Filippo Carosella, Filippo Marcovecchio and Alfonso Saulino along with wife Angela Maria, lived in Agnone. Of these, Filippo Carosella and Filippo Marcovecchio were contadini, or farmers, while Alfonso Saulino was a shoemaker. For all of them, as for many in southern Italy, and especially in Agnone, the 1870s were very difficult years.

But despite all the challenges the four would face, they would eventually leave Italy and settle in the Mahoning Valley in 1873. Why did they abandon their native land and how did they arrive in the Greater Youngstown area?