Mary Trulucia White and Wilford A. Alberti

Mary Trulucia White - born 28 October 1886 in Independence, Missouri - died December 30, 1940 in Independence, Missouri

Mary Trulucia (White) Alberti

My grandmother died in 1940, three years before I was born. My older brother, Dale, was only eight when she passed, but he remembered visiting his grandmother at 1410 South Main in Independence, Missouri. His most vivid memory was of the small neighborhood lake that was visible from a long bay of windows on the second floor. He also remembered a large picture of stampeding horses on the wall just inside the entrance of the home. My two older sisters (Judy and Sherry) were very young, but have memories of the horse picture, and the stairwell leading to the large open room upstairs.

My mother would take Dale, Judy and Sherry with her while she attended to her mother, Mary Trulucia, who was dying from breast cancer. I found in “the box” of memorabilia a beautiful tribute to Mary Trulucia written by my mother titled “Grandma loved Christmas.”

Quoting directly from my mother’s tribute:
“The cancer did slow her down. At first she could sit in a chair. Little Sherry would sit at her feet and hand her what-ever she needed – her cane, her pocketbook, etc. Mama tried carrot juice and grape juice, and asked the doctor if they would help. He said to her, “You haven’t one chance in a hundred. Just do what you want.” Mama smiled. She didn’t lose color. Afterward, she told me that she wasn’t afraid to die.” If you’ve ever wondered where my mother got her inner strength to face adversity, look no further than her mother, Mary Trulucia.

Home on Doutts Lake

Quoting again from the tribute:

“Soon she had to go to bed. She decided she wanted to be upstairs. It was a large room—a stairwell in the middle, with three alcoves and fourteen windows facing the lake.”

During the last Christmas season in 1940, just weeks before Mary’s death, my mother read to her each evening the postings of a serial Christmas story that was being printed in the Kansas City Star.

During Mary Trulucia’s last Christmas, each of the three alcoves had a decorated Christmas tree, set where Mary could see it. A handmade Christmas wreath was hung in each of the many windows in view from Mary’s bed, and Christmas bells were hung from the top of the mirror on Mary’s dresser. Mary had her son-in-law, my father, making doll houses from orange crates for the children. They were complete with furniture.

Mary even had her husband, Wilford, busy. He found a wooden chest and painted it black, then put brass hinges on it. He also made an insert for it.

I don’t know what medical steps were taken to relieve her suffering in those final days, but I’ve witnessed the death of loved ones in a sterile hospital setting. I can’t imagine any stronger argument for dying at home than this depiction of my grandmother’s last Christmas.

Mary Trulucia grew up with five brothers and one sister in Independence, Missouri at 606 North Delaware. Her father—who, for some reason, regardless of relationship, was addressed as Grandpa White—was a city councilman and well-known citizen in Independence. With his income and stock dividends from the growing Badger Lumber Company, he was able to afford a large house in an affluent Independence neighborhood.

When young Harry S. Truman was eleven, his father moved his family into the same neighborhood where Mary Trulucia and her family lived. The Truman home was at 909 West Waldo Avenue, about a block and a half away from the White’s house at 606 North Delaware. Mary Trulucia was two years younger than Harry when he became a neighbor. With all the children in the White home, there was probably a well worn path between Mary’s home and the Truman home, and the barn behind it.

Looking at a website outlining periods of Harry S. Truman’s life I found this:

“The barn became the gathering place for the neighborhood children. The new neighborhood was home to a plethora of children who were Harry’s age, as opposed to his younger brothers. Harry proceeded to make countless friends and turned his house into the unofficial hub for all the adolescent children. In his own words, Harry now had a gang.”

I’m sure I could find more on the White-Truman connection if I were to visit the Truman Library, which for some reason I have not. It must be that I never really forgave Harry for dropping atomic bombs on civilians.

The White and Truman children attended the same schools and attended the same Trinity Episcopal Church, all walking distance from their homes. Fast forwarding in time, the church later became the place that the future president married Bess, and where my mother taught Sunday school as a teenager. One of the children in her class was Margaret Truman.

After Harry married Bess Wallace, they bought a home at 219 North Delaware, on the same street where Mary’s family lived at 606 North Delaware. Today, the Truman home is an important historical site. After Mary’s father died in 1902, her mother, Sarah White, continued to live in the home on Delaware for 38 more years.

It’s a little hard to picture what Independence was like when Mary was born in 1886. Independence was still rural and families raised food in small backyard gardens and many kept chickens and dairy cows. Few of the roads were paved, and most homes were heated with wood or coal. There may have been a few gas lit streetlamps, but illumination inside most homes was provided primarily by candles and oil lamps.

In 1887, the year after Mary’s birth, a consortium of Independence businessmen formed a private company in order to sell electrical power to homeowners. One of those businessmen was Alson Alexander White, Mary’s father who, in time, became the President of the Board. They located a Thomas-Houston arc light generator in an old mill near the Liberty Street Depot. Crews using horse drawn wagons installed poles, and strung electrical lines.

Five years later, and just four months before he fell down the basement steps in his home and died, Alson wrote a letter to one of his five sons. I can find only the second page in “the box,” so I don’t know which son it’s addressed to. Here is an excerpt from the letter.

“We are having more or less trouble with our electric light plant. We have installed some 75 street arc lights in the City.” The letter suggests that Alson is still optimistic and prepared to move forward but in reality the company had more trouble rather than less.

Privately held, the company faced a continual struggle to meet the overwhelming capital investment needed to electrify Independence. Sales never matched projections, and a fire in 1901 completely destroyed the uninsured electric light plant. The city of Independence bought what was left of the private company and made it a public utility.

Alson lost money on this venture, but he was well fixed financially with all his lumber company stock. When he died, he left his wife Sarah plenty to live on for the rest of her life. She lived for nearly four more decades and purchased one of the first electric cars in the city.

Despite the comparative wealth the family enjoyed, Mary’s childhood may not have been all that idyllic. Mary had a close attachment to her father, but he was often away on business. Mary and her mother were never close. Sarah favored her sons. When Alson sent gifts to the children, Sarah would appropriate to herself gifts that were intended for the girls.

