San
Joaquin County
Biographies
BENEDETTO RATTO
Eminent among the sturdy pioneers
whose lives posterity will ever be thankful for, and whose memory will be kept
green and honored, was the late Benedetto Ratto, who was born at Upechelli, in the province of Genoa, Italy, on February 6,
1837, and left home at the early age of thirteen, reaching New York City after
a thousand adventures, decidedly a stranger in a strange land. He walked on foot to Boston, and when near
that city met by chance a friend, a fellow countryman, and together they
started to work on a farm. Benedetto
received as his share the meager sum of $8.00 per month and his board, and
small as was this wage, he managed to save some money, and as early as 1860 to
come out to California.
His brother, Joseph, who had
preceded him to the Golden State, was then farming near Placerville, and there
Benedetto joined him; but soon afterward the two brothers came into San
Francisco. Benedetto bought a small
river boat, which he further formed into a kind of ark, and there he lived, on
the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.
After that, he engaged as a market fisherman, and going into the Delta
regions, operated as a market fur trapper.
So skillful was he that it is said he alone held the record for trapping
beaver and otter in the Delta; and he had several experiences in recovering the
bodies of people who had been drowned, when he delivered them if possible to
relatives, by whom he was generally amply rewarded. Trappers’ Slough in the San Joaquin Delta was
named by a party of engineers and surveyors in honor of Mr. Ratto’s
accomplishments there, for probably no other trapper was ever better known from
the Squaw Valley in the north, to King’s River in the south.
In many ways, Mr. Ratto was a
remarkable man. He was gifted with a
wonderful memory, and his ability to relate vividly his early experiences was
the delight of all privileged to hear him.
He also seemed to have special capacity for the handling of Chinese
laborers, and on this account he was frequently employed for superintending of
large ranches and other estates and building levees with wheelbarrows and
shovels, where the Mongolians were at work.
His ark was always to be seen on the channels and sloughs, and when he
was in Stockton it was generally at Lindsey Point. One day Captain Weber, who was a very good
friend, called him aside and advising him to rear his children in town and be a
citizen there said, “Ben, I want you to have a home here, and if you will build
I will give you the deed to a lot in Weber Tract,” and this was agreed
upon. Accordingly, on January 3, 1881,
the deed was recorded in Mrs. Ratto’s name, Lot 4,
Block Q, west of Center Street, and this is the present home-place of the
daughter, Mrs. Bava, but is a part of the Ratto estate.
Mrs. Ratto was Miss Catherine Velerga, a native of Genoa, Italy, where she was born in
1854. On March 15, 1905, she breathed
her last, thirty-three years after she had arrived in Stockton from Italy,
where she was married the same year.
Eleven children were born to the estimable couple, but only four grew to
maturity: Richard Peter, Matilda, who is
the wife of Ralph Vignolo; Clorinda,
the wife of Santino Bava;
and Benjamin.
The residence was completed in 1882
at 226 South Van Buren Street, and the family then moved from the Ark to this
home. Their children attended the
Franklin school. A staunch Republican,
and a broad-minded citizen, Mr. Ratto was ever ready to pull with his
neighbors, in more non-partisan fashion, for whatever seemed best for the
community. Mr. Ratto acquired eventually
much property in Stockton, and at the time of his death, May 11, 1922, owned
four lots and five residences. He had
spent his declining years in his home where, for almost eight years, he was
cared for tenderly by his daughter, Mrs. Clorinda Bava. He was a resigned sufferer, and very brave to
the last. He was known as a man of stern
character, determined in his own mind and therefore usually holding fast to his
own ideas; but he had a beautiful philosophy of life, and merely carried out
that philosophy nobly and consistently in his own living. Stockton and San Joaquin County lost in his death
one of their most efficient pioneer builders, and one who was valued and
honored while he lived. His remains were
placed beside those of his devoted wife in the family plot in the Catholic
Cemetery.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1492. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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