The Hills We Called Home
An Italian Immigrant Family Story from Sicily to Pennsylvania
“Between the goodbye at the port of Naples and the first harvest in Pennsylvania, the Russos learned that home was not a place you found. It was a place you built.”
It was a bitter January morning in 1885 when Giovanni Russo stood at the port of Naples with his family and tried not to think about what he was leaving behind. The wind came off the water carrying the smell of salt, coal smoke, and engine oil. Sailors shouted across the crowded docks. Ropes scraped against wooden posts. Families gathered around piles of luggage, some praying, others crying, and a few pretending that this was simply another journey. Giovanni knew better. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, the son of farmers from Trabia, in the province of Palermo. He had spent most of his life working the land, first beside his father and later on his own. Now he stood with one hand wrapped around the small hand of his son Pietro and watched the steamship that would carry them to America. Beside him, his wife, Lucia Greco, held their youngest child, Matteo, against her chest. Isabella, their eight-year-old daughter, kept looking at everything. She had never seen a ship so large. Her brown curls had escaped from beneath her hood, and every few seconds she pushed them back with one gloved hand. “Papà, is that our ship?” she asked. Giovanni looked down at her. “It is.” “Is America on the other side?” He smiled. “That is what they tell us.” Lucia heard him and gave him a look. Giovanni knew what she was thinking. They had heard plenty about America. There was work there. There was land. There were factories, mines, farms, and towns where a man willing to work could supposedly make a better life. But America was still only a word. They had never seen it. The wind cut through Lucia’s coat. Her eyes filled with tears, and she quickly looked away. She did not want the children to see her cry. Behind them stood the stone house where Giovanni had been born. Beyond it were the fields, the olive trees, the church where they had married, and the narrow streets where everyone knew their name. Lucia thought of the bread she had bought that morning, still warm from the oven. She thought of her mother. She thought of the women who had gathered outside their homes to say goodbye. Some had told her to write. Some had promised they would pray for her. No one had said what everyone understood. They might never see one another again. A baggage handler shouted from the dock. “Tickets for the Sicilia! Last call!” Giovanni tightened the strap of the linen sack over his shoulder. Inside were the few things he refused to leave behind: clothes, personal belongings, and the carpenter’s and farming tools he had used all his life. He had no fortune. But he had his hands. And as far as Giovanni was concerned, that was enough to begin. “Lucia,” he said quietly. “Andiamo.” She nodded. They climbed the gangplank together. For a moment, Lucia stopped and looked back. Naples seemed strangely beautiful from the ship. The people on the dock were becoming smaller. The voices were blending into one distant sound. Somewhere among them were the people she loved. Then Giovanni touched her arm. It was time. The family moved onto the crowded deck. Around them were other immigrants from southern Italy—Sicilians, Calabrians, and Campanians—each carrying a different story and, in many cases, the same uncertain hope. Isabella stared at the funnels. Pietro stayed close to his father. Matteo had already fallen asleep in Lucia’s arms. Then the ship’s whistle sounded. Lucia closed her eyes. Giovanni put his arm around her. As the ship pulled away from the dock, he watched the coast disappear. “Addio, Sicilia,” he whispered. Then, after a moment, “Addio, Italia.” He did not say anything else. There was nothing more to say.
