Camunni Alphabet and it's Links to Other Ancients Alphabets

Angelo was good enough to update us on a recent study in Europe regarding the links and patterns of ancients alphabets from numerous peoples from Europe, Eurasia, and the Near East. There are links to the lettering system of the Camunni tribe, which are amazing. Grazia Angelo.

*************************

'Origine Degli Alphabeti Camuni'


Book presentation, Budapest, Sofitel, August 17th, 2007


The Magyar rovás

The Magyar rovás make up an alphabet of 40 letters, plus several ligatures or letters representing consonant clusters or syllables.

Some 24 rovás are similar to Vinča signs, to Germanico runes, to letters of the Asiatic runic scripts, to letters of the earliest Italic and Helladic alphabets. Some 16 letters appear to be later additions: they are rounded and/or do not comply with the 5 rules of the runic scripts (see page 45 of the book) and/or are not similar to Vinča or later European signs. These 16 letters were added to the rovás in Central Asia, when the Magyars were no longer carving hard materials, but drawing on parchment, as the Parthians did.

Out of the 24 letters that are similar to Germanico runes, 16 appear to be very similar, but some 8, which could correspond to signs added by the Celts to represent their Indo-European phonemes, are not. In particular, the phoneme [θ] was written in the North and is kept in Irish; but it was written in the south and, still similar, is kept in Greek.

The Germanico runes and the Magyar rovás could both have an ancestor in an earlier 16-letter alphabet. In fact, the original 16-letter Flavio *VUARK, but also the *Pannonico alphabet, can be easily reconstructed by comparing the rovás and the runes with some of the most ancient alphabets: Esik, Lemnos, Camuni, Veio, Marsiliana, and the Venetic and Athenian alphabets.

The Esik, Lemnos, and Camuni alphabets remain so far undeciphered. The Esik and Lemnos alphabets appear to be congruent with the limited Finno-Ugric phonology: the Esik alphabet does not contain any of the characters added in Europe by the Germans and the Celts; the Lemnos alphabet only contains some of them. These three isolate alphabets have kept some of the most ancient *VUARK characters.

In Esik (nearby "Alma Ata" = "Mother/Father of Apple", Hungarian name of the former capital city of Kazakhstan), in the grave of an Amazon Shaman Princess (J. W. Jay) buried with a rich treasure, an inscription on a silver bowl was found. The grave has been dated back to the 5th century B.C. The characters that make up this inscription consist of: 12 characters identical to 12 Flavio *VUARK characters, two *characters identical to another two of the *VUARK, and a few possible ligatures. This inscription cannot be Phoenician or Greek because some of its characters and legatures have never been written around the Mediterranean Sea (except along the western shores of the Adriatic Sea, where Pannonico populations are supposed to have migrated from Illyria). Instead, these characters and ligatures do appear in later alphabets of the Turanian plains, in the Siberian rovás, in the Magyar rovás, in the Nü Shu syllabary (Yunnan, China), and in the Kaganga script (Sumatra) (see the book "Honfoglalás... the Magyars are back home" for other cultural markers that link all these regions). The Esik script contains no characters at all that resemble any Indo-European addition: the Hungarian population that migrated to Esik could have been able, while in Europe, to keep itself separated from the Celts.

When the Camuni alphabets were carved, the Indo-European phonemes had already been added; but the corresponding characters were different from both those used in the Germanico runes and in the Magyar rovás. The Camuni alphabets prove that the Germanico and the Pannonico were alternative characters for the same [a] phoneme. The Camuni alphabets had a letter between D and E that also the Ugaritic abjad had, in the same position. This letter had disappeared from all European alphabets in the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C. (or had been moved between N and O, as it also happened in Phoenicia!). The Camuni alphabets also show an ideogram, which was copied in the Ugaritic abjad, but was never transliterated by the Semites. The Camuni alphabets have characters that do appear in the Ugaritic script, but do not appear in the Phoenician abjad. Thus, it is impossible that the Camuni alphabets could have been copied from the Phoenicians, and it would be nonsense to say that it was copied from the Romans! Instead, it is possible that the Ugaritics could have copied from Europe alphabets with features of the Camuni ones.

The Veio and Marsiliana alphabets have been found in Etruria: these two alphabets were not (not) Etruscan alphabets: the Etruscans never, or only occasionally, used some 8 letters of these alphabets. The Etruscans never added the Indo-European phonemes to their alphabet: some exceptions were graphically and phonetically unstable in time and space (the characters and the associated phonology changed with time, and from one region to another), in most cases different from the Phoenician letters, and in some cases different from any other known script (e.g.: 8 for [f]). The Marsiliana and Veio alphabets could be Pannonico alphabets, a few centuries older than their official dating (8th-7th century B.C.): in fact, they are more similar to the alphabet that the Ugaritics could have copied than to the later Phoenician abjad (see table 60 of the book).


The Germanico runes (Futhark)

The Germanico runes consisted of 24 letters. Eight of them were not stable in space and time and/or do not comply with the rules of the runes. The remaining 16 runes, more stable in time and space, represent the 16 phonemes that are still peculiar to the Finnish alphabet. The phonemes [b], [d], [γ], [w], [z], [f], [θ], (and probably [o] in ancient times) are not used, even these days, in words of Finnish origin. These phonemes were added by the Germans and correspond to the 8 letters that are graphically and phonetically unstable in time and space in the many different European runic scripts. When the German populations left Scandinavia, the Vikings started writing again with a 16-letter alphabet, congruent with a limited, Finno-Ugric, phonology.


The Flavio VUARK

All (all) the earliest European alphabets, including the most ancient Athenian and Etruscan ones, the Linear B, and the Cypriot syllabary (Facchetti, Kirkhoff, ancient scripts.com, et alia), only had the letters needed to represent those Finno-Ugric 16 phonemes. Tocharian, the so-called "Indo-European" language of the Tarim Basin, (possibly an intertwined language Hungarian/Gandhara Sanskrit), also had a limited phonology (Wikipedia). Hungarian also, in ancient time, was lacking the [b], [d], [γ] phonemes (M. Alinei).

