His great great grandfather is said to have come from Spain in the 1700’s.
61It now appears that the original spelling *may* have been Valente with an ‘e’ and changed to Valenti upon immigration to Canada (or perhaps the spellings were interchangeable in Italy?)
The birth record says he was born at 10 minutes after five and the street was “Contrada Donnamiatta”.
8According to his eldest daughter Mary Valenti (DeMarco) as a child he lived with his family in a one room house with partitions separating family members and slept on mattresses stuffed with corn husks. The family meals were eaten from one big common bowl in the middle of the table. He experienced the big earthquake of 1908 which killed half the inhabitants of Messina. Reported seeing water at the bottom of a bathtub splashing out of the tub at the onset.
Mary says he came to USA through New York in 1910 and first worked at Niagara as a labourer. He then worked on the Welland canal before coming to Toronto. There are Ellis Island records with the original passenger manifests from 1912 arriving May 21 on the ship “Duca d’Aosta” showing Antonino Valenti from “S. Filippo del Mela” (although Mary had thought he came over in 1910). His contact within Canada is listed as “Cousin Pirri, Giuseppe, 1 Clinton St., Toronto, Canada”.
16 Mary confirmed that the Pirri’s were a great support to Anna when she first came to Canada later on.
He visited Italy again in 1922 but according to Mary said he discovered that he was “nothing but a Canadian” and returned to Canada. There is also the original passenger manifest from 1922 for the ship “Colombo” listing Antonio Valenti from Toronto and listing his Italy contact as his father Paolo from San Filippo del Mela, Messina. The Toronto contact is mispelled “Pizzi” instead of Pirri.
16 The story goes that when he was established he planned to mary Rosina Di Paola. As it turned out she was already spoken for while her younger sister Anna was available and offered as a substitute! They were happily married for 31 years until his untimely death from a heart attack.