User:Eggventura/Leonetto Cipriani

Leonetto Cipriani

Research: french-language article, reliable translation, belmont history book, possibly use it's sources, also any pre-unification histories of italy, sardinia-piedmont etc.

Bohme, Frederick G. California Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 2, 1963, pp. 163–164. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25155552. Accessed 6 May 2021.

Dr. Ernest Falbo, $28.00 used Amazon https://www.amazon.com/California-Overland-Diaries-Leonetto-Cipriani

/dp/B000KV9PYQ

Short review of “California and Overland Diaries of Count Leonetto Cipriani from 1853 through 1871” translation of Cipriani’s “Avventure Della Mia Vita '' by Dr. Ernest Falbo [professor of Italian at Lake Erie College, Painesville, Ohio].

Cipriani was born in Corsica, and was part of Piedmontese forces when they were defeated by the Austrians, and sought change in the California Gold Rush. He was the first Sardinian Consul in San Francisco in 1852, and on his journey to California, he joined a cattle drive from Missouri to the Sacramento Valley, possibly one of the first ones ever done.

Avventure Della Mia Vita has humorous commentary, where Cipriani makes fun of Mormons and shares how he drank 20 glasses of milk for constipation. It unfortunately has some inaccuracy, poor and questionable translation occasionally by Dr. Falbo.

His prefabricated house brought from Italy, commonly reported to now be Ralston Mansion, was actually erected on Sutter Street in SF in 1852. He bought a plot of land in Belmont in 1854, but the connection to the house is questionable.

“RESTRAINED OF HIS LIBERY,” The New York Times, 12 June 1888, pg. 8

Available at: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/

timesmachine/1888/06/12/106325304.html?pageNumber=8.

Accessed 6 May 2021

Italian Consul Giovanni B. Raffo [no information online] was reportedly contacted by E.N. Rich [no information online or relation] and J. Tolley Worthingon [buried in Baltimore, most likely Cipriani’s brother-in-law] due to Cipriani’s son’s imprisonment in Bastia, Corsica.

Cipriani reportedly married Ms. May Worthington of Baltimore in May, 1859, but five weeks later gets called back to Italy for military duty— never sees Mary again.

He supposedly died March 2. 1860, a few days after the birth of his son Leonetto Jr.

Confusingly, the article says Cipriani returned to America in an attempt to take his son with him, but failed. Back in Corsica, Cipriani remarried, and his wife passed, leaving behind two daughters (not named).

Leonetto Jr. reportedly considered himself an American citizen, and registered to vote in Reisterstown, Maryland in 1882. According to Consul Raffo, there is no restraint on Leonetto Jr. on behalf of the Italian Government, but the French Government, as Corsica was then French, recognized him as a French citizen and have him under surveillance for not fulfilling his military duties. Raffo asked Rich and Worthington to re-confirm their facts, at which point he would contact the Secretary of State Thomas F. Baynard (End of 2nd Cleveland Administration).

“Leonetto Cipriani.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 February 2007,

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonetto_Cipriani

Possible Useful Sources from French Wikipedia:

Vasoli, Nidia Danelon. “CIPRIANI, Leonetto.” Dizionario Biografico Degli Italiani,

vol. 25, Treccani, 1981.Available at: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/

leonetto-cipriani_(Dizionario-Biografico)

(IN ITALIAN)


 * Also from Nidia Danelon Vasoli: Federico Biesta e Leonetto Cipriani: Due Italiani Del Risorgimento e Il Miraggio di Favolose Ricchezze Nelle Terre Americane del Pacifico (Federico Biesta and Leonetto Cipriani: Two Italians of the Risorgimento and the Mirage of Fabulous Wealth in the American Pacific Lands), $18.00 paperback, https://www.amazon.com/Federico-Biesta-Leonetto-Cipriani-Risorgimento/dp/B00639S42I/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1620325866&refinements=p_27%3AVASOLI+DANELON+NIDIA&s=books&sr=1-1&text=VASOLI+DANELON+NIDIA

Translation of French Wikipedia:

General Count Leonetto Cipriani (born in Centuri in Corsica October 16, 1812 died in Centuri on May 10, 1888) is a French politician naturalized Italian, whose family, of both Corsican and Tuscan origin, dates back to the fifteenth century and by oral tradition to the Cipriani of Florence, cited in Dante's Divine Comedy. He was a strong supporter of Italian unity. His fight was rewarded in 1861 by the attribution of the hereditary title of count and senator for life of the Kingdom of Italy1.

At eighteen Leonetto Cipriani was part of the expeditionary force which landed in Algeria in 1830, under the orders of generals de Bourmont and Juchereau de Saint-Denis, his godfather, and took part in the capture of Algiers.

From 1831 to 1834, he traveled to the West Indies, Central America and South America, a region of the globe where his family had great interests. His father and his uncles had been close friends of Simón Bolívar, hero of South American independence. Leonetto Cipriani showed great business acumen and returned from the West Indies with a sum of six million gold francs (the equivalent of eighteen million euros).

Linked both to the Bonaparte, by Prince Jérôme Napoleon, with whom he was intimate, to the Savoys and to the Habsburgs-Tuscany, he contributed to the voluntary adhesion of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the new Kingdom of Italy. He was also a friend of Garibaldi, of whom he did not, however, share the Republican opinion. He was a fierce opponent of Mazzini, whose Carbonari ideas were far from his. He was an officer in the Piedmontese army with the rank of colonel then general and took part in the wars of Italian unity against Austria. He was also a liaison between Napoleon III and Victor-Emannuel Ier.

Large landowner in Tuscany, Corsica and Belmont (California), he had the opportunity to cross the Atlantic several times. He was consul of the Kingdom of Sardinia in San Francisco from 1852 to 1855. During his first trip from Le Havre to New York, he had as traveling companions Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 and Lola Montez, for whom the king Louis I of Bavaria lost his throne. Adventurer at heart, Leonetto Cipriani was one of the first to cross the North American continent through and through.

In 1849, he brought to light the Roman ruins of Cecina in Tuscany, located on his estate.

Its financial independence allowed it to play a historic role without ever having to be part of a coterie, nor depend on the power in place. Its great idea was the Italian unity that only the Savoy dynasty could ensure, the only one having reigned in the peninsula permanently since the Middle Ages. The Bourbons, of Naples or Parma, as well as the Habsburgs, whose good administration he recognized, were for him strangers to Italy. Although speaking French perfectly, and born French, he recognized himself as Italian, having been raised between Pisa and Livorno, where his family owned palaces and villas.

The signing of the Triple Alliance in 1882 was a shock to him. He did not understand, like many of his compatriots, how the Kingdom of Italy could ally with Austria, the enemy of always. He then retired from public life and came to live in his castle of Bellavista in Centuri in Corsica2.

From his first marriage to an American from New York, he had a son, Leonetto. From his second marriage to a Corsican, he had three children Alexandre, Marie wife of Dominique Tomasi and Angéline wife of Antoine Tomasi.

He left Memoirs (Avventure della mia vita), written in 1876, interesting both the history of Italian unity and the conquest of the American West.