SHIPS - Italian Immigration to U.S. in the Early 20th Century

This film details the history of Italian Immigration to the United States via steamship in the early 20th century, through the eyes of Gerardo D'Amico. Learn about the business of the immigrant trade and how changing laws and anti-immigration sentiment in America forced the steamship companies to focus more on pleasure cruising. This film provides primary source images from the SSHSA Archive as well as images from personal collections of the D'Amico family and Ted Scull. Images and video from the Library of Congress and in the public domain are also used.

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[chrisventura]

Amazing story salute to all my Paesani in Italia and all over esp Rhode Island. Much love from NY.. Im 2nd and 3rd generation from Queens to LI, I love learning about our People. My family has insane stories as well. Salute.🇮🇹✌🏼🇺🇸

[amymcginty]

God Bless You, Grandma & Grandpa, & Nonna & Nonno for your sacrifices & hard work to establish your lives in The United States of America, and making our lives here possible. Thank you for your love of America & your love for us. Thank you for your dreams & accomplishments, your humor & lessons on how to live & love. Thank you for your love of God🙏 I love you so much & miss you so much I ache. I’ll never forget you & I pray for you always 🙏😘🥰💕💖

[fobxxl]

I wouldn't be here today if my grandparents hadn't come here from Italy in 1906, when my dad was 3 years old.

[annettewhitlock]

My grandfather's radio was confiscated in WWII and he had been here for almost 20 years. When they wanted to give it back to him, he had some choice words for them!

[terryannmaes]

My Italian ancestors on my mom's side actually came here in 1884 from San Fele, Potenza.

[benjaminallen]

Great video. My great grandfather emigrated from northern Italy to Providence, RI. Lived in a tarpaper shack and eventually started doing construction with a shovel and wheel barrow. Through hard work grew into a major roadbuilding corp under the Eisenhower interstate development era. Such interesting times. Much of my family still in RI.

[dablacks]

God bless my four grandparents.
Growing up they were very patriotic to the United States as well as my parents. My father who is a world war two hero.

[modestacattaruzza]

This resilient people came to a very new land, and brought their experience, expertise, indurance, strength, class, finess, fashion, skills of every kind, elegance, cleanliness, cousine smartness and much more. Very proud of them all.

[ZacharyDuhamel]

Gerardo's shoe store is now the site of East Providence City Hall and an excellent coffee shop called Cafe Zara. Will think about his story every time I stop in for an espresso.

[alexmele]

My great granpa migrated to the States in 1905, he entered through Ellis Island, I managed to find the document with his name even if it was misspelled! His name was Santoro and came from Sicily but they spelled it Satoro, ‘forgetting’ the N which made sound his name Japanese rather :)
Anyway he was 25 years old when he landed and he went there as bricklayer, even he probably was more likely an agricultural worker but hey in those days men were able to do many things…he left behind a wife with 2 children by then, some time later, while he was sending money to his wife to go to the States too, she told him she wasn’t going to move to the States! She used that money to buy some land in Sicily and not to buy tickets for the ship! So he went back to Sicily for her and his children leaving the rest of his family, his siblings and other members in St.Louis, Missouri …they went on to have 4 more children and my granma being the last, the 6th child to be born so now I come from that branch that went back to Sicily but I still have plenty of relatives scattered around the States, Missouri, NY, Canada …an amazing mix in a rather romantic family history…some still carry my great granpa surname FIRRERI in the States and some share the same first names like Dorotea, that turned into the English, less nice version of Dorothy for example…intriguing past and I wish I knew more of my American family!
By the way, on the land my great granma bought, my granma and her sister build two houses right across from the beach and those houses are still there! We are not the owners anymore but my granma’s sister descendants still own theirs!!
Does anyone else love this story??

[rosieE]

Matches stories my grandma told us about coming to America. They brought their own food. People dying on board of dysentery. Passing health checks on arrival.

[Tina-bsot]

So proud of my grand parents and parents aunts and uncles who came to US first and then to Canada with only the clothes on their back! Italians are not recognized enough for their hard work and contrbutions to society. They were discriminated agsinst in the early 1900 and never rehashed or played the victims.Worked extremely hard to make a life for themselves and never took a dime ftom anyone!
Working on the railroad and in factoties. Such humble people that had a simple life that shared a loaf of bread among 11 people. Can you imagine living this life? I'm so proud of my Italian family! Thank you yo my grand parents znd mh beloved parents for teaching me ethics, morals and respect!

[Vid]

Very interesting about the restriction of Italian passengers on only Italian steamers. That's a huge loss of revenue.
My mother worked on the Giulio Cesare bringing tourists from Genova to N America

[Donna-cckt]

Proud to be an Italian American. God bless my grandmother

[WinstonSmithGPT]

I encourage everyone to research the ship their family traveled on. You can often see pictures. My grandparents arrived on a tiny tuna can that sank on a subsequent journey.

[modestacattaruzza]

God bless them all for their hard work, stamina 💪🙏 and a lot of guts

[Susan.I]

My grandfather and great grandfather came over together, they worked hard saving money for a trip back to Italy and getting great grandmother and grandma. They were able to buy a house, have children and set up businesses!

[paolazuffinetti]

Very interesting video with important pictures: greatly appreciated, saved to be kept and watched many times.

[nuffsaid]

We need to really appreciate the sacrifice our ancestors made coming to America leaving behind relatives and facing a harsh trip across the Atlantic. Dio benedica

[stricklycorrugated]

My dad was born in 1938 to an Italian mother and a German father. He was raised in a white Protestant San Francisco neighborhood. He did not consider himself white and he told us stories how the other kids told him that he wasn’t bad… for a “dago”. He was much more olive complected than his mother and my grandmother would always remind us that her family was from Northern Italy. This meant nothing to us grand kids. In the 1990s, my dad moved to a small Texas town where he received an invitation letter from the local branch of the KKK. He laughed and said that the KKK must be lowering their recruitment standards. When my sister and I completed our 23 tests and we discovered that my sister is all northern Italian, but I am southern and Sicilian. Which makes sense because, like my dad, in Texas, have always been mistaken for Hispanic. Thanks for sharing. It’s good to know where these attitudes came from historically.