Most of the immigrants went to the cities. New York, Buffalo, Rochester and other cities in the State of New York received large contingents. It must be remembered that immigrants almost always came to join others who had preceded them – a husband, or a father, or an uncle or a friend.

In western New York most of the first immigrants from Sicily went to Buffalo, so that from 1900 on, the thousands who followed them to this part of the state also landed in Buffalo. There they joined their friends and relatives who in many cases had purchased the tickets for their steerage passage to America. After they arrived, guided and assisted by relatives, they ventured out of the city of Buffalo, joined work gangs all over western New York to pick peas, beans and other crops and to work in the numerous canneries located in the small towns and villages. In their westward migration they first went to work on the farms in Brant, Angola and Farnham and also in the canneries at Farnham, Silver Creek, Irving and other places. 

Read more

Fonte: Jovina Cooks Italian