EXAMINING PATTERNS OF ITALIAN IMMIGRATION TO ...

were volunteer followers of Giuseppe Garibaldi who fought during the second and third
Italian Independence War. The Carabinieri is a Corps of the military formed in 1814 that
became the first Corps of the Italian army after the unification.
Finally some societies are named after important men in Italian and American
history such as Romulus, Christopher Columbus, and the Duke of Abruzzi. Romulus was,
according to the legend, the son of Mars and eponymous founder of Rome who, with his
twin brother, Remus, was reared and suckled by a wolf. Christopher Columbus (1451
Genova - 1506 Valladolid) was an Italian explorer in the service of Spain who determined
that the earth was round and attempted to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe, thereby
discovering America in 1492. The Duke of Abruzzi was in fact Luigi Amedeo di Savoia
(1873 Madrid - 1933 Duke of Abruzzi village, Somalia). He was an explorer and a general
of the navy during World War I.
Despite their different origins, aims, and membership, when the Italian population in
Houghton County, and also in other parts of the Upper Peninsula, became smaller, some
societies decided to unite. The Colonial Union among the Italian-American Societies of the
Figure XXVII. Front page of the bylaws of
the Colonial Union among the Italian-
American societies of the Counties of
Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon
established in Calumet in 1907 [Northern
Michigan University Archives].
Counties of Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon (Unione Coloniale fra le Società Italo-
Americane delle contee di Houghton, Keweenaw ed Ontonagon) was founded in Calumet
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