Over the years, Los Altos Hills Town Hall storage facilities have accumulated an impressive array of historical miscellanea: scrapbooks filled with yellowed newspaper clippings, assorted cutlery and dishes – even a glass box containing a mannequin dressed as 18th-century Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza. While many of the items originated from residents who donated them for posterity, deciphering the origins of a family photo album found in a town hall closet earlier this month has left City Clerk Deborah Padovan stumped.
“There must have been some significance in their mind why they donated it,” she said. “So I wasn’t going to throw it away. You don’t throw stuff like this away.”
Padovan has joined forces with History Committee member Jitze Couperus to identify a living descendant of the album’s original owner, an impressively mustached San Francisco pharmacist named Augusto Leonida Galdieri, and present him or her with the album. Padovan and Couperus don’t believe a family with that surname has ever lived in Los Altos Hills.
“So it’s a real mystery – ” Couperus said.
“ – who these people are,” Padovan said.
A legacy of clues
The album, a dark-green volume with “Scrap Book” printed in faded gold on its cover, contains mounted and loose photographs, articles from San Francisco-based, Italian-language newspapers and even a 1950 Western Union telegram. The oldest photograph is a tintype portrait of Galdieri and his parents and three siblings circa 1889, when Galdieri was approximately 8 years old. Among the more recent photographs is what appears to be a 1960s-era high school graduation portrait of a young woman sporting pearls and a beehive hairdo.
Couperus’ examination of the photographs and articles and their handwritten annotations, combined with U.S. Census data research, indicate that Galdieri was born in 1881 in Conca della Campania, an Italian town located approximately 35 miles northwest of Naples. He immigrated to San Francisco in 1902, lived on Mallorca Way in the Marina neighborhood and owned Galdieri’s Pharmacy on Vallejo Street. He married Carmela (maiden name uncertain) and had at least three children: Cristina, born 1913; Theresa, born 1914; and Peter, born 1918.
Galdieri’s 1925 passport application is a particularly intriguing read revealing a smattering of personal information. He intended to set sail later that year aboard the Conte Verde from New York to the British Isles, Italy, Spain and France and visit family along the way, according to the Department of State document. He was 43 years old at the time, stood 5 feet, 5 inches tall and had a fair complexion with gray hair and brown eyes. His forehead, nose and chin are described as “regular,” though “mustache” is noted under the category of “mouth.”
Although Galdieri died in 1969 and his wife and children all passed by 2002, Padovan and Couperus hope the trail of names, dates and places he left behind could ultimately point toward a living descendant who still remembers that impressive mustache. Couperus has identified one man he believes could be Galdieri’s grandson, but he deems additional sleuthing as prudent before aggressively pursuing the lead.
“The other part of this is how are they related to somebody in Los Altos Hills?” Padovan said. “How did Los Altos Hills come to receive it?”
“I haven’t got a clue,” Couperus said.
Additional Galdieri album photos are available on Couperus’ website at couperus.org/Mystery.
To share information and tips about the origins of the album, call Padovan at 941-7222 or email [email protected].
