If you are among the many ancestors of immigrants who left from Sant’Agata railway station, you might be interested in reading the Cleveland Memory Project on Italian Americans at http://www.clevelandmemory.org/italians/partiii.html.
It refers to the specific chain of migration from Sant’Agata (they mean the area around Sant’Agata) to Cleveland. The website covers all kinds of interesting points about how the immigrants lived and worked. For example, it credits the Sicilian immigrants with a unique way of caring for each other, basically reproducing the familial and town (paese) relationships here in the US. They also created mutual aid societies like the Sant’Agata Fraterna which helped find and secure jobs. It discusses the churches, festivals, etc.
The chain of migration is named for Sant’Agata, but it includes other towns: Militello Rosmarino, Alcara li Fusi, San Marco d’Alunzio, San Fratello, Acquadolci, Piraino (my grandfather’s birthplace), Naso (my maternal great-grandfather’s birthplace), and many others. By the time of this immigration, Sant’Agata was the political and economic center of its region. Consult a map of northeastern Sicily, and you will find many small towns for which Sant’Agata served as the initial point of departure.
If you check the Ellis Island records (available online), look for “point of departure” which will often be the rail station, and at the far right you will find “place of birth.” This will help you in your search. If I can help, let me know.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Sant'Agata Militello Train Station
The Sant'Agata railway station is still there and in use. These pictures show the stop itself, the water tower, and the mechanics of filling the steam engines.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Getting Started
This is not a “travel blog,” per se. I have been visiting Sicily with the purpose of finding and understanding the Sicily that my grandparents left when they emigrated from Sicily to the US at the turn of the twentieth century. I have learned about folklore and folk customs, as well as the “lifestyle” of Sicilians of that generation, both those who stayed and those who left. I want to share my experiences with those are interested in Sicily itself, but even more specifically with those whose families emigrated from Sicily as my grandparents did and might want to know more about their own heritage.
My story begins five years ago I was all-of-a-sudden overwhelmed by the need to know my Sicilian grandfather, Antonino Serraino. He died when my father was only seven, after having been ill for most of my father’s life. Dad had few memories to share with me. The family said they didn’t want to remember the sadness. By the time I started to question my grandmother, she had already developed dementia, so that I could not be certain that she even recognized me. Nevertheless, one day my question did penetrate her fog. She seemed to look into the past for that answer: he was a good man.
So in my mid-fifties, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, let alone explain, I felt that I wanted to crawl up on his lap for the hearty hug that I have watched other Sicilian grandfathers give their granddaughters.
In two months I was on a plane to Palermo, Sicily, Italy, with my 25-year-old daughter Anne. Anne deeply loves and appreciates her own Sicilian grandfather (my father), but also, I think, was along to watch over her out-of-her-mind mother. I hadn’t tried, and wasn’t going to try, to locate any relatives. I uncharacteristically gave way to spontaneity. I was convinced that if I could experience Sicily as much as possible the way that my grandfather had experienced her, Sicily might embrace me. No plans would get in the way. Somehow my grandfather would reach across time and show us his Sicily.
We headed for Sant’Agata Militello, the town that is home to the railway station that is listed as “point of departure” on the Ellis Island record. This is one place we could be sure he had been. We hoped the original building was still there. It seemed to be the obvious place to begin to find his world.
If there were any doubt that I was following the right path, it was settled as soon as we reached Sicily.
We were driving from Palermo airport toward Sant’Agata. Tired, but anxious to see more than what a modern turnpike has to offer, we chose to leave the autostrada and make our way to the coastal road. SS 113 hugs narrow curves of land bordering the sea; it passes through small shuttered towns pausing in the heat of the August afternoon sun. The riotous hot colors—reds, oranges, and fuchsias of oleander and bougainvillea--cascade onto the road, while on the other side the blue sea is constantly reflecting the blue of the sky that is reflecting the blue of the sea. All are bathed in the angle of sunlight that sets every color glowing. Mediterranean blue can scarcely be called a cool color.
A train headed for Palermo passed us. We finally noticed SS 113 had been running parallel to train tracks. We were retracing the very route that my grandfather had taken as he departed by train almost a century earlier, seeing what he had seen, the timeless landscape of Sicily.
I told Anne about my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt Josephine, stirring a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, shouting at her near-deaf father, (my great grandfather on my grandmother’s side), “Sicily is just a pile of rocks. Why do you want to go back there?”
These were the words of a woman who had been born in the US and had never seen Sicily. Anne and I already knew why he wanted to return.
My story begins five years ago I was all-of-a-sudden overwhelmed by the need to know my Sicilian grandfather, Antonino Serraino. He died when my father was only seven, after having been ill for most of my father’s life. Dad had few memories to share with me. The family said they didn’t want to remember the sadness. By the time I started to question my grandmother, she had already developed dementia, so that I could not be certain that she even recognized me. Nevertheless, one day my question did penetrate her fog. She seemed to look into the past for that answer: he was a good man.
So in my mid-fifties, for reasons I cannot begin to understand, let alone explain, I felt that I wanted to crawl up on his lap for the hearty hug that I have watched other Sicilian grandfathers give their granddaughters.
In two months I was on a plane to Palermo, Sicily, Italy, with my 25-year-old daughter Anne. Anne deeply loves and appreciates her own Sicilian grandfather (my father), but also, I think, was along to watch over her out-of-her-mind mother. I hadn’t tried, and wasn’t going to try, to locate any relatives. I uncharacteristically gave way to spontaneity. I was convinced that if I could experience Sicily as much as possible the way that my grandfather had experienced her, Sicily might embrace me. No plans would get in the way. Somehow my grandfather would reach across time and show us his Sicily.
We headed for Sant’Agata Militello, the town that is home to the railway station that is listed as “point of departure” on the Ellis Island record. This is one place we could be sure he had been. We hoped the original building was still there. It seemed to be the obvious place to begin to find his world.
If there were any doubt that I was following the right path, it was settled as soon as we reached Sicily.
We were driving from Palermo airport toward Sant’Agata. Tired, but anxious to see more than what a modern turnpike has to offer, we chose to leave the autostrada and make our way to the coastal road. SS 113 hugs narrow curves of land bordering the sea; it passes through small shuttered towns pausing in the heat of the August afternoon sun. The riotous hot colors—reds, oranges, and fuchsias of oleander and bougainvillea--cascade onto the road, while on the other side the blue sea is constantly reflecting the blue of the sky that is reflecting the blue of the sea. All are bathed in the angle of sunlight that sets every color glowing. Mediterranean blue can scarcely be called a cool color.
A train headed for Palermo passed us. We finally noticed SS 113 had been running parallel to train tracks. We were retracing the very route that my grandfather had taken as he departed by train almost a century earlier, seeing what he had seen, the timeless landscape of Sicily.
I told Anne about my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt Josephine, stirring a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, shouting at her near-deaf father, (my great grandfather on my grandmother’s side), “Sicily is just a pile of rocks. Why do you want to go back there?”
These were the words of a woman who had been born in the US and had never seen Sicily. Anne and I already knew why he wanted to return.
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