Ancient agglutinative languages, including Sumerian according to some scholars, had (and several ones still have) a limited phonology. All the ancient European alphabets therefore derive from an original 16-letter European alphabet. The letters for the Indo-European phonemes were added later on, when the Indo-Europeans had learned how to write.

Both the Germanico runes and the Magyar rovás derive from an earlier, pre-Indo-European 16-letter *VUARK alphabet congruent with the ancient Finno-Ugric phonology, and were made up with characters identical or similar to Vinča signs. The European scripts later inherited these same *VUARK letters, with the same original phonetic values. (See table 43 of the book, which shows that all (all) the original letters of the *VUARKs and of the *Pannonico alphabet were later used by the most ancient European alphabets).

The Flavio *VUARK could have been brought to the shores of the Baltic Sea by those Hungarian populations that migrated from the Carpathian Basin northwards at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.. (See the book "Honfoglalás... the Magyars are back home", page 85).

The Flavio *VUARK evolved in two different scripts: Pannonico *VUARK (from which the Magyar rovás derived) and Finnic *VUARK (from which the Germanico runes derived). There are only a few letters which make the difference between these two *VUARKs. Astonishingly, the Magyar rovás, the Mother of all alphabets, kept both variations (and also variations which shall appear in Southern Europe): and ; and ; and ; and , and ; and .... up until the 19th century A.D..

All the ancient alphabets quoted in the book had a feature in common: none of them was ever designed with any horizontal stroke. Such a strict rule could only be a religious dictate. Note also the many multiples of 8 for the number of letters of ancient alphabets (16, 24, 40).

In any case, a "reconstruction", be it linguistic or historical, is pure speculation as long as a proof of its existence, at the supposed time, is not found.


The Ugaritic abjad

The Ugaritic abjad (abjad = consonantal alphabet, without vowels) is written in cuneiform. Cuneiform was not in the tradition of the region. The local writing tradition is that of Byblos, (undeciphered), which, nevertheless, appears to have already borrowed several rovás and/or Vinča signs in the 19th century B.C. (see table 49, proel.com).

The Ugaritic script is written from left to right in a region that always, and until these days, writes right to left. In Beth Shemesh (Israel) also, the Ugaritic script was used; but it had been modified to become a right to left script, modified to fit the local tradition.

The Ugaritic abjad contains letters for vowels: the Semites did not use the vowels of the Ugaritic script and still these days do not use vowels in their scripts. The Ugaritic characters that corresponded to vowels in Europe were used by the Semites as semivowels or laryngeals; the letters for [i] and [u] were not even ever transliterated. The three vowel characters used by the Ugaritics were only used in foreign words.

No Northern Semitic script has ever transliterated eight letters of the Ugaritic script: they were alien phonemes, vowels, or ideograms (see table 55, Proel.com). Who would ever design an alphabet including letters that would never be used?

The letter order of the Ugaritic abjad is not the traditional Semitic letter order - h, l, h, m... The Beth Shemesh alphabet was also modified in order to have a Semitic letter order. The Ugaritic abjad was alien to the region in which it was written: this is why it had a short life: 2 centuries. The Ugaritic abjad cannot have been designed in Phoenicia.

The Ugaritic abjad was an attempt at writing the *Pannonico alphabet by using the cuneiform writing technique borrowed from the Acadians. It could have even been originally a secret script to be used between Pannonico traders and a friendly Levantine population (or a Pannonico "Middle East settlement"): in fact, the Pannonici would have easily understood it and the Levantines would have used their clay tablets and their writing techniques. The encryption key was very efficient: nobody has found it during 3,300 years! It is not me the monster, but all those who looked not attentively at the Ugarit tablet because it could not serve their causes. If you attentively look at the tablet, you easily see how similar it is to the ancient European scripts!

In the 11th century B.C., the Phoenicians converted again the cuneiform script into linear, using the reverse key and rules that had been used to transcribe the *Pannonico alphabet into Ugaritic: in fact, they left in the Phoenician abjad the same scribal mistakes that appear in the Ugaritic abjad: the B has only one hump. Such a B, with a single hump, was never copied by any ancient European script. Nor the head of the ox (aleph) was ever copied by the Europeans (except the Athenians. See page 59 of the book for the origin of the A). Nor the C... Et cetera. The Greeks only "copied" letters that they already used!

The Greeks did not copy the Phoenician abjad. The Athenians and the Lemnos peoples used the 16-letter alphabet as long as they were allowed to speak and write their own language, until the beginning of the first millennium B.C.: only at that time the letters needed to represent Indo-European phonemes started appearing in Greece (Kirkhoff).

The Greeks did not need to invent the vowels. In fact, the vowels existed already in the Old European *Pannonico alphabet: so much so that the Ugaritics did copy the vowels from the *Pannonico, but did not use them. The Semites used some of them as semivowels or laryngeals. They never transliterated the signs for [i] and [u].

The Europeans did not copy their alphabets from the Phoenicians; but the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Etruscans did copy the European *Pannonico alphabet.

The reconstructed *Pannonico alphabet did exist: in fact, the Ugaritics copied it in the 14th century B.C.. Vasil Ilyov has compiled a table in order to show the derivation of the Cyrillic alphabet from the Vinča signs (he is correct: all alphabets came from there!). The table proves that in Macedonia (region of the Vinča Culture), between 1650 and 1200 B.C (the time in which the *Pannonico was brought to Ugarit) all the characters of the *Pannonico alphabet were written in the local inscriptions.


Consequences

Gimbuteniė was right: the Vinča signs were, or generated, the "Old European" script. The Flavio *VUARK, which was the Mother of all other alphabets, derived from the Vinča signs. Most of the letters of the *VUARK survived in the Futhark and in the Magyar rovás, and most, modified by the time, still survive in the Roman alphabet that we all use every day.

