This page is a class research project on the settlement of the Italian-american population in Dunkirk-Fredonia, in Chautauqua County, New York. The focus is on the period of 1900-1920, the middle of the largest wave of Italian immigration to the United States (1880-1924).
The first immigrants arrived in the large sea port cities of the East Coast such as New
York or New Orleans. Frequently
the new arrivals chose to stay in this new city and build a new life in that area.
The Little Italy's and Little Sicily's of New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and many
others, are testimonies to that choice. Many of the jobs Italians obtained involved
hard physical labor building railroads, or as in the Lewis Hines picture above (Courtesy
of New York Public Library), building New York City's public transportation system.
Less well known, since they scattered in many different directions, many immigrants
decided to move to other cities and to other jobs. They went to the Louisiana sugar
cane fields, to the Washington state lumber industry, to the mines in Colorado, to the New
England textile mills and still others, following the advice of both the Italian consulate
and numerous American citizens, sought to return to an agricultural life. (Strawberry
Harvest in Arkansas, Courtesy Centro Studi Emigrazione, Rome).
Fredonia-Dunkirk offers a unique picture of the migration to agricultural life. The two towns lie in the Northern portion of Chautauqua County, occupying the south-western corner of New York State. Together, these two towns form the most populous section of the northern half of the county. The largest of the two towns, Dunkirk, was an industrial town built on sewing factories and the better known Brooks Engine Company, a steel based manufacturing industry. Fredonia, the smaller of the two towns, built itself around its educational institution, a Normal School for teachers in 1900 and its historical involvement in farming, represented by its proud membership in the first working Grange in the United States. (1868)
Italian-Americans moved to this region in the late 1880s (Dunkirk) and early 1890s
(Fredonia). This page is the class' efforts to tell that story.
Transportation |
Italian Businesses | Education |
Churches |
Data |
Maps |
Sources |
About the Project |
Last updated December 1998
e-mail Swansinger@fredonia.edu