Boston's thick spread; The unlikely role butter played in Boston's Italian community.

Byline: John Bishop

"WE will go to America. They have butter on their bread there."

The words of a 93-year-old Italian migrant recorded on a bridge in Boston, recalling her father in 1860s Italy before the family made its way to the United States.

Boston is typically associated with the Irish, and there are certainly plenty of them about, but the Italians also came in their many thousands escaping the grinding poverty of rural Italy in the latter part of the 19th century.

The remark moved me when I found it cast in metal and attached to the migrants' bridge which links down-town Boston to the north side, which was...