(inspirational music) - [Jim] The story of an era when marrying an immigrant could really cost you, especially if you were an American woman, - This law of 1907, and if an American woman marries a foreign man, she loses her citizenship.

- [Jim] We stop at the Lenten fry that's south city and south of the border.

- Yesterday, we started with the tamales.

Today is the chilies.

All of those things are made fresh.

- [Jim] They're keeping alive a local French dialect that's not as long gone as you might think.

- We were growing up, we just called it French.

- [Jim] The efforts to preserve a language deeply rooted in Old Mines, Missouri.

And a night in St. Louis when one of the country's grandest hotels was destroyed with a few pieces ending up as a local landmark.

It's all next on "Living St.

Louis."

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music) (lively music continues) I'm Jim Kirchherr, and immigration is kind of a hot button issue these days, but in fact, there have been a lot of times in this country's history when immigration was a hot button issue.

Different problems, perceived or real, and different solutions.

Well, one solution in one era is part of my own family's history.

And it's not just the what that happened, it's the why it happened.

Three of my four grandparents were immigrants.

Two were from Germany and one from the part of Austria-Hungary that would become Poland.

But get this, when these home movies were taken in the 1950s, the only one of my grandparents who was not a US citizen was my mother's mother who had been born and raised on a homestead in Western Nebraska.

Here's what happened.

She'd gone to work at the Wheat Growers Hotel in the town of Kimball, and that's where she met my Polish grandfather, who had not yet become a US citizen, although he had served in the US Army in World War I.

They got married in 1919 in the Kimball County Courthouse.

That's when, under a 1907 law, the Expatriation Act, my American grandmother lost her US citizenship.

The United States now considered both of them citizens of Poland, although I'm not sure Poland thought so.

But here's the twist.

If he had been the American and she the immigrant, they'd both be American citizens.

- There's a lot of American law which I can describe which gave the husband a great deal of power in the household.

- [Jim] That's historian and legal scholar, Linda Kerber.

- So their thinking is, if an American born woman marries a foreign born man, he is in charge of the household, and there should be what they called marital unity.

And so marital unity meant a foreign woman marries an American man.

She becomes an American.

An American woman marries a foreign man, she becomes French or German or whatever.

- [Jim] The Expatriation Act was passed at a time of growing immigration and growing concern about immigrants.

There were those who felt that immigrant women were docile and American husbands would make them good citizens.

But American women marrying foreigners seemed to some unpatriotic.

But one issue that didn't have to do with Ellis Island that got a lot of folks riled up was Americans living overseas, and especially galling, was sometimes impoverished European aristocrats, marrying wealthy American heiresses and taking them and their money back home - Was no American good enough for this heiress?

This is horrible.

And the upshot of that is that Congress conceptualizes this law of 1907, which writes into law that practice, that if an American woman marries a foreign man, she loses her citizenship.

- [Jim] But my grandmother was hardly a wealthy socialite or world traveler, which was a good thing, because she now couldn't get a passport anyway.

And then when the 19th Amendment took effect in 1920, giving women the right to vote, it did not apply to all those American women like her who'd married foreigners and were no longer US citizens.

And in a city like St. Louis filled with immigrants from Italy, Poland, Germany, Ireland, there must've been non-citizen immigrant men marrying native born St. Louis women.

There were still expatriation stories on the society pages, but little if any coverage of how all of this was affecting, say, American born shop girls and factory workers.

The Expatriation law was challenged in California where women already had the right to vote.

Ethel McKenzie, a well-to-do San Francisco woman married to a British subject, was turned away from the polls.

She took her case to the US Supreme Court, which upheld the law, saying the Expatriation Act did not take citizenship away.

Women marrying non-citizens were voluntarily giving it up.

And once again, the story was focused on the impact on wealthy and prominent women.

But that wasn't the end of it.

Equal citizenship was part of the women's rights movement, but it was overshadowed by the fight for the right to vote.

And when they got that under the 19th Amendment.

