House Away From Home
Dana and John Hooper (left) and former owners Adeline Devaux and her husband, Emilio Guidetti.
John Hooper’s quest for information about his ancestors took him from his home in Glide to a house from his family’s past
Story by Dick Baltus with John Hooper
He found the book in November 2018. Digging into a box of family memories, John Hooper found photos, mostly, but also his grandmother’s Italian grammar primer and, next to it, an unmarked antique text. Curious, he opened to the first page and set off on an adventure that would lead him through his family’s past and to the other side of the world.
Hooper had never known much about his grandmother’s background. “I remember her saying she was Swiss Italian, but I didn’t really know what that meant,” says the Glide resident and owner of Good Vibrations Audio/Visual in Roseburg.
So when he saw three names on the inside of the old book, he only recognized his grandmother’s. With the help of ancestry. com, Hooper was able to identify them as Matilde Vittoria Devaux, his great grandmother, and his great-great grandmother, Barbarina Garbani.
Now immersed in intrigue, Hooper continued his Internet search for more information about his relatives and quickly found a public notice in Italian with the name Barbarina Garbani highlighted. After translating the ad, Hooper learned that someone was seeking his great-great grandmother’s heirs. Someone on the other side of the world was looking for him.
“I had all these questions. Who was my great-great grandmother? Why was half a house in Switzerland still in her name? Why were they searching for heirs 58 years after she died?”
— John Hooper
Hooper traced the address in the ad to a courthouse in Locarno, Switzerland, then contacted the editor of the magazine where the ad appeared and verified its legitimacy. “He said they were often contacted by Swiss authorities searching for families of Swiss immigrants to America,” Hooper says.
But why, he wondered, would Swiss authorities be searching for the heirs of a woman who died in 1961 in San Luis Obispo, Calif.? Hooper responded to the ad and learned that his great-great grandmother had been the half-owner of a house in Lucarno, and that half was now his and his brother’s. Communicating via email with an attorney assigned to the estate, Hooper was told the house had “no real value” and, as an heir, he could easily sign over his half to the other owners.
“It was a lot to take in,” he says. “I had all these questions. Who was my great-great grandmother? Why was half a house in Switzerland still in her name? Who owned the other half? Why were they searching for heirs 58 years after she died? Why should I sign it over without seeing it?”
Hooper started digging into genealogy sites. He learned his great- great grandmother had immigrated to America in 1908, following her daughter, Matilde, who had arrived in 1905. He also learned the other half of the house was owned by three siblings, but their connection to his family was a mystery. Then Hooper found the house on Google Earth.
“It was located on a hillside between two small villages in Ticino, Switzerland,” he says. “There was no road or driveway to it; it could be accessed by foot only.”
On Google Earth, Hooper could see the house was “constructed of stacked granite, four stories tall, and looked to be about 200 years old.”
Hooper and his brother decided they would have their share of the house transferred to them. Then they had to figure out what to do with it. So they packed their bags.
On Saturday, Sept. 28, 2019, 10 months from the start of Hooper’s journey, he and his wife, Dana, and his brother and wife picked up Achille Poletti, the youngest of the three sibling co-owners, and a translator and headed for their new-found home.
On the walk up from the trailhead, the travelers were treated to stories of the property and structures they passed along the way, including an old stable and a relatively modern barn, constructed from pink block that reminded Hooper of his grandmother’s pink bathroom fixtures.
And then they reached the house.
“There were palm trees, even a kiwi tree growing in the front yard,” Hooper says. “The roof looked brand new, and Achille explained that a helicopter had to be hired to deliver the tiles for it.”
The group sat at a rock picnic table in the backyard and watched their new partner, Poletti, fish a stack of paperwork from his backpack.
“The first thing he showed us was a photograph of two people standing in front of the home sometime around 1908,” Hooper says. “They were my great aunt, Adeline Guidetti, and her husband, Emilio. Adeline’s sister, Matilda, was my great grandmother. When she and my great-great grandmother immigrated to the U.S, they left Adeline with the house. That’s where she lived the rest of her life.”
Poletti told the group that Emilio had been a successful businessman with stores and other homes in the local villages. But when the economy turned downward, and villagers were unable to pay the accounts carried by Guidetti, he and Adeline were forced to move into his wife’s family home. The Guidettis farmed the land around the home and made cheese to make ends meet.
When Poletti’s father, Mario, was 14, he started working as a ranch hand for the Guidettis in exchange for room and board. When Emilio died in 1930, Adeline needed Mario’s help more than ever to keep the farm afloat.
In time, Mario would marry Olimpia Fachetti, who helped Adeline in the home while Mario worked outside. They had three children, Achille, Emilio and Rosina.
In the mid-50s, Hooper’s great aunt Adeline was diagnosed with cancer, and Mario and Olimpia cared for her until her death in 1957. Before dying, Adeline gave her half of the home to Mario and Olimpia. When they died, the home passed to their three children.
Achille Poletti said that he and his siblings had spent their lives caring for the house, never knowing who their co-owner was. He said he had even traveled to San Luis Obispo in 2000, attempting to find someone to talk to about their partial ownership of the house.
As Poletti continued to talk about his family making all the needed house repairs, not knowing if they’d ever be reimbursed for half the costs, as he spoke of the weekends family members still spend out the house and the love his children had for it, Hooper turned to his brother. It was clear they were both thinking the same thing.
“We knew what we should do,” he says. “We told Achille the Polettis could have our share. It belonged to them.”
