The European Family Traveling Across Boundaries

My acestral heritage reads something like this: Swiss Italians, Volga Germans, French living in North Africa and Italians living in North Africa. Sometimes I wonder if my ancestors ever lived in their native country. While I was thinking of the adventerous spirits my forebearers must have possessed, I started to think of the ways their families would have been impacted as they migrated across country boundaries and adapted to entirely different cultures.

Of course, my background is only one example of the thousands of European families that uprooted themselves for new jobs, new adventures and new opportunities as traveling became easier and the fever of Imperialism spread through Europe. Not all migrations were a result of Imperialism, of course. Jewish families often traveled from one end of Europe to the other in search of a hospitable country. The Germans were invited by Peter and Catherine the Great to come to Russia as artisans. Swiss-Italians living in the lower canton of Switzerland had either been there before there was ever any real boundary between Switzerland and Italy or had traveled there as political refugees in the mid 1800s.

In the name of Imperialism, England sent men and their families to India and North and South Africa. The Dutch sent early colonists to Africa's coast. As those Dutch families moved inland on the continent their way of life adapted drastically to their rugged surroundings and the native Africans. Even their religion changed. But most of all their progeny changed Africa for hundreds of years as it propogated the apartheid government. The French also sent out colonies of families to its conquered countries and islands. Today I would like to share the true story of one family who was part of this intermingling of cultures, colonization and the lust for adventure.

On October 19, 1856 the romantic life of Steffano Francesco Antonini began in the small Catholic town of Lugaggia, Switzerland, located just 15-20 miles north of the Italian border. Francesco's parents Michel Antonini and Maria Dubini were wealthy farmers. At 14 years of age the wanderlust took hold of Francesco and he ran away. He got a job as a deck hand on one of the many ships headed to Argentina with Italians looking for jobs. Francesco had spent about five years in Argentina when he had a dream that his Mother had died. The dream was so powerful that he returned to his home to find his mother dead and himself disinherited.

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