At some point, after her father died, Mary took up with Wilford Alberti. I don’t know if they met at school, on the trolley, or possibly at the soda fountain at the Clinton Drugstore in Independence. Sarah did not approve of Wilford, and that may have encouraged, rather than discouraged, Mary to run away and elope with Wilford. There are no found records of the marriage. My mother’s notes say that “Sarah never forgave Mary for running away.” Sarah considered Wilford a foreigner, a lazy Italian, with no prospects. It didn’t help that he was unemployed.

One of Mary’s brothers, Alson Alexander Jr. (Allie) was working at a primitive lumber camp in Snohomish County in Washington State. It was associated with the Badger Lumber Company, in which their now-deceased father had been a major stockholder. A job was there to be had for Wilford, if he could make his way to Washington. Albert Anatole Alberti, who had a good retirement income, bought a train ticket for his son, Wilford, so he could join Alson Jr. at the lumber camp.

Sarah, to her credit, didn’t think that Mary should be separated from Wilford, so she bought Mary a train ticket so she could travel with him to Washington. My mother’s notes say that Sarah had begun to accept Wilford at this point. I don’t know if Mary was pregnant when she boarded the train or if she got pregnant after she got to the lumber camp at Three Lakes, Washington. Given Wilford’s inexperience in logging, and Mary’s inexperience in living in substandard housing, it turned out to be a bad decision.

Evidently, the logging camp at Three Lakes was very primitive and bears would come into the camp and get into the food. Bed bugs were prevalent, so the conditions at the camp must have been abysmal for Mary. Heavily shaded by the dense forest of Giant Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar, there was no grass beneath the canopy, only ferns. Hanging moss further obstructed light shining through the canopy.




When Mary went into labor, she probably went into the town of Snohomish, a small nearby town on the banks of the Snohomish River. The logging camp may have been primitive, but the little city of Snohomish was booming. The town had a two story courthouse, a good school building, six saloons, and one church with a bell. A new sawmill in town was producing 20,000 feet of lumber each day. Steamships were active on the river, bringing loggers and supplies to the lumber camps. Transportation was better than you’d expect. Streetcars and horse drawn wagons waited along the main dirt road, ready to move people around. Interurban trolley cars ran on steel tracks, connecting the city of Snohomish to Everett on the Puget Sound, and as far north as Seattle.

I’m assuming that there was somewhere, or at least someone, in Snohomish who could aid in the delivery of a child. After Mary returned to the logging camp with her newborn daughter, Charlotte, she got homesick. Not homesick for her mother, but for the comforts of home. It’s not surprising, given the bedbugs and bears. Her breast milk upset the newborn Charlotte, and Mary and Wilford boarded a train back to Independence when Charlotte was only six weeks old. Charlotte was born on the tenth of October, so six weeks later would have them leaving Washington in early December. The return home was probably inevitable, given that Wilford didn’t seem all that keen for hard physical work, and the winter conditions for Charlotte and Mary would have been unbearable.

Wilford A. Alberti – born 4 October 1884 in Independence, Mo. died 29 January 1971 in Pomona, Los Angeles, California

When it comes to my grandfather, Wilford, it is hard to get a sense of him. I only remember him coming by the house once when I was young. “The box” reveals a few traits that reflect poorly on his character.

Here are some of my mother’s written comments about Wilford. “Wilford had dark curly hair – Br. eyes. He was very dependent and expected to be waited on – When Mary had morning sickness and was too sick to go downstairs and fix breakfast – He said he would help. He helped her downstairs so she could fix breakfast.” This may be a clue as to why my mother never said much about her father to any of her children.

On the same page, she writes that when Mary was sick with her monthly cycle, “he would suffer from cramps and etc. – and be sicker than she was.” I’m not sure what the etc. means. The internet reveals that one study showed that some men experience conditions associated with the female menstrual cycle, including tiredness, cramps, and increased sensitivity. I’m sure he had many redeeming qualities, but there is not much evidence in “the box.”

There is an amusing anecdote that my mother remembers about her dating days with my father, Leonard: “Wilford was impolite and sometimes teased if Leonard stayed too late – He would stomp upstairs and take off his shoe and throw it down, then another – and then he started over – Leonard said – Um – he sure has a lot of shoes.”

Wilford and Mary Trulucia, with their children, Charlotte and Albert.  Circa 1910.

I have a lengthy prayer written by Wilford near the time of his death in 1971. It starts, “I pray for myself; I pray that you will forgive me my sins, my lies, and my petty stealings. Help me do thy will each day.” The prayer continues for eight more pages and includes every relative, every acquaintance, and even the doctors that performed successful cataract surgery on him. The prayer is heartfelt and sincere. I’m sure the Lord forgave him, but I’m not so sure about Mary, or my mother.

Aaron and Charlotte Sarah Bloch

Aaron Bloch – born in Germany 1823 – date of death unknown

Charlotte Sarah Bloch (Alberti) born in Saint Louis 1867 died in Kansas City 1916



The past three weeks have been spent waiting for a competent AT&T technician to fix our broadband connection, and piecing together what information I have on my great-grandfather, Aaron Bloch, and his daughter, Charlotte Sarah Bloch.

If you’ve not read previous blogs, I should mention that Charlotte Sarah Bloch was the wife of Albert Anatole Alberti., who sues him later in life for his philandering ways. Charlotte was sixteen when Albert Anatole Alberti rented a room in her family’s boarding house in Saint Louis. Albert was visiting Saint Louis on a short vacation, but some things, once started, take months to play out. Charlotte became pregnant, and Albert, to his credit, extends his stay in Saint Louis until his first son, Wilford, is born. I can’t find a marriage certificate, and there are no clues as to whether the marriage was blessed by Aaron Bloch, and his wife, Mary.   Maybe Aaron and Mary were relieved to marry off one of their daughters to such a promising young man. Charlotte was one of two daughters by a previous marriage, and Aaron and Mary had eleven other children of their own.

Scandal seemed to follow Albert around in his storied life, but whether this was a union blessed by the parents, or something in between, I have no information. At some point Albert does the honorable thing and weds Charlotte.

After two other sons are born in New Mexico, Albert takes the family back to Saint Louis for a visit. Listening in on a life insurance pitch being given to Aaron Bloch from a Metropolitan agent, he becomes interested. This was the catalyst for his long career with Metropolitan Life.

