The year was 1912. Three Sicilian immigrants: Gaetana LaMarca, Guiseppe Seminara and Michele Cantella, decided to try their collective hands at entrepreneurship and started a small spaghetti manufacturing company on Prince Street in Boston.

Prince Macaroni workers at 90 Prince street in 1912.

They probably never dreamed their project would blossom into the one of the largest pasta companies in the nation. The three men pooled their assets and proceeded to assume different roles. They were very comfortable partners: Mr. LaMarca, the administrator; Mr. Seminara, the salesman; and Mr. Cantella, the manufacturer.

In the early years, they manufactured macaroni on the second floor of 92 Prince Street, later extending to the next building #90. By 1917, requiring more space, they expanded and built a 7-story structure at 207 Commercial Street. Construction included a railroad track that entered into the back of the building along Atlantic Avenue. The semolina used in the macaroni was transported on these railroad cars and was unloaded directly inside.

	Pasta making at 207 Commercial Street, Boston

Twenty years later, they had outgrown that building and again needed more space. Mr. LaMarca spent several years surveying many sites, and then with the cooperation of all the partners, made the move to Lowell.

Prince moved to Lowell in 1939. Guiseppe Pellegrino, another Sicilian immigrant, became involved with Prince in 1940. At that time the three original founders needed additional assistance. In 1940, with a seemingly limitless capacity for work and a knack for publicity, the 34-year-old Pellegrino literally moved into a room at The Prince Co. The young man had come to Lowell looking for a pasta mill to replace the mill that his wife's family had lost in a Brooklyn, N.Y. fire.

The new plant impressed young Pellegrino so much that he actually moved into a room there until he could raise enough money to buy control of the company a year later. The cost: a few thousand dollars.

Original Italian language newspaper ad from the 1940s.

Advertising for the company during the period before the 1950s was mainly done in Italian newspapers since spaghetti and macaroni were considered an ethnic food.

Around 1953, Mr. Pellegrino hired the advertising firm of Jerome O'Leary of Boston where they created the famous slogan "Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day." This was an attempt to introduce non-Italians to pasta products. The advertising at this time was done on radio. Prince sponsored "The Stan Freberg Show"; and later did television commercials sponsoring the Sunday Night Movie of the Week. This was a big advancement for Prince. Joseph P. Pellegrino II continued to take an active part in the business in the early 1960s with aggressive advertising and promotions. In 1969, the famous "Anthony" TV commercial was introduced to the public.

	View Anthony in ReaMedia: Original Anthony New Anthony (Need help viewing? Visit the RealMedia web site to learn more about streaming video and download the RealPlayer player plug-in for free.)

One fall afternoon in 1969, 12-year-old Anthony Martignetti was standing on a street corner near his family's North End home when he was approached by two men who were filming a commercial for Prince spaghetti. The camera followed Anthony as he ran through the narrow alleyways that were so familiar to him. By the end of the day, a legend was born.

There are few who watched television in New England in the 1970s who do not remember the familiar refrain of a woman peering out a tenement window, yelling for Anthony to come home for a supper of Prince spaghetti Since the days of his immense popularity, Martignetti has toiled at various jobs in the food industry, including working in his family's grocery store for many years. Fame also came to Prince pasta; Martignetti's commercial soon had everyone in New England knowing that Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day.

Joseph P. Pellegrino II accepted the reigns from his father and became Prince's President in 1973. The company was in 38 states and had 6 manufacturing plants at the time the Pellegrinos sold it to Borden in 1987 for $164 million.

1912: The Prince Macaroni Manufacturing Co. is opened in a storefront on Prince Street in Boston's North End by three immigrants from Villa Rosa, Italy, named Michael Cantella, Gaetana LaMarca and Giuseppe Seminara.

1917: The company outgrows the Prince Street store, moves to larger quarters on Commercial Street.

1939: The company leaves Boston for Lowell, changing its name to The Prince Co.

1940: Guiseppe Pellegrino, partner and sales manager of the Roman Macaroni Co. of Brooklyn, NY, starts buying product from Prince when Roman is destroyed by fire.

1941: Pellegrino buys controlling interest in Prince and expands its marketing into Connecticut and Rhode Island.

1950s: Prince expands by adding more pasta companies in Brooklyn and Rochester, New York; Chicago, Illinois and Pennsauken, New Jersey.

1965: Prince acquires two more pasta companies and a food engineering company.

1971: Dutch Maid Macaroni Co. of Allentown, Pennsylvania is added.

1972: Joseph Pellegrino II takes over from his father Guiseppe.

1979: Prince expands its Lowell plant into the biggest pasta mill in the country and the companty is reorganized into three separate divisions, Prince Foods, Prince Packaging and Prince Engineering.

1984: Prince builds an $11 million flour mill in Ayer.

1987: Borden Inc. purchases Prince from the Pellegrino family for $164 million.