Lanfranco, Samuel

Samuel Lanfranco was born in Asti, Piemonte, Italy, on October 28, 1873, and immigrated to America at seventeen years of age in 1890. He worked in Alameda County rock quarries and British Columbia coal mines before operating businesses in San Francisco, Oakland, and eventually Fresno, where he purchased the Cosmopolitan Hotel at Fresno and G streets in 1903. Beginning in 1907, he focused on local agricultural development, building an impressive portfolio that included forty acres in Arizona Colony, twenty acres in Roeding Villa Colony, and thirty acres in the Muscatel District.

As a successful self-made viticulturist, Samuel produced high yields of raisins, peaches, and grain while investing in additional residential property near E and Merced streets in Fresno. He married Italian native Linda Ferraris, with whom he had four children: Isador, Edmund, Edna, and Italia. Making his primary home on his Arizona Colony ranch, he supported St. John’s Catholic Church, maintained a twenty-year membership with the Knights of Pythias, and earned widespread recognition as an enterprising pioneer of Fresno County.