The Hungarians were in Europe in the 14th century B.C.. (See "Honfoglalás... the Magyars are back home"). They brought the 16-letter Flavio *VUARK alphabet to Northern Europe, where it evolved as Germanico runes. They also brought the *Pannonico alphabet to Central Asia, where it evolved as Magyar rovás, and other Asiatic scripts.

The Europeans, who had an alphabet before the Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe, spoke agglutinative languages with a limited phonology. The Finno-Ugric substratum is responsible for most of the phonetic mutations in ancient Europe (see a further book). Gimbuteniė correctly described the "Old European" society: matriarchal, egalitarian, peace loving... She only made a mistake: those populations were not nomadic, war faring, pastoralist Indo-Europeans; they were sedentary, democratic, peace loving Hungarians. The Hungarians are the most ancient population that shows up in the History of Humanity, with an alphabet, and maybe with a script (the Tatarlaka tablet).


Michelangelo@michelangelo.cn

*************************

Original forum link:
origine degli alphabeti camuni

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 10 of 10)

Intermarriage intertwines West Marin's Swiss families

By David Rolland

If the intertwining of Swiss immigrant families seems confusing, imagine how it must have struck Vicki Martinelli of Point Reyes Station's Martinelli family.

As a student at Tomales High in the early 1970s, she became smitten with recent graduate Fred Genazzi. The pair began dating. After a few months, the relationship started growing serious.

Then Vicki's uncle Stan delivered some startling news; he told her he thought that she and her boyfriend were related.

"You've got to be kidding," Vicki said she recalled thinking. "When that's told to you, you get a numb feeling."

Although the relationship suddenly felt "weird," Vicki said, she and Fred kept dating for another year.

Martinelli joked that at the time she figured she'd have to date people in Petaluma to ensure that bloodlines wouldn't cross. Ultimately she never did learn exactly how she and Fred Genazzi are related.

(Actually, The Light has turned up the answer. Martinelli is the great-granddaughter of Olympio Martinelli, who was the half brother of Isa Campigli, Fred Genazzi's great-grandmother. In short, Vicki and Fred are third cousins with one great-great-grandparent in common.)

The problem, Martinelli said, was that her grandparents never passed on much of their family's history. "They never told any of us ... anything about what they did when [their ancestors] got off the boat ... I think it's really sad for my generation."

Tangled genealogies

As Martinelli's story demonstrates, the genealogies of Swiss descendants are often an elusive tangle. Lineages and marriages span two continents, and unraveling family histories is a challenge even to those who work at it.

Another great-grandchild of Isa Campigli, Fred Gilardi of Point Reyes Station, built a family tree for an anthropology assignment while attending Chico State University in the 1970s.

His project left his professor and classmates awestruck. The branches of his tree included Swiss and Italian names such as Tomasi, Lafranchi, Yelmorini, Soldati, Mazza, Pomi, Giammona, Bolla, Bianchini, Sartoris, Giacomini, Grossi, Bettinelli, Scilacci, Garzoli, Muscio, Lucchesi, and Conti.

Now a teacher himself, Gilardi has assigned similar projects to elementary school students in Petaluma and West Marin, sometimes to his pupils' consternation.

"I inevitably got some poor kid who was related to the teacher and didn't want to admit it," Gilardi said with a laugh. So many immigrant families here are related that "you can't step on someone's toe without someone else yelling, 'Ouch!'" Discovering family trees

Like Gilardi, Swiss Professor Giorgio Cheda, Modesto resident Rae Codoni, and the late Lauren Cheda -- all of whom are distantly related -- spent years trying to figure out family trees.

Codoni, a cousin of Tocaloma rancher Don McIsaac, has flown to Corippo, Switzerland, several times to search church records dating back to the 16th century. He has written a book on the subject called The Corippians.

Giorgio Cheda, a professor at Locarno's Teacher's College, has studied Swiss emigration for 30 years and has interviewed West Marin residents for two books on Swiss immigration to California.

One clan's emigration

The clan that eventually included Chedas, Codonis, and Gilardis began with two teenagers from Maggia, who emigrated to West Marin in the mid-1860s: Peter Campigli and Louis Cheda.

The pair established a pattern that would be followed by generations of other young men from the Valle Maggia. First, they land jobs milking cows on dairy ranches owned or leased by earlier immigrants from their home town.

Then, after about a decade of saving money, they returned to Ticino to claim wives. Many of them returned to West Marin, gambling that the New World would be a better place to raise families.

Campigli married Isa Martinelli. Cheda married Isa' sister Nina. The two couples -- along with the Martinellis' half-brothers Santino and Olympio Martinelli -- returned to West Marin, and the family tree starting branching.

Campiglis & Genezzis

Today, it would be difficult to find Swiss or Italian descendents in West Marin who are not in some way related to the early Chedas, Martinellis, or Campiglis. Few of these family links became more entangled than those connecting today's Campigli and Genazzi families.

Two of Pietro and Isa Campigli's children, Erminia and Armando, married a brother and sister, Fred and Dora, from the immigrant Genazzi family.

Armando and Dora Campigli were the grandparents of Ed Campigli who lives in Point Reyes Station with wife Jackie. Jackie is a sister of Butch and Joe Giammona, who are of Sicilian descent, not Swiss. The brothers run an unlikely pair of businesses: City Sewer Service and Joe's Diner.

Before marrying Fred Genazzi, who had moved here from Maggia in 1896, Erminia Campigli had first been married to Silvio Codoni, the son of Joseph Codoni, who immigrated from Corippo of Ticino's Val Verzasca in 1868. (Silvio died a young man.)

Silvio Codoni's sister was Nellie McIsaac, mother of Tocaloma rancher Don McIsaac.

Fred and Erminia Genazzi in 1917 bought the Riverside Ranch in Point Reyes Station which Pietro Campigli had been leasing from the Righetti family. Son Harold Genazzi, who lives there with his wife May inherited the ranch in 1945.

Harold and May are the parents of the second Fred Genazzi, who as a youth unwittingly dated his cousin Vicki Martinelli.

The Martinelli family

Vicki Martinelli belongs to the fourth generation of a family directly descended from immigrant Olympio Martinelli, the half brother of Isa Campigli and Nina Cheda.

