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farmer’s cottage on the property. Initially six other workers, including Maria Giannini’s brother
Giovanni Francesco Modena, came to Albemarle County with the Gianninis and Mazzei. In
1774, another ten workers from Lucca joined them at Mazzei’s farm, Collé.
Mazzei oversaw the planting of a “considerable vineyard,” Jefferson wrote in 1793 in a letter to
Albert Gallatin, “and attended to it with great diligence for three years. The war then came on, the time
of his people soon expired, some of them enlisted [in the Revolutionary army], others chose to settle
on other lands and labor for themselves; some were taken away by the gentlemen of the country for
gardeners, so that there did not remain a single one with him.” The war also prevented Mazzei from
importing more workers.
In 1779, Mazzei took a job as an agent for the Commonwealth of Virginia to raise funds
and support for the Revolution in Europe. While he was away, he rented his farm, Collé, to a
Prussian army general. The general’s horses, Jefferson wrote, “in one week destroyed the whole
labor of three or four years.”
As his indenture neared an end, Giannini worried that he might be stranded in Virginia. On
February 23, 1778, Mazzei and Jefferson signed an addendum to Giannini’s original contract,
made in Pisa in 1773. In the addendum, Mazzei agrees to prolong his pledge to return the Giannini
family to their native country, regardless of what happens to Mazzei, as long as Giannini remains
in the service of Jefferson. Jefferson signed as Mazzei’s security for this addendum.
Giannini tried to leave Virginia in the fall of 1778, but his plans were thwarted, perhaps by
the British naval blockade. Jefferson’s notes from 1790 indicate that Mazzei agreed to arrange
transportation for the Gianninis to return to Italy in October 1778, and Giannini sold his personal
property in preparation for leaving, but the wagon never arrived to start them on their journey.
In the autumn of 1778, Jefferson hired Giannini and several other Italians to work for him
at Monticello. Giannini labored as a gardener for Jefferson from 1778 to 1786, and occasionally
after that. The family bought land in Albemarle County, along the road between Collé and
Carter’s Creek.
Giannini continued to press Jefferson for return passage to Italy, as well as the clothing
that Mazzei had promised him and his family in the original indenture contract. He agreed to
arbitration of the complaint in 1794. In May 1795, Jefferson mentioned the case in a letter to
Mazzei. “I have had an arbitration with Anthony Giannini on his claim of clothing and passage
to Italy. The arbitrators decided he had no claim to clothing but that you were still liable, and
myself also as your security, to pay his passage whenever he chuses [sic] to go to Italy, and I can
find a conveyance. Anthony not content with this, has brought a suit, which will be determined
this summer. I shall do my best for you I can. If his right to a passage is still confirmed, I will
buy it up reasonably, that you may be clear of him.”
eVentuAlly AmeriCAns
In 1795, Giannini was nearly fifty years old, and by then he may not have wanted to return to
Italy. He still felt Mazzei owed him compensation for failing to meet the terms of the contract.
He filed a civil suit in Albemarle County Court against Jefferson in May 1795 for five hundred
pounds in damages. The case was decided in January 1798 in Jefferson’s favor, on the grounds
that Giannini’s claim had been resolved in arbitration.
Antonio Giannini never returned to his native country. He and his wife reared eight children
in Albemarle County. From 1807 to 1811, he was licensed by the county court as an ordained
Baptist minister with the authority to solemnize marriages. On July 19, 1808, Antonio and
Maria Giannini sold 200 acres of land in Albemarle County to James Monroe. The land became
part of the Monroe estate Highland, now known as Ash Lawn–Highland. The Gianninis then
moved to Nelson County, where two of their children had settled.
Earl Hamner, creator of the television series The Waltons and Falcon Crest, is descended
from the branch of the family that settled in Nelson County. His mother, the inspiration for the
Olivia Walton character, was Doris Giannini Hamner. Falcon Crest, a drama about an Italian
winemaking family in California, was inspired in part by Hamner’s interest in the culture of
winemaking brought to Virginia by his mother’s ancestors, Antonio and Maria Giannini.
Catherine OBrion is a local records archivist at the Library.
Eureka!
Giannini descendant finds
genealogical gold in the archives
The records of the lawsuit
that Antonio Giannini
filed against Thomas
Jefferson, which contain
his indenture to Philip
Mazzei in Livorno, Italy,
in 1773, were transferred
to the Library of Virginia in
1972. With the creation of
the Circuit Court Records
Preservation Program in
Portrait of Philip Mazzei
1991, funds for preserving and describing
the records were made available. The lawsuit
was described in the Library’s online catalog
in 2008, which brought it to the attention of
Rosanna Bencoach, a Giannini descendant
and family historian. She describes the court
case file’s importance to her genealogical
research in the following thank-you note sent
by e-mail to the Library:
Studies of genealogy and history are
seldom “finished.” There are new discoveries
waiting to be made if only the person who
needs the material can learn about its
existence and find a copy. My family had
been looking, for at least three decades, for
any court documents or letters revealing the
final action of a lawsuit a family member
undertook in the 1790s against his original
employer for the balance of the funds he
believed owed to him. We had some initial
documents describing the suit, but the last
known reference was a letter noting that the
“suit has not yet come to trial.”
But thanks to the Library of Virginia’s
efforts . . . we now have a copy of the
court’s case file! It was better than we even
hoped. It gives the history of the dispute
and arbitration, reveals the names of the
attorneys and witnesses, and (because it was
key to the dispute) contains my ancestor’s
original 1773 indenture written in Italian!!!
As other resources are revealed through the
Library’s enhanced, online finding aids, who
knows what discoveries might await?
Rosanna Bencoach
Richmond, October 7, 2008
Bencoach contributed research to a family
history published in 1999, The Gianninis
of Virginia: Family and Descendants of
Antonio and Maria Giannini, Vignerons and
Gardeners, Immigrants, 1773, available at
the Library of Virginia.
Summer 2009 broadSIDe 7