I can only go back three generations at most. I only have two names from four generations ago.
Mother's side:
My maternal grandmother's parents were Italian, father from Ventoso (Emilia-Romagna), mother from Padula (Campania). Apparently my great-grandfather, Niccolo, was upper-class and lived in a country manor. He served as a sergeant during WWI, and was captured by the Austro-Hugarians. After being held as a prisoner of war, he was released and then stationed in Sorrento, where he met my great-grandmother, Concetta. When he brought her home to his parents, his father was furious that his son fell in love with a Neapolitan peasant girl and wrote him out of the will, giving his inheritance to his brothers. The mother, though, secretly gave him her jewelry and told him to buy a ticket to New York City. They also left to escape fascism, which would place their migration date around 1922. They had one son and four daughters, the youngest of which is my maternal grandmother.
All of that's what I'm told, anyway. Sounds like a fairy tale, but on the other hand I could see Italians doing that. I always wonder what the moment of his capture was like. Was he on the Alpine front, or somewhere else? Was he outsmarted/outmaneuvered, did he have bad luck, did he make terrible tactical decisions, or was he just cowardly? Were his captors also ethnic Italians? Where was he held when he was a prisoner, what was it like? My grandmother says that he never talked about it, so the story died with him.
My maternal grandfather's parents were farmers in upper Michigan, he was the youngest of five brothers. He would never talk about them, apparently they drifted apart.
Father's side:
My paternal grandmother's family lived in La Junta, Colorado, poor as shit until pre-WWII naval buildup gave them shipbuilding jobs in Los Angeles, where they continued being pretty fucking poor.
My paternal grandfather had it tough during the Great Depression, especially after his biological father abandoned him and his mother. His mother remarried and moved from Kansas (they were also farmers) to Los Angeles. His new stepfather became a longshoreman at the LA harbor, and that job passed to my grandfather and then my father.
All in all, I barely have any knowledge from before the Depression, and the various parts of my family came to Los Angeles for WWII-related jobs (my maternal grandmother was a secretary for an aeronautics company, she said she always had to take care of all the absent-minded professors there). A pretty common American story. Since I have Mediterranean skin, I'm glad I live in the one region of the US with a Mediterranean climate.