Immigration to the USA: Chain Migration
The process of moving to a new location by following others from the same town is known as chain migration. The “pioneer” immigrants who are already established ease the way for subsequent arrivals, and an essential cohesive support network grows and develops. Among immigrants passing through Ellis Island, this arrangement was especially important for adult females and children who arrived unescorted by an adult male; they were held on the island and not released until a man came to accompany them to their next destination.
Passenger manifests for arriving immigrant ships are a rich resource for family history research. A good manifest documents the chain migration network by indicating, with names and addresses, both the immigrant’s origin and where he/she is going.
In the example below, a network of related people living in Tommaso Natale and neighboring Sferracavallo is shown; it is a vastly simplified version of a more complex web of interrelatedness of our ancestral Palermo families. Starting with the pioneer emigrant Giacomo Riccobono, it shows a year-by-year progression of Ellis Island arrivals paving the way for Antonino Gambino, the patriarch of our American lineage. In 1898 Francesco Messina came over, with Giacomo the contact person to host him and help him to get established. The following year Francesco Riccobono arrived, going to his cousin Francesco Messina; next, Ignazio Riccobono arrived, headed for his brother Francesco, followed by a more distant relative, Vincenzo Messina. In 1902 it was Antonino Gambino’s turn; he travelled together with Domenico Pandolfo, headed to Vincenzo. The coda to this sequence is the 1905 arrival of Antonino’s widowed mother, Santa Caporrimo, to join him, her only child, at 338 East 11th Street in Manhattan.
Within even the limited network of people shown, there are other threads of relatedness; showing more of them would strain the capacity of a 2-dimensional representation. For example, Ninfa Caporrimo and Santa Caporrimo are descended from the same great-grandfather Antonio Caporrimo (~1733-1793), but different great-grandmothers, making them half-second-cousins.