Nowadays all this may seem only befuddling, but years ago these extended family ties could be worked to an advantage.

As a young immigrant, Olympio Martinelli worked for his brother-in-law Louis Cheda, bought the Olema Store with his cousin Attilio Martinelli (who went on to be a county supervisor from 1920 to 1940), and then rented and later bought his father-in-law Battista Tomasini's ranch, from which Tomasini Creek and Tomisini Canyon derived their names. Olympio Martinelli and Flora Tomasini are the parents of the late Elmer Martinelli, who in 1965 opened the dump in Point Reyes Station that is now the controversial West Marin Sanitary Landfill. Elmer Martinelli's widow Hazel and their children Leroy, Patricia, and Stanley, today own the landfill with a minority co-owner, Jim Wyse.

Apples, garbage & produce

Intriguingly, the landfill owners are related to Stephen Martinelli, who in 1868 at the age of 26 founded the Martinelli Apple Juice company in Watsonville. He had left the village of Maggia only nine years earlier. As it happens, Olympio's brother Santino "Sam" Martinelli for a time worked at the apple juice company.

Still another branch of the Martinelli family settled in Bolinas, where today they operate an organic farm in Paradise Valley. They are descendants of EB Martinelli, who was a two-term state senator beginning in 1908.

Senator Martinelli's father Lorenzo Martinelli had been a fry cook during part of the John Fremont expedition which blazed a trail through the West and reached San Rafael in 1846.

Martinellis in Bolinas

EB's son Jordan Martinelli Sr., a Marin County Superior Court judge, over time bought three small ranches in Bolinas, beginning in the late 1930s.

Since then the ranches -- together called Paradise Valley Ranch -- have been used for dairy, beef, and sheep ranching.

But recently the Bolinas Martinellis have converted their ranch to new forms of agriculture. In 1983, the family leased part of their land to Warren Weber for organic vegetable growing, and last year they leased another portion to Don Murch, who now "dry farms" potatoes.

A few months ago, Peter Martinelli, great-great-grandson of immigrant Lorenzo Martinelli, followed suit by by starting Paradise Valley Ranch Organic Garden.

The Cheda family

Unlike the different branches of the Martinelli family, who still are involved in agriculture to various degrees, members of the Cheda family abandoned dairy ranching early on -- a rare move among the immigrants.

The early ranching Chedas evolved into shopkeepers, garage owners, and a prominent mortician.

Rancher Louis Cheda, whose wife Nina was a sister of Isa Campigli, was the great-grandfather of Adolph "Sonny" Cheda, who with his son Gary runs Cheda Chevrolet and garage in Point Reyes Station.

Sonny's cousin Vernon Cheda formerly owned Cheda's Market (now Beckers' deli) on Point Reyes Station's main street. Vernon's brother Leroy is a mortician with Russell and Gooch Funeral Chapel in Mill Valley.

Vernon's aunt Erma Scilacci, now 92, married Wilford "Bill" Scilacci, who in 1922 bought the Point Reyes Emporium (later the Palace Market) at auction after feed merchants seized it from his father for unpaid bills. Bill Scilacci died three years ago at age 99.

Swiss in Pt. Reyes

Scilacci's widow this week told The Light the market was one reason so many Swiss immigrant families became intertwined. Downtown Point Reyes Station, and especially the market, served as a meeting place, she said.

"Everybody was very friendly," Mrs. Scilacci recalled. "You just felt like one big family."

As with many other Swiss descendants who came to play dominant roles in West Marin, Mrs. Scilacci has enjoyed an unusually long life. At 92, she suffers from merely "a little arthritis, but that's all. I shouldn't complain."

What's the secret of her countryman's longevity? After a pause, Mrs. Scilacci answered brightly. They're made, she said, from "good old stuff."

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 9 of 10)

Isolation limited Ticinese in choosing their spouses

By David Rolland

Just as geography often determined which families intermarried back in the Old Country, so too was the case in West Marin.

The Lafranchis, the Dolcinis, and the Barbonis -- three ranching families who own much of north-central Marin County -- became neighbors early on but soon became relatives.

Fredolino "Fred" Lafranchi, the father of Nicasio rancher Willie Lafranchi, left Maggia in 1908 at age 17 and traveled to Marin with the late Tomales rancher Giocondo Cerini.

Fred "had heard all these glowing things from his uncle and others who were over here -- wonderful things about California," Willie LaFranchi said.

Brothers meet

Fred's brother Piero of Locarno, Switzerland, told The Light that he didn't even meet his older brother until Piero was a teenager. That was in 1930, when Fred returned home to visit their parents for the first time since emigrating.

In West Marin, Fred found work on an uncle's dairy ranch at Red Hill. Later he tried chicken ranching when his brother Alphonso joined him from overseas.

Like his son Willie, who has served more than 30 years as a trustee of Nicasio School District, Fred joined numerous boards and civic organizations, including several dairymen's groups.

The connections with the Dolcinis came in 1919, when Fred married young Zelma Dolcini of the Nicasio Valley. The couple immediately rented a Nicasio dairy ranch and bought it in 1938. Today, son Willie owns the ranch.

Citizenship revoked

As is the case today, immigration laws in the early part of this century could seem absurd. Although Zelma Dolcini was born in the US, she lost her citizenship when she married Swiss immigrant Fred. Between 1907 and 1922, federal law required American women who married foreigners to take the nationality of their husbands.

As a result, Zelma "had to go through the same procedure as people entering the country," her son Willie said. "My father became a citizen before my mother did."

Zelma was the daughter of Pietro Dolcini, who immigrated in 1870 and married Anita Martin, the daughter of enterprising immigrant Charles Martin (formerly Carlo Martinoia), who, like the Dolcinis, hailed from the town of Cevio. Banking success

Martin went on to be a prosperous banker. He served as president of the Petaluma National Bank and the Marin Bank of San Rafael. He was also a director of Hill Bank of Petaluma and the Swiss American Bank of San Francisco. When he died in 1905, Martin's estate was worth $1 million.

