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Italian Gifts Online July Events
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Italian immigrants to the United States from 1890 onward became a part of what is known as “New Immigration.” Poverty was a main reason for emigrating from Italy, but political hardship and the dream to return to Italy with enough money to buy land were motivators as well. For 80% of Italians, agriculture was their livelihood.
ll met and married in the United States. They immigrated by ship to Ellis Island in their teens. Can you imagine? They had sponsors and went to work at doing what they had learned in Italy. We found letters to them from family members talking about the poverty in Italy. One of our grandfathers was honored in World War I as an Italian soldier in the Battle of Veneto. In the United States an Italian woman from Piemonte could meet and marry a Sicilian man. They met in her father’s bakery shop in Los Angeles. Her father and his brothers won an award at the World’s Fair for their “grizzini”, bread sticks. Our Italian grandparents worked as bakers, in produce, farming, shoe repair, seamstress, and homemakers. Our father and mother followed in their footsteps as our family continues to farm apricots, row crops and make extra virgin, organic olive oil in the San Benito County of California. We come from a family of eight children who grew up in farming, developing a strong work ethic and moral foundation, and continue the culture in which we were raised--Italian-Americans.