My mother's paternal grandparents, Giovanni De Riggi and Rosa Ambrosini. They emigrated from Italy in 1909 and settled in northeastern Pennsylvania.
For Week 7, the theme of genealogist Amy Johnson Crow's 2024 "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" project challenges participants to write on the theme of Immigration.
My ancestors immigrated to the U.S. from Italy. Americans don't usually expect that someone here is descended from only one country; some don't believe me. But it is true for all the lines of my family. I know exactly where my father's grandparents emigrated from. My mother's side is a little more complicated -- or, at least, harder to document. Both sides of her father's family had names that were constantly misspelled, even more so than most Italian immigrant family's names.
My mother's father's family came from Cicciano, a town that is part of the Naples metropolitan area. I have documentation for my great-grandmother's immigration. Rosa Ambrosini arrived on 9 November 1909 with her three oldest children, Giuseppe (12), Filomena (2), and Michele(just one month old). This is different from my grandfather's story. He always said that his brother Mickey (as he was called in the U.S.) was born on the boat coming to the United States, but this does not appear to be true; according to the ship's manifest, he was a newborn when he boarded the boat with his mother and older brother and sister.
My great-grandfather Giovanni De Riggi's immigration is more complex. My grandfather always said his dad crossed the ocean nine times, coming back and forth to work in the U.S. for several months at a time, and then traveling back to Italy to see his family. After four round trips, he finally returned to Pennsylvania for good. A lot of Italian men did the same; they were known as Birds of Passage.
I have found his name on several ship's manifests. A very early one is so badly faded that I can't read the date or much of anything else except his name. I believe another is not actually him but is a relative, maybe a cousin with the same name, who immigrated alone in 1901 at age 16 to join an uncle in Pittsburgh. All of the evidence I've found says my great-grandparents married in Cicciano before they emigrated, and I've never found anything to make me believe he ever lived in Pittsburgh, only in the Eastern part of the state. So I am fairly sure that one was not him.
The first credible date I've found for my great-grandfather's earliest trip to the U.S. is 1904, but his name has been crossed out on the manifest; I believe that may mean he was turned away at Ellis Island and sent back to Italy. In 1905, he seems to have tried again. And this manifest has an intriguing clue: It says he is being sponsored by someone in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania -- the name is the same as my great-grandmother's surname, so I'm thinking it was her brother, who was maybe working in the steel mills there and offered to put him up and find him a job. It was common for companies that hired Italian immigrant labor to encourage their employees to bring relatives over from Italy to work there, as well. As far as I know, when Giovanni De Riggi returned to the U.S. in the next few years, he worked in northeastern Pennsylvania, mining coal and then laying rails for the railroad.
One of his trips back to Italy during that time period, a family story says that there was a shipwreck. Supposedly the passengers and crew were stranded on an island for six weeks, their families back home in Italy thinking they were dead. I have absolutely no evidence that this ever happened. After he returned from that one, my great-grandmother put her foot down and said that was it. She and the children were coming to the U.S., too. In 1909, he emigrated what seems to be one last time. He must have needed time to find a place for them all to live, but a few months later, she joined him in the U.S. with Giuseppe, Filomena, and Michele, soon to be called Joe, Fannie, and Mickey. My grandfather was born in the U.S. a few years later. As far as I know, no one in the family ever returned to Italy.
My great-grandparents Giovanni DeRiggi and Rosa Ambrosini immigrated to the U.S. on the S.S. Madonna in 1909, though he preceded her and their three Italian-born children by several months.
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