Juan Norberto Casanova

A connection with the von Eberstein and Champion families.

Dr John Norbert Casanova was a much-travelled physician, born in Spain around 1801, who spent his early years in the Americas, coming to Europe, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man, settling at the end in Brighton, where he died in 1871. In the 1820s he seems to have been in Carolina, and then resided in Chile and Peru, where he became proprietor of a cotton mill and tried politically to better the lot of agricultural workers. He wrote a paper advocating the manufacture of guano as the answer to Peru's economic woes, athough he was not successful in either endeavour. He converted to homeopathy and was a very active writer on medical matters and homeopathy, with a special interest in mineral waters.

His wife Albertina was a member of the aristocratic von Eberstein family. Her father, Baron Ernst Albert von Eberstein married in 1814 as his second wife Harriet Perchard Champion (1794-1886), daughter of Joseph Champion (b. 1768), Customs Officer of Guernsey. Albertine was born in 1823 and, as were most of her siblings, christened in the Anglican Chapel in St-Servan-sur-mer, France. Her brother Albert Ernst, however, was born in St. Pierre, Nova Scotia, in 1815. After the death of their father the family moved back to Guernsey. William Henry von Eberstein, older than Albertina by two years, became a mariner and settled in America, where he wrote his memoirs, visiting his family in Guernsey in 1850.

Thanks to Paul Ballard for bringing this to our attention. Paul is researching his relative, a godson of Dr Casanova and his wife— Albert Casanova Ballard, baptised in 1866 in St Peter Port. He later became a millionaire philanthropist, known by the soubriquet 'The Pied Piper of Plymouth.' Paul has promised to let us know more about this man, whose life sounds fascinating, and we will keep you updated.