by Mauro Battocchi

Mike Homer, Italy's Honorary Consul to Utah since 2008, is a historian among many other talents and has written several books on the American West and Mormonism. In 2007, the Mormon History Association awarded him the Steven Christensen Best Documentary Book Award for On the Way to Somewhere Else: European Sojourners in the Mormon West, 1834-1930 (see cover above). Today, I'm pleased to bring you a selection from this book about Italy's first Consul in San Francisco.

In saying "the first Italian Consul in San Francisco" it should be noted that "Italian" is being used somewhat loosely, since Mr. Cipriani was in fact representing the Kingdom of Sardinia (see map below), whose capital was in Turin in the Piedmont. In other words, Mr. Cipriani was dispatched to San Francisco before the official unification of Italy in 1861.

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Source: San Francisco, Italy