Peter Ferrante, wholesale dealer in fish, at 325 Van Buren street, Monterey, meeting with well deserved success, is a native of sunny Italy. He was born August 4, 1867, the son of Arisimo and Susan Ferrante, the former also a dealer in fish. Both parents are now deceased.
Because of financial conditions at home Peter Ferrante had to go to work at the extremely early age of four years, being apprenticed to the fish trade, which he has followed ever since. When twenty-two years of age, he crossed the Atlantic and ultimately reached California, although according to the custom of cooperation among the Italians, he took almost two years to work his way across the continent. He first located at Pittsburg, then called Black Diamond, and after a year he moved to San Francisco. There he made his home but every season followed fishing either in Alaska, Oregon or British Columbia. After nine years he returned to Italy, where he married, and later came again to the new world, spending five years in Pittsburg. A fire made him lose all that he had acquired and in 1905 he came to Monterey.
Here he engaged in the fishing industry, at first hiring five men and having one sail boat, but now he has a force of twenty-four men working for him, and from a modest beginning has developed a large business, being the leading representative of the fishing industry here. Mr. Ferrante is the most successful of the local Italian colony, and he is a generous contributor to all civic undertakings properly endorsed. How able he is may be seen from the fact that, at the request of the famous Van Camps, the packers, he constructed a boat to hold the live bait that is required in the fishing for tuna, succeeding in solving the problem where others failed. The lower part of the boat he contrived, by the use of wire screen, to be below the water level, thus providing the live bait constantly with the fresh salt water they need.
Mr. Ferrante married Miss Rose Enea, and their children are: Susan; Mary, who has become Mrs. H. Coniglio; Frances, now Mrs. F. Ferranti; Angelia, Rose and Virginia. Mr. Ferrante is a republican in politics. He is fond of music and embraces the opportunity to hear the work of the best composers.
Source: History of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, California : cradle of California’s history and romance : dating from the planting of the cross of Christendom upon the shores of Monterey Bay by Fr. Junipero Serra, and those intrepid adventurers who accompanied him, down to the present day. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1925.