The boarding house appears to be a two story brick building that is still standing today. It is one of a few buildings scattered about in a desolate, forgotten landscape of vacant flat land devoid of vegetation. It was once teeming with activity, conveniently close to the steamboats unloading immigrants at the Mississippi landings. Today, the area is either part of some urban renewal plan, or just the disintegrating remnants of a once thriving neighborhood.

Sadly, there are no pictures in “the box” my sisters left with me of Charlotte Bloch, or her father, Aaron Bloch. I have found some information from separate notes my mother has written down. Much of the additional information comes from the leg work of Lynn Cox, my brother-in-law, who spent untold hours putting together the ancestry of the Sherman family. He provided two census reports on the Bloch family, taken in 1870 and 1880, the Kansas City Star article where Charlotte sues Albert for divorce and maintenance, Charlotte’s death certificate, and a lead on Aaron’s first wife, who may have been the mother of Charlotte Sarah Bloch.

My mothers’ notes say Charlotte Bloch had brown hair, warm brown eyes, and loving ways. She adds that she was kind, and better to Mary Trulucia (my mother’s mother), than Mary’s own mother. Mary’s mother was Sarah (Sadie) Robertson. I described her, probably maligned her, in a previous blog, pointing out her numerous character flaws.

Charlotte Sarah Bloch shows up on the two census reports in 1870 and 1880. The two oldest daughters listed are Charlotte and Ida, who are daughters from a previous marriage. Lynn Cox found a marriage certificate for a Kezia Stevens and Aaron Bloch in Allen County, Indiana. Allen County is over 300 miles from Saint Louis. Maybe Aaron proposed to her when she was on an excursion to the city, and she insisted on a ceremony back home that included her family. Maybe. The Stevens family were well established in Allen County with farms and businesses. The dates match up closely with the ages of Charlotte and Ida, but whether Kezia was Charlotte’s real mother is unproven. If Kezia was her mother, the marriage would have lasted about twelve years, at which time she either died, or less likely, divorced Aaron.

According to my mother, Aaron Bloch was a Jewish Rabbi, who owned a jewelry store in Saint Louis. She notes that he had thirteen children. On the census report I count eleven. The two missing children had either left the nest already, or may have succumbed to childhood diseases.

My mother’s only contact with the large brood of her grandmother was Esther, a step-sister to Charlotte Bloch. Esther showed up for my mother’s graduation from Chrisman High School in Independence, Missouri, and gave her a ruby encrusted diamond ring. I can’t help but speculate that it was made by Aaron Bloch. My mother gave it to her mother, Mary Trulucia White. When Mary Trulucia died from breast cancer, her husband Wilford, gave it to his second wife, Edna. Should it have gone back to my mother? You’ll have to ask one of those etiquette columnists, like Heloise or Dear Abby.

The 1880 St Louis Census is inaccurate. The sixteen people living at 2327 Warren Street are counted twice. A second census taker showed up the day after the first one and took information from one of the boarders. In the 1870 census, there were three boarders staying in the Bloch home: John Hett, a tailor from Germany (Prussia); Robert Lyles, a bookkeeper from Scotland; and Dan Curley, a mail carrier from Ireland. There seemed to be a little confusion in the census taker’s mind on the difference between Prussia and Russia. Aaron emigrated from Prussia, not Russia. Prussia was a prominent German State at that time.

Aaron Bloch probably immigrated to America late in the 1830’s, when he was a young man. It is possible he was brought in by his parents, but there are no records to support it. There was no concentrated settlement of Germans until the 1830’s. Before that, Saint Louis was not much more than a French Village where rafts and barges unloaded furs and lumber.

Saint Louis became a prime destination for Germans in the thirties due to a wealthy German named Dr.Gottfried Duden. He had lived in Saint Louis and the surrounding area for three years starting in 1827. The Bloch family was probably influenced by his writings. On returning to Germany, he wrote a book extolling in glowing terms the opportunities in Missouri, and the favorable environment. Additionally, he wrote of the political and economic freedom there. Germany, at the time, had neither. The book was wildly popular, and went through numerous editions. Dr. Duden likened the climate to the Rheinland, calling it the garden spot of the West.

Some Germans were not so impressed after arriving. One publicist printed in his Saint Louis German newspaper, that if Duden ever returned to Saint Louis, he should be hung in the nearest tree. Duden never did return, but he was the primary reason thousands of Germans ended up living in Saint Louis.

Many Irish, and I love ‘em, also came to Saint Louis, but they were unskilled farmers, who came because of the Irish potato famine. It was the influential German doctors, lawyers, bankers, brewers, and skilled craftsmen like Aaron Bloch, who made a lasting impact. Their influence still gives Saint Louis its German zest. Prost! Raise a glass of Anheuser Busch, to wash down that bratwurst, or hot dog. We have visited the famous Busch Gardens, and marveled at the Clydesdale horses that pull that famous beer wagon. There were many other breweries started by early German immigrants, but Anheuser, and his son-in-law Busch, were the most successful.

In 1834, Paul Follenius, a freedom loving lawyer, and his friend, Friedrich Muench, a philosopher, brought 500 Germans into Saint Louis in a single day. Their intent was to establish a German State. Interestingly, to me at least, Arkansas was their first choice. Unfavorable reports from an advance scouting party caused them to change their minds. Their plans for a new Germany came to naught because they were already divided into two groups by the time they arrived.

In the three years following the German Revolution in 1848, 35,000 Germans arrived in Saint Louis.  Many neighborhoods were predominantly German. Even in 1838, when the first public school opened, there were so many Germans that they convinced the school system to adopt German as a second language. By 1880 there were 54 schools in Saint Louis offering German as a second language. One famous legend in Germany, or fake news if you prefer, was that a Congressional Committee missed by a single vote of making German the official language of the United States.

Aaron Bloch would have been 23 years of age in 1846, just before the massive immigration following the German Revolution. I know next to nothing about that part of German history, but along with the embedded prejudice against Jews in Germany, it may have been the impetus for boarding a steamship to America.

Although my mother notes that he was a rabbi, his second marriage to Mary Ellicock took place in a Protestant Episcopal Church in Saint Louis, and the christening of their son, Paul Bloch, took place in a Presbyterian church in Saint Louis. If Aaron celebrated any Jewish holiday, or attended a synagogue, there is no mention of it. He seemed to embrace the primary protestant religions of the non-Jewish immigrants in Saint Louis.

