Monte Etna's Children: A Story of Sicilian Immigration to America

Monte Etna, an active volcano laying at the heart of Sicily, dominates the island's landscape and culture. Cities and villages sprung up along its coastline where rocky slopes met the Mediterranean Sea, and most people who lived there eked out hardscrabble lives as farmers or fishermen. By the early twentieth century, while King Victor Emmanuel III ruled Italy, young men often found work as sailors in the king's navy as an alternative. Two of them - Eligio Monte (later Monti) an orphan from Catania and Carmelo Gianino from Augusta - followed that path and eventually emigrated from the island, first to Boston's West End, then to the Hill in St. Louis, Missouri. Their story affords the opportunity to examine in detail the broad historical roots of Sicilian immigrants as they acclimated to the New World and their descendants' slow but steady assimilation and loss of Old World ethnic identity. Biographies of the children of Eligio Monti and Sebastiana (Gianino) Monti, some of the first generation born on U.S. soil between 1908 and 1928, complete this saga of two Sicilian immigrant families traveling and taking root in new American soil. Photographs, maps, documents, and a Proper Name Index will aid the genealogical researcher in finding their own roots. Also included is a descendants chart with numerous surnames, including: Baynes, Beishir, Biffignani, Combrevis, Dolan, Egler, Farabee, Frattini, Furham, Gegg, Gianino, Hall, Lebeque, Monte, Monti, Palmer, Renfrow, Schmitt, Virga, Viviano, Willis, and others.