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Italian Immigration Story: My Nonna Left Her Baby Behind
Imagine my shock when I discovered my great-grandmother had two children in Italy, but left one of them there. This is my nonna’s Italian immigration story.
This changes everything about the story that I had created about her.
After her husband died leaving her with a young son, I thought that she, her son, and her father all emigrated together from Schilpario, an alpine village in the province of Bergamo, to start their new life together in New York.
I imagined that the three of them lived in Brooklyn together near other Italians. I assumed that one day her father was out working and he heard a familiar accent. It was the voice of my great grandfather who had emigrated from a small town near Bergamo.
So happy to hear the familiar Bergamasque rhythm, he introduced this man to his daughter and the rest was history: my great-grandfather and great-grandmother fell in love and got married.
However, a strange discovery changed everything.
The Shocking Discovery
I had a question about something in a report that my genealogist, Elena Gissi of EGAncestry Research, had done for me after our visit together last summer to the church archives in Schilpario, Italy — if you’re curious about researching church archives, here’s what to know about Italian parish records.
Her report showed that my great-grandmother had two children in Schilpario with her first husband, not one as I had thought.
I knew my great-grandmother, Angela, had brought her son, Pietro, with her when she emigrated to New York. In fact, realizing he was her son from a previous marriage was the key in my Italian genealogy research that unlocked the entire mystery of my ancestors and showed me where they came from.
But what happened to the daughter? Neither I nor the genealogist could find a death record for her.
Violante Spada was the daughter of Angela Grassi and Giovanni Spada, indeed! However, the mystery is…what happened to her?
Elene Gissi, genealogist
I started poking around again in Portale Antenati trying to find the death record of her baby daughter. But then I found something weird.
I found a record of my great-grandmother’s daughter Violante Spada getting married in Schilpario. And 9 months later, she had a son, Giovanni Ambrogio Grassi.
This means that my great-grandmother’s baby didn’t die. Instead, she brought only her son with her when she emigrated, but she left her five-year old daughter in Italy to grow up on her own.
As a mother myself, I can’t imagine leaving my young daughter behind.
From Confusion to Hope
Once I got over the shock and disbelief, I felt hope. The daughter she left behind did not die as an infant, but rather grew up and started a family of her own in Schilpario. She also always listed my great grandmother as her mother on important documents, so they must have stayed in touch.
It turns out that it was actually pretty common for Italians to leave a child in Italy. They assumed the situation would be temporary. Either they would return to Italy or their children would join them in the New World.
Unfortunately for Angela, that didn’t happen. She was stuck in New York giving birth to five more children. She died before she had a chance to see her daughter in Italy again.
However, this means that I have close relatives that continued to live in Schilpario, and maybe their descendants still do, or at least maybe there are people who have a memory of them. And my genealogist confirmed this.
This finding re-writes the history of the family, because there may actually be descendants of Violante in Italy.
elena gissi, genealogist
Who Raised the Daughter Left Behind?
Up until finding these records, the story that I had imagined was that after her first husband died, my great grandmother had emigrated with her young son and her father.
I assumed this to be true because my great-grandmother’s father, Francesco Grassi, is listed as a witness on her marriage certificate to my great grandfather. I know that families usually emigrated together so that made sense.
But as I continued to poke around in my relentless quest to learn Angela’s story, I realized that Francesco Grassi only came to New York to see Angela get married.
After making sure she was safely married, he returned to Italy. After his first wife (Angela’s mother) Violante Mai died, he remarried and had another daughter (my great-grandmother’s half sister, Violante Grassi).
Now I presume he and his second wife raised both their own daughter and Angela’s young daughter.
This again gives me hope that I have close relatives still in Schilpario.
Understanding Her Italian Immigration Story: Was My Great-grandparents’ Marriage Arranged?
In a previous ancestor story, I painted a beautiful picture of how both my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother emigrated separately from the same region and then met each other in New York and fell in love because they recognized each other’s speech.
But now after discovering Angela left her five-year-old daughter behind in Italy and that her father returned to Schilpario, I realize that it was not all love and roses, but must have been an arranged marriage.