The Dolcinis have since parlayed their share of Martin's estate into 12 ranches consisting of more than 8,000 acres, making the family the largest private landholders in Marin County.

Unlike some ranching families in West Marin, the Dolcinis expect to remain ranchers. "Most of the ranches where my generation resides do have [children] that do carry on," noted Hicks Valley's Peter Dolcini, 70, a grandson of Pietro Dolcini.

"You have to like the life," he said. "If you didn't like it, you'd get out."

Barboni marriage

Dolcini's ranch sits adjacent to the Circle B Ranch, now owned by Bill Barboni, 74, another descendant of a Swiss immigrant.

Peter Dolcini's cousin Irene Dolcini married Joseph Barboni, Bill's uncle, and the two began raising a large family on the ranch.

Tragedy struck in 1927. Both Joseph and Irene died within six months of each other; he of appendicitis and she during the still-birth of the couple's tenth child.

With the nine orphans facing separation by adoption, a judge persuaded Joseph's brother Charles Barboni, Bill's dad, to adopt all the children. Charles, who had dropped out of school in the fifth grade to start dairy ranching, was only 32 at the time. He and his wife Effie already had two kids of their own.

'A good businessman'

Along with his brother's kids, Charles moved from Petaluma and assumed ownership of Joseph's debt-ridden ranch. Bill Barboni recalled his father as generous and "a good businessman ... That's how we wound up with four ranches."

Charles Barboni may have inherited his generosity from his father Constantino, who had left Ticino for West Marin in the 1890s.

Some years later, Constantino heard through the grapevine that back in Switzerland was a girl named Josephine who longed to move to California.

Bill Barboni told The Light that his grandfather sent $200 to Josephine's parents, promising that if they sent their daughter to West Marin, he would marry her.

Josephine soon joined Constantino. Together they returned to Switzerland in 1905 and lived there five years. In 1910 they changed their minds again, came back to West Marin, and started a dairy ranch at Red Hill.

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 8 of 10)

Religion changed more for Swiss who emigrated

By David Rolland

For the Ticinese Swiss, the core of social and cultural life has traditionally been the church. Locarno's Piero Lafranchi, 81, recalled the devotion of his mother, who gave birth to of one of his sisters while in the high Alps where the family summered its cattle.

Just out of labor, his mother put the baby "in one of those basket things they carried on their backs, and brought her down to the village so that she could be baptized," he said.

"That same day she went back up again to the mountain -- the day she had given birth -- all the way down and back up again with the child, about a four-hour journey each way just after giving birth," he said.

Such devotion was not uncommon, and the Italian Swiss carried their beliefs with them when they resettled in West Marin. Over time, however, the traditional faith has in some ways and in some families diminished. Less practiced here

As explained by Lafranchi's nephew, rancher Willie LaFranchi of Nicasio, "The church has always been the center of everything, [but in West Marin] some Swiss families went to church, and some didn't go to church."

As for his own family, "My parents were pretty strict churchgoers, especially my dad. He was from over there."

Indeed, Willie Lafranchi's aunt Virginia (another of Piero Lafranchi's sisters), immigrated to the state of Washington and returned to Ticino only once -- to pray to the Virgin Mary.

"Her son was in the war in Japan," Piero Lafranchi explained. "Of the group of soldiers he was with, he was the only survivor of a bomb. All his companions were killed.

"When he came back alive, his mother made a promise to Madonna del Sasso [Our Lady of the Rock] that she would come back here and go up to the sanctuary in person to give thanks."

Comfort for the afflicted

Such faith, Piero Lafranchi said, was rooted in poverty; the Church offered consolation and guidance to the impoverished villagers.

Piero's nephew Luciano, who with his uncle spoke to The Light at a cafe alongside Lake Maggiore, noted that to the minds of villagers, it was the Madonna who saved them each time someone misstepped and fell in the mountains while herding cattle, which happened frequently.

These days, the village of Maggia (population 750) has two Catholic churches. In one, two walls are covered with pictures depicting the Madonna saving Ticinese from all manner of catastrophes. They were all painted by Antonio Vanoni of nearby Aurigeno.

Monuments to Madonna

In addition, religious monuments mark spots in villages and on mountainsides where the Madonna spared various lives.

"It is superstition to think that this one didn't die because the Madonna interfered, no?" asked Luciano Lafranchi.

But, he said, for his father and grandfather's generations, "you must not forget that what we now call now superstition was for them religious faith, and it helped them to live and accept these conditions.

"What the priest would say was accepted. It wasn't questioned. Religion was accepted without criticism. The priest was the most important person in the village."

Even today, Catholicism is generally stronger among the Swiss in Ticino than among their relatives in West Marin, for the departure from the Old World was not only geographical but also cultural and religious.

Pressure to conform

For some, Catholic dogma felt oppressive, and provided additional incentive to leave Ticino. In Maggia, "you were blackballed if you didn't stay in line," noted rancher Harold Genazzi of Point Reyes Station.

Swiss families who emigrated to West Marin generally consider themselves Catholics, but nowadays worship seems somewhat less obligatory. Church attendance among the Swiss descendants is down, matching the trend in the general population.

"We've always been Catholics," said Hicks Valley rancher Bill Barboni. "We received communion and everything when we were young." But, he said, the rigors of running a dairy ranch made regular church attendance difficult.

These days, however, despite the declining numbers at Mass, Barboni said he's getting to church more often, with the encouragement of his wife Rosemarie. Swiss picnics

Religion, of course, was just one tradition Swiss carried across the Atlantic more or less intact. Another was the Swiss picnic, for years a much anticipated annual respite from the relentless, back-breaking work of dairy ranching.

Late historian Jack Mason, in his book Earthquake Bay, writes of one such celebration in Tomales in 1889, a commemoration of the 582nd anniversary of Swiss independence.

At that event, patriotic banners and bunting festooned the streets. A wagon bearing a portrait of Swiss hero William Tell went through town "behind a band playing Swiss airs," Mason writes. "Aboard the wagon were representatives of each of the 22 cantons [there are 28 cantons now] in the old Republic...

