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Below is a summery of the History of the Chichizola Family in Jackson Gate.
It was primarily compiled by Stanley Cuneo.
Agustino Chichizola was born in Zoagli, Genoa, Italy on July 4, 1830. He came to Boston, Massachusetts with his two brothers, Antonio and Luis Chichizola, in 1848. They had friends in Boston.
Louis Chichizola went to New Orleans, Louisiana and worked on the docks loading and unloading freighters. Rumor has it that engaged in a little piracy with the famous pirate, Lafitte.
Agustino and Antonio went to California via boat to the Isthmus of Panama, across the Isthmus on horseback, walking and taking small boasts across lakes and then by freighter up the west coast to San Francisco. They took a stage to Sacramento and on to Lancha Plana, a few miles south of Ione, Amador County, on the Mokelumne River, where they tried their hand at mining.
Being unsuccessful in their mining adventure, they went to Jackson Gate, two miles north of Jackson in late 1849. The North Fork of Jackson Creek flows through a rocky cut or gate – hence the name Jackson Gate. Gold was first discovered there in 1849 and by 1850, the area boasted 500 miners.
Anticipating the need for food and supplies, Agustino went into the mercantile business in 1850. Riding around the area on horseback, he took orders from local families and miners for later delivery by wagon. With the store flourishing, Agustino decided that it was time to marry and start a family. Leaving his brother Antonio to operate the business, he journeyed back to Boston where he married Maria Molinari on April 17, 1852, whom he had met on his former trip to Boston from Italy.
Agustino returned to California in November 1852 by way of the Isthmus of Panama and up the West Coast on the steamer Oregon to San Francisco and by stage to Sacramento with his new bride following in 1853.
Agustino’s brother stayed with him until 1858. Antonio then moved to Indian Gulch near Hornitos in Mariposa County and opened a store there with help from Agustino.
 Agustino and Maria had eight children, four boys, Thomas I (1855-1834) Julias (1856-1929) Ceasari (1858-1902) Victorio (1863-1915) and four girls, Amelia (1865-1952) Lucy died as a child, Mary (1867-1879) and Ida (1876-1902).
Three of the sons, Thomas, Julius and Victorio worked with their father to help operate their expanding store business.The Chichizola’s opened up a second store in Amador City of which the western half of the building was completed in November 1877, and the other half within the decade.
A. Chichizola and sons purchased large tracts of land north of and northeast of Jackson Gate and in the Buena Vista - Ione area for their 500 head cattle operation managed by Victorio. They also owned 4,000 acres of summer range in the Mace Meadow area south of Highway 88, 25 miles east of Jackson.
Thomas Chichizola I married Mary Campbell of Rochester, Vermont in 1881, raising three children, a boy James Augustus Chichizola (1882-1943) and two girls, Lucy Chichizola (1897-1993) and Mary Chichizola (1900-1996). Julius Chichizola married Irene Levaggi in 1918. They had no children. Ceasari and Victorio never married. Ida Chichizola married M. Reno in 1897. She died from scarlet fever in 1902 at the age of 26. She had a women’s hat and dress shop in San Francisco. Lucy and Mary Chichizola died in their youth. Amelia Chichizola married Henry Marre, a wholesale liquor store operator in Jackson in 1889. They raised one son, Augustus Marre (1890-1972).
Thomas’s I son, James Augustus Chichizola married Hazel Mary Griffith of Plymouth in 1908. They had three children, a son Thomas II (1909-1936) and two daughters Virginia Mary (1914-1991) and Marian Frances born in 1917. Thomas II was killed in a delivery store truck accident in 1936.
Thomas Chichizola’s daughter Lucy married Pierce Deasy (1919-1975). They raised two sons, Robert Campbell Deasy, 1921 and James Edmund Deasy, 1926. Thomas Chichizola’s I daughter Mary married Edward Zappettini (1891-1961) in San Francisco in 1924.
James Augustus Chichizola took over the Agustino Chichizola store in 1914 and operated it until his death in 1943. Daughter Marian ran the store from 1943 to 1955; she married Stanley Cuneo of Sutter Creek in 1954.
A long time employee of the store James Feretti carried on the store business for Marian Chichizola Cuneo until 1977. The chain stores moved into Amador County in the late 1970’s and the small stores could not compete price-wise. After 127 years, the Agustino Chichizola store business had to end. It has since been furniture store, a carpet and rug store, a buy and sell store and an antique store.
In 1992 the Chichizola store was placed on the National Register of Historical Places as well as the Chichizola home adjoining on the North, now a Bed and Breakfast Inn called “The Gate House Inn.”
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