My paternal grandfather and grandmother (Pietro and Immacolata Saracino)
emigrated to the United States in 1920, arriving at Ellis Island on July
6th of that year. At the time, my grandfather was 25 and my grandmother
18. She would turn 19 that August. My grandmother was seven months pregnant
with my father(Francesco Saracino). Their sponsors were Nunziata and Luigi
Gionnotti. Nunziata was my grandmother's aunt.
After living in New York city for a period of time my grandparents moved
upstate and settled in Seneca Falls, NY, where my father was born on September
11, 1920. My grandfather was a baker by trade and worked in a bakery in
Seneca Falls, NY. In 1924, my grandmother returned to Castellaneta with
my father, who was four years old at the time, and the two additional children
she had given birth to: Filaberta and Mario. My grandfather stayed in Seneca
Falls, visiting my grandmother and his children in Castellaneta several
times, and fathering two more children with my grandmother.
In 1931, with Fascism on the rise in Italy, my grandfather sent for my
grandmother and their (now five) children and paid for their passage to
return to Seneca Falls, NY. My father was eleven at the time and my grandfather
did not want him conscripted into the Fascist youth corps. After resettling
in Seneca Falls, NY, my grandparents had two more children, bringing the
family total to seven children and two adults.
My grandparents remained in Seneca Falls until their deaths. Pietro died
in 1960 and Immacalata died in 1994. In 1946, my father married my mother,
an Italian American whose parents had emigrated from Castlenouva di Garfagnaga
in Tuscany.
If you would like to write to the family of PIETRO AND IMMACOLATA SARACINO use the form below.
