The granite industry changed both the landscape and the demographics of Cape Ann in the nineteenth century. Join Susanna Natti for a CAM Talk to explore the social history of the granite industry’s largely immigrant workers. 

Susanna Natti is a Gloucester native, growing up on the edge of a quarry in Lanesville.  After a career of illustrating children’s books, she has found a new interest in local history and has been following a trail of questions and answers centered around the changing population of northern Cape Ann caused by the rapid expansion of the granite industry in the last half of the 19th century. Susanna’s interest in the story of her Finnish grandparents has led to a widening circle of questions, including wondering what life was like during the period of the great European migration around the turn of the last century and what it might have been like for the newcomers and for the population already here.  The granite industry changed more than the landscape on Cape Ann. It also changed the faces of the population.

Image Credit: Eino Natti (1909-1975) Polyphemus (detail). 1950. Ink on linen, linoleum block print. Collection of the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA. Gift of Annie S. Howells, 1990 [2677].