- Members of Congress all are shaking in their boots because they know how to run for reelection with a male constituency.

And now suddenly their constituency has been doubled and they have no idea what these women are going to do.

- [Jim] So Congress did something almost immediately, taking up the citizenship issue, and undoing the 1907 law by passing in 1922, the Cable Act, named for the Ohio Congressman who sponsored it.

- And it provides that when an American born woman marries a foreign man, she can still keep her citizenship.

- But it's not retroactive and that- - But that's the problem.

The Cable act is not retroactive.

- What I also realized was, my mother was born in 1921.

She was only a citizen because she's native born, but neither of her parents were citizens at the time.

- And that brings birthright citizenship right home to the core of your family.

- [Jim] So those like my grandmother did not get their US citizenship restored, even after their husbands became citizens.

They could go through a lengthy naturalization process, which, over the years, would become easier and easier.

And, finally, in 1940, all my grandmother had to do was go to a courthouse, raise her hand, take the oath of allegiance, and, boom, once again, an American.

Wouldn't do it.

Not because it was inconvenient, but out of principle.

She told my mother, her family had been in this country a lot longer than anybody who was going to swear her in.

I don't know if she ever voted or if she tried, if anyone would've stopped her.

All I know is she died stateless, a woman without a country, stubborn, independent, American through and through.

And little more than a footnote in this country's ongoing story of immigrants and citizenship given and taken.

(no audio) If I say it's that time of year, a lot of things might come to mind: baseball, soccer, gardening, spring break, and they've all made for pretty good stories.

But last year, Anne-Marie Berger focused on a springtime tradition that has been, let's say, spiced up a bit.

(bell tolling) - Each Friday during Lent, Catholics are called to abstain from eating meat on Fridays, and we know what that means.

(upbeat music) Fish fries.

(upbeat music) Lenten fish fries in St. Louis are a big draw.

And not just for Catholics, anyone looking for fried fish, a cold beer, and good company are welcome.

And you have your pick.

No matter where you are in the St. Louis region, you can find one.

Now I've never heard anyone use the word competition in reference to the Holy season's fish fry industry, but offering something unique to your menu doesn't hurt.

I'm in the kitchen at St. Cecilia's Catholic Church in South St. Louis as they prep for their Lenten fish fry.

And while I'm sure the fish is delicious, the big draw here is the made-from-scratch Mexican fair.

(lively music) (people chattering) (lively music) - [Customer] Water.

- Yesterday, we started with the tamales.

Today's the chilies and tomorrow, well, of course, it's a big day, but we also make the quesadillas, all of those things are made fresh, so we do it on the spot.

(lively music) - [Anne-Marie] St. Cecilia's Mexican Fish Fry requires three days of food prep before they open their doors to the more than 1,200 hungry visitors each week.

That's three days of volunteers for six weeks.

- I would say we have at least a hundred volunteers, yeah, over the course of the three days.

- [Anne-Marie] Heather Sieve is the business manager for the church.

She also runs this fish fry and manages the massive grocery list.

To give you an idea, each week she orders 50 pounds of onions, eight cases of poblano peppers, 11 cases of cheese.

- I mean, it's just a lot.

I mean, like, I order like 10 cases of tomatoes each week, and that goes into the pico and the salsa and the sauce for the chili.

So, I mean, it's just, it's a lot.

- [Anne-Marie] St. Cecilia's is located in South St. Louis between Grand and Interstate 55.

Masses have been celebrated at this neighborhood church since 1907, but it was in 2005 after many Spanish-speaking immigrants made this church theirs.

The parish received a new designation.

- At that time, we became a personal parish for Spanish-speaking members of the archdiocese.

We don't have a geographical territory.

If you're Spanish-speaking, this is your parish.

(mellow music) - [Anne-Marie] This designation is more than just offering Spanish masses On Sunday.

They receive new Americans from Latin countries and using St. Vincent DePaul and other resources help them find housing and jobs so they can call St. Louis home.

What about English as a second language?

