The ANNOTICO Report

This is Not a repeat of the San Jose Mercury News article, same theme, but
additional information.

I've got TWO gripes about this journalist, because they say:

(1) "Garibaldi, born in France in 1807". Actually, Garibaldi was born in
Nice in 1807, when Nice was a part of Italy as it had been for the greater
part of 3000 years. Nice was extorted from Italy when Italy was trying to
drive the Austrians out of Northern Italy during the Unification in 1860.

(2) "In 1850, Garibaldi sailed into New York and lived with an Italian
family". Pardon me!!??
Lived with an Italian Family?? Garibaldi lived with Antonio Meucci, the
inventor of the Telephone!!
What you still think that Alexander Graham Bell, the Fraud, was the
inventor???? No! NO!

Bell was born in 1847, and Meucci invented the telephone in 1840, while
conducting experiments as the Stage Engineer at Teatro Tacon in
Havana,Cuba, seven years before AGB was born!!!!
 http://www.italianhistorical.org/MeucciStory.htm

Los Angeles Times
By Cecilia Rasmussen
Times Staff Writer
March 6, 2005

Italian independence hero Giuseppe Garibaldi left his mark on California
without ever setting foot here. The state saltwater fish is named for him,
as is a defunct Death Valley gold mine, several streets in Los Angeles and
the Garibaldina Society.

In turn, California's Gold Rush — and its hard-working, patriotic and
generous Italian immigrants — helped Garibaldi forge modern Italy. One of
them is known more for his "sweet gold," chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli.

In the 19th century, Italy was made up of several regions ruled by foreign
interests, including the French, Austrians and Spanish. Rome and other
regions were ruled by the pope. After more than a decade of trying,
Garibaldi and his "Red Shirts" captured Sicily and Naples in 1860, uniting
the country.

Gathering armies cost money, and much of it came from America. The Gold
Rush connection has been known, but was solidly illustrated by Alessandro
Trojani, a history professor at the University of Florence. He discovered a
gold nugget labeled "California S.U. 1853" at the family home of one of
Garibaldi's officers in Livorno.

In an e-mail, Trojani said he found the nugget in 2003 in the house of Gen.
Andrea Sgarallino, who came to America in 1852 to escape arrest for his
independence efforts.

"Andrea Sgarallino lived in California, in the Gold Country, from 1852 to
1859," Trojani said. He believes that Sgarallino took the nugget back to
Italy in 1859, along with other money that was collected "city by city,
village by village, house by house" for the cause.

Trojani is director of an oral history project sponsored by the University
of Florence, Cal State Long Beach and the Italian government. Called
"Italians in the Gold Rush and Beyond," the project has linked the names of
hundreds of Italian 49ers to the gold and money sent home for Italy's
revolution.

After finding the nugget, Trojani headed for California. He drew on
published materials about early Italian immigrants, charitable foundation
documents, interviews with California historians and stories by descendants
of men who fought in Garibaldi's army. One of those men was Sgarallino.

"During my studies of the Italian presence in the American West … I
discovered that many Italians were patriots like Sgarallino…. [His] family
saved many things, including the nugget," Trojani said by e-mail.

Italy's political skirmishes for unification had been going on for
centuries.

"Many Italians lost their land and homes," Trojani said. Some came to the
California gold fields to strike it rich, but others came because they
wanted to unite their homeland, he said.

Trojani published a book on the topic in Italian, "Go West! Looking for
Italians in the American West." He also published his project on the
Internet at http://www.igrb.net . Both are the latest additions to
scholarship about Italians in California.

"There is no doubt that Italians in California supported Garibaldi," said
Gloria Ricci Lothrop, a Cal State Northridge emeritus professor of
California history and an expert on Italians in the Gold Rush. Lothrop
cites rich information about Italians in the West, including Andrew Rolle's
"Westward the Immigrants: Italian Adventurers and Colonists in an Expanding
America," published in 1999.

Garibaldi, born in France in 1807, was a radical guerrilla leader, the son
of a fisherman. He and his followers raised funds in America to support an
army of Red Shirts to unite 19th century Italy. Their first attempt in 1848
failed and he had to flee.

In 1850, he sailed into New York and lived with an Italian family on Staten
Island, where he set up a candle shop. In 1852, he moved on, eventually
returning to Italy.

Sgarallino came to America that year and headed west. He spent seven years
in California, mining the pockets of wealthy Italian-born pioneers to
bankroll Garibaldi's revolution.

Aspiring miners of all nationalities came by every route and means
available — around Cape Horn, over the mountains and across the Pacific.
The port of San Francisco soon became a forest of masts, full of ships that
had been abandoned by crews and captains who hurried to the gold fields.

"Ships were converted into jails and an asylum," Lothrop said. "Others were
salvaged for their brass, then burned to make way for arriving vessels."

Trojani said he found documents from charitable foundations scattered
throughout California, listing hundreds of donors to Garibaldi's
revolution. Benefactors included traders, financiers, politicians,
vintners, farmers and Ghirardelli, he said.

"I do not know if many people know that Ghirardelli was a great patriot and
gave a lot of money for the Italian cause," he said.

Ghirardelli came to California in 1849 and tried panning for gold. When
that didn't work out, he learned that he could make a more dependable
living off the miners than by working the placers himself.

"He prospered selling sweets to miners in isolated gold camps, later
establishing his factory manufacturing chocolate and liqueurs in San
Francisco," Lothrop wrote in "Italians in the California Gold Rush," a
paper published in 2004.

In 1859, while many Italians traveled south to Los Angeles, Sgarallino and
others returned to Italy carrying gold — no one knows how much — to finance
the revolution.

The next year, Garibaldi, Sgarallino and about 1,000 soldiers boarded two
ships in Genoa and set sail for Sicily.

They were secretly supported by Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy, who saw
himself as the future sovereign of a united Italy. Garibaldi and his army
won; Emmanuel II was crowned king of Italy in 1861.

After a tumultuous life in subsequent battles, in which he was wounded once
and taken prisoner twice, Garibaldi returned to the island of Caprera,
where he died June 2, 1882, a month before his 75th birthday.

The gold mine named for him didn't exist until 1876, when Joe and Jeff
Nosanno founded it near the town of Skidoo. The gold gave out in the early
1900s, and so did the town.

Gold fever also attracted a Genoese named Ambrosio Vignolo, who dug his way
to fortune. Then he made his way south to Los Angeles, where he opened a
thriving wine shop on Main Street.

In 1877, Vignolo helped form the Italian Mutual Benevolence Society, which
soon grew to a membership of 120. In 1888, it merged with the Garibaldina
Society, which celebrates the union of the two groups on the first Sunday
of June — coinciding with the day that commemorates Garibaldi's death.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/
la-me-then6mar06,1,4362093.story?coll=la-h
eadlines-california&ctrack=3&cset=true