Lazare Ponticelli

Born as Lazzaro Bernardo Ponticelli in Cordani di Groppoducale, a frazione (civil parish) in Bettola, Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, in northern Italy, he was raised in a mountain hamlet in Bettola, one of seven children born to Giovanni Ponticelli and Filomena Cordani. His father sold livestock on the fairgrounds and occasionally worked as a carpenter and cobbler.

His mother cultivated the family's small plot of land and, like many women of the area, commuted three times a year to the Po Valley to work in its rice fields. Despite the Ponticelli family's hard work, they were impoverished and the children often went to bed on an empty stomach. When Lazare was two years of age, his mother moved to France to earn a better living. After the unexpected deaths of Jean Ponticelli and his eldest son, Pierre, the rest of the family moved to Paris, leaving Lazare in the care of neighbors.

At age six, Ponticelli started several jobs, including making clogs. By 1906, aged eight years old, he had saved enough money to buy a railway ticket to Paris, which he considered "paradise". To travel to the capital of France, he walked 21 miles (34 km) to the nearest train station at Piacenza. He could not speak French, but found work as a chimney sweep in Nogent-sur-Marne and later as a paper boy in Paris. He obtained a work permit at age 13.