"CF Cavalli, editor of the only Swiss newspaper on the Coast printed in the Italian language, gave an oration in Italian." More songs and speeches followed, with festivities building to "Mme. Martinoni's closing of the Star Spangled Banner."

Picnics in other towns

Although not always so extravagant, Swiss picnics continued as a tradition through the first half of this century. Willie Lafranchi and Peter Dolcini of Hicks Valley both recall attending the annual Swiss picnics at California Park in San Rafael during their youth.

"That was the big event of the year," Lafranchi said, "to go to the Swiss picnic. We never missed that. [The Ticinese] were so anxious to see their old friends."

Added Dolcini: "Each of the families would come, and you'd congregate with your own clan or with your friends. There was no yodeling or anything like that, but we would whoop it up. They had bands, lots of singing -- no shortage of wine."

Swiss clubs waning

Although a few Swiss clubs still hold social functions around the state, they are not nearly as well attended as they once were, in part because immigrant families have become "diluted" with other nationalities, Dolcini said.

Aside from the picnics, other forms of recreation for Ticinese immigrants included one distinctly American pastime -- baseball -- as well as regular Saturday night dances.

During the 1930s and 40s, semi-pro baseball teams from San Francisco and elsewhere would come to play at Nicasio Square. "It was big before the war," Lafranchi said, "and then after the war it started up again for a while."

Rodoni baseball tradition

Although baseball was a new sport for the Swiss, there were soon Blooms (formerly Fioris), Righettis, and Rodonis on local teams. Among the Rodonis were current Point Reyes Station residents Fred Rodoni Sr. and his brother Julius.

"Fred...was a good baseball player," recalled Lafranchi, "and Julius too." In fact, Rodoni Sr., 77, is still going at it; the Point Reyes Station insurance salesman is the starting pitcher for his team in the West Marin Softball League.

Bars and dances

There were saloons, of course. "At one time, I think, there were four bars in Nicasio," Lafranchi said, adding that there used to be 26 dairy ranches in Nicasio Valley, compared to three today.

But it was the weekend dances that young Swiss looked forward to most. Indeed, many of them met their future spouses on the dance floor. "The Saturday night dance was held over there in Nicasio," Peter Dolcini said. "You'd pick your wife or your husband within the territory because you all socialized together."

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 7 of 10)

Ticino has found prosperity since war

By David Rolland

Directly east of Point Reyes Station's Green Bridge is the ranch of Harold Genazzi, whose father Fred Genazzi immigrated from the Swiss village of Maggia in 1896.

A century later, Maggia is still tiny (750 residents compared with 675 in Point Reyes Station), and its lord mayor is Elio Genazzi, a cousin of Harold.

Mayor Genazzi has never set foot in West Marin, but in describing his own town on a recent Wednesday afternoon he might easily have been talking about Point Reyes Station.

Vacationers -- typically Dutch, German, and Italian -- boost Maggia's population to 1,000 in summer, crowding the town and making some villagers unfriendly toward outsiders.

As is true throughout West Marin, strict land-use regulations maintain Maggia's traditional appearance but often frustrate property owners. Real estate prices have become exorbitant.

The tourist-based prosperity is only a fairly recent phenomenon. Life, for many Ticinese, generally began improving as the villages modernized after World War II.

Genazzis epitomize change

The Genazzi family itself epitomizes the change. Mayor Genazzi, 42, a bespectacled, soft-spoken man, noted that around the turn of the century, when virtually all Maggia residents were poor, the Genazzis were especially destitute.

"They were considered the poorest family in Maggia," he offered matter of factly. "Even today in Valle Maggia, people talk about what a terrible time my family had to survive."

These days, aside from being the lord mayor, Elio Genazzi works as an urban planner for the City of Locarno and has just been elected to Ticino's canton (or state) parliament.

"Boy, things have changed," exclaimed Evelyn Gilardi nŽe Genazzi of Point Reyes Station, when she learned from The Light how well her cousin was faring.

The mayor, who is also a cousin of Tomales rancher Romeo "Butch" Cerini, recalled with a touch of pride what family members who stayed in Maggia managed to endure 100 years ago.

"At that time it was important to have some land," Genazzi said through an interpreter. "But the only land that they had was right up in the Alps -- in the mountains -- the farthest away from their house."

A dangerous life

Work then was hard and dangerous. Transporting hay down from the Alpine meadows was especially tricky. At the time, men and hay descended the mountainsides in gondola-like slings, which were ridden at high speed.

On one occasion, Elio's uncle Ubaldo Genazzi had not yet reached the end of the line when Mayor Genazzi's father Marco sent a bale of hay careening after him. The hay plowed into Ubaldo and knocked him off the crude sling. He fell some 50 feet and broke both legs.

These days, cable cars have replaced the slings, making the task far safer. The post-war era

If life has improved, the improvements by no means have come free of complications.

A decade ago, after 40 years of modernization and an influx of wealthy residents, civic leaders in Maggia grew concerned about some very West Marin-style issues.

New residents were building modern houses or remodeling old ones, and the resulting loss of historic character and scarce open space prompted a wave of land-use politics.

"If we allow everybody to build where they want, future generations will find themselves with no land, no green open space," said Mayor Genazzi. "Today that's one of the biggest problems we have here -- to plan what to do with the land."

Genazzi acknowledged, however, that some property owners feel paralyzed by new zoning laws and building codes. "Now it's almost to the point that it's practically suffocating people," he said.

"There are so many rules and laws they have to conform with that people say there's no liberty anymore. But it has been necessary to make these laws."

Genazzi, who has been mayor for eight years, is particularly pleased by a recent architectural trend celebrating traditional stone houses.

Homogeneity lost

Some changes city planners can't stop. Historically, villages in Ticino were defined by the families who lived in them. Cevio was the home of the Respinis and Dolcinis. Giumaglio was home to the Cerinis and Sartoris. In Someo were the Tomasinis and Righettis. The Codonis and Scilaccis came from Corippo.

