About my GG grandfather Lisandro Paganini, son of Anselmo.

Paganini y Orsetti, Two Lombards

Further to this fact, regarding the majority of Piamontese in the area, and in our town, ironically, two men of Lombardía were the pioneers. 

The first man in question, Lisando Paganini, founder of the town we live in, and which, until 1950 carried his name, Pueblo Paganini, to be later renamed as the Grenadier Biagorria. He haled from a prosperous family of Italian immigrants from the Lombardia region. His father arrived at the beginning of the 19th Century and soon made his fortune with cattle farming. However, the family did not get on well with the government of Brigadier Juan Manuel de Rosas, and the whole family moved to Rosario. 

Lisando was born on 28th June 1837 and as a young man became involved in the politics of the newly formed country. In 1861 he qualified as a notary and began working in the field of real estate. At the time of buying the land that would come to make up the Biagorria territory, Paganini associated with other governors and influential political figures, going on to found the towns of Barrancas (1889) and Puerto Gaboto (1891). At the same time he wrote the deeds for other towns of the Santa Fe region, such as Fray Luís Beltrán and Casilda, contracted by the people exploiting the land for the influx of Europeans intent on settling in the fertile Argentinian terrain. 

The other man was Juan (Giovanni) Orsetti. Unlike Paganini, he was Italian. He came from Lombardía with his dreams intact. He will have arrived with his wife, Teresa Filippini to the port of Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 1880s, and Lisandro, having only just purchased the hectares of land, where he would request the official authorization of the town plans of Pueblo Paganini, Orsetti was contracted as the person responsible for the developing and renting out of the land. 

There is no concrete proof that Paganini chose Orsetti as a representative of his land, but the local historian, Raúl Zavattero has a convincing theory on the possible relationship between them both. Lisandro was a direct descendent of the exceptional Genoese violinist Niccolò Paganini and the families stayed in contact despite the distances. Zavattero affirms that, “Possibly, among the missives coming from Europe, there would have been a request of a recommendation to find work for the young married couple from Lombardia on arriving in the country.”