PLIN
MAGGINI
HISTORY OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY 537
SURNAMES: CORPSTEIN
A worthy rancher couple who are enjoying the enviable prosperity now
rewarding their investments and labors, are Mr. and Mrs. Plin Maggini,
the owners of seventy-six very attractive acres making up a productive
ranch at the junction of the Sierra and Calaveras roads, six miles east
of Milpitas. They came to their present ranch in October, 1920; and as
leading Republicans and firm believers in Christian Science, they exert
a helpful influence in the direction of progress in the community such
as might be wished for in any fast-developing section.
Mr. Maggini was born in the Canton Ticino, Switzerland, at the town of
Basca, on the day after Christmas, 1884, the son of Alexander and
Josephine Maggini, the former a native of Switzerland, who came out to
the United States alone in 1852, and mined for gold at Iowa Hill, Gold
Run and Forest Hill. After becoming a naturalized citizen, he returned
to Switzerland and continued his industry of raising goats. A second
time he came to California, and mined for a while; and a second time he
returned to the Italian region in the Swiss Republic
A
third time he came to California, when our subject was three years old;
and in this state he passed away, in 1918, esteemed by all who knew
him as a hard-working, highly-intelligent and honest man who had
done something definite toward advancing agricultural interests in
California. Mrs. Maggini is still living, the center of a devoted group
of friends and she enjoys life in San Jose at the age of sixty-six.
Owing to these movings back and forth, from country to country. Milton
Maggini, the eldest in the family of four children, was born in
Switzerland; Livio in the United States; Plin in Switzerland; and Ida
under the Stars and Stripes.
When only sixteen years of age, Plin started our for himself, and
learning the blacksmith trade, he worked for wages for several years.
He then went to the mines in Placer County for a year and a half, and
mined in the same place where his father had been many years before.
Next he went into San Jose and clerked for five years in the City
Store; and after that he took a position with the Alloggi wholesale
tobacco dealers, but at the end of three years, he established a
bicycle and motorcycle shop at 266 South First Street, San Jose, where
he handled the Reading, Standard, Smell, Cleveland and the Hudson
bicycles.
Mr. Maggini sold out his cycling business at the end of three years and
bought with his increased capital a ranch of thirty-five acres on the
Almaden Road, twelve miles out of San Jose; and this farm he set out to
prunes and apricots and so well developed, for three and one-half
years, that he sold it again at a good margin. then he purchased a
ranch of 575 acres on the Uvas Road devoted to cattle and grain and
there he had a dairy and engaged in the wholesale milk business. This
ranch he kept for a year, disposing of it on June 2, 1919.
Mr. Maggini then purchased a ranch of seventy-six acres at the junction
of the Sierra and Calaveras roads, forty-five acres of which are
devoted to apricots, while the remainder of the land is given to the
growing of grain; and there Mr. Maggini and his family now reside. He
was married at San Jose on October 13, 1915, to Miss Lucielle
Corpstein, a native daughter born at Saratoga, whose parents were John
and Mary Corpstein. They came to California from Iowa and settled
at
Saratoga; and there Lucielle went to school. Later, she attended the
high school at San Jose, and she also pursued the courses of an
excellent business college; prior to her marriage she was a bookkeeper
for five years,--first for the Benson & Weaver Automobile Company,
and then for Messrs. Bloomdahl & Keller. two children have blessed
this union, Evelyn Mae and Mildred Eileen.
Transcribed by Marie Clayton, from Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara County,California, published by Historic Record Co. , 1922.page 537
SANTA CLARA COUNTY PIONEER BIOGRAPHIES
SANTA CLARA COUNTY HISTORY-The Valley of Heart's Delight