The woman left her little Italian village in the province of Lucca and walked along the dusty road with a cart full of flowers to sell. Suddenly she stopped and thought, “I don’t want to live this kind of life anymore; I want to go to America.” The year was 1921, and the young women was 22 year-old Caterina Tocchini.
Caterina’s decision to go to America was perhaps made easier by the fact that her sister, Costanza, had immigrated earlier to Madera, California, and was living there with her husband, Dominic Del Cerro. When her brother-in-law heard that Caterina wanted to come to Madera, he sent her the money for passage. Accompanied by one of her cousins, the future Mrs. Alfredo Farnesi, sailed from Genoa to Boston to begin a new life in America.
Dominic met Caterina at the train depot and took her home in the La Vina District where there was a large Italian community. However, she didn’t remain with her sister and brother-in-law for long; it just so happened that one of Dominic’s good friends was Alfredo Farnesi, who met Caterina on one of his visits to the Del Cerro home.