Domingo Ghirardelli
Domenico "Domingo" Ghirardelli was an Italian-born chocolatier who was the founder of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Francisco, California.
Early life, family and education
Domenico Ghirardelli was born on February 21, 1817, in Rapallo, Italy, to Giuseppe and Maddalena Ghirardelli. His father was a spice merchant in Genoa. In his teens, he apprenticed at Romanengo, a noted chocolatier in Genoa.In 1838, at about age 20, he moved to Uruguay, then to Lima, Peru, where he established a confectionery, where he began using the Spanish equivalent of his Italian name, Domingo. In 1849, he moved to California on the recommendation of his former neighbor, James Lick, who had brought of chocolate with him to San Francisco in 1848. Caught up in the California Gold Rush, he opened his first store in a mining camp to sell sweets and treats to miners who were lacking the small pleasures of life. Ghirardelli spent a few months in the gold fields near Sonora and Jamestown, before becoming a merchant in Hornitos, California.
Career
In 1852, he moved to San Francisco and established the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company at what would come to be known as Ghirardelli Square. According to the San Francisco Chronicle he is San Francisco's most successful chocolatier.Around the year 1865, a worker at the Ghirardelli factory discovered that by hanging a bag of ground cacao beans in a warm room, the cocoa butter would drip off, leaving behind a residue that could then be converted into ground chocolate. This technique, known as the Broma process, is now the most common method used for the production of chocolate.
Personal life
Ghirardelli married Elisabetta Corsini, a native of Italy, in 1837. She died in 1846.Ghirardelli married Carmen Alvarado Martin in Lima, Peru, in 1847. Her first husband had been a French physician who had been lost at sea, and she had an eight-month-old child, Carmen. He and Carmen had seven children: Virginia ; Domenico Jr. ;; Joseph Nicholas ; Elvira ; Louis ; Angela ; and Eugene Gustave. Carmen died on September 18, 1887.
Ghirardelli was a Freemason, joining the San Francisco French-speaking La Parfaite Union Lodge No. 17 in 1869.