Bargetto Family's Bocce Ball
Bargetto Family's Bocce Ball
Usage conditions apply
- Description
- Bocce is a game with ancient roots that was widely practiced in Italy and among Italian immigrants to America. Played on a court or any large, flat surface, the inexpensive game was an important element in the social and community life of immigrants from Italy. Since the late 1980s bocce has become a popular pastime for millions of Americans.
- This bocce ball was part of a set owned by John P. Bargetto, who immigrated to the United States in 1909 to join his brother Philip, a winemaker in California. Made of a rubber composition, the ball is well used and shows a few remnants of green paint and black marks. In bocce, each player rolls two balls toward a mark (another, smaller ball called the Pallino). The player whose bocce balls land closest to the mark is awarded points. Bocce games can go on for hours as players strategize each roll of the ball.
- The Bargetto family’s story reflects in many ways the history of Italians in California, with several themes threaded throughout: multiple migrations between Italy and America, opportunity and work in the wine industry, and the importance of family and community. The first Bargettos to arrive in California were Giuseppe (Joseph) and his eldest son Filippo (Philip), who left their ancestral home in Italy’s Piedmont region, in 1890. They settled among other Italians in the winegrowing area around Mountain View, in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where they found work at the Casa Delmas Winery. Although Joseph moved back to Italy two years later, Philip remained until 1902, when he returned to Italy to be married. Three years later Philip and his new family arrived back in California, settling first in San Francisco, then, with remarkable prescience, to Mountain View just before the devastating earthquake and fire in 1906.
- In 1909, back in San Francisco, the Bargettos opened their first family winery on Montgomery Avenue. Philip’s uncle Giovanni (John) arrived from Italy and, with a third partner, Alberto Colombo, they formed the South Montebello Vineyard and Wine Co., where they fermented, aged, and delivered barrels of wine to local restaurants. The next member of the family to arrive from Italy was Philip’s younger brother, also named Giovanni (John P.), who went to work in a San Francisco restaurant. After two years and suffering from exhaustion, he moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains, where he was joined by his sisters Angelina and Maddalena, both of whom married Italian immigrants. The growing Bargetto family became part of an expanding community of Italian Americans in the town of Soquel.
- As Prohibition loomed, the Bargettos closed the San Francisco winery and moved to Soquel in 1917, where they purchased the site of what became the family’s winery after Repeal. Here they began making wine for home use by family and friends. To keep themselves financially afloat during Prohibition’s dry years, the family peddled vegetables and also served meals out of their home on weekends. Customers who wanted a glass of wine with their meal, a longstanding Italian tradition, were served wine from barrels stored in the cellar.
- After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the Bargettos applied for federal bonding, and officially became Bonded Winery 3859. The two brothers, Philip and John P., ran the winery together until Philip’s death in 1936; through the 1940s and 1950s, John P. held the company together with help from his sons Ralph and Lawrence, who took the lead in the 1970s and 1980s.
- The winery was still family-owned in 2014, when artifacts associated with the early years of the Bargetto family’s winery were donated to the museum. The donor, John E. Bargetto, with his brother and sister, are the third generation of Bargettos to operate the family’s wine business in the Central Coast region of California.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Object Name
- ball
- Physical Description
- wood (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 5 in; 12.7 cm
- ID Number
- 2014.0321.03
- accession number
- 2014.0321
- catalog number
- 2014.0321.03
- Credit Line
- Gift of Bargetto Winery thru John E. Bargetto
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Food Technology
- Food
- Sports & Leisure
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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