as someone who delights in shitting on Italian-American "traditions", they are only slightly less embarrassing than Irish-American traditions, which basically include dyeing this river in march, saying the hard R n-word more than anyone else, being cops, and doing everything they can to ensure that every symbol of irish identity (the clover, the harp, etc) can be traced to active, ultraviolent white supremacist organizations like the Aryan Brotherhood.

I say this as someone whose grandparents were 1st gen US born of immigrants from like supposedly ulster, though nobody really knows because everybody was really into violent drinking, beating the shit out of their kids, lying constantly, religious excitation, and dying young.

between all these cool hobbies, nobody had any time for like keeping track of paperwork or documents or anything prior to my great grandparents. my personal theory is that they were pariahs even among the other irish immigrants, so probably overzealous and overstupid land agents that overstepped and got cut loose with little to show for a life of bootkissing.