Last month I wrote about the Unlikely Genealogy Resource of using search terms of other people, and how I discovered information about my family I'd never seen before. Today the traffic to my blog was mainly from people searching for things so I thought I'd check out their results to see what interesting links my visitors found. I found many sites, but one stood above them all and is titled In the Vicinity of the Maxwell Street Market: Chicago 1890-1930. This is a part of a special collection of the University of Illinois at Chicago and explores in photos and essays the City's West Side during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The site shows many of the ethnic aspects of this part of Chicago, but (as you might guess) I zeroed in on the Italian immigrant stories.
Under the heading of Italian Americans on Taylor Street, I found scores of interesting items and I'll highlight a few of my favorites. The first on on the list is The Boyhood of Anthony Sorrentino. This is a 24 page PDF file full of details and photos about Anthony and his family immigrating to, and living on, Chicago's West Side. Another is a wonderful essay on Italian Women Immigrants also including photos. This paper quotes a proverb I've seen before in other readings highlighting how important women are to the family "If the father should die, the family would suffer; if the mother should die, the family ceases to exist." Two photo pages I love are Old World and Migration and of course a page titled Italian Women. One last photo page is called The Sovereign State of the Italian Family.
I've probably overloaded the post with links, but there are so many interesting parts I had a hard time narrowing them down. It appears the site is still under construction, because some of the links don't work, and there is a need for some organization, but it's still a fascinating exploration of Chicago's West Side.
