Starting at the beginning is usually best. Vittorio Traverso was born in Pentema, Torriglia, Genova, Liguria, Italy on 15 March 1866. Pentema is a very small village perched upon a mountainside located near the Swiss border with the sea coast on one side and mountains on the other. According to his certificate of death, his father's first name was Giacomo. (Father's death in Italy 1897 | See church and plaque to right)

Luisa Bacigalupi, born on 26 July 1875, immigrated in 1890 by herself from Carasco, Genova, Liguria, Italy to live with a sister on Greenwich Street in San Francisco.

Read more about the "Great Arrival" of Italians to America.

Vittorio found he could make better money as a miner at the Great Western Quicksilver Mine in Middletown, Lake County ($3 a day) so he moved his family there. (Read lower portion of note from B. T. Rocca.) Their second son, Victor, was born there (16 January 1898). Besides working in the mine, they grew vegetables and sold them to the resorts.

They saved their money and around the turn of the century (1900) they returned to San Francisco. On 9 February 1901, Vittorio purchased 491 Greenwich at Dupont for the sum of three thousand dollars. (First Deed)

John, their third son, was born 5 February 1902 in San Francisco. On 15 April of that year, Vittorio became a naturalized United States citizen. The record was lost during the Quake of 1906 and his naturalization was reestablished on 5 January 1909 in the San Francisco Superior Court by Judge Thomas Graham. This Voter Registration page includes Vittorio. Note his address is at 439 Greenwich.

Page 233 from the PACIFIC TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CO. SAN FRANCISCO TELEPHONE DIRECTORY JUNE 1902. It lists Traverso V. Groceries at 439 Greenwich with DAVIS 641 as the phone number. The research is continuing to try to understand why Vittorio bought the grocery at 491 Greenwich, but Vic worked in a grocery at 439 Greenwich according to the San Francisco City Directories.

"For most of its 150-year history, Telegraph Hill was a working-class neighborhood, and it remained unapologetically so until the 1930s. Early photographs of the Hill show a neighborhood of trash-strewn steep dirt and gravel streets (often little more than paths) with goats grazing on the unbuilt portions. The streets were lined with small false-front or gable-roofed Italianate-style cottages, with the occasional multi-story balconied dwelling. These worker's homes were built on the Hill because steep grades kept land prices affordable and because the Hill was close to the piers and warehouses of the Northeastern waterfront where many of these workers had jobs. Rickety wooden stairs linked the top of the Hill with that waterfront. Longshoremen, in particular, had an advantage living on Telegraph Hill because they could keep an eye out for incoming ships, allowing them to make it to the 'shape-up' at the piers before the arrival of other would-be job-seekers."(Telegraph Hill, September 2002 by Christopher P. Verplanck)