The automobile, however, brought an end to the villages' isolation. Outsiders have moved in and the townspeople themselves have been freer to leave. Communities are far less homogenous than they were before World War II.

"Up to about 1960 in Maggia, the Genazzi, Martinelli, and Garzoli families were the majority," the mayor said, "but today, those families are just a few. The new arrivals have nothing [historically] to do with Maggia."

Unclaimed estates

Intriguingly, the changing character of Ticino's villages may hold financial significance for some West Marin residents.

As many older Ticinese have died, their property has fallen into legal limbo. Under Swiss law, all relatives of a deceased person must be asked if they want to put in a claim for his or her property.

Among those with outstanding claims to property in Maggia are the Swiss branches of the Campigli, Martinelli, and Genazzi families, the mayor noted.

"The relatives that are here can't dispose of an estate until they know all the heirs," he said. "It creates quite a problem, [for] we know there are heirs in America.

"But those heirs are afraid to admit who they are because they fear that maybe in the inheritance there are some debts, and maybe they'll have to pay."

Some heirs don't realize they may have a claim to valuable land in Maggia, he stressed.

Lived in both locales

Eva Giubbini of the village of Intragna has lived for years in both Ticino and West Marin, and has watched both regions evolve along somewhat similar lines.

Giubbini was born in Intragna but grew up in Inverness. She returned to Ticino with her family in 1948 when she was 19.

While living in Inverness, "my parents always said [Ticino] was the most beautiful country in the world," Giubbini said,

Inverness in the 1930s was no less rustic than Intragna at the time. When her family arrived, "Inverness still did not have electricity whereas Intragna already had electricity," she recalled. (Electrical service finally reached the Point Reyes peninsula in 1939.)

"My mother for one year cried every day...she was that homesick."

Likewise, Giubbini's father missed Intragna so much he made visits home every few years, returning one time having bought an old post office in Ticino. During his visits to Intragna, "he always said, 'I want to come back here. These are my roots. I want to come back.' And he did," Giubbini said, "but for only six months, and [then he] died of a heart attack."

New prosperity in Ticino

Upon returning to Switzerland as a young woman, she found Intragna "awful quiet, but I didn't care because I was coming here, and it was a whole new world."

Nearby, the city of Locarno has grown to 15,000 residents, but right after World War II, it looked "like a small, sleepy, Spanish town with little activity," Giubbini recalled.

"I don't know how the change came about, but everyone seemed to be happy," she said. "Everyone started working again. You started building. Banks went into business. Shops opened ... This happens after every war."

As has happened in her childhood home of Inverness, many old houses in Intragna and other Ticinese villages have been converted to vacation lodging.

Giubbini herself rents out a couple of houses to short-term and long-term vacationers. A two-bedroom house rents for the equivalent of $900 a month.

Giubbini waited 10 years after resettling in Intragna before visiting West Marin. She said she was too busy experiencing Europe: "I had too much to do...

"I love going back [to West Marin, but] I think I have gained more by staying in Europe. It has broadened me more than if I had remained in Inverness or Point Reyes."

However, Guibbini said, "I still feel very American."

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 6 of 10)

A reporter's Swiss notebook

By David Rolland

Swiss officials charged photographer Janine Collins and me a whopping 70,000 Italian lira ($42) to drive our rented Ford Fiesta across the border from Italy, and once again we worried that our newsgathering adventure was far too expensive for The Light.

Our mission was to interview residents of Canton Ticino about their links to families in West Marin. The focus of our research was immigration that began 150 years ago and ended by the time most people alive today can remember.

One of the first Ticinese we looked up was Rita Alberti, owner of Hotel International in Bellinzona (comfy plus great Italian food), and her husband Toce. Toce Alberti's aunt and uncle lived in Greg and Doris Ferrandos' house in Point Reyes Station before the Ferrandos.

Longing for California

Intrigued by our research, the Albertis introduced us to Renaldo Richina, who with his wife Angelina had ranched in Monterey County for 14 years and could compare Ticino with California.

Richina showed us nearly every house in his town of Robasacco and described their inhabitants. At first, we were overwhelmed by this hospitality, but when we reached Richina's own home, we saw how much he still misses his cowboy days in California. Hanging in the entryway to his home is a Great Western Savings poster of John Wayne.

Angelina Richina poured us a glass of red wine, as did everybody else we met in Ticino, while her husband told us over and over how California is most wonderful place on earth but that President Clinton is "too soft."

With great humor, Richina served up rapidfire opinions on communism, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Kirk Douglas, Turkey, and former French President Francois Mitterand, revealing as he joked a keen understanding of what California has meant to him and other Ticinese.

After showing us photos of himself in cowboy garb, his prizewinning bulls (highest-grade butterfat 1958, 1959), and his children, Richina proudly declared: "I am an American. My children are American."

But what about Switzerland, his birthplace and home? "Too many son-of-a-guns," he shot back.

Our mission revealed

The Richinas and our hosts, the Albertis, took us to dinner at one of Robasacco's small restaurants where a boisterous crowd was drinking and singing at a nearby table. Curious what the revelers were singing in Italian, photographer Collins asked Toce Alberti to translate.

They're singing about the Ticinese migration to America, Alberti answered. Collins and I were dumbfounded: what could be more perfect for our research?

The group's songleader was introduced to us as a journalist, Pier Baroni, who writes for Lugano's Couriere del Ticino. Once Baroni learned why we were there, he shouted the news across the room to his cohorts, and they again burst into song.

It was a song for me, and it was followed with one for Collins -- her name worked cleverly into the lyrics.

Baroni was amazed that anyone in the States would know about the Ticinese emigration to California -- one of the most important events in his canton's history -- let alone would travel all the way to Robasacco to learn more about it.

It wasn't the only time Collins and I received such an emotional response to our reporting.

Rodonis in Ticino & West Marin

Exactly a week later, we arrived in the town of Biasca to have dinner with the Cavaglieri family. Before she married her husband Claude, Amina Cavaglieri's last name was Rodoni.

