New York has been America’s city of immigrants for nearly four centuries. Between 1880 and 1920 over four million Italians were recorded as entering the United States. About three-quarters of these immigrants went through the Ellis Island immigration station with the majority being males between the ages of 24 and 45.

The island of Sicily and the region around Naples, both in the south, accounted for over half the Italians who moved to the U.S. looking for a better life. According to manifest documents from the ships, so many Sicilians reported ‘Sciacca in Agrigento’ as their home village that immigration inspectors used “ditto” marks to record this information.