From California to Ticino: what a journey to my ancestors’ Swiss villages revealed
Last summer, Nicole Holst visited the small villages in southern Switzerland where all of her great-great-grandparents were born before emigrating to the United States in the 19th century. Her trip helped her to make sense of her character and dreams.
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
From California to Ticino: what a journey to my ancestors’ Swiss villages revealed
Nicole, born and raised in California, always knew her ancestors had emigrated from Switzerland. As a child she used to visit the Negranti Ranch, in Cambria, Central Coast, California, where her great-grandmother Mary Clementine Negranti (née Bassi) lived. The area was popular among immigrants from the southern Swiss canton of Ticino. The map of both the Californian Central Coast and Valley still shows ranches, vineyards, wineries and roads bearing Ticino family namesExternal link.
“She’d have a birthday party and that was always really intriguing because it’s a big family – she was one of 11 children,” Nicole recalls. “Me and my cousins would get into a lot of trouble, chasing bulls and getting poison ivy, and we’d have these big family barbecues with Swiss Italian sausage.” When Nicole’s grandfather passed away, her grandmother moved out of the family ranch with her three daughters – one of them being two-year-old Lynette, Nicole’s mother – to San Luis Obispo, a 30-minute drive south of Cambria.
“This year I’ve been reflecting on family a lot because I lost my mom about ten years ago, and I just moved back to New York for the second time after having gone home to California, in that area where the ranch is,” explains 43-year-old Nicole. “Going there now as an adult and seeing it made me sad because I wish I was more involved in it. I was a bit removed from that part of my family history. But moving back to New York got me thinking about traditions and family and wondering, ‘Why am I the way I am,’ and ‘Am I the only weirdo that feels the need to expand and move and explore?’,” she says.
More
From the Swiss valley Maggia to the valleys of California
Emigration runs in the veins
Last May, at the invitation of a Swiss friend she met in college, Nicole decided to fly to Europe to find out where exactly her maternal and paternal great-great-grandparents had emigrated from. Over a few days she visited a couple of small villages in Valle Maggia, southern Switzerland, where the Negranti came from, before exploring Giubiasco and Sant’Antonino, where the Bassi family originated. Ahead of the trip, she reached out to members of a Facebook groupExternal link for descendants of emigrants from Valle Maggia to ask for tips.
“I was just curious to know why they moved, because I think Switzerland is so beautiful. But from what I understood, they wanted more business opportunity: I could see it after being there that they’re tiny villages,” says Nicole. After arriving in the US, her great-great-grandfathers farmed and ranched around California, until they managed to build their own business. “The ranch they have now is worth probably billions of dollars because it’s a thousand acres overlooking the California coast,” she says.
Walking through the narrow streets where her ancestors had lived until the 1870s brought Nicole a sense of relief. “I was just curious about what it was like where we came from and whether it would reveal something about me,” she says. “I’ve always been sort of ambitious and willing to go explore and not wanting to just stay in my small town, and I realised that that’s actually in my genealogy. It isn’t just me. Other people in my family came this far and succeeded at it. And I actually had a lot of pride in them after leaving.”
A passion for hospitality
The trip’s biggest surprise was finding out that both sides of her family were involved in the hospitality business. While on a wine-tasting tour in Giubiasco, Nicole found out that the Bassi family owns a hotel in Sant’Antonino.
In Valle Maggia, an old stone house with the name Bonetti on it was up for sale. Nicole remembered reading about her Bonetti ancestors running a hotel in a newspaper clipping she has about her family history. “I’ve actually thought about Airbnb’ing parts of my house,” she says. “And my mom used to talk a lot about wanting to open a bed and breakfast. It’s something I’m thinking about but it’s crazy that it might be in my family lineage!”
The trip was short but inspiring. “You understand yourself better when you know where you came from and what your ancestors did,” says Nicole. “And then appreciate the opportunities I have because they did that.” The Californian inherited lots of pictures from the 1800s of different Swiss-Italian families that belonged to her family and would like to take the time to sift through them and if possible bring them to the descendants of the people in the photographs.
Ticinese traditions in California
Nicole does not have a Swiss passport but knows polenta well. In a small shop in Valle Maggia, she bought the typical wooden spoon that’s used to stir it for her cousin in California, who still cooks this typical Ticinese dish made of boiled cornmeal.
She does not speak Italian, but her mother, along with many relatives, is buried in a California cemetery full of Swiss-Italian names. “They definitely banded together when they got there and I think that’s how my great-grandparents met in California,” says Nicole, thinking of the photographs where her great-grandmother wrote down people’s names on the back.
The trip was a first immersion in Ticino for Nicole, who did not come with the aim of carrying out genealogical research. But the information she stumbled upon while visiting made her want to come back for more. “If I went back, I’d go to that hotel in Sant’Antonino to find out about the Bassi family, which are my great-grandmother’s relatives.” A brief research through online genealogical platforms seems to indicate that Guido Bassi, who opened the hotel in 1963External link, could be Nicole’s grandfather’s second cousin. Meeting in person and sharing personal documents could shed proper light on the family tree.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg/gw
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.