You've got kids that are coming here for school, they're learning English, but their parents might not be.

- Correct, we do have an ESL program that's run strictly by volunteers, which is really nice for adults in the evenings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

So that's helpful.

But it's, there's... We struggle all the time with how can we serve a community that has English-speaking children and non-English speaking parents?

So like trying to find formation and programming for both to bring them two together is a struggle.

I mean, it's a challenge to us all the time.

- [Anne-Marie] It's a challenge, but they have found success and not just connecting generations within the same family.

They're connecting different cultures within the same community.

(lively music) (people chattering) - 2005 comes and we become Spanish-speaking and we're like, We need to do something that is going to highlight both communities, where both communities are working together.

(people chattering) (audience applauding) So that's when we were, like, okay, fish fry.

(lively music) (blender whining) (lively music) - I went to grade school here years ago.

And I'm definitely gonna get all the Mexican food.

I'm not gonna get cod.

I'm not gonna get fish, and I'm not gonna get shrimp.

I'm gonna get what represents them.

(upbeat music) - [Anne-Marie] Since 2008, tens of thousands of people have stood in line to experience this authentic Mexican fish fry.

You know it's a big deal when there's merch.

What do you think's at a Mexican fish fry?

- Hopefully quesadillas.

I'm excited for that.

I don't really know.

I haven't like seen the menu yet, so.

- Some tamales, chilies.

- Tamales.

Ooh, exciting.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to try it all.

- [Anne-Marie] And they're not only celebrating their Latin community.

They've created a much needed source of revenue for their church and school.

- Our buildings are old.

Our church needs a new roof.

- We are not a wealthy community so it's a way that we have to keep a roof on our head.

So to keep our house, the house of our Lord.

- [Anne-Marie] Is it fun?

- Oh, yeah, I mean, you get to talk.

Of course we're in Lent, so.

- You don't wanna have too much fun.

- Exactly.

(chuckles) - We had no idea that it was gonna be what it is, - And it takes a lot of work, but we do it with a lot of love.

- It was so cool that, you know, this had grown into this amazing thing, so.

Yeah, it really is, like, I didn't know it was gonna get emotional, but, yeah, it really was, like, this is what we wanted to do.

Like, this is our community and they need, you know, here we are.

(lively music) (people chattering) - This is the "1930s WPA Guide to Missouri."

It was a project that put writers to work during the Depression.

And in the entry for the then isolated community in Washington County of Old Mines, it says 90% of the population was still speaking of French dialect.

That's just a lifetime ago.

Well, a lifetime later, Veronica Mohesky went searching for what is left of what came to be known as Paw Paw French.

(artists singing in a foreign language) - [Veronica] If you have a good ear for it, you might recognize some French words in this song.

But the songs Dennis Stroughmatt and L'Esprit Creole are performing are not in the standard French you might be familiar with.

- I learned to play this music in Old Mines, Missouri, some as well across the river in Cahokia, starting in like 1990.

And so a lot of the music that we're doing, these are songs, for the most part, that I learned from living people.

These are songs that were in the tradition, old French folk tunes.

- [Veronica] Dennis Stroughmatt first became interested in the language as a teenager, but over the last 30 years has become an expert and a musician in what he calls Illinois Country French.

- I was sort of was told or given the impression that French was gone and that all the music, you know, there's a little bit of music left.

Then what happens is I move to Cape Girardeau and got to talking with a professor there about our traditions and about our history, and he goes, "Oh, no, no, it's not dead, it's not gone."

He said, "You will find a lot of this in Old Mines, Missouri.

(lively music) - The town of Old Mines, Missouri is exactly what it sounds like, an old mining town.

For about a hundred years after the Civil War, it was known for its mining of barite.

Otherwise known as tiff.

And even before barite, lead mining had been the prominent industry in Old Mines since before the 1700s.

And because Old Mines is relatively isolated compared to other early French-speaking cities like Ste.

Genevieve and St. Louis, the unique French language of the area was allowed to thrive.

