By Milo Miller, CCHS volunteer
Today, Chemung County has a sizable Italian American population, with more than 10% of its residents reporting Italian ancestry.
This figure exceeds both the New York State and national averages for Italian ancestry—nearly 1 in 200 Italian New Yorkers are from Chemung County. During the first seventy years of European settlement in Elmira, however, Italian influence was absent.
Historically,
several factors have driven Italian immigration to the United States. The first
surge of Italian immigration to colonial North America occurred in the
mid-1600s when a small group of Waldensians fleeing religious persecution
joined Dutch emigrants sailing for present-day New York and Delaware.
Waldensians were a religious group living in the Cottian Alps along the current
French-Italian border. Although some Waldensians hailed from the present-day
Piedmont region of Italy, Italy would not achieve political unification until
more than two centuries after the Waldensians departed for North America. The
regions that the Waldensians originated from did not even speak Italian, but
French, Occitan, and Piedmontese. During the two centuries between early
Waldensian immigration and Italian political unification, Italian immigration
was rare and sporadic. Most early Italian immigrants were artisans, musicians,
political refugees, and merchants from Northern Italy, contrasting with the
mass migration of Italian laborers that began in the late nineteenth century.
In 1850, fewer than 5,000 Italian immigrants (around .02% of the population)
lived in the United States. Twenty years later, following Italy’s 1861
political unification, this number quintupled to 25,000 (around .07% of the
population). Beginning in 1880, widespread poverty and limited economic
opportunities in Southern Italy and Sicily contributed to a massive wave of
Italian immigration. More than four million Italians immigrated to the United
States between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I. Although many of these
immigrants eventually returned to Italy, more than 1% of the United States
population was Italian-born by 1920, with New York State becoming home to a
large share of these newcomers. During this time, Elmira’s “Italian Patch”
neighborhood arose around Railroad Avenue, Magee, and North Main Streets.
Given this historical
context, it follows that encountering an Italian immigrant before 1860 would
have been rare. In Elmira, Peter Landy (likely born Pietro Landi) would
have been the first encounter to many. Peter immigrated to the United States
sometime in the 1840s, likely from Northern Italy, first arriving in
Skaneateles, New York. There, he lived with his new wife Catherine in 1848, an
Irish immigrant and fellow Catholic fresh off the boat from County Sligo. In
1849, the two had their first son, Charles Alexander Landy. Peter first resided
in Elmira in 1858, on East Henry Street, near where the Dollar Tree stands
today.
Peter apparently encouraged “considerable learning.” According to his son Charles Alexander, Mr. Landy was a physician in Italy before coming to America, and his brother across the ocean was a Catholic Priest. In the United States, Peter did not practice as a physician. Foreign medical licenses either did not hold up to United States standards or the process of transferring the licenses was difficult and costly. In Skaneateles, Peter was recorded simply as a laborer. In Elmira, Peter served as a travelling salesman for an ink manufacturer for several years. During this time, he and Catherine’s second son, William, was born in 1860. By 1866, Peter changed occupations and worked as a watchman. In 1869, these escapades in the United States ended. Peter received word that he was to inherit a $25,000 fortune in gold—worth well over half a million dollars today—that his father had originally entrusted to his brother. To receive the fortune, Peter had to sail back across the ocean. Promising his family that he would return a rich man in December, Peter left on July 28th, 1869. He was never heard from again.
Elmira Daily Advertiser, July 17th, 1869 mentioning that Peter was
leaving.
According to his
son, the family concluded that Peter had been forced into military service upon
arrival, which was common under Italy’s conscription laws. The real story of
what happened to Peter may never be known. While a handful of Italian families
had arrived in Chemung County by the time of Peter’s departure, they still
represented a small minority of the city's population. Peter seems to have
largely integrated into Irish society, likely due to his affiliation with the
Catholic Church. While his life does not mirror the larger Italian American
immigrant experience, which began a decade after his departure, Peter’s life
offers a glimpse into what life was like for some of the first Italian
Americans. Many older Elmirans may have reflected back to their first
experiences with Peter Landy, the Italian ink salesman during the later waves
of immigration. As for his children, Charles Alexander married an Irish girl,
and he and his brother William grew up to become popular and successful
Elmirans. Peter’s wife, Catherine, continued living at the same house on East
Henry Street until she died in 1909. She is buried in Saint Peter and Paul’s
Cemetery.
