Santa Clara County Biographies


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm



EDWARD P. GIACOMAZZI
Founder of the Bank of Milpitas
 
SURNAMES: Ramelli

Enviably prominent, popular and influential for great good, Edward P Giacomazzi 
of Milpitas, may well feel that he is enjoying some definite reward for the 
years of labor and risk which have led up to the position he now occupies as one 
of the representative men of affairs of Santa Clara County. A native son, he was 
born in San Jose on March 22, 1879, the son of Peter and Poalina Giacomazzi [Ed. 
Note- see obit for Peter below], worthy folks who never failed to have the 
confidence and esteem of those who knew them. His father was a native of Canton 
Ticino, Switzerland, and when a young man, he came out to the United States and 
California, and settled in Santa Clara County. At first, he worked in the lumber 
mill on the Alameda, and later he engaged in the cattle business near Pescadero. 
Edward attended Santa Clara College, and also the old Garden City Business 
College on Market Street; and after a while his father discontinued 
stock-raising and embarked in the handling of general merchandise, at Soledad, 
in Monterey County. From his father he learned the ins and outs of the trade, 
and for ten years was his right-hand man. Then he became one of the bookkeepers 
at the Spreckles Sugar Company, at Spreckels, Cal., and that responsibility he 
continued to discharge for a twelve-month.

Peter Giacomazzi then sold his business at Soledad and removed to San Jose, 
where he joined Felix Maggini in a partnership to conduct a general merchandise 
store on Thirteen Street; and Edward remained with his father in this new 
venture for four years. In 1903 he came to Milpitas and, having bought out Mr. 
Muller, established for himself a general merchandise store. In 1905, he was 
appointed the postmaster of Milpitas, and he was also made deputy county clerk 
under Henry Pfister. In 1911, Mr. Giacomazzi cooperated in the founding of the 
Bank of Milpitas, and so well has this institution been conducted that the Bank 
of Milpitas has the record of being the first bank in Santa Clara County to pay 
dividends the second year of its existence. Mr. Giacomazzi has been director of 
the bank since its establishment, and since 1917, when he was elected to succeed 
Michael Lynn, has been its president.

At San Jose, in 1899, Mr. Giacomazzi was married to Miss Amelia Ramelli, a 
native of Santa Clara County, and the daughter of Joseph and Mary Ramelli. Her 
father, a very early pioneer, was a dairyman when he came to California and he 
had a dairy farm of 120 acres on Coyote creek, about twelve miles south of San 
Jose. One daughter, Elsie, a student at the high school, has blessed the union. 
Mr. Giacomazzi is a member of the Lodge No. 522 of the B. P. O. E., and he is a 
strong Republican.

Transcribed by Carolyn Feroben, from Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara 
County, California, published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. page 1494