About the time Aaron Bloch was impregnating wife #2 with clock-like German proficiency, Alson Alexander White, was busy making a living in the burgeoning lumber business just over a hundred miles downstream from Saint Louis, in Hannibal, Missouri. (Alson is the subject of the first blog back in August).

There is little documentation of what Charlotte Bloch’s marriage to Albert Anatole Alberti was like before the scandal and divorce, but she died in 1916, in Kansas City, the same year that Albert retired from Metropolitan Life. The “certificate of death” lists the cause as “chronic interstitial nephritis.” A secondary cause was staphylococcus infection of the kidney. My mother said she died of a broken heart. My money is on the pair of scissors an incompetent surgeon left in her following a previous surgery. She was only 49 years old. She and Albert had two sons that survived, and the oldest, Wilford Alberti, becomes my grandfather on my mother’s side.

Albert Anatole Alberti--part 8

Albert was plagued with stomach troubles for sixty odd years.  It was possibly some pathogen picked up from contaminated water on the French steamship when he was in his early twenties. Its engines gave out in the middle of the Atlantic on a return trip from Brazil.  When Albert came to America, he always sought out towns with natural springs, with reputations for their therapeutic qualities. This is what led him in 1930, at the age of seventy five, to the curious little town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

            It is said the Eureka Springs was founded on sacred Indian grounds.  There’s a local story of a Sioux princess who had her eyesight restored by bathing her eyes in the waters from Basin Spring.  Considered a sacred site, legend has it that warring tribes treated it as such, and would not fight at the springs.

            Later, the waters were used at “Dr. Jackson’s Cave Hospital,” to care for combatants during the Civil War.  Following the war, Jackson set up a brisk business selling “Dr. Jackson’s Eye Water.”  Judge Saunders, a friend of Dr. Jackson, was cured of a crippling disease by a visit to Basin Spring, and the news of the healing water spread far and wide.

 In the 1800’s, photos show small crowds gathered at the springs filling jugs, tin cups, and ladles.  I don’t know how legitimate the claims were for the water’s healing quality, but the story took root and was spread across the country.

            Modern day mystics, who may include a lovely lady I wed in 1966, believe that Eureka Springs is an Earth “Vortex,” a rare planetary center, where body, mind and spirit are aligned.  I acted as chauffeur some few years back, escorting my bride and her life long friend Nancy, on an “other-worldly” trip to Eureka Springs, where there was much conversation about crystal fields beneath the surface of Eureka Springs, accounting for the “Vortex.”  Skeptical by nature, I check, and find that Arkansas has the largest singular deposit of crystal quartz on the planet.  The crystal strata below the surface extends nearly 200 miles across the state. Arkansas quartz is said to be the finest in the world, containing rare electro-magnetic properties found no other place on earth.  Check mate on my skepticism!

            This quaint little Arkansas town is studded with cedar and has an alpine character. Steep winding streets are lined with Victorian cottages, and other unusual dwellings of all makes. Many of the buildings are constructed with local stone, and lie along streets that curve around the hills, and rise and fall with the topography.  Many of the buildings have street-level entrances on more than one floor. Numerous homes, inns, and retails shops are constructed on the sides of cliffs, with stilts as support.  The unscripted development of the city, with its lax building codes, has enabled the building of unique and odd shaped homes, with pronounced angles and inclusions of found and hand crafted materials. It reminds one a little of Dr. Seuss’s “Who-ville.”

 Some folks, like Albert, were drawn to the city by the spring water and the spa, some by the magnetic pull of the quartz field, and others because it’s just a fun place where anything goes.  My parents chose it as their honey moon destination in 1936.  “The box” reveals how untrue anecdotal stories can be. The story I’ve always heard is that Leonard and Charlotte, (my parents) borrowed Plinnie’s Model-T for the honeymoon trip to Eureka Springs. Plinnie was my grandfather, father of Leonard. The story goes that Plinnie, or Plem, as we called him, accompanied Leonard and Charlotte on the trip to Eureka Springs because he didn’t trust Leonard to drive his newish Model-T.  I always pictured my mom and dad in the back seat with Plinnie actins as their chauffeur.  The story got a little creepy, where at some point Plinnie is sitting at the foot of their bed.  Was he giving the newlyweds advice, or was he unable to afford his own room?

            This story, told and re-told, was wrong I’m happy to report.  Plinnie did loan Leonard his car, but did not accompany them to Eureka. The honeymooners were at the Basin Street Hotel on Spring Street, not the Crescent, which had fallen on hard times and was closed in 1936.

 Albert Anatole, my mother’s grandfather, was the one who visited the newlyweds, and sat at the foot of their bed in their hotel room.  Albert lived within a short trolley ride of the Basin Hotel, and may have popped in to say hello, and pick up the tab for the room.  Did they have the comforter pulled up around their necks?  Was this an economy room with no extra chair to sit in?

The year after the honeymoon, the Crescent Hotel was purchased by the infamous Norman Baker.  He was a flamboyant, self proclaimed champion of the common man, who pitted himself against the medical establishment.  Always dressed in a white suit and a lavender shirt, he owned a radio station in Muscatine, Iowa with the call letters KTNT, which stood for “Know the Naked Truth.”  He preached the gospel of alternative medicine, and promoted Norman’s Magic Elixir, a useless mix of watermelon seed, brown corn silk, alcohol, and carbolic acid.  He made millions promoting and selling this on his radio show.

With this money, he purchased and transformed the Crescent Hotel into the Baker Cancer Hospital.  According to one U.S. Postal Inspector, Norman was raking in $500,000.00 a year between 1937 and 1939, until federal authorities closed him down.

The Crescent Hotel sits 2000 feet above sea level, and overlooks the town nestled below.  Albert’s home was a modest one story with five sides, an odd little 45 degree porch extending from one corner.  The house sat even higher than the Crescent Hotel.  It would have been a short down hill walk between the house and the Hospital.

I can’t help but wonder if some of Baker’s profits came from my great-grandfather.  He was always searching for that elusive cure to his stomach ailments.  He died in Eureka at the age of 85, and his certificate of death lists the cause as “cancer of the liver.” Without an autopsy, the only source for this conclusion would have been information given to the coroner by Laura, Albert’s second wife.  If he had been diagnosed before the Baker Hospital was established, he would almost certainly have been a patient there, at least an out-patient. 

