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figure 13)." Situated a short distance from the recently established Manchester Hotel,
this larger block provided Andrea with an increased sense of financial security and the
means to support a wife. About the time that St Joseph's Church was nearing
completion in 1872, the young woman who would eventually become his bride was
making the joumey to Australia from her village of Cevio, which ~ given its close
proxunity to Andrea's home viUage of Coglio in the Valle Maggia ~ may indicate that
a marriage had been arranged by the two families.
Margherita FiUppini, the 20-year-old daughter of a goat farmer, had faced the
prospect of Ufelong spinsterhood. During the peak years of emigration, Cevio had lost
over fifteen per cent of its population to the Australian goldfields, resulting in a gender
unbalance lasting through to the 1870s: in 1870 the village comprised 504 females and
320 males." Mostly departing between 1854 and 1855, the FUippinis, like the
Lafranchis, had emigrated to AustraUa in large numbers and settled in the area around
Jim Crow. In 1872 Margherita, accompanied by two members of her extended family,
also arrived in the Colony aboard the Somersetshire^^ and, though no members of her
immediate family were in Australia, she was warmly received by the Filippini
community. Within two years she had married the 34-year-old Andrea Lafranchi, the
union reflecting ~ and possibly reaffirming ~ the strength of village endogamous
traditions. In Ticino itself, despite the difficulties caused by the gender imbalance, the
practice continued with 45 of the 58 marriages celebrated in Coglio between 1855 and
1875 occurring between citizens of the village." Thus both in Europe and Australia,
the Italian speakers stmggled to uphold familiar ways.
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