San
Joaquin County
Biographies
DAVID FACCINI
Comfortably situated among those who
have both merited and attained the good will of a wide circle of friends is
David Faccini, now living at 427 South Harrison Street, Stockton, an honored
pioneer Italian-American, and a member of the Exempt Firemen of that city. He was born at St. Terezo,
on the Gulf of Spezia, near the historic city of Genoa, on December 8, 1850,
and at the very early age of ten went to sea on the steamboat “Tuscano,” and for twenty-five years he followed a sailor’s
life. Most of this time he served on large
Italian vessels, and he not only has sailed the “seven seas” but he has coursed
around Cape Horn three times, and has seen much of many countries, particularly
in South America. While ashore in Peru,
where he was employed by one of the best clubs for nine years, he competed in
water-athletics, being a champion oarsman; and he is rather proud of the record
of never having lost in such a contest.
Aboard the good ship “Garibaldi,” on
which he had visited practically every port on the Pacific coast in North and
South America, David Faccini arrived in San Francisco in 1881 from Peru, then
he went north to the salmon fisheries on the Columbia River, near Astoria,
where he remained for two years. Then he
returned to California, coming down to Stockton in 1883 on the river boat Paris
City, and that season put in with service on the freight boats in the
Delta. For twelve years he worked in the
Stockton Paper Mill as a fireman and then for eleven years for the Bowers
Rubber Company in San Francisco.
In 1892 he bought a tract of land
near Stockton, which he developed into a garden ranch; for the past fifteen
years he has been a faithful and trusted employee of the municipality of
Stockton in the department of streets and highways, and now lives in the quiet
and comfort of his family circle, entertaining his friends with remarkable
ability in the narration of his many and varied adventures while traveling over
the globe before he reached California, but nowhere, at any time, did he find
any place more attractive to him than Stockton, in which city, in 1888, he was
married to Miss Clarinda Largomazino, a native of
Calaveras County, where she was born in 1866.
Her father was a ‘49er, and he came direct from Italy to the Golden
state via Nicaragua.
Four children have blessed this
fortunate union of Mrs. and Mrs. Faccini.
Frank is the eldest; Angelina married Don Hopper and died leaving one
son, Don; Josephine married Fred Fritz and has two girls, Dorothy and Evelyn;
David, Jr., first saw the light on October 8, 1895; he served in the late World
War, responding patriotically to the call of his native country on February 26,
1917, enlisting as an aviator at Kelly Field and went overseas in the 32nd
Aero Squadron; and during spirited action, when exposed to the deadliest fire,
he received three wounds and has still a piece of shrapnel in his leg. He is a member of the Army and Navy Union,
Hiram W. Johnson Garrison No. 33, and of Karl Ross Post No. 16, American
Legion. By a former marriage Mr. Faccini
has one daughter, Mrs. Emily Benz.
Mr. Faccini early joined the
volunteer fire department, becoming a member of Weber Engine Company and is now
a member of the Exempts; he then joined the Bersaglieri,
an Italian society; then became a member of Concordia Grove No. 98, U. A. O.
D., and also holds membership in the Beneficencia
Puccini.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
614. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Biographies
Golden Nugget Library's San Joaquin County Genealogy
Databases