Cavaglieri showed as a picture of her grandfather, Ferdinando Rodoni, a cousin of immigrant Julius Rodoni. Julius was the father of Point Reyes Station residents Sis Arndt, Fred Rodoni Sr., Julius Rodoni, and Pat Rodoni, who died in March. Then she set the photo down next to a picture of a young Pat Rodoni, and the resemblance was unmistakable.

It was less than a decade ago that she learned she still had family alive in California. With her son Michel acting as translator, she told us how she the two halves of her family made contact:

Pat Rodoni, his wife Nola, and daughter Yvonne visited Biasca in 1984 in search of relatives. One of the town's longtime residents took them door to door to some of the many Rodoni households in Biasca, but the search was fruitless -- that is, until one Rodoni suggested that it might be the Cavaglieri family that they were looking for. Unfortunately, luck was not with Pat, Nola, and Yvonne; the Cavaglieris were out of town.

Pat and his family left their West Marin address and phone number with people in Biasca, and Amina ultimately got it. She called Pat and Nola in Point Reyes Station, and the relatives began exchanging old pictures of family members and the relationship developed.

A Swiss Rodoni visits Pt. Reyes

The two families didn't actually meet in person until another of Cavaglieri's sons, Carlo, visited Point Reyes Station and in broken English asked the first man he saw how he could find Pat Rodoni. The cheerful man replied, "I'm Pat Rodoni."

How did Carlo react? we asked him. "I don't have words," he replied. "It's impossible to explain -- excitement, emotion."

Some months later, Pat's daughter Yvonne and her husband Antonio Paez returned to Biasca for a visit, and Amina used the opportunity to bring out more photos of people she couldn't identify; they had been tucked away in an old family album.

As Yvonne eyed the photos, she saw the images of her father and her uncles that had been sent to Switzerland from California more than 50 years ago. "If we didn't have this documentation," Cavaglieri said, "we could not have found the family of Rodonis in America."

As Cavaglieri told her story and listened to Carlo tell his, she at times appeared on the verge of tears. She had been overcome with joy ever since we walked through her door. Our visit was worthy, in their opinion, of a huge bottle of champagne that Michel had won in the town's Carnivale. They said they had been saving it for a very special event.

The celebration didn't end with champagne. Two friends, the Maggini Sisters, suddenly burst into the house and serenaded us with America America, Happy Birthday to You, and a risqué ditty titled Don't Touch My Breasts -- all played on saxophone kazoos.

Two weeks of encounters like these made the $42 border crossing well worth the price.

Switzerland to West Marin (Part 5 of 10)

Canton of Ticino neighbors help each other in Tomales

By David Rolland

Sometimes not much changes when families move thousands of miles from home.

For more than a century, the Cerinis and the Sartoris have been neighbors in the Swiss town of Giumaglio. Today, a Cerini is the town mayor, and a Sartori Quarry sits just north of town.

As it happens, the Cerinis and Sartoris are also neighbors in Tomales.

They are an example of how the first immigrants from a certain town established themselves and then helped townspeople who arrived later not understanding a word of English.

One such helpful immigrant was Tomales rancher Maurice Sartori, who in 1910 gave 16-year-old newcomer Giocondo Cerini his first job as a ranchhand.

Two weeks before he died on Feb. 14 at age 100, Cerini told The Light that upon arriving, he saw so many familiar faces that Tomales "was just like home."

Stone cutter back home

Sartori had been a stone cutter in Giumaglio before emigrating to Tomales in the 1890s. He became a landowner in 1903 when he purchased the Burbank Ranch from his brother Victor, who had immigrated before him.

Sartori's ranch is still in the family. Romeo Sartori -- Maurice's grandson -- his wife Kathleen, and their adult son Russ own the 645-acre dairy on the Tomales-Petaluma Road now.

And Sartori's generosity paid off for the Cerinis. Giocondo saved enough money to later buy the John Keys ranch in Tomales along with two of his brothers, Arcangelo and Romeo.

That ranch, which is located across Highway 1 from the Tomales gas station, has since passed on to Romeo's son Butch.

Butch's cousins Roy, son of Isadore Cerini, and Leroy, son of Giocondo Cerini, also own land in Tomales.

Last living immigrant

Before he died, centenarian Giocondo Cerini was believed to be the last living immigrant who had made the journey from Switzerland to West Marin.

Ironically, his sister Maria Genazzi, who had stayed in Giumaglio with two of their brothers, died in Switzerland only a month earlier at the age of 104.

Her daughter Laura Bono -- talking to The Light between loads of laundry at her home in Maggia, Switzerland -- noted that Maria Genazzi was too attached to Ticino to emigrate to West Marin with the six of her brothers and sisters who did.

So while her brothers began the long road to greater freedom and prosperity by finding work at Tomales dairy ranches, Maria Cerini moved from Giumaglio to Maggia. There she married Giacinto Genazzi and struggled to raise five children.

"Life was very hard, especially for the Genazzi family," Bono said. "With five children, it was a difficult life because my father passed away very young. "It was difficult to get some money in the early times here. The brothers and sisters in California...they saved some money. But she -- here in Maggia -- she was very, very poor."

Murdered over livestock

Nor could she turn to her own parents for help. Her father Giovanni also died as a young man, having been murdered in a dispute over a goat.

Although her brothers in West Marin did far better, two sisters who had also immigrated weren't so fortunate. Adela and America Cerini died of consumption (tuberculosis) shortly after they arrived.

For his part, Giocondo Cerini had a tough time making it from Ticino to West Marin. After boarding the SS Britannia in France, he and a friend, Alex Piezzi, traveled in different classes of the ship en route to America. The two got separated when the ship docked at the federal immigration station on Ellis Island, New York, and they searched for each other for days.

As it turned out, American officials had wrongly registered young Cerini as an Italian, and Piezzi eventually found his friend at the Italian consulate.

Cerini told The Light that all he could afford to eat on the week-long train ride from New York to California was salami and cheese washed down with jug wine.