Episode 2 - Mary Trbovich
Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate located in Butte, MT
Welcome to Mining City Reflections where we illuminate the history of Butte, Montana through the stories and observations of 20th century women who lived there. I’m your host, Marian Jensen. The oral history collection in the Butte Archives has preserved the personal reminiscences of these women in vivid detail. They bring to life the challenges and achievements of the boom to bust town. During the first half of the last century, the streets of Butte teemed with more than 20 ethnic groups, seeking a new life. The meIting pot image of America was nowhere more evident than in the Mining City.
In this segment we explore the experience of Butte resident, Mary Trbovich, the daughter of Serbian immigrants. Her recollections are documented in an oral history interview recorded by Professor Mary Murphy in 1987, and give a detailed glimpse of one of Butte’s prominent ethnic communities.
“So my mother and her brother came to the United States with my sister Stella. Didn’t know a word of English. But they were very brave, to travel like they did, and not get lost.”
Serbians began arriving in large numbers in America in the late 19th century, with more than 2,000 Serbs living in Butte by 1910. Part of this wave, Mary’s parents, Stana and Louie Markovich, had immigrated from Budva, Yugoslavia near Dubovnick on the Adriatic coast.
Mary’s father had been a stonecutter but soon adapted to mining in the United States, first in Bisbee, Arizona. Then in 1918, when she was four, the Markovichs and their three children moved to Butte where Louie Markovich had a cousin. Mary’s father worked in the mine 16 hours a day.
“Oh, there were very many Serbian people here then, because they all followed mining or whatever job they could get. This was what they were best equipped in. Even if they didn’t have any experience, they knew that they could get a job and live. That was the main thing. Of course, a lot of them had a lot of pressure from shift bosses and people that were over them, and they were forced to do a lot of things that they weren’t supposed to. But they had to do that or else they were out of work! Because a lot of the miners in the mines, they couldn’t live on day’s pay, which was something like $2.75 a day then. So they would work on contract; they’d probably work 14 or 16 hours, just to make more money. And it was better for the foremen to have a showing like this, you know, that all that work was being done.”
Despite the difficult working conditions, the Trbovich family adapted. Mary spoke Serbian at home, learned English at school, and like a lot of immigrant children, taught the new language to her parents. The Serbian community, deeply religious but far from the old country, were keen to have their children retain their Serbian heritage. The children, not so much.
“And then we had Serbian school here. Our priests used to have Serbian school every Saturday. We didn’t run around like the other kids. We had to be downstairs of the church learning our language. We’d have to walk all the way down to the old church in below zero weather, no matter what it was, which is nice that we did! At that time, we resented it, but it was great that we could learn the reading and writing and to speak it.”
Serbian customs followed the Julian calendar of the Orthodox Church which celebrates holidays a week or so later, a difference that clearly set the community apart. This often created embarrassment for their school children who found that an extra Christmas brought unwanted attention.
“We still celebrate the 7th of January, which is according to the Julian calendar. Although, that’s getting smaller and smaller every year because so many now are American-born and it’s too difficult to go through two Christmases. So naturally, you’re going to observe the 25th, which is what your children look for and everybody else. I’ll never forget when I was small how embarrassing it was that we could only observe the Serbian Christmas. We would have the other Christmas vacation and then come back to school and the teacher would want everybody to get up and tell what they got for Christmas presents, and what their Christmas tree was like and so on and so forth. Those of us who were Serbian felt real very badly because we’d have to make up little stories that we got a doll or something, you know. But we didn’t! It was very difficult, and growing up at a time like that was hard on a youngster.”
During her teenage years, Mary worked with her mother, who like many of the women in her community, provided room and board for the many single, Serbian miners. Eating traditional Serbian food, like sarma and povitica, no doubt provided comfort for those far from home.
“A lot of our Serbian women kept boarders at home. My mother used to always have 10 or 12 living at our house. We only had like three bedrooms upstairs for the boarders, and then there would be two double beds in each room. If we didn’t have room for the men to sleep there, then they’d sleep in a rooming house somewhere and come to the house for the meals. I’ll never forget the buckets I’ve washed, and dishes, cooking and all. Yeah we had it pretty rough, and so did our mothers. They used to do their laundry too on a board. No washing machine or anything.”
After graduation from Butte High School during the Great Depression, Mary landed a coveted job at Montana Power, where she earned sixty dollars a month. With her father out of work, she gave her mother her paycheck, the sole income on which the family relied.
In 1935 she married Eli Trbovich from Anaconda which also had a large Serbian population. In the strictest Orthodox tradition of the time, usually only the male congregants were allowed to attend a wedding ceremony. Luckily, Mary’s in-laws were more liberal, and her mother and female members of the family were able to attend the ceremony.
“Now here’s another wedding scene and there are no women in the group; only the men could go. They couldn’t even go to the church to see their own daughter get married. And at that time they didn’t have all the bride’s maids and everything. I was married in ‘35 and at that time, from the part of Yugoslavia where my husband’s people were from, (they were from Lika) they were more, oh what can I say, they went more than these other places, these other communities. Because his mother came to my wedding, and sisters and everybody.”
Marriage meant Mary had to leave her job. Montana Power Co. like numerous corporations, and the School Board, would not employ married women. Only after she separated from her husband in 1941 could she return to her position.
“No, because a lot of companies would not hire married women. I know the Power didn’t. You could not be married and have a job. They were very strict about that. Even when I came back to go to work there, I had to prove that I was separated, and that I was not receiving any support from my two children.”
As an adult, Mary took an active role in her community, and became a founding member of the Serbian Circle of Sisters at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, where they fostered their traditions, even taking the meeting minutes in Serbian. She eventually visited Yugoslavia -- though her mother, like many immigrant women, never saw her homeland or her family again.
“I didn’t realize how nice it was that I could speak Serbian until I went to Yugoslavia and my relatives there were dumbfounded. To think that I could carry on a conversation with them! [laughs] They thought that being that I lived in America that I didn’t know any Serbian.”
By then, the value of her parents’ devotion to their culture became evident. Mary came to appreciate the courage, sacrifice and hard work her parents put forth to make a life for their family in a new country.
“I didn’t realize how wonderful they did with conditions the way they were, until I was older and could see. But we didn’t ever want for anything.”
Mary died in 1992 at the age of 79. Her well-attended funeral was held at Holy Trinity where many of the traditions of the Serbian culture continue even today, a testament to the steadfastness of Butte’s multicultural roots.
Mining City Reflections is a production of KBMF-LP and has been funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Permission for these recordings has been granted by the Butte Silver Bow Archives, the Montana Historical Society and the University of Montana.