Why Did Your Immigrant Ancestors Leave Home?

In January I mapped out 12 small genealogy projects to add to this year's calendar. They're all projects I've wanted to complete, but I never seemed to make time for them. This plan has been worthwhile and productive, so I want to make sure I map out 12 projects every year.

My project for August was "Look into local social conditions". I wanted to find out what was happening in Italy when my immigrant ancestors left home forever.

Those precious vital records in your family tree can't tell you what your ancestor's life was like. This tool can.

I don't have a lot of immigrant ancestors since my roots in my home country are not very deep. I have:

• Two 2nd great grandparents who left Italy for New York in 1898.
• Four great grandparents who left Italy for New York in 1899, 1902, and 1906.
• Two grandfathers who left Italy for New York in 1920.

Based on these eight immigrants, I started a chat with Microsoft Copilot. After answering my questions, Copilot suggested follow-up questions that I pursued.

What Was Going On in 1920?

I asked, "What were the social conditions in the Benevento province of Italy when my grandfather emigrated to New York in November 1920?"

When I visited my ancestral hometowns, I fell in love with them. I wondered how my ancestors could ever want to leave. I've since learned that poverty in Southern Italy was a strong driving force. This chat (which cited its sources) told me about three dominant forces in the area at the time:

1. The political climate left Southern Italy with no opportunities for growth and modernization. These were farming communities, and only the wealthy owned land. That wasn't about to change. In 1919 and 1920 there was unrest over these conditions. There were strikes and social agitation that often ended in violence.
2. The economy in the south took a beating due to post-World War I inflation and unemployment. There were no opportunities for either of my grandfathers.
3. My grandfathers may have felt an obligation to provide for their families. They couldn't do that if they stayed home and worked the land.

It's also worth noting that the Spanish flu lasted from 1918–1920. This caused further hardship and increased the conditions of poverty.

What About Earlier Years?

Next I thought about my maternal great grandparents. I asked, "Were the social conditions any different in 1898 and 1899 in nearby Sant'Angelo a Cupolo, Benevento?"

The answer surprised me. Things were much worse at that time. In 1898 there was rioting over food insecurity. It was a nationwide crisis, but it hit much harder in Southern Italy. It started with a bad wheat harvest and skyrocketing grain prices. Protests in cities as close as Napoli ended with shootings and military intervention.

This was the year my 2nd great grandfather took his whole family to New York. Well, he did leave behind one daughter. She and my great grandfather followed in 1899 after marrying, having a baby, and losing that baby.

And In-Between Years?

My paternal great grandparents didn't meet until they came to America. I asked about my great grandmother's town when she left in 1906. "What was happening in Pescolamazza, Benevento, when my great grandmother emigrated in 1906, following several of her brothers?"

It seems that in 1906, as in 1898 and 1920, poverty was a major factor. Poor people like my ancestors didn't own the land they worked. Their situation sounds like that of the sharecroppers in the U.S. South. They never earned enough money to pay their debts and lived in a state of extreme poverty.

My great grandmother was the last of her siblings to come to New York. It's possible her parents were dead by 1906. Her brothers sent for her in upstate New York. Within four months, she married their friend and paesan, my great grandfather.

As suggested by Copilot, I asked about the daily routine of people in Pescolamazza in 1906. All my ancestors came from rural hill towns, located close together. So the description would fit them all.

Copilot gave me a detailed itinerary of a family's typical day. This includes what they ate, where they worked, and how they interacted with the community. It was a demanding life. I can appreciate how much easier it seemed to them once they came to America. They still worked hard, but they were able to thrive.

I copied the conversation into a Word document to save. I titled it "Southern Italian Social Conditions & Emigration". I'll follow up by chatting about living in a tenement building in the Bronx, New York, in the early 1900s.

What would you like to learn about your ancestors' lives and motivation?

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There was one month's project this year that was a bust—but I still plan to make it happen. I wanted to find more documents to digitize using HandwritingOCR, but I couldn't come up with any! I'd already digitized:

• my handwritten notebook of ship manifests
• a few books about my ancestral hometowns
• my brother's college paper documenting our family history.

I couldn't think of anything else.

Then I had an idea. What about my college thesis (a novel)? I can't seem to find it, but I have a few other items I'd love to turn into Word documents. There are my notebooks from when I was a college film student and two short novels I wrote after college. I'd love to recover these works through digitization.

Which projects have you had on the back burner for ages? What if you scheduled time for a couple of them? What's stopping you?