"Doctor" Norma Baker holds the head of a patient
undergoing hypnotic therapy.

            Laura was always secretive with details on their lives, so I don’t know where in Eureka Springs Albert actually died, or if there was even a funeral service for Albert.  I originally thought it was within the realm of possibility, and even probability, that Albert ended up on the autopsy table at the Crescent, under the knife of Norman Baker.  In the basement of the hotel there’s a large walk-in cooler where Baker stored cadavers and body parts he removed from patients, in an effort to stumble onto an actual cure.  Was Albert’s cancerous liver stored in that cooler? 

 No, it would have been a disturbing epitaph, but Albert died in mid September of 1940, and federal authorities had already closed in on Norman in the latter part of 1939.
            There are colorful characters like Albert, who live out- sized lives, and somehow resist passing peacefully into the annals of history. Albert certainly would have been a welcome addition to the ghosts that now inhabit the haunted Crescent Hotel.  There’s Michael, the Irish stonemason who fell to his death while building the hotel in 1885, the cancer patient of the Baker hospital days who seems to need help finding her room, Norman Baker himself, in his white suit and lavender shirt, and many remember Morris, the cat.

The morgue in the basement of the hotel, where the "Doctor"
performed autopsies. 

 Then there’s the mystery patient, in a white hospital gown, who appears in the luxury suites, at the foot of your bed. Could that mystery ghost be my great-grandfather Albert Anatole?  The Crescent Hotel is a short one hour drive from our home, so I plan check out this mystery guest. Sharon refused my offer to stay at the haunted hotel last week, but if I book a luxury suite, and re-package the offer as a second honeymoon, she may reconsider.  Who knows who may end up sitting at the foot of our bed?

Post-script – two great nieces plan to visit Florence, Italy in February of next year.  They are eager to solve the mystery of Albert’s genealogy.

Albert Anatole Alberti--Part 7

Part 7 – Albert Anatole

            The danger my dead relatives face is wrongful conviction of some odious crime, or at minimum, slander by insufficient evidence I find in “the box.”  Its obvious Albert could wander away from truth as easily as a politician stumping on the campaign trail.

 I was born in 1943, three years after Albert died, so I’ve never heard his voice or seen his mannerisms.  When he told my mother his untruthful stories, was there a mirthful timbre to his voice, a mischievous twinkle in his eye, or a submerged chuckle accompanying the conversations?  I’ve never, ever considered my mother a gullible woman who could be fooled by a con man, yet there is every indication she took Albert at his word.  Albert’s two sons and most of their children have passed, so I’m unable to get their take on him.   My sisters have little recollection of him, so I’m limited to information in “the box.”

            What I do know is that Albert had a certain charm and sense of humor, which he used to his advantage; he could have written the book on “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” As a young man, he convinced hundreds of Italians to sell all their possessions and board French steamships headed to America.  As a Metropolitan Life Insurance employee, he sold insurance policies worth millions of dollars, both personal and commercial.

            His career with Metropolitan Life started as a sales agent in Saint Louis in 1890.  Within three years, he was promoted to assistant superintendent, and in his fourth year to superintendent.  He was transferred to St. Joseph, Missouri for a year, and then to Davenport, Iowa. His supervisory skills left a trail of increased sales and motivated agents. The next seventeen years were spent superintending other agents in Kansas City, where he settled and bought a home at 1100 Bales Avenue.

            From here, it becomes a little unclear.  On December 9, 1912, the article on Albert’s arrest is printed on the front page of the Kansas City Star.  Twelve days later, on December 23^rd, the Superintendent of Agents, Mr. Stewart, requests Albert’s resignation, citing unsatisfactory conduct. I’ll have to edit a previous blog, because I wasn’t paying close attention to the records on Albert’s career at Metropolitan Life.  I thought his retirement banquet closely followed the resignation request, but I was wrong by four years.

            This is where Albert’s skills with influencing people came into play.  He refused to turn in his resignation.  Albert had clearly embarrassed the company with his behavior, but somehow, he maneuvers a transfer to the Wilmington, Delaware branch of the company where he works for the company for four more years.

Mr. Fiske, the vice-president of the company, said this of Albert four years later at Albert’s retirement party in Wilmington, Delaware: “Mr. Alberti always gathered around him as friends the principal people of the places in which he lived.”

Mr. Fiske recalls a previous luncheon in Kansas City, where Mr. Alberti gathered together eighteen or twenty men from prominent walks in life. It’s obvious that Mr. Stewart’s request for Albert’s resignation didn’t stick because Albert had far too many influential friends, both within and outside the company.

 I’m not sure when Albert’s divorce was finalized with Charlotte Sarah, or when he and Laura were married.  Laura had to finalize her divorce also before she could marry Albert.  Whether Laura joined Albert in Delaware is unknown.

  Charlotte Sarah stayed in Kansas City, where she died four years later, and four months after Albert’s retirement in April of 1916. My mother’s notes say she died from a “broken heart.”  I don’t know if she had actual heart problems, but she had other significant health issues, and I’m sure the pair of scissors left in her by an incompetent surgeon didn’t help.

I made another error in assuming Albert fully funded his own retirement banquet in order to save his pension.  It appears Metropolitan Life ponied up a substantial amount for the extravagant affair at the Dupont Hotel in Wilmington.

As proof that Albert had fiercely loyal friends in Kansas City, many of them from outside the company boarded a train for the eleven hundred mile trip to attend the retirement banquet in Delaware.  From the home office the vice president, the fourth vice president, and many of the men Albert had mentored, made the long trip. Mr. Stewart, who had asked for Albert’s resignation, did not attend.

 Mr. Remington spoke in behalf of Mr. Stewart at the banquet, and the guests joined in a message of sympathy to Mr. Stewart for his unspecified illness, and hopes for his speedy recovery.  There was a tongue-in-cheek quality to his condolences.  I’m sure Mr. Stewart’s health would have been greatly improved if Albert had been run over by the train arriving in Delaware.

Other friends of Albert traveled to the banquet from as far away as Chattanooga, Tennessee.  The guest list included the current and previous mayor of Wilmington, several of the Duponts, of the gunpowder company who were also the owners of the hotel, and various presidents of prominent banks and trust companies.  A number of Metropolitan Life superintendents and company lawyers sat at the main table.  The Wilmington Evening Journal named 20 of the most prominent guests.  In all, there must have been near 100 guests in the elegant, four star dining room.

