Merced County Biographies

MRS. ELVEZIA TONOLLA

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

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

 
        No object lesson could be presented to the student of history more 
striking than the progress of civilization and especially of California in the 
last twenty years. It was about that time that Miss Elvezia Pedrazzini, a native 
of Canton Ticino, Switzerland, came to California. Since her arrival she has 
seen more new inventions
that are now in common use than were made in a hundred years previously. Her 
father, Fedele Pedrazzini, was an attorney at law, who went to Australia and 
died there leaving his family in Switzerland. The daughter, who remained with 
her mother, Celestina (Traversi) Pedrazzini, was educated in the grammar school 
in
Switzerland and taught school there. She was the youngest of five children, 
namely: Adelaide, Pauline, Flamina, Carmelo and Elvezia.
        Miss Pedrazzini came to Pescadero, San Mateo County, and was married in 
Redwood City, on December 3, 1903, to Venanzio Tonolla, a native of Canton 
Ticino, Switzerland, the son of Antonio and Martina De Grigioni; and reared on 
his father's farm. When nineteen years old he came to California and worked in 
hotels, dairies and as a ranch hand. After his marriage he remained on ranches 
in San Mateo County. Later they moved to Merced County and he leased the S. A. 
Smith ranch and ran it for nine years. In 1916, he bought the Louis Bambauer 
place of thirty-seven acres, one and a quarter miles south of Los Banos and 
carried on a dairy there. He died there, on January 17, 1918, leaving a family 
of three children: Ida, Oscar, and George. Mrs. Tonolla is a Democrat in 
politics. Mr. Tonolla was a member of the Druids of Santa Cruz.
 
History of Merced County, California � Los Angeles, Historic Record Co., 1925
page 886-887