Download (14Mb) - VUIR - Victoria University

POZZI
When up to 40 Valmaggesi (people from the Valle Maggia) left the famine-hit
areas of their canton to seek better opportunities in California and Australia, it marked
the beginning of a chain of emigration which was to last more than 30 years. While the
drift towards America would continue to the end of the Second World War, the
emigration to Australia reached its peak in the years between 1854 and 1855.^ In
1852, another 100 Ticinesi departed for California, while four ~ Luigi Caporgni and
Tommaso Pozzi from Valle Maggia (not immediate members of this family), Battista
Borsa from Bellinzona and Giacomo Bmni from Dongio ~ headed for the lesser
known fields of Jim Crow.^ Two vessels arrived carrying Ticinesi in that year: the
Atrevida, which departed from London carrying Borsa and Bmni, and the Miguel
which left from San Francisco. The Ticinesi aboard this second ship, Antonio and
Attilio Gobbi from Quinto, had presumably been mining in California.^ In 1853, the
year in which Field Marshall Radetzky imposed his blockade of the border with Ticino,
many more Italian speakers departed from Europe for Australia. The Asia, which left
on 26 April, carried 20 Ticinesi while the Marchioness of Londonderry, which
departed just four days later, carried another 23.'* Aboard this second ship, the
Marchioness, was Alessandro Pozzi. He and three of his brothers were to arrive in
Australia before the end of 1861.
Alessandro Pozzi was bom in the valley of Valle Maggia, in Giumaglio, a
village of some 400 people (ref figure 4). His parents, who were goat farmers, had
36