Occhieppo Superiore

I Cèp ad sora

There was, even in ancient times, a commercial-productive class in textiles side by side to traditional agricultural activities.  “Di necessità, virtu’”, says an old well known proverb and then, like in other villages of the Biellase, people had exploited what nature was offering: water and pastures. The Elvo and Romioglio streams supplied the water for irrigation and from this came the hemp fields where the crops were steeped and then spinned and weaved by hand by the families.

Today, the presence of the family name Caneparo is the past inheritance of that trade practiced by numerous families. It was already mentioned in 1680. The waters of the streams were also ideal to wash the wool from the flocks grazing in the land and this in turn developed the production of wool cloths.

  
The description of the village by Super-intendent Blanciotti in 1755 lists the various agricultural products, but includes: “the inhabitants added to their income by working in the production of cloths, some by spinning, washing and teasing the wools, others by dyeing and still others by shearing the cloths”. There was no mention of the production of linen and cotton goods, but later the same Super-intendent rectified this and registered the presence of both looms for linen-cotton goods and cloths. Blanciotti ended the brief description of the village mentioning that there were also some master builders and a few bricklayers spending many months of the year in Piedmont.

Amongst the first regions in Italy, Pietro Sella started the industrial revolution in 1817 by importing the first machines in the Biellese, followed shortly after by other entrepreneurs and thus producing large changes, not only in the social-economic field. In the village, as in others near by, new factories were constructed, mostly to work with wool, where a consistent part of the population finded work, while the remaining part continued the traditional working in the fields. The number of these last ones was in slow but constant decrease as there was no possibility to find extra income by spinning and weaving at home for third parties. From the end of 1807 to 1809, in the Historical Archive of the village, were registered 103 requests for passports, with listing of destinations and trades, mostly bricklayers, toward the South of France. Emigration then extended to the United States, especially New Jersey.

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The periods in which the migratory flux  is more intense coincide with the end of the XIX century, after the end of World War I, during the great difficolties of “quota 90” of 1926 and the world economic crisis of 1929. After World War II, emigration became more sporadic as social and economic conditions in the Biellese changed radically and Occhieppo became a rich appendix and a pleasant place to reside compare to the city. The other villages de-populated while this one increased in size.

The biographies of Occhieppesi are 146, 8.4% of the inhabitants in 1911. From these cards we observe that 38.6% emigrated to France and 29.4% to the United States; South America follows with 12.9%, Switzerland with 6.1%, other European nations with 9.4%, Africa and Australia with 1.8% each. The family names more frequent are Tua, Pozzo, Borsetti, Ricca and Frassati. The oldest emigrant is Benedetto Zocca, born 1849, emigrated as teamster in France.