The Botto House

The Botto House was the focal point for striking workers during the Paterson Silk Strike of 1913. Eva Botto (standing in this photo) daughter of Pietro and Maria Botto, and a striking silk mill worker, appears with a friend (seated left) and labor leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (seated right) in a photograph taken under the grape arbor of the Botto’s home in Haledon, New Jersey, during the strike.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964) was twenty-two years old at the time of the strike and had been involved with labor activities since she was a youth. Flynn gave two and three speeches a day during the Paterson strike, many of which were delivered from the balcony off the second floor of the Botto House.

At her family’s home, Italian immigrant silk mill worker Maria Botto (1870-1915) ran her household and did “outwork” for the local mills, including the Cedar Cliff Mill in Haledon. A second family income was derived from use of the family’s property as an informal inn. The trolley car that connected Haledon to Paterson made the borough a favorite Sunday recreation spot for workers. The Botto family provided visitors with a bocce court, card tables, wine and Northern Italian cuisine. Marie and her four daughters often served meals to as many as a hundred people who came to Haledon for country outings.

“The women have been an enormous factor in the Paterson strike…They are becoming deeply interested in the questions of the hour that are confronting women and are rapidly developing the sentiments that go to make up the great feminist movement of the world. With them it is not a question of equal suffrage but of economic freedom.” –William D. “Big Bull” Haywood, Industrial Workers’ of the World (I.W.W.), June 1913.

(Inscription in the two boxes on the right) (Top box) , The Botto House is on the New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail because of the significant contributions of silk worker Maria Botto to improving the status of women worker in New Jersey.

(Bottom box)> , The New Jersey Women’s Heritage Trail highlights a collection of historic sites located around the state that represent the significant contributions women made to the history of our state. The Heritage Trail brings to life the vital role of women in New Jersey’s past and present.