Not one to forget the lesser paid employees of the company, Albert also invited a large contingent of medical examiners and their wives. There were nurses and clerical staff in attendance whose annual salaries were near the national average in 1916, which was $687.00.  The cost of living makes one wistful for times of yore.  You could mail a letter for two cents, buy a loaf of bread for seven cents, and buy a house for around three thousand dollars.  Albert was making a hefty $12000 a year. His pension after retirement was $6000 annually, which he collected for the next twenty five years.

In the main dining room, also known as the Green Room, fumed oak paneling soared two and a half stories from the mosaic and terrazzo floors below.  Rich forest greens, browns, and ivories, embellished with gold, decorated the room.  Six handcrafted chandeliers and a musician’s gallery overlooked the opulence below.  The Duponts set out to build a hotel that would rank among the finest in Europe.  The intricate detail – its carved woodwork, gilded ceilings, and elaborate marble and mosaic floors – required the labors of 18 French and Italian craftsmen for more than two years.  I’m sure it was not lost on Albert that the hotel was built in the Italian Renaissance style.  Over the years, Charles Lindbergh, Prince Rainier, John F. Kennedy, Katherine Hepburn, and recently Whoopi Goldberg and Reese Witherspoon have booked rooms in the hotel.

Today, it is still a world class hotel, and I will add it to my five gallon bucket list.  You can still order a Four Star meal in the famous dining room, but the hotel rooms may not provide the sterling silver comb, brush and mirror sets that were placed on every dressing table in 1916.

 I’m not sure how guests were dressed for Albert’s banquet in 1916, but I’m certain that some of the clerks and bookkeepers that attended had never set down to a four course meal of this caliber, and set in such an elegant room.  Blue Point Cocktail, whatever that was, and Cream Portuagaise was served with radishes, celery and olives.  Patties of sweetbreads with mushrooms, half chicken Reine a la Roche, Salad Florette, and petit-fours of Neapolitan ice cream were served.

Here’s the menu for a Sunday night Four Star meal at the Dupont 101 years later. 

It appears not much has changed with the exception of price.  Still, $35.00 a plate doesn’t seem all that unreasonable for a three course meal with Sautéed Breast of Duck as one of the menu choices. 

There are six trains departing daily from Kansas City, destined to arrive in Wilmington, Delaware 32 hours later.  If you’re a descendant of Albert wouldn’t this be worth the Vanilla Bean Cheesecake dessert?

I know I promised to make this the last blog on Albert, but some promises are meant to be broken.  Albert moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas in 1930 and lived within walking distance of the Crescent Hotel.  The hotel is famously haunted, primarily due to the con man that purchased the hotel in 1937.  He defrauded cancer patients out of millions of dollars with a phony cancer cure, hastening their deaths with a useless mix of watermelon seed, brown corn silk, alcohol, and carbolic acid.  Albert died in 1940, the same year the con man was sentenced to four years in the Leavenworth Penitentiary, in Kansas.

Until next time. I know the next blog will be post Halloween, but the Crescent hotel is haunted year round.

Albert Anatole Alberti--part 6

My great-grandmother, Sarah Ann Robertson (1854-1940), was prejudiced against all Italians. There was a lot of anti-Italian sentiment in America in her time. She cried when my mother was born looking too Italian, with her black hair and olive-colored complexion. It didn’t help that her daughter Mary Trulucia married Wilford Alberti against her wishes, and that he was unemployed at the time of my mother’s birth. Wilford was the oldest son of Albert Anatole.

The majority of the early Italian immigrants pouring into this country were extremely poor and uneducated. More anti-Italian sentiment was generated in my mother’s lifetime, when prohibition gave root to the Mafioso. Then there was Italy’s early affiliation with the Axis powers in the Second World War, before they switched sides in 1943.

Despite all this, my mother was proud of her Italian heritage, and her prejudice was limited to Sicilians and their link to the Mafia. This is why she would repeatedly say “We are from northern Italy, Florence, not Sicily.”

If my mother had hard evidence that her grandfather Albert came from Florence, she didn’t reveal it, and it’s not in “the box” my sisters left me years ago. My mother’s suggestion that we came from Florence is flimsy evidence, but there are other indications that Albert Anatole and his family were from Florence.

There are a number of Alberti’s scattered throughout Italy, but I would wager more money than I should on Florence as his home. I suspect his lineage and connection to the city extended back to the 15th Century, and beyond. The connection may be in that “data book # 4”, sitting on some library shelf in Florence.

Statistics on who reads this blog show what device they are using to access it, and what country they are from There is one reader from Italy who I think accessed through Firefox. If he or she has any Italian links to the Alberti family, I hope they contact me.

Albert listed Pienza as his birthplace on his naturalization papers, but years later, just before his retirement, he tells a reporter he was born in Florence. This would be solid evidence, if it weren’t for the fact that Albert had trouble separating fact from fiction. Even with that, I think he was telling the truth when he told the reporter it was Florence.

There is also a letter in “the box” from Florence, Italy dated 12 March, 1947. It is

a beautifully scripted letter from the husband of Assontina, one of Albert’s sisters. It was forwarded to my mother from Laura, the secretary that Albert married after the scandal in Kansas City. She forwarded it with no envelope that would reveal the exact address in Florence. Although Albert had been dead for six years, Laura continued the pattern set by Albert to keep my mother from directly corresponding to the Alberti family. Why?

In that letter from Assontina’s heart sick husband, he notes:

“I do not know what I shall do – I think I shall go (after some time) to live with a sister who like all is kind and affectionate to me.”

I think he may be referring to one of Albert’s other sisters. In my mother’s enigmatic arrows and incomplete lines on the pages, where she tries to recreate everything she can remember about the Alberti family, she indicates that Albert had three sisters. She can only remember the names of Assontina and Antoninas. With an arrow pointing to the name Assontina, she adds “died in husband Antonio’s arms of dysentery.” Another arrow from the names of the known two sisters points to “Nazi’s took over and they died.”

