EXAMINING PATTERNS OF ITALIAN IMMIGRATION TO ...

the Toscani (Lucchesi), little the Veneti and very little the Lombardi; Southern Italians are
absent ”. 23
The sources used to verify these data and to track down the provenience of Italian
immigrants to Houghton County have been essentially four: the Ellis Island database that
includes ships’ manifests indicating the last place of residence of the immigrants, the
employment cards of Calumet and Hecla Mining Company kept at Michigan Technological
University and Copper Country Archives that indicate the place of birth of the workers, the
available issues of the Italian newspaper Il Minatore Italiano (The Italian Miner) edited by
Italian immigrants in Calumet starting from 1896 that sometimes included data about local
Italians, and the oral interviews taken by Professor Russell Magnaghi during the 1980s with
Italian immigrants and descendants of the Upper Peninsula in which people talk about their
villages of origin.
It has been possible to establish a region and province of origin for most of the
immigrants sometimes even their city and/or their village. Other individuals cannot be
identified to this level; because the name of the immigrant on the census is not clearly
readable; because the immigrant arrived before 1897 and on the ships’ manifests of the Ellis
Island database only the country of origin is indicated; or because the immigrant arrived in the
US through a port that is not New York and manifests were not accessible. In the case of
married women there is a different problem. If they arrived in the United States with their
husbands or some years later but already married, their name is on the ships’ manifests. If
they married after their arrival, because they changed their surname, their name on the
censuses does not match that on the ships’ manifests. In some cases however, the employment
cards indicate the maiden names of the wives of the workers, so it’s been possible to track
down their provenience.
Children born in the United States from Italian parents were assigned the provenience
of the father if both the parents were Italians and the provenience of the Italian parent if one of
them was not Italian.
23 Castigliano, Attilio. “Origine, sviluppo, importanza ed avvenire delle colonie italiane del Nord Michigan e del
Nord Minnesota”. In Bollettino dell’Emigrazione Vol. 7 (1913), p. 723 and 731.
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