26.

ARTICLE FROM BOOK BY HARVEY PAUL MOTT,
son of Joseph Elmer Mott, grandson of Joseph Louis Mott

Joseph Louis Mott and Mary Emeline Kelly Mott and their Family

“Joseph was born on August 2, 1860 in a village in Northern Italy.  His Italian name would be Giuseppe Luigi Motta or perhaps La Motta.  Our family records say that he was born in Larvasjaw, Solorm, Italy.  Much research tells us there has never (been) found a place with that exact name.  We think that Joseph's newly learned English was so heavily accented that he was misunderstood, or what it sounded like to the writer was not what it actually was.  There are several places with similar names.  We are still trying to discover which place he came from.

The names we have for his parents are Ajadia and Mary Moroni.  In a book on Italian names, it gives Morrone as a common surname.  An Italian researcher at the Family History Library in Salt Lake told Sherri and Doris that Ajadia is not a known or even slightly used name in Italy.  However, Marlene was looking on an Italian site and found an article on Italian given names.  The name Egidio, (a Catholic saint) is a name used occasionally now and more frequently in the eighteen hundreds.  So there is much work left to (be) done to try to search this part of our family.  

One time back in the seventies we were visiting with Papa and he was telling us about his father.  He said his father always told he was from Northern Italy and either lived on or near a farm that had olive trees.  He told his little son about growing olives and harvesting and pressing the olives.  These are the two things he always told the same, time after time.

During the years of Joseph’s boyhood, it was common in Italy for young boys between 10 and 17 to leave their families and travel to America to try to make a better life for themselves.  Joseph’s father died when he was quite young, and when his mother remarried, he came to America with her brother.  We are not positive but believe the uncle would have been Giuseppe Morrone.  Both he and his uncle were musicians.  Grandfather played the full sized harp….

Grandfather and the group he was with made their way to Denver and spent some time there.  They earned coins by playing music in front of the saloons, pool halls and other businesses.  There were many Italian musicians, and competition was keen for the best street positions and the coins that the miners, travelers and others were willing to toss in the pot for music the musicians played.  

Somehow, young Joseph was separated from his uncle.  He believed his uncle had been killed by rivals.  He left, fearing for his life, and went west with some people going to Idaho.  He stayed there for a year or two in the Bear Lake area, trying to get a ranch started.  (A) hard winter killed most of his cattle.  A friend named Robert Beers invited him to travel south with them.  They ended up in the San Luis Valley in Colorado.  Somewhere he was introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was baptized by William Ball and Hans C. Heiselt on May, 1881.  He became a U.S. Citizen on June 26, 1881 in Del Norte, Col…. Most of the knowledge we do know about grandfather Mott is told in papa’s life story.”