We know that Assontina died in 1946 according to the letter from her husband. Possibly another sister (or sisters) died during the German occupation during the war. The Nazi’s did occupy Florence, and in their withdrawal destroyed nearly a third of the city. The Via dei Bardi (street) was reduced to a pile of rubble. This was where many of the earlier Alberti’s had homes. Most of the medieval bridges were destroyed with the exception of the historic Ponte Vecchio, mentioned earlier as the escape route for the Medici’s, and other prominent families, including the Alberti family, during the turbulent 15th Century.

Albert was 85 when he died in 1940, so the sisters were probably younger or possessed some serious longevity genes.

Albert traveled back to Italy twice after retiring, taking Laura with him. I have records of the ships they traveled on, but no information on where they went after getting off the ship. One trip lasted two months. Albert was most likely visiting relatives, and showing Laura the “beautiful estate” he told my mother that his family wanted him to take over. This “secret,” Albert kept about the family and “the beautiful estate,” must have been a dandy. Could it have been a scandal more scandalous than the one in Kansas City?

We know that the Alberti’s were feudal lords as far back as the eighth century. In the twelfth century, some were established in Valdamo, a commune near Florence in Tuscany. The Alberti’s from this branch began to settle in Florence.

Many of the Alberti men became judges and notaries, and some members of the family became rich from investing in the wool industry. That money led to the loaning of money and progressed into banking. The Alberti family eventually had bank branches all over Europe. There was a time the Alberti family paid more taxes to the city of Florence than any of the other wealthy families, including the Medici’s.

When Sharon and I were in Florence, we marveled at the art and architecture. We had no idea of what life was really like for the Florentine families that lived there in medieval times.

There were tremendous obstacles and a dark underside behind the statuary and ornate columns. There was the black plague in 1348 that killed more than half the population of Florence. It started in Europe, when twelve ships docked in Marseille and most of the crew members onboard the ships were dead. The crew members caught the plague from flea infested rats, and then it was transmitted from person to person. It would return to Europe time and again. In 1348, the population of Florence was a modest ninety thousand, but in 1348, it was one of the largest cities in Italy. The plague reduced the population to less than forty five thousand.

Then there was politics, just as cutthroat and dirty as it is today. It was inevitable that, with its enormous wealth, the Alberti family would become entangled in it.

Benedetto Alberti and his sons became major players in the political intrigues, and the government began to fear them. Two major political mistakes were used by the government to banish them from Florence for a number of years.

First, in a civic celebration and parade in 1386, the Alberti family dressed their brigade of Knights in white and gold and adorned them with their own coat of arms instead of the communal insignia (Ouch!). They were forced out of the festivities for “excessively glorifying the family.” 

Later that year, Benedetto’s son-in-law was named Standard Bearer of Justice. When it was discovered he was not of the required age, Benedetto engaged in what one anonymous chronicler described generously as “heavy handed pressure.”

Various charges, including treason, were brought against Benedetto and Cipriano, Alberti, and they were forbidden from holding any office, and to make sure they were run out of town. Over a period of twenty five years more and more Alberti men were banished from Florence. The final blow came in 1412, when it became so bad that all Alberti family members were banned from Florence. Their property was confiscated and transferred to other families. Bounty hunters were encouraged to shoot any Alberti male that came within 200 miles of Florence. One of the exiled Albertis was Lorenzo, a Florentine banker, who then moved to Venice, where the Alberti family conveniently had a bank branch.

While he was in Venice, Lorenzo fathered a son with a woman from Bologna; Leon Battista Alberti, born illegitimate by this union, became the most famous of all the Alberti men. Listing all his accomplishments would wear you out; architect, art theorist, writer, linguist, cryptographer, and musician. Sharon (my wife) wants me to include the beautiful geometric gardens he designed.

While Leon Battista was studying law in Padua, he took up mathematics because it was a relaxing break from the memorization law required. Studying mathematics for relaxation would have never crossed my mind.

Eventually the Florentine ban on the Alberti’s was lifted. Many of the buildings in Florence were designed by Leon Battista Alberti. I’ve ordered several books authored by him, which haven’t arrived yet. One of the books is “Libri della famiglia,” where he stresses the importance of education, marriage, household management, raising children, and money.” That should be interesting reading from a man who never had a wife or children.

Leon did have a dog though, a mongrel that he loved so much he wrote a lengthy eulogy for him. As I mentioned in a previous blog Leon said he could tame wild horses, and claims he could spring over the head of the man standing next to him. According to other sources, he could sing beautifully and played the organ. He was handsome, an engaging conversationalist, and his achievements in crypto-analysis were groundbreaking. (I must be connected to another branch of Albertis’).





My apologies for not finishing Albert off this week. I tried, but he insists on living for one more blog.

Albert Anatole Alberti--part 5

Palazzo degli Alberti, an historical building in the center of Prato, Tuscany, central Italy.

Examining what went on inside Albert’s head to see what made him tick would take an advanced degree in psychiatry. Still, it’s fun to speculate. First, why would he tell my mother so many half-truths? Self-aggrandizement comes to mind. He was a self promoter and good at pulling himself up by his Italian bootstraps. Partial confession comes to mind. A real confession in front of a priest would have been tedious and not as interesting as unraveling a tale to a granddaughter, which included a few hints of sins committed, sprinkled in. Even Albert’s similarities to Samuel Clemens (you might know him as Mark Twain) come to mind. I know it’s a stretch, but I can’t resist trying to make something out of nothing.

Both Albert and Samuel could spin a good yarn that had something of truth in it. Albert said numerous times that his family had a beautiful estate in Italy, and he had been asked to return there and take it over. Samuel Clemens’ father owned 70,000 acres in Tennessee in the late 1820’s, hoping it might someday make the family wealthy. Later in life, Samuel Clemens lamented that the possibility was a curse. “It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent…It is good to begin life poor, it is good to begin life rich - these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.” Fortunately, neither Samuel Clemens nor my great-grandfather waited around for his ship to come in.

With the evidence I’ve retrieved from “the box,” I still don’t know if Albert’s family was rich or poor, landed or homeless; if they were counts and countesses, or if they were no-accounts? The answers are somewhere outside “the box.” In his youth, Samuel Clemens speculated in silver mining and other business ventures, similar to young Albert’s risky gambling on silver certificates in Italy. Albert lost all his savings earned from his work for the French steam ship companies, and that was a deciding factor for moving to America. Samuel Clemens ended up destitute after his prospecting ventures; and that was the beginning of his days as a writer. There are several other similarities, but I’m getting off track.