The first days at sea were harder than Giovanni had imagined. The ship rolled constantly. The air below deck was thick and close, and the smell of too many people living in too little space never completely disappeared. Food was simple—thin soup, potatoes, and hard bread—but no one complained much. They were saving their strength. At night, the ship creaked and groaned as it moved through the Atlantic. Children cried. Adults prayed. Some passengers became sick and stayed in their bunks for days. Giovanni did what he could to keep his family together. Pietro was old enough to understand that something important had happened, but young enough to miss the life they had left behind. Isabella asked questions. When would they arrive? Would there really be snow in America? Did Americans speak Italian? Would they have a house? Giovanni answered as confidently as he could. “Yes.” “Yes, there will be snow.” “No, most people will speak English.” “And yes, one day we will have a house.” He did not know whether any of it would be true. But Isabella needed to hear it. Lucia spent most of her time caring for Matteo, who developed a fever during the third week. The child’s skin was hot, and his breathing worried her. Giovanni searched for the ship’s doctor, who examined the boy and advised them to keep him hydrated and let him rest. For Lucia, that answer was not enough. She stayed awake beside Matteo, cooling his forehead with a damp cloth. One evening, another passenger, Anna Ricci, a young widow from Calabria, came to her with a cloth soaked in vinegar. “My husband used this when he was sick,” Anna said. Lucia thanked her. It was a small kindness, but on that ship, small kindnesses mattered. The women began talking. They shared what food they had. They watched one another’s children. They exchanged stories about the towns they had left behind. The ship was still crowded and uncomfortable, but the passengers were no longer complete strangers. Then came the storm. The children were frightened by the thunder. Isabella climbed into her father’s arms. Giovanni wrapped his coat around her. “It’s all right,” he told her. “Are we going to die?” He looked toward the dark sea. “No.” He said it firmly enough that she believed him. When the storm finally passed, the ship seemed almost quiet. Days later, land appeared on the horizon. Someone shouted first. Then others began pointing. People crowded the deck. Some cried. Some laughed. Some simply stood there in silence. Giovanni lifted Matteo into his arms. “Look,” he told him. “America.” For the first time since leaving Sicily, Giovanni allowed himself to believe that perhaps they had made the right decision.
When the Sicilia reached New York Harbor, the Russos were exhausted. The city seemed enormous. There were ships everywhere, buildings rising higher than anything Giovanni had ever seen, and people speaking languages he could not understand. In 1885, immigrants arriving through New York were processed at Castle Garden, not Ellis Island. The famous Ellis Island immigration station would not open until 1892. Giovanni and Lucia presented their papers and answered the questions put to them. Did they have money? Where were they going? Did they have relatives in America? Could they work? Giovanni answered honestly. He had very little money. They had no close relatives waiting for them. But he could work. That, he believed, had to count for something. For several days, the family stayed in crowded lodging with other Italian immigrants in Lower Manhattan. The city overwhelmed Lucia. There was coal smoke in the air, noise in the streets, and people everywhere. Yet there was also something exciting about it. America was no longer a word. It was under their feet. Giovanni soon heard about opportunities in Pennsylvania. Italian immigrants were already finding work in mines, factories, construction, and agriculture throughout the state. Giovanni had no interest in spending his life underground. He wanted land. A man he met at the lodging house told him about a small farming community in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania where land could be purchased at a price a hardworking family might eventually afford. It was not the promised land Giovanni had imagined. It was simply a chance. And a chance was enough.
The train carried the Russos westward. For the children, the journey was an adventure. For Giovanni and Lucia, it was another step into uncertainty. They watched forests replace buildings and hills rise beyond the windows. When they finally reached the small Pennsylvania community where they planned to settle, Giovanni was struck by the silence. There were no olive groves. No stone houses. No familiar church bells. Only woods, hills, rough roads, and the sound of wind moving through the trees. Their first shelter was small and poorly built. It was not the house Giovanni had promised Isabella. But it was theirs. He and Pietro began clearing the land. The work was slow. They cut trees, pulled roots from the ground, and carried stones away from the fields. Lucia planted a garden. She grew vegetables and herbs whenever the soil allowed it. She baked bread whenever she could find enough flour. At night, the family ate together. Sometimes there was little on the table. Sometimes there was enough. But there was always pasta when Lucia could make it, and there was always conversation. The neighbors helped one another. Some were Italian. Others were American families who had lived in the region for generations. The Russos slowly learned that building a new life required more than hard work. It required learning how to belong.
The years passed. Pietro grew taller. Isabella became a young woman. Matteo stopped being the little boy everyone carried and became a boy who wanted to help his father in the fields. Giovanni’s clearing became a farm. They planted wheat, corn, vegetables, and eventually grapevines. Lucia kept a few memories of Sicily alive through food. She made tomato sauce the way her mother had taught her. She kneaded bread by hand. She taught the children the songs she remembered from home. And she insisted that the family sit together at the table whenever they could. The children began speaking English more often. At home, Italian remained. Sometimes the two languages mixed in the same sentence. Lucia pretended to be annoyed. Giovanni secretly enjoyed it. That was how he knew the children were becoming American. The community grew as well. A school was established. Roads improved. A church became a gathering place. Italian families formed friendships, mutual-aid networks, and traditions that helped them survive in a country that could still feel unfamiliar. Giovanni became known as a dependable man. If someone needed help repairing a fence, he came. If a neighbor needed an extra pair of hands during harvest, Giovanni showed up. He had arrived in America with almost nothing. Now people trusted him. To Giovanni, that mattered more than money.
