Pietro Bandini

In March 1889, he returned to Italy and was appointed the vice rector of St. Thomas Aquinas College in Cuneo. One year later, Bandini returned to the United States.[1] In 1890, in New York City, Bandini established the Saint Raphael Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants. The purpose of this society was to care for Italian immigrants to the United States who were subject to usury and labor exploitation. Through the society, Bandini assisted them in a much broader range of matters, such as finding work and housing. He also assisted 20,000 Italians[2] to prepare for their American citizenship examinations by holding instructional classes.[3] In addition to aiding them with their worldly needs, Bandini also tended to the immigrants' spiritual needs in New York by establishing a chapel that he named after Our Lady of Pompeii. This chapel served the Italians in Greenwich Village in Manhattan and was housed in a building at 113 Waverly Place that Bandini purchased.[2] Eventually, this chapel became Our Lady of Pompeii Church, of which Bandini was pastor from 1892 to 1896.[3]

Bandini theorized that Italian immigrants would prosper if located in a colony whose agricultural environment[4] was similar to that they were used to in Italy. Therefore, in December 1896, his Jesuit superior permitted him to relocate with a group of Italian immigrants to Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County, Arkansas, whose owner, Austin Corbin, was seeking laborers. Bandini's first wave of Italians arrived in the port of New Orleans on November 26, 1895, and traveled to Sunnyside Plantation. Bandini followed them in January 1897. Immediately, his project met problems, as more than 125 people out of the 100 families that moved to Sunnyside died of malaria due to unsanitary conditions, unsafe drinking water, and a mosquito-favorable climate. The living conditions of the Italians continued to deteriorate when the plantation came under new ownership in June 1896, forcing the few families that could afford to move back to Italy to do so.[1]

Recognizing the squalor of the plantation, Bandini purchased 800 acres (320 hectares) of land in northwest Arkansas, where forty families from Sunnyside had already moved. He believed this land, due to its 1,500-foot (460 m) elevation and workable soil, was sufficiently similar to the Italian climate the immigrants had known. He settled here with his community of Italian immigrants in 1898.[4] This community went on to become incorporated in 1909 as Tontitown, Arkansas, which he named after the Italian explorer Henri de Tonti. Bandini was elected mayor of the city.[4] The first winter forced the residents to live in abandoned farm buildings and survive off of meager sustenance. Bandini then established a schoolhouse and church, and divided the land into ten-acre parcels and distributed the allotments randomly. On the land, the immigrants grew their own food and cultivated grape vineyards, which became commercially prosperous; the Italian ambassador to the United States visited and spoke approvingly of the colony in 1905.[1]