Italian Immigration To Texas

Italian Texans Migration of Italians to Texas

People from Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia, Emilia, Sicily, Calabria, Campania, and other regions moved to the United States and/or Texas to improve their lifestyles, or to move closer to family. Many Italians believed that Texas was a land of opportunity. An Italian immigrant, Rosario Maceo, even said, “People thought that you came to America…look on the floor and you’d find money,” Immigration also accrued when Texas business men encouraged foreign immigrants into their State. The Italians who moved to the United States before 1910 were mostly male, in between the ages of 20-34, who were in search for their fortune and initiative purpose. Most

Salvatore was born in 1866, in a village near Palermo. In 1882 he sailed to Galveston, and moved to San Antonio a year later. He opened a boot shop, and became one of the best known boot maker in the United States. He made boots for Theodore Roosevelt, Francisco Madero, Gene Autry, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Anne Baxter. Lucchese married Francesca Battaglia and had seven children. One of their daughters, Josephine, became a renowned coloratura soprano who sang in major opera houses throughout the United States and Europe. Salvatore died of a myocardial infarction in San Antonio

Vincent’s Catholic Church in Civil War Houston . He spent his lasts years secretly distributing clothing, food and money among the needy people of his city. More than a century later, similar gifts are quietly dispensed each day in memory of this native Italian priest. Father Augustine was born in Piedmont at St. Damiano d’Asti. At the age of 16 he began his novitiate in the order of St. Francis. He and four members of this order came to America and established a Franciscan house in New York, 1856. The bishop Odin of Galveston requested that they reestablish themselves in Texas, where they had not been since the Revolution of 1836, and Father Augustine was appointed Superior, and his post was the Church of St. Vincent. Father Augustine is also remembered for having blessed the flag which Dick Dowling and his men carried into battle. The priest died in 1866 at the age of 39 and was buried at Holy Cross