Mount Union borough

Peduzzi's Soda and Lunch

Peduzzi's Soda and Lunch, the counter at the heart of downtown. Look down at the doorway and the name is still set in tile.

The man behind it had come a long way to stand there. Charles H. Welch wrote him up in 1909 as “the Mount Union Confectioner”. T. C. Peduzzi was born in Lombardy, in northern Italy, on 16 March 1867. He spent fourteen years in Italy, then five travelling the Swiss cantons of the Alps, working as a stone mason. At nineteen he went to France and stayed four years. In 1890 he came to America, and went west — Montana and Washington — before he ever saw this town. Welch says he had travelled through thirty-one states.

A stone mason from Lombardy by way of the Alps, France and the American West, keeping a soda counter in Mount Union.

Checked against the record. SOURCED. The page had no source at all and described the counter without ever saying who kept it. CONFIRMED from Welch, page 406, written while Peduzzi was in business: born in Lombardy in northern Italy on 16 March 1867; fourteen years in Italy; five years through the cantons of Switzerland, a stone mason by trade; France at nineteen for four years; to America in 1890, settling in the West in the region of Montana and Washington; travelled through thirty-one states. A NAME NOTE. The chapter heading reads PEDUZZI and the first line of the text reads “Perduzzi”. The index, the tile in the doorway and every other mention say Peduzzi, so that is what the page uses; the variant is a slip in the book rather than a second spelling worth preserving.

Sources