Tag Archives: Land of opportunity

In her book, “Houses with Names, Adria Bernardi’s writes that the first known Italian who lived in the Highwood/Highland Park area was a Venetian named Agosto de Bon. He was already living in Highland Park in 1900. Highwood at the time was inhabited primarily by Swedish immigrants. What we know about ourselves as Italians is that we tend to stick together, to take care of our own. So it makes sense that our Italian ancestors congregated on the North Shore, bringing their family with them in search of a better life. Like many men in the late 1800s and early …