Missouri French stayed and grew in Old Mines until the late 1900s when the town became less secluded because of better roads and technology.

The language is known by many different names, like Missouri French, Paw Paw French, and Illinois Country French.

it's not a completely different language, but it differs from standard French in some pronunciations, spellings and words.

- We were growing up, we just called it French.

- Yeah, I have no idea what Missouri French or Indiana French or Illinois.

- [Veronica] Joe Politte and Natalie Wilmer grew up listening to their parents and relatives speak Missouri French in Old Mine.

- Every now and then when they would have friends come in, some of the older folks, and they'd be bantering back and forth, you know, and, you know, you've always heard that, well, they're speaking that, so the kids don't understand what they're saying, you know?

Which was kind of true, you know?

- My dad spoke French more even, had a bigger vocabulary than my mom, but he didn't want us to speak French because when he was little, he only spoke French as a child, and his mom would send him to the store up the creek to buy something.

And he would say, she would tell him what it was in English, and he'd say that over and over and over, and he'd get up there and of course forget it when he walked in the door.

Well, all these old guys would be sitting around the potbelly stove there in the store, and they would laugh at him, because he couldn't, you know, say it in English.

So he decided that when we grew up, he, you know, he would not encourage us to speak French.

- [Veronica] The kids in Old Mines at that time were also discouraged by teachers and often punished for speaking Missouri French.

And though neither Politte nor Wilmer considers themselves fluent in the language, they are some of the best remaining speakers of it.

Possibly the youngest speaker of the language is 44-year-old Matheaw Pratt.

- I was actually taking French class in high school, failing it miserably because I was arguing with the teacher that she was saying everything wrong.

- [Veronica] Pratt credits his Missouri French skills to his grandma and Great-Uncle Pete.

- And he had a funny accent.

And so I remember I was staying with my grandmother one day, and I said, "Grandma, why does Uncle Pete talk funny?"

And she kinda giggled and she said, "Well, you know, he was a teenager when he had to learn English."

And I'm like, "What?

Where are you guys from?

She said, "Old Mines, honey.

We grew up here."

- [Veronica] The Creole language didn't just exist in Old Mines, though most of its remaining speakers come from there.

Linguist Adam Paulukaitis says, at one time it was spoken in Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.

- That whole region is called in French, the (speaking in French).

the Illinois French Country.

And so the Illinois French spoken in Missouri is nicknamed Paw Paw French or Missouri French.

- [Veronica] He says, many Missouri French words contain influences from English, Native American and West African languages.

- So in standard French, tornado is (speaks French), which is borrowed from Spanish.

In Louisiana, they call it a (speaks in Paw Paw French) or a (speaks in Paw Paw French).

In Missouri French, they came up with the term (speaks in Paw Paw French) which means twister.

So that's a word you will not find anywhere else in the French speaking world.

- [Veronica] But of course there are hundreds of words, phrases, and spellings that are different.

And Adam Paulukaitis has created a YouTube channel with videos featuring Missouri French words, songs, and folktales.

Many of the videos feature recordings from the early to mid 1900s, and most of the speakers are now deceased.

Paulukaitis Credits a 1930s researcher named Joseph Medard Carriere for making many of these videos possible.

- He recorded, very carefully transcribed over 70 different folktales.

And there are some that actually show influence from West African French-speaking slaves that were brought into the Illinois country in the early 1700s.

Some of their tales have also, aspects of them have come into the Missouri French folktales.

- [Veronica] Later in the 1970s, research into the language in Old Mines continued with the University of Missouri's Dr. Rosemary Hyde.

The researcher published a book of Missouri French folktales and other observations about the language in 1981.

(mellow music) - I'm working on a documentary called "Toujours Icitte" which is really about the, just what I found when I started diving into this, which is a group of people that was able to preserve their cultural patrimony and their stories and songs and language, in spite of pretty incredible odds.

The documentary kind of just blossomed because I learned more and more about kind of the present state of things.

