California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

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

G. FERRO. In that splendidly cosmopolitan population which is one of the factors of strength in 
the commercial greatness of California, can be found many men who by training and station 
occupied positions of distinction in their native countries, and are naturally prominent in the 
affairs which they have touched and influenced in California.
One of these is G. Ferro of Ventura, a polished and scholarly Italian gentleman and lawyer, and 
now successful as a rancher, fruit grower, banker and capitalist. He was born in Genoa, Italy, 
May 1, 1873, a son of August and Maria (Mombello) Ferro. He had the liberal training given to 
a youth of the best Italian families. From the elementary schools of Genoa he entered at the 
age of eleven a gymnasium, in which he was a student until sixteen, was then in the Lyceum 
Academy until nineteen, and continued his higher education in the Commercial University until 
twenty-two. Locating at Spezia, Italy, he was engaged in the practice of commercial law there 
for ten years, and continued in the same profession for two years at Alexandria. For another 
two years Mr. Ferro was engaged in practice at the City of Rome.
His coming to California was to represent in this state the Italian affairs in the great Schiappa 
Pietra Estate, consisting of 9,000 acres in Ventura County. In 1909, having settled the estate he 
bought 700 acres of this land from the heirs, and has since developed this as one of the notable 
plantations of the country, forty acres being devoted to lemons, forty acres to grapes, and the 
rest to beans. He also has a half interest in the Conception ranch of 4,000 acres at Conception, 
California. This large acreage is planted to beans and grain.
Mr. Ferro is a director in the Bank of Italy at San Francisco, and is vice president of the Italian 
Vineyard Company at Cucamonga in San Bernardino County. At that place the Italian Vineyard 
Company has one of the largest vineyards in the world. Mr. Ferro is a republican in politics and 
is of course a naturalized American citizen. He belongs to the Catholic Church and the 
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. At Alexandria, Italy, May 22, 1911, he married Anna 
Cavezzale. They have one child, August, now one year of age.