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In the dovmstairs living area was a big open fireplace occupying half a wall at
the rear. It represented (as in the Gervasoni home) the central gathering point of the
family. In later years a daughter would recall of the room:
In our home the large living room opened straight away from the open
door, and we had a big table in the middle of the room with chairs all
around it, and we had a sofa one side, and two windows and the stairs
were in one comer to go upstairs. It had a trap door to close then. We
cooked on the big open fireplace in the room, wdth three chains hanging
up in the ceUing, one for the camp oven, one for the big kettie, and one
for the big boiler.**
Two staircases led away from the living area, one (very steep) going to three tiny
bedrooms upstairs and the other to the cellar, both of them accessed by trapdoors in
order to save space. The entrance to the cellar through the front of the house, as weU
as the double-door width of the stairs, may indicate that in the early years the cellar
served as a wine saloon for the sale of the family's home-made wine; though its floor
was too rough for dances, it was adequate for social drinking. The exterior walls of
the Gaggioni home were covered in a white stucco (removed in 1992) and surrounding
the property were cowsheds, stables and a meat house. In later years the family
attached a verandah to the front of the house and planted poplar trees which recaUed
the landscape of Lombardy and Ticino.*'
Settied in Gordevio^ Pietro and Loretta produced a second child Joseph
Gaudenzio hi 1879 and another son Pietro in 1881, both of whom died as toddlers; by
21 years of age, their mother was well acquainted wdth the joys and sufferings of
raising a family. Happily, a healthy daughter Josephine was bom in 1884 and son John
Peter in 1886. Loretta bore another six children: Loretta Ellen in 1888, Emest William
in 1891, Elsie Theresa in 1893, Clare in 1895, LeUa in 1897 and Ray, a change-of-life
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