Antony Petrocchi

Anthony Petrocchi was born 6th July 1858 in Italy, in a little town called Campiglia Marittima. Campiglia Marittima is a town in the province of Livorno (Tuscany).

After the discovery of guano on Aruba by J. H. Waters Gravenhorst in 1874, exploitation was started by the Aruba Phosphaat Maatschappij (APM), founded in December of 1879. The centre of exportation was San Nicolas, which only consisted of a few fishermen's huts before. The activities surrounding the exploitation and exportation of phosphate led to more and more huts being built there. It already started to look quite like a little village, where sailors from the ships that came for the phosphate came looking for distraction ashore. Local labour was initially only found with difficulty: that was because of the rival branch of industry, the exploitation of gold. That's why forty men were attracted from Bonaire and about twenty bricklayers and carpenters from Curaçao. Even a group of Italians was attracted to the island to manage the company; four of them never left the island: Antonio and Victorio Petrocci, Eugenio Falconi and Cajetano Jacopucci. They settled at Tanki Leendert.