We do not know from where Gaetano came originally. The name, 'Tiene', is not of Ligurian origin. But we know that he married two sisters whose maiden name was Fossati, and Fossati is a typical Ligurian name.
We do not know from where Gaetano came originally. The name, 'Tiene', is not of Ligurian origin. But we know that he married two sisters whose maiden name was Fossati, and Fossati is a typical Ligurian name.
Gaetano's first wife, Rosa, accompanied him on his first journey to the USA. They spent many years there and had quite a few children. Their youngest child, Charles, was Mary's father-in-law.
But when Rosa died, Gaetano must have felt homesick. He went back to Italy and there met his wife's sister, who was also a widow. She was Clotilde Fossati, married Chichizola, a name which is again a typical Ligurian name. Though no longer young, Gaetano and Clotilde were married and from there since, Gaetano's story is woven with that of the Chichizola family, in whose house he lived and in whose family vault was buried. Gaetano and Clotilde did not have any child and the directed heir was a Maria Chichizola, dead in 1960, who is told to have been rather unfortunate. She was simple-minded and her mother gave her in marriage to a man without scruples who disposed of all her belongings and left her sick and poor. 
Gaetano is one of those emigrants who returned to their native place to spend there the last years of their life and, sometimes, thanks to the laboriously accumulated saving, could enjoy a relative comfort. We find traces of them in numerous villages f the area, often honored as benefactors, when, in their fortune, they remembered also of their relatives and neighbors, and of their village. We don't know if Gaetano was rich when he returned to Pontegiacomo, but we like to imagine he enjoyed his last years of rest in the comfortable house of Clotilde. And we are grateful to his distant descendants because they have not forgotten their roots.
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