Which makes more sense actually. My great-grandfather was a peasant son of an abandoned orphan while my great-grandmother was the daughter of homeowners. My great-grandfather was at the bottom of the social barrel while my great-grandmother came from a well-to-do educated family.
She did not want to leave Schilpario — her family, security, her home — and she did not want to leave her young daughter there. She was forced to. She was a widow with two young children in a town with no marriage prospects for her.
My great-grandfather was an immigrant widower in New York who needed a wife. They came from the same area. It was obviously an arranged marriage. (What happened in New York is another gripping story — one that I still need and plan to write.)
I would love to find some evidence for this arranged marriage theory. I wonder how men advertised for a wife back in the old country. I also wonder what kind of deal was made between the parties.
In fact, it suddenly occurs to me that the priest of St. Francis Church in Hoboken, where they married, may have been the very matchmaker who brought them together. The betrothed probably met for the first time on the church steps.
Did My Great-Grandfather Make Her Leave Her Girl?
Another possibility is that, living in a boarding house, my great-grandfather might have found my great-grandmother through the campanilismo network.
Maybe he mentioned at dinner that now that he had work, he was looking for a woman to keep a house. Another boarder might have replied, “My cousin back in Schilpario knows a good, respectable woman. Her husband died leaving her with two children and her family is desperate to find her a secure situation.”
My great-grandfather might have set the terms. He probably agreed that she could bring the 6-year-old boy because soon he would be able to earn money and contribute to the household. But he said he wouldn’t take on her daughter. Angela had to leave her in Schilpario.
That must have been excruciating for my great-grandmother. But she had no choice.
Did My Great-Grandmother Write Letters to Her Daughter?
Another fascinating thing I learned last year during my trip to Schilpario during our guided tour of the ethnographic museum, was that children in the Val di Scalve went to school through the third grade. This means that my great-grandmother knew how to read and write.
I am sure Angela kept in touch with her daughter, her half-sister, and her father. I would love to find these letters.
In any case, my quest to discover more about my great-grandmother Angela and her family in Schilpario continues. These are questions I may never be able to answer — but going back to Schilpario might bring me closer.
Going Back to Schilpario
Last summer, I spent only a few hours in Schilpario — just enough time to walk in my great-grandparents’ footsteps for the first time. It was a dream of a lifetime, and standing there felt surreal. I came home and wrote a romantic ancestor story about their life in the Italian Alps — which I now know was a bit too rosy. But I was only scratching the surface.
Since then, the same genealogist who walked me through the church archives — and whose work I can’t recommend enough if you’re wondering whether hiring a genealogist in Italy is worth it — has also done cadastral research for me, spending hours in the Bergamo State Archive photographing and deciphering records from the land registries.
What she found is mind-boggling. I now know the exact location of the house where Angela’s mother, Violante Mai, lived. I know the Mai family had holdings in the forest — little plots of land, kilns, tools — all in service of their coal-making business. Angela grew up in a family with roots, with property, with a place in the community. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking that she had to leave it and her young daughter behind.
Armed with all of this, I’m going back. This time I’ll spend several nights in Schilpario — after a week in Torino diving deep into my ancestors’ language — not just a few hours. I want to stand where that house once stood. I want to walk the land her family worked.
Finding Violante
But above all, I want to find Violante — or rather, the two Violantes. Angela’s daughter Violante Spada, who grew up without her mother, and Angela’s half-sister Violante Grassi, who may have helped raise her.
Angela’s daughter Violante Spada grew up, married, and had a son named Giovanni Ambrogio Grassi — all in Schilpario, all without her mother.
Angela’s half-sister, Violante Grassi, married Giovanni Severino Mai and died on January 11, 1943, at Via Torri 70 — a street I can find on Google Maps today, but her house number doesn’t exist. Only number 69 remains. I’m still searching for their children in Portale Antenati.
I want to wander the town and find someone who remembers these women, or knows what became of their families. I want to know if any of their descendants are still there, going about their lives in the same valley where Angela was born and where she left her daughter behind.
Angela died in New York in 1905, never making it back. Never knowing she had a great-granddaughter who learned Italian and discovered her past. I can go back for Angela to look for Violante. And next week, I will.
If Italy and the Italian language call to you too, I’d love to help you get there. I teach online Italian classes for learners at all levels.
