\u201cThe Texas Miner,\u201d a line of newspapers published in Thurber that, to our knowledge, ran from January 27, 1894 to October 26, 1895. This series was unique in that it had a dedicated section written in Italian to be enjoyed by the town\u2019s substantial Italian population. These articles, titled \u201cCronaca Italiana\u201d or \u201cItalian News\u201d, primarily gave the latest reports on local events relating to the company and the Italian community in the company town. It also recorded Italian national news and occasionally reported on American national and wider European news. The sole publisher of these Italian articles starting from Volume 1 Number 9 was a man named \u201cA.N. Ivancich.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paolo Antonio Nicolo Ivancich and Anne Marie Vidulich gave birth to Antonio Nicolo Ivancich in Lussinepiccola on June 11, 1866. Born to a Catholic family, the family Christened little Antonio at two days old. The name and location of the parish church remains unknown. He was one of the seven children born into the Ivancich household, though this number would increase to 14 by 1875.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His birthplace, Lussinepiccola, now called Mali Losinj, has long held the position as the largest town on the island of Losinj, which sits in the Kvarner Gulf in the Northern end of the Adriatic sea that separates the Italian peninsula from the Balkans. Today, the Losinj island belongs to the Republic of Croatia, but at the time of Antonio Ivancich\u2019s birth it was under the rule of the Austrian Empire; ruled by the famous, or perhaps infamous, Habsburg dynasty. A year after Icancich’s birth, the country underwent a shocking political upheaval and was transformed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a nation most well known for fighting in World War I, and collapsing afterwards. This part of Croatia, despite its location in the historical homeland of the Croats, has always had significant Italian influence and settlement, which explains Antonio and other of his family members\u2019 names; all of whom have traditional Italian first names combined with the Croatian surname.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Very little is known about Ivancich before his voyage to America, but it can be surmised that his family was comparatively wealthy, as he was able to read and write, alongside knowing how to use a typewriter. The Imperial Austrian educational system is a different topic, but it stands to reason that the Ivancich\u2019s, if not wealthy, were very committed to their children’ s education. Whatever the case, Antonio felt discontent in Austrian Croatia, because in 1880, he was found in New Orleans, Louisiana, at only 14. He was still there by 1886, as revealed in a city directory, which also shows him with his future brother-in-law, Simon Antonius Ambrosius Cosulich, a fellow native of Lussinepiccola. Antonio was 20 and Simon was 39 at this time. They may have come over together in 1880, as letting a 14 year old boy travel to a new country on his own would be risky, but it was not outside the norm for people in their teens to go off on their own during this. In 1890 he applied for a passport in Chatham county, Georgia, where some Savannah, Georgia directories show him living in Georgia in 1889-1890. Interestingly, the one from \u201989 shows his working for \u201cM.S. Cosulich & Co. as a clerk. This company could be related to Simon. The passport, being what it is, shows that he left the country for a time, likely to visit his hometown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1894 he was in Thurber, Texas, as evidenced by him being the one and only Italian writer for \u201cThe Texas Miner.\u201d It\u2019s likely that he arrived sooner than 1894 as it\u2019s unlikely that he would make such a long journey for the sole purpose of being a writer for The Texas Miner, as the company made no announcement that it intended to start the newspaper. Rather, according to early issues of The Texas Miner, he worked in the mercantile department of T&P at the general store. While it is not known exactly when he arrived in Thurber, we do have a much tighter window for when he left Thurber. In The Texas Miner volume 1 issue 24 for June 30, 1894, the Cronaca Italiana<\/em> says that Ivancich moved to Fort Worth but will still be writing for the newspaper. The issue on June 23 makes no mention of this. It can be estimated that Ivancich moved to Fort Worth between the release of those two issues. It is not known why he chose to leave Thurber, though a job-related reason is most likely. In a 1902-1903 Fort Worth city directory, there is a mention of an Anthony Ivancich working as a cotton classer. This was a way of saying cotton merchant, which reflects the job description on the previously mentioned passport application. Antonio going by Anthony reflects a fairly common phenomena for immigrants; this name change was either personal choice, necessity for fitting into a culture where being Italian was looked down on, or simply an error. However other mentions of him after this do not use Anthony. Two years after moving to Fort Worth, he is found filling out another passport application in Bell County, Texas. Revealing that he had moved to Temple and matches how he met his wife, Clara Denny. This passport also shows that he left the country for a second time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clara Denny was born in Bell County and married Ivancich in Fort Worth in 1901. In 1902, they gave birth to Paul Nicholas Ivancich. After the birth of Paul, the family moved back to Temple and were living there by 1910. Not much is known about the family during this time except that they were wealthy enough to go on a vacation to Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After this point, the Ivancich family is not consistently found in one place. Both Antonio and Clara proved to be busybodies. Antonio found himself in a myriad of business ventures and Clara involved with many social groups in the local communities they found themselves in. The family is found going between Temple and San Antonio often, and occasionally found in Austin. Antonio found varried work, anything from selling real estate to serving as the president of the San Antonio Cotton Exchange. This shows a very industrious man who always leapt at opportunities for financial gain.On February 7, 1938, Ivancich died in Houston, Texas. He passed from his old age. Clara passed on only months before, and their son and only child Paul made the trip back to Texas from Massachusetts to organize his father\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Antonio Nicolo did not have the largest impact on Thurber. The Texas Miner would be the only newspaper in the town to have sections in Italian, so after the newspaper ended, so did Ivancich\u2019s contribution to the town. One might think that a short presence like Ivancich\u2019s would be forgotten in a long dead ghost town, but sometimes certain people have a perplexing tendency to stick around; in this case it was a passing name in a newspaper that even I initially paid no mind to. Even if he had been erased from the town\u2019s memory, Thurber was neither the beginning nor the end of his story. He traveled the ocean from his little island town to find a new life in a new country, he went on to start a family, and he took every opportunity life tossed his way. In the grand scheme, this is the story of an adventurous and industrious man whose exciting life of travel landed him in the booming company town of Thurber, Texas, if only for a little while. His life, and story, serves as a snapshot of how Thurber connected to state, national, and global life even in little ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Traslations from Italian to English necessary for this blog post were made utilizing AI. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Clinton Nelson \u201cThe Texas Miner,\u201d a line of newspapers published in Thurber that, to our knowledge, ran from January 27, 1894 to October 26, 1895. This series was unique in that it had a dedicated section written in Italian to be enjoyed by the town\u2019s substantial Italian population. These articles, titled \u201cCronaca Italiana\u201d or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","wds_primary_category":35,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[40,39,38],"class_list":["post-4703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-of-thurber","tag-history","tag-newspaper","tag-thurber"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"lhart","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/author\/lhart-2-2-2\/"},"featured_img":null,"coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["People of Thurber<\/a>"],"unlinked":["People of Thurber<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["History<\/a>","Newspaper<\/a>","Thurber<\/a>"],"unlinked":["History<\/span>","Newspaper<\/span>","Thurber<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 22 hours ago","modified":"Updated 22 hours ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on August 25, 2026","modified":"Updated on August 25, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on August 25, 2026 9:01 pm","modified":"Updated on August 25, 2026 9:01 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4708,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4703\/revisions\/4708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/308\/2026\/08\/Cronaca-Italiana-editor-A.N.-Ivancich.png\")
![\"Antonio](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/308\/2026\/08\/Antonio-Nicolo-Ivancich-699x1024.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/the-industrious-historian\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/308\/2026\/08\/Clara-Denny-Ivancich.jpg\")