EXAMINING PATTERNS OF ITALIAN IMMIGRATION TO ...

Italians concentrated in the Houghton County communities of Laurium, Calumet, South
Range, and Hancock. Their community was of national significance as shown by their
symbolic involvement in the famous Italian Hall disaster of 1913 that linked this region to the
larger issue of American labor strife.
They left a rich documentary record in the form of newspapers, diaries, benevolent
society papers and other materials. The purpose of this work is to identify and characterize the
Italians that came to Michigan’s Houghton County during the years between 1870 and 1930.
The following chapters explain the regions of origin of these Italians, their jobs in Houghton
County, the areas where they preferred to settle and the relations, if any, among origins, jobs,
and patterns of settlement.
The starting point for this thesis is the work of Professor Rudolph J. Vecoli - who
wrote extensively on the topic of Italian immigration and is also one of the first to have
written specifically about Italian immigrants to the mines of Lake Superior - and Professor
Russell M. Magnaghi - who wrote particularly on the Italians of Upper Michigan and
interviewed some of them in the 1980s.
Historic documents concerning Italian immigrants to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
may be found at three main repositories. The Michigan Technological University and
Copper Country Archives in Houghton maintains collections of primary sources on the
Italian immigrants of the region, including census records, mining company records,
newspapers, diaries, and benevolent society papers. Databases of the Italians living in
Houghton County in the years 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1930 have been extracted
from the censuses of the same years. Mining company records such as employees’ cards and
job applications have been useful in tracking provenience and places of residence of the
Italian workers. Newspapers such as Il Minatore Italiano and Miners’ Bulletin have been
helpful to know more about everyday life of the Italians in Houghton County.
The Northern Michigan University Archives in Marquette maintains a collection of
oral interviews of Italians living in the Upper Peninsula that Professor Russell Magnaghi of
Northern Michigan University made during the 1980s. The tapes of the interviews helped to
make more sense out of the data previously collected, and to form an idea of how Italians
perceived themselves within their new environment. Besides the tapes, Professor Magnaghi’s
papers represented a rich source for each part of this work.
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