By 1900, the Russo household had become a noisy place. Lucia had five more children: Elisa, Tommaso, Giulia, Roberto, and Angela. There were always children underfoot. There was always something cooking. There was always laundry hanging somewhere. And there was almost always someone at the door. Giovanni’s vineyard was growing. The grapes were not yet making the family wealthy, but they gave him something he understood: a connection between the old country and the new. The vines reminded him of Sicily. The land reminded him of America. He began making small quantities of wine for the family and neighbors. It was never simply wine to Giovanni. It was memory in a bottle. By 1918, Pietro was a married man with children of his own. He and Giovanni decided to look for more land farther west. They found a larger property and began again. Pietro took to the work as naturally as his father had. The two men planted vines together. They argued about pruning. They argued about weather. They argued about almost everything. But they always worked side by side. The family wine became known in nearby communities, and the vineyards provided a modest but growing source of income. Lucia remained at the original home with the younger children. Letters traveled between the two households. They carried news about harvests, marriages, births, illnesses, and children who were growing too quickly. The family had become larger. But it had not become less connected.
On a cold January morning in 1932, Giovanni Russo died in the wooden house he had helped build decades earlier. Lucia was beside him. Her hair had turned completely silver. Her hands, once strong from years of work, trembled as she held his. She prayed quietly in Italian. Their children and grandchildren gathered in the house. For the first time in many years, there was no work to be done. No field needed clearing. No vine needed pruning. No roof needed repairing. There was only grief. Giovanni had left Sicily with a wife, three children, a sack of tools, and a hope he could not explain. He left America with something much larger: a family, a farm, vineyards, a home, and children who had begun to think of Pennsylvania not as the place their parents had chosen, but as the place where their own lives belonged. His descendants eventually spread across Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and beyond. Some stayed close to the land. Others became teachers, doctors, shopkeepers, and professionals. Elisa became a teacher. Tommaso entered medicine. Pietro became the keeper of the family traditions. Lucia remained the heart of the family. She taught her grandchildren how to make bread and pasta. She taught them that food was not merely food. It was memory. She taught them that family was not merely a name. It was responsibility. And she taught them never to forget where they had come from.
When Lucia died in 1940, at eighty-seven, the family gathered beneath the trees Giovanni had planted. Some of the younger children barely remembered him. But they knew his story. They knew about the ship. They knew about the first house. They knew about the forest. They knew how hard he had worked. And they knew that every generation after him had inherited something he had never possessed when he left Sicily: the freedom to choose what came next.
Today, the Russo legacy lives in more than land. It lives in family recipes, old photographs, names passed from grandparents to grandchildren, Italian words spoken at kitchen tables, and the stories told whenever the family gathers. The journey began at the port of Naples, but it did not end in Pennsylvania. It continued through every child who learned a family recipe, every grandchild who heard the story of the crossing, and every descendant who wondered about the people who had come before them. Giovanni had once believed that America was a place where a man could build a better life. He was right. But he eventually learned something else. A better life was not something a person found waiting for him. It was something he built. One day. One field. One meal. One child at a time.
Author’s Note
The Russo family is fictional. Their story, however, is rooted in the experiences of countless Italian immigrants who crossed the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Italian immigration increased dramatically during these decades, and many immigrants settled in northeastern states such as Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Giovanni, Lucia, and their children are not meant to represent one documented family. They represent the experiences shared by many families who left southern Italy in search of work, security, land, and a future for their children. The details of their journey—from the crowded ship to the first uncertain days in America, from the hard work of clearing land to the traditions preserved around the family table—are inspired by the broader history of Italian immigration. For many Italian-American descendants, family history begins with a question: Who were the people who came before us? What did they leave behind? What did they hope to find? And what did they build when they finally arrived? The Russos are an imagined answer to those questions. Their home in Pennsylvania is fictional, but the emotions behind their journey are not. They belong to the thousands of Italian immigrant families who crossed an ocean carrying little more than a suitcase, a few tools, a family recipe, a prayer, and the belief that their children might have a life they themselves could only imagine. Perhaps that is the true meaning of immigration—not simply leaving one country for another, but giving the next generation the freedom to call a new place home.
Dr. Luiz Carlos B. Piazzetta
