Ancestral Home - Pertusio, Italy

Giacomo Riva is listed on his 1896 army discharge paper as being from the town of Pertusio, Italy. Italy is a Southern European country in the shape of a boot that extends
out into the Mediterranean Sea. It's divided into twenty regions and Pertusio can be found in the Piedmont Region which is located in the north-west part of the country. Piedmont is surrounded on three sides by the Alps Mountains and it borders with France and Switzerland.

The Piedmont Region (illustrated in red to the left) is divided into eight provinces and one of those provinces is called Torino. Its territory is mostly high mountains and its capital city is Turin. It's within the province of Torino that the town of Pertusio can be found.

The first known humans to inhabit Torino were Celtics tribes (200BC) who lived there until they where replaced by expansion from the Roman Empire coming northward. By the first century the area was a Roman settlement. During Renaissance Time the French army under Napoleon occupied the area followed by the Austrians who ruled until 1861. The 18th and 19th centuries in Italy were often unstable and violent.

It's important to our family history to note that Pertusio has two hamlets near by---one called "Case Riva" and the other "Case Faletto." Hamlets, I'm told by people who live in the area, took their names from the people living there. So it's safe to assume that the Riva side of Giacomo's family (his father's ancestors) and the Faletto side (his mother's ancestors) are well entrenched in these hamlets. It was from this area of Italy that twenty-three year old Giacomo Riva set off across France to the port at LeHavre where he got on a steamer ship named the LaBourgne. Seven to eight days later he had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, arriving at Ellis Island, New York City, on January 18, 1897. (See his passenger listing here.)

© J. Riva 2008


Ellis Island

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