State’s Gold Fields Helped Fund 19th Century Italian Revolutionary

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

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 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.