- [Veronica] How many people would you say, you know, either speak Paw Paw French or do you think speak Paw Paw French or at least some?

- About 10, you think?

- Yeah, maybe 10.

(chuckles) - Maybe 10 people left that speak it- - In the surrounding area.

- I would be hard pressed to say that there is any one person who speaks it completely fluently.

There are people alive now who spoke it as children fluently, and there are several people who were children or grandchildren of native speakers that still retain a lot of words, a lot of phrases, they can understand.

But, unfortunately, the language itself, that dialect is restricted to a few people, and it is on the way out.

Unfortunately, it is not going to continue as a native language for anyone.

(vehicle whirring) - It is, yeah.

- So there's no motivation to learn it, because what are you gonna do with it, you know?

(group singing in Paw Paw French) - I hate to see it die out, you know?

And I don't, you know, that sounds, I guess, morbid, but it's not, you know, it's not...

There's just, the interest isn't there in the young people, but I think it helps to know to remember a little bit of where your ancestors came from.

- [Veronica] And there is plenty of work being done to make sure the language isn't forgotten.

Dennis Stroughmatt and L'Esprit Creole perform Illinois Country French all over the region, including a recent performance at the January 6th, Twelfth Afternoon Ball at the Gateway Arch.

(lively music) (Dennis singing in Paw Paw French) - [Veronica] Besides the work of people outside Old Mines, like Adam, Brian, and Dennis, the descendants of the Missouri French are trying to spread the language as well.

Natalie Wilmer teaches students at St. Joachim's School "La Guignolee", a New Year's song in Missouri French.

She also teaches adults interested in learning or brushing up on the language.

Old Mines also host a variety of French events every year, and the Historical Society is working on establishing a historic village, filled with real cabins once inhabited by French Missourians.

(Dennis singing in Paw Paw French) = [Veronica] But it's up to the younger generations to keep awareness of the language and its history alive.

- My hope is that there is some way that it still continues.

And even if that is in song, that's how I learned it, was through the song.

Those stories are what led me to fluency.

- [Veronica] He says the language is still an important part of the identity of Creole French people.

- If you don't know where you come from, you don't know where you're going.

And so to me, it's about a preservation for us as a community, you know, and in our French Creole communities, as far as food, language, events, it's what holds us together.

(lively music) (upbeat music) (typewriter typing) (rack cracking) (typewriter rattling) - [Jim] On the evening of March 30th, 1867, a great public calamity, according to a St. Louis newspaper, the city's grandest hotel, said to be the largest in the country, some said one of the biggest in the world, burned down.

The Lindell Hotel was its sixth in Washington.

It opened with great fanfare in a fancy ball in 1863.

It was six stories tall, and that turned out to be a problem that Saturday night.

The fire started on the fifth floor, and firefighters had no way to reach that high, but it had spread slowly, and all 400 guests were able to get out, but they lost everything in their rooms.

The news was reported around the country.

The New York Daily News called it the tallest and stateliest hotel in the country, and praised the efforts of firefighters.

But a Chicago newspaper took some shots at its rival to the South, criticizing the ineffective fire brigade, and citing the city's lack of public spirit and municipal enterprise as a factor in what it called an unaccountable conflagration.

Of course, much of Chicago would burn down four years later.

In St. Louis, there was immediate talk of rebuilding the hotel.

It took time and money to undertake the dangerous job of clearing the ruins.

But in 1874, a brand new Lindell Hotel was open in the city.

That one was torn down in 1905.

You can still see the remnants of the original scorched building blocks removed at Tower Grove Park to create a picturesque spot called The Ruins.

All that's left from the great Lindell Hotel, which burned down this week in St. Louis history in 1867.

(mellow music) And that's "Living St.

Louis."

You can find these stories and more on our Nine PBS YouTube channel and at NinePBS.org/LSL, where you can also leave questions and comments.

Well, thanks for joining us.

I'm Jim Jim Kirchherr.

And we'll see you next time.

(lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) - [Announcer] Living St. Louis is funded in part by the Betsy & Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.