EXAMINING PATTERNS OF ITALIAN IMMIGRATION TO ...

stress a specific pattern of Italian immigration to this county through the years. In fact the
three regions represented in the table will remain in the first place as the sources of
immigration to Houghton County. The table also helps to compare the trend of Italian
immigration to Houghton County with that of general emigration from Italy during this period
(see Figure I, Chapter I). In fact from 1876 until 1900, the so-called first phase of Italian
emigration, most Italian emigrants left from the northern regions of Veneto, Friuli Venezia
Giulia, and Piemonte.
Because some names of the 1880 census match names on the census of the following
years, the documents yielded specific information about the villages (nowadays probably
municipalities) in the province of Torino from which some of them came. The villages are
Agliè, Locana Canavese, Pont Canavese, San Giorgio Canavese, San Martino Canavese, and
Vialfre’. The pattern that starts to emerge and that will be evident in the following years is the
fact that people from the province of Torino were actually coming from a limited area of the
province itself called Canavese (see paragraph 2.4.2 of this chapter).
2.4 Italians in Houghton County in 1900: numbers and provenience
In 1900 the Italian community reaches 2,789. The increase was probably already
evident in 1890, but there are not data available for that year. Of a total of 2,789 people, 1,891
(68%) were born in Italy, 855 (31%) had at least an Italian parent. The rest of them, thirty-two
(1%) were from other nations and married an Italian.
With the increase in number also increased the number of provinces and regions of
origin. There are in fact ten regions and twenty-one provinces represented.
There is no information about the provenience for 675 Italians (24.2%). As for the
others, as Table IV shows, Torino and Lucca remain the first two provinces, with respectively
1,489 (53.3%) and 434 (15.6%) individuals. The third one is Belluno with forty-nine
individuals (1.8%), followed by Bergamo with thirty-eight (1.4%) and Imperia with fifteen
(0.5%). The rest of the provinces with less than fifteen immigrants sum up to seventy
individuals (2.5%).
Marriages with persons from other nations increased. In fact there are nineteen
individuals (0.7%) of other nationalities married to Italians (three Canadian, six German, three
Irish, three American, one Belgian, one Norwegian, one Scottish, and one Swedish).
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