After re-settling at Ostlers Creek, Vittorio's local profile was reduced. He no longer appeared to be operating his tramway or supplying cut timber to local mines. There are no known reports of him acting as a facilitator or interpreter, or of any engagement in local business or social affairs. He died on 5 January 1903 of heart failure, aged 53 years, at 'his residence at Ostlers Creek, beloved husband of Anna Campagnolo'.⁵⁶ He was never naturalised and died intestate. The absence of a Will disadvantaged Anna financially as her husband's intestacy meant that she was only legally entitled to one-third of Vittorio's estate, and his infant children were to receive the remainder on attaining adulthood.⁵⁷ Vittorio and Anna had the following children: Victor (b. 1881), Grace (b. 1883), Teodoro (b. 1884), Victorina (b. 1887), Rudolf (b. and d. 1888), Hilda (b. 1889), Leopold (b. 1891), Teresa (b. 1893), Eugenie (b. 1895), Ernesto (b. 1897), Adelina (b. 1899) and Ada (b. 1903, after her father's death). Of the twelve children, ten were living and nine were still minors living at home when Vittorio died.

In June 1903, Anna Campagnolo applied for a grant of Letters of Administration, and the relevant file provides a glimpse into her life and her financial struggle to carry on the family farm after her husband's death.⁵⁸ It also reveals the little-recorded part played by women married to Italian speakers when they were widowed or forced to take over the mantle as head of the family. The Inventory and Statement of Assets and Liabilities of the estate signed by Anna show the farm was valued, for death duty purposes, at just over £458 ($42,200). While this was less than the purchase price paid in 1901, it would have been a conservative figure applied so as to attract less probate duty. Improvements on the land included a stable, barn, pigsty, fowl house and orchard. Two acres of potatoes were planted, one acre of oats and half an acre of maize. Animals included an ageing horse, ten cattle and five pigs valued at £30 ($2,920). Usual farm tools included two ploughs, one harrow, one waggonette, a blacksmith's anvil, bellows, hammers, two spades and three hoes. Other items were two horse collars, one pack-saddle and one riding saddle. The bank overdraft was just over £10 ($975). Probate duty on the estate was assessed at £2 16s. 10p. (c. $250).

Under the conditions of a grant of Letters of Administration, Anna Campagnolo was required to lodge with the Court a yearly account of the estate's management, and her regular reports provide a picture of her capability to run the farm and to harness, as best she could, its resources. She was physically active on the property, maintaining a hands-on approach that reflected her role in the operation of the Alpine Hotel with Vittorio in the preceding decades. In September 1903 she advised the Court that the potatoes, maize and oats referred to in her previous affidavit had been consumed by her family and by stock. She had sold three cattle for £14 12s. and one pig for £2; another pig had died. Money received from the sale of the stock had been used to pay family debts. Despite difficulties, Anna was enterprising and hard-working. In the time since her husband's death she had planted forty young fruit trees and cleared, ploughed and fenced a further three acres.⁵⁹

Anna's 1904 summary shows, however, that the family's assets continued to decline. During the previous year, she had sold one steer and two aged cows for nearly £11. With the funds raised she paid £3 off her overdraft, paid her rates and used the balance for food and clothes. Livestock numbers were dwindling, now reduced to nine cattle, two pigs and one aged horse but, again, she had continued to clear the land and had fenced two paddocks of about three acres.

Despite her efforts, Anna Campagnolo finally lost her battle to keep the farm. In December 1906, Ellen Maria and Charles Collins, friends and local business proprietors who had given surety over Vittorio's estate, advised the Court that they had no objection to Anna Campagnolo selling the farm at Ostlers Creek as 'we are sure she has done the right thing as it is impossible for her to make a living on the land in question'.⁶⁰

It is not known what amount Anna received from the sale of the farm. In 1907 she purchased a house in nearby Toongabbie about which there is little information as all records were destroyed in the Shire of Narracan municipal office fire in the 1960s.⁶¹ In 1923, Anna Campagnolo died of pneumonia at Toongabbie, aged 63. She left an estate of £275 ($14,145).⁶²

Vittorio Campagnolo only partly fits into Price's model of immigrant communities. He is an example of an individual who was initially part of the local timber industry and work cluster system, and who enjoyed the economic benefits and camaraderie that flowed from them. But, as his ambitions grew, he moved outside the boundaries of cluster life and worked in other occupations that better fulfilled his aspirations. Even though he married a non-Italian woman, Campagnolo remained aligned to the work cluster system and utilised its human resources to further his business interests. In doing so, he perpetuated the on-flowing opportunities provided and sustained by work clusters which he himself had benefited from after his arrival in Walhalla in the 1870s.

Price's model provides a useful tool for the historian to develop a theme or concept. By drawing on the small and seemingly insignificant, the Walhalla Italians study has helped to develop broader themes of migration which test a formularised and impersonal approach. Micro-histories focus on the finer detail of a small place and on ordinary lives and bring to life something of the past and the way men and women may have lived. Their use also emphasises the relevance of such studies within the wider national and international study of migration and its patterns.