After emigrating from Northern Italy to Paterson, New Jersey, she helped found Paterson's anarchist Gruppo Diritto all'Esistenza (Right to an Existence Group); co-founded a local feminist group and performed in feminist plays; and, with her companion Firmino Gallo, ran an anarchist bookstore said to be "America's richest storehouse of extreme radical literature.
[3] Flouting the social conventions of her day, and the teachings of the Catholic Church, Baronio lived with Gallo and had six children with him out of wedlock.
In his memoir, her son William describes her as an avid reader and a deep thinker with an anticlerical, anticonsumerist bent.
[5][note 1] With Maria Roda and Ernestina Cravello, Baronio co-founded the Gruppo Emancipazione della Donna (Women's Emancipation Group) in 1897.
[11] On February 14, 1920, the FBI raided the homes of over thirty of Paterson's Italian anarchists and brought them to Ellis Island to await deportation.
Among the detainees was Firmino Gallo, who was allowed to remain in the United States only after he agreed to legalize his marriage to Baronio.
[12] At the Libreria Sociologica, agents found receipts for orders from 27 states and Canada, suggesting the bookstore had become a national clearinghouse for radical literature.