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Download (14Mb) - VUIR - Victoria University

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Unlike most Irish girls who married Italian speakers, Lucy was not a Roman<br />

Catholic, but a Protestant. She had agreed, however, to allow her children to be<br />

baptised in the CathoUc faith, as happened wdth Edmund and Emest. When it was<br />

Lucy's turn, and her mother took her along to the church on the appointed day<br />

accompanied by a Protestant woman who was to be the baby's godmother, the Irish<br />

CathoUc priest refused to conduct the service, insisting that a Catholic woman should<br />

be the child's godmother. Mrs Righetti, taking umbrage, vowed that any future<br />

children would be baptised in a Protestant church.^' While this might have<br />

disappointed Serafino, he might also have agreed that a church dominated by the strict<br />

Irish clergy did not accurately represent his own faith. The retelling of this story<br />

through each generation of the Righetti family ~ with its constmction of a mother who<br />

is both determined and courageous ~ suggests a family identity in which women were<br />

encouraged to be independent and strong; descendants continue to feel ties wdth the<br />

qualities which enabled their ancestors to survive and prosper.<br />

FoUowing their marriage, Serafino and Lucy Righetti remained in the<br />

Daylesford district fifteen years, during which time Serafino continued to mine the<br />

local creeks for gold. When this activity took him away from his home at night, Lucy<br />

would keep a loaded gun hanging ready in case 'the Chinese should come to steal their<br />

gold' ^* ~ this popular view of the Chinese continuing long after the days of the gold<br />

msh. By 1870 Serafino had begun paying rates on a hotel at Stony Creek, his dairying<br />

skiUs also possibly being used on a block of land purchased on 1 Febmary 1872 at<br />

213

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