The love of Rosie Rosencrants
Bear River, bootlegging, and a Bluenose girl married to the mob
Editor’s note: This is the story of a Nova Scotia family, a teenage girl who caught the eye of a mobster who ran with Al Capone, a tale of love, violence and tragedy. Part 1 of 3.
The Rosencrants moved around a lot.
It was the 1920s and the family lived in Cambridge, Mass., and Maine before returning, to Windsor, N.S., and a home where the post office now stands.
By 1923 they were living among family in Bear River.
The matriarch of the family, Rosie Rosencrants (nee Palmer), was originally from Aylesford.
Her husband Maynard was from Greenland, Nova Scotia.
Yes, there is a Greenland, Nova Scotia.
Rosie was just 16 when she married Maynard in 1904. Maynard was a military man of 25 who also worked in lumber as a labourer.
The couple had three daughters.
Irene was born in Bear River in 1905. Bessie was born in Cambridge and died in infancy in 1907. Florence was born back in Bear River in 1908.
BOOMING BEAR RIVER
In the late 1800s, Bear River was a happening little spot.
The lumber industry was booming.
Bear River was covered in oak, ash, and pine trees. Photos of the town from the 1900s show naked fields from all the trees that were chopped down.
The river was also home to six shipyards. More than 100 boats would be sent to sea by hands from Bear River.
But by the 1920s, the town’s fortunes had started to plummet. The introduction of steamboats and steel killed the demand for wooden vessels. The mature trees were gone, and the lumber industry was headed that way.
Maynard had been disabled by the lumber industry. An injury to his legs in a lumberyard left him with a lifelong rheumatoid condition that made the damp weather cause him extreme pain.
He wasn’t worth a whole lot to the military work after his injury. This caused the family to move between a few places over their younger years.
When Maynard started to accept that he needed more assistance with his family, they moved home.
Any damp weather could leave him bedridden for days
or months.
Rosie knew to take care of him.
RUNNING ON THE RIVER
In 1923, an enterprising Italian-American started to come to Bear River.
Michael Moro was originally from Acerra, Italy. He immigrated to America in 1908 and was living in Buffalo, N.Y.
He’d travel from New York via commissioned boat to Nova Scotia.
Moro claimed he was visiting Bear River in the search of antiques.
Going back and forth and skipping border authorities. Picking up new batches of antiques all the time.
Bringing the antiques back to prohibition America.
It was booze. The antiques were booze.
Moro was using Bear River and other parts of Nova Scotia to serve thirsty Americans their prohibited beverages. Wine, beer and Canadian Rum were all available at his speakeasy on Eagle Street in Buffalo.
While making these trips, Moro befriended the Rosencrants family.
He was just a year younger than Rosie though they were born an ocean apart.
Moro and Maynard surprisingly had a lot in common. Moro’s health was also aggravated by damp climates. A bronchial condition, likely from a prior bout of tuberculosis. When Moro was drafted into the American military in 1918, he was discharged less than six months later.
Occasionally while visiting, Moro would be overcome by his condition and fall ill. Rosie would take him in and care for him.
THE SUMMER OF 1923
During the summer of 1923, Moro bonded with the Rosencrants, but he had goingons back home in Buffalo.
His speakeasy was doing
well, and Moro was making a name for himself in the bootlegging world.
In late July, he took in a young man, a fellow Italian immigrant of hardly 18 years of age named Filipo Sacco.
Sacco was having some run-ins with the law in Boston. Never leaving Boston since he immigrated there as a child, he decided to run away with his friend Tancredi Tortora.
Sacco was already involved with the drug and bootlegging world. Tortora already had a warrant out for his arrest for murder, of which he was guilty.
When Sacco and Tortora were looking for a place to go outside of Boston, Moro was their man.
Moro and Sacco got along well. Tortora was from Moro’s hometown of Accera, a place that is half the size and population of current-day Sydney, N.S.
Sacco started helping Moro out with his bootlegging journeys.
But Moro was distracted. He kept returning to Bear River not just for supply, but for Rosie’s daughter Irene.
Irene was a girl, all of fivefoot-two.
Her light complexion was paired with a small series of moles, beauty marks, on her left cheek. Her dark hair and dark eyes topped her small but healthy frame.
She stood nicely next to a man of five-foot-seven, 16 years her senior.
Both Sacco and Rosie knew.
Sacco and Tortora eventually moved on from Moro’s speakeasy, taking on labour jobs, as young men and figuring out their lives.
Tortora decided the furthest place from Boston was California.
Sacco decided the furthest thing from himself was himself. He changed his name to John Roselli.
Through connections with the Buffalo bootlegging world, the newly named Roselli headed to Chicago. He found himself a job as a driver for an up-and-comer in the underworld named Alphonse Capone. A young guy with scars on his face that Roselli and everyone close to him were told never to ask about.
Roselli would head to California eventually for the warm weather Tortora was writing him about.
IRENE AND MORO
Being in Buffalo it would have been far easier for Moro to hike up to Ontario to stock up his bar.
To go from Buffalo to New York City, find and commission a boat, then do it all again but backward was a lot of work.
But Irene made it worthwhile.
Rosie watched as this man nearly her age was basically climbing mountains for her daughter.
Irene went back to the United States with Moro in the spring of 1926.
Rosie knew when she filled out an official birth certificate for Irene in 1927, she was going to stay.
Katy Jean is a writer and tweeter based in Dartmouth. When not typing away she enjoys chasing after her little boy Vincent, and eating spicy noodles.