work was, balancing his family’s needs against making a living.There’s a story from July 1918 that tells us a lot about him. A newspaper article describes Peter as a shoemaker with his own shop on Main Street in Thompsonville, Connecticut. He had just hired a new helper, and he stepped out for a bit to take care of some business in Springfield. When he came back, the helper was gone, along with the money from the cash register, and the shop had been left unlocked. The story shows Peter as a small-business owner and an employer, and as a very trusting man. Shoemaking was a good, lasting trade for immigrants. It didn’t cost much to get started, it relied on skilled hands instead of big machines, and people always needed their shoes fixed. Craftsmen like Peter could build their independence and earn the trust of their neighbors with it, even when times were bad.You might think from all this that the family moved around a lot, but a look at the map explains it. Enfield, Thompsonville, and Springfield sit close together along the same stretch of road, all within about fifteen minutes of each other. Peter could live in Enfield, run or work in a shoe shop in Thompsonville, and go to Springfield for other work or family business, all without uprooting his household. The records don’t show a man who couldn’t settle down. They show a working man making smart use of how close those towns were.The 1920 census, the count of everyone in the country taken every ten years, finds Peter and his young family in Enfield. He’s listed as head of the household, married to Mary, with Charles and Bessie still very young. That year he was recorded as a laborer in a carpet mill, earning wages in one of the region’s toughest factory jobs. Put that next to the 1918 newspaper story, and it looks like Peter was probably working for wages while he kept up his shoemaking on the side. Plenty of immigrants did that to get a steady paycheck while working toward being their own boss. He could read and write, but he was still learning English and was still listed as an alien, meaning not yet a citizen. That tells you how much of his early progress came under real strain.During the 1920s, all that work on his trade paid off. By 1930 Peter and his family were settled in Springfield, renting a home on Bradford Street. The household had grown a lot. It included six children, plus a boarder, someone who paid to live with the family, a common arrangement in working-class immigrant neighborhoods. That year’s census lists Peter not as a laborer but as the owner of a shoe-repair business, working for himself. Shoemaking had become his main job, and he had earned a measure of independence through his skill, his reputation, and the trust of his community. By then he spoke English and had begun the steps toward becoming a citizen, signs of how much a part of American life he had become.The family kept growing. Aphrodite, known as “Affy,” was born in June 1931, joining her older brothers and sisters Charles, Bessie, Helen, Nicholas, Irene, and Anna. Springfield stayed home through the hard years of the Great Depression. Peter shows up again in city records in 1935, still keeping a roof over a big family at a time when many families struggled just to stay housed. Peter was old-fashioned and protective of his daughters. He didn’t allow lipstick, not even when the girls were in their late teens and twenties! The family story is that Mary would slip them some, so they could put it on once they were out of the house and wipe it off before they came home.By 1940 Peter and the family were living on Dwight Street in Springfield, still renting but firmly rooted. At forty-nine, Peter was supporting a household with seven children still at home. His work had changed again. Now he repaired shoes in a department store, working full time for wages. This was a practical choice for the Depression years: he gave up the risks of running his own shop for the steadier pay of working for a big business. He worked most of 1939 and earned $975, not much, but reliable for a family that size. The census recorded his schooling as going through eighth grade, which fits what was available to a boy born in rural Greece in 1890. He was also signed up for Social Security, the new government retirement program that started during his working life.Peter kept working almost to the end. The Springfield city directories for 1948 and 1949 list him as a department manager at 1514 Main Street, living with Mary at 27 Carver Street. Peter Nicholas Madamas died in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 29, 1949, at fifty-nine. By the 1952 directory Mary is listed as “widow of Peter.” Look at the path his life took. He arrived from a Greek village as a teenager, put in years of factory work, owned his own shoe shop by 1918, spent years in his own trade, and then held steady wage work through the hardest decade the country had seen. Put together, the records don’t show a man drifting from place to place. They show a man carefully finding his way in a small corner of New England to provide for a growing family. He used his skill, his adaptability, and his determination to turn nearby towns into opportunity and hard work into lasting stability.