Napa County Biographies

J. MONGINI

Transcribed by: Betty Wilson

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

 
            J. MONGINI has a ranch of 140 acres about three and a half miles 
from Napa, on which is a small family orchard of various fruit and nut-bearing 
trees, and forty acres of vineyard.  He has also a small winery, with storage 
capacity for 25,000 gallons.  He purchased this place about eleven years ago, 
and began planting it out in grapes and his family orchard.  Fifteen acres have 
been in fruit for about ten years, and the remainder has come into bearing at 
intervals since that time.  He was born in Toriglia, Province of Genoa, Italy, 
in 1839, and worked as a lad in the silver and quicksilver mines of Sardinia 
until he came to America in 1868.  He was married in 1866 to Miss Theresa 
Navonia, a native of the same province in Italy.  There are three children 
living:  Louise, Joseph and Frederic.  Remaining in New York for some time after 
arriving in this country, he reached San Francisco in 1870, and at first worked 
in San Jos� and Livermore, and a few months in Napa.  He then returned to San 
Francisco, where he remained for about eight years; but, remembering the 
beautiful vineyards of his native land, and its wonderful resemblance in soil 
and climate to that of Napa Valley, he decided to settle there, and purchased 
his present ranch, in the cultivation of which he has been very successful.  Mr. 
Mongini has heretofore sold the most of his grapes to the wine cellars in Napa, 
but this year (1889) he has made them all into wine, and has on hand about 
12,000 gallons.
 
Memorial & Biographical History of Northern California, The Lewis Publishing 
Co., 1891