Domenico Colombo, the father of the illustrious navigator, is described by Washington Irving and other writers as a "wool comber," but in all the contemporary documents discovered by the historians just named he is invariably said to have been "a woollen manufacturer,"--a position very different from that of a wool comber, the difference being that between a mechanic and a tradesman. No wonder that Ferdinand Columbus indignantly contradicted an assertion which most of us, even in this democratic age, would keenly resent. Although never in affluent circumstances, Domenico and Susanna Colombo, Christopher's parents, were evidently highly respectable tradespeople, who spent the whole of their lives between Genoa and Savona. Probably Domenico Colombo was born at Quinto, a village not many miles distant from the capital of the Genoese Republic. His father, Giovanni Colombo, undoubtedly lived there, for, in a document dated 1439, he is described as "Giovanni Colombo of Quinto, the father of Domenico of Genoa." This Giovanni was, it seems, according to another and still more ancient deed, the son of a certain Giovanni Colombo, of Fontanarossa, another village in the district. As the inhabitants of this village were engaged in sheep-dealing, it is probable that this Giovanni was a wool merchant, and since Fernando Columbo, with the justifiable vanity of the son of a great man, seems to have been always desirous of claiming a social position, and signs himself, on more than one occasion, as "of Fontanarossa," we may go so far as to conclude that the Colombo (or Columbus) family was, according to its own tradition, the principal in that place. The family and Christian names of the great-grandmother and grandmother of the Discoverer of the New World are lost. His mother, however, was Susanna of Fontanarossa, a native of the suburb of Bisagno. This is proved by a document in the Savonese archives, whereby, on the 7th August 1743, "Susanna, daughter of Giacomo of Fontanaruba (the Latin for Fontanarossa), in the Bisagno, agrees to allow her husband, Domenico Colombo of Genoa, to sell a house situated in that city, near the Olivella Gate." It is described as a house with a pleasant garden, in the parish of San Stefano, and next door to the house and property of Nicola Paravagna, and adjacent to the property of Antonio Bondi. "The house faces the principal street, and is close to the old wall of the town." In this document Domenico Colombo is specially designated as a citizen of Savona--because, as he had by this time resided there some years, he was entitled to citizenship.