Albert tells my mother that he valued American citizenship over the title of Count and his family’s “beautiful estate” in Italy. Was this the truth, a half-truth, or a complete invention? Albert was never one to shrink from inflating his resume. I can halfway understand why he would tell my mother that his “father was a Count and his mother a Countess.” A grand daughter would likely be spellbound by such romantic sounding possibilities. A recently found record indicates that Albert’s father was Guiseppe “Joseph” Alberti, who resided in Santo Stefano, a port city in Tuscany. There is nothing to indicate he held the title of Count. This is a tantalizing connection I have yet to verify.

The best evidence of Albert’s history was perhaps left behind by me, 46 years ago. I was stationed in Darmstadt, Germany, the result of a series of events that led me there, instead of Vietnam. My mother-in-law signed up for one of those “Best of Europe” tours. Another lucky event occurred when a couple on the tour disembarked in Amsterdam. Sharon and I filled the vacated bus seats for the best part of the trip. We traveled with the group to southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. In Italy, we visited many famous sites including Michelangelo’s Pieta in Milan, the leaning tower in Pisa, and the coliseum in Rome. In Florence, we stood behind a crowd of Italians spellbound by a television set in a store window. On the small screen, a man in a white space suit was bouncing slowly across a barren rock strewn terrain. They were watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. That afternoon, we walked over cobblestones that had been trod on by Alberti’s from the past.

I have trouble reconstructing yesterday, so you can imagine my trouble reaching back 46 years. After watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, we crossed over the Medieval Ponte Vecchio Bridge that spans the Arno River. It is pedestrian-only and is home to small jewelry shops and artisan kiosks. The Medici’s used it as an escape route back in the 15th Century.

Sharon remembers that we were still loosely following the tour guide when left the bridge and entered the nearby Palazzo Pitti, a museum of sorts, dedicated to the powerful families of Florence. She remembers a full-sized statue of Leon Battista Alberti, set in an alcove. He is high on the list of suspected ancestors. She has an uncanny memory for cathedrals and statues. Her memory jogs mine, and I remember the museum was huge and I left Sharon inside and walked out into a back garden to rest. After a short eternity, Sharon emerges and we left the tour group to begin looking for a place to stay near the Borgo Santa Croce, at the suggestion of the guide. The travelers that disembarked in Amsterdam were refunded for their meals and hotels, so Sharon and I paid only for the bus ride. We scrambled daily to find our own lodging and meals. It was a small inconvenience for such a terrific trip.

We wandered down the Via dei Bardi. On the corner of that street, we saw a large Coat of Arms of the Alberti family etched into the stonework of the building. In the center of the large engraving are two crossed chains. It seems rather ordinary, unless you know the history. In the eighth century, a young male Alberti progenitor saves a city in Tuscany (Valdamo) by chaining the gates and stalling invaders. As a reward, Charlemagne gives the eighth century Alberti two chains made of silver. Two crossed chains then become the armorial bearings of the Alberti descendents. This sounds plausible, but I wasn’t there - and I don’t trust everything I read on the net.

After seeing the family crest on that cornerstone, a further sequence of events I can’t recall, led us that warm July day in 1969, a short distance down the street to the “Instituto Araldico Coccia.” It was basically a private institution that did genealogical research. A massive street-side door led to an inner courtyard. A short set of steps led to another large door. I knocked, and was welcomed by a young lady I took to be a secretary. She led me to a middle aged man sitting behind a large mahogany desk. He spoke enough English to get the general idea of my inquiry on the Alberti family. He reminded me that, to have arrived at the Institute, I would have had to pass the corner of the Alberti’s where the original homes of the Alberti family were found. I told him I had seen the Alberti Coat of Arms engraved into the stone. I did not have the time or the $500.00 asking price for a full history of the Alberti family, but he was kind enough to send me a short letter a month later to the army base I was stationed at in Darmstadt, Germany. Quoting directly from the letter: 

“The Alberti’s have been Counts since the year 867, in that more than one thousand years ago the Emperor Ottone the First gave the title of Count to Goffredo Alaberti. From that time until today, the Alberti’s have always been Counts. They also possessed many Castles, the most famous one is the Castle of Catenaia but they were also owners of the Castles of Talla, Montegiovi, Bagnena and Penna which are found between the higher valleys of the Trevere and Arno rivers: these rivers are born together from Monte Falterona. The Alberti Family has been so important in Florence, that there are still streets and “piazza’s” named for this Family. If the cost is not too burdensome, the research number 4, the genealogy, would be much more interesting than research number 3, the data-book.”

The second page of the letter has been lost, but I think it only contained some contact information that was already included on the heading.

That’s the evidence of Albert’s connection to the main branch of the Alberti family I left behind decades ago. Googling a street view of the “Instituto Araldico Coccia,” it appears they are no longer in business. Free access to information on the web probably made it unprofitable. The “research number 4, the genealogy,” referred to in the letter has hopefully been transferred to some library in Florence. I may be able to track it down with the aid of my keyboard.

Let me ramble here about Leon Battista Alberti, who was the illegitimate son of Lorenzo Alberti, and speculate on any connection to Albert. Not only did Leon design many of the famous buildings in Florence, but he was an architectural consultant to Pope Pius II, who rebuilt Pienza. Curiously, Albert lists Pienza on his naturalization papers as his birthplace, although most evidence points toward Florence. We know Albert had a sister still living in Florence at the time of his death in 1940. He tells a reporter interviewing him at the age of 61 that he was born in Florence. Maybe time will tell.

In addition to being a talented architect, Leon Battista Alberti was an accomplished painter, mathematician, and a published writer on many subjects. If you want to compare personality traits that may have been passed forward to Albert, Leon’s immodest autobiography provides some clues. He says he excelled in all bodily exercises, and that he could stand flat footed and jump as high as the head of the man standing next to him. He had a penchant for mischief, and when entering a cathedral, would throw a coin far up to ring against the vault. In his spare time, Leon tamed wild horses and climbed mountains. I fact checked the wild horse claim, and he did write a published manual on taming wild horses, adding that there was no horse he could not subdue. Self promotion, ambition, hyperbole, and mischievousness seem like traits Leon and Albert shared. Unfortunately, none of the mathematical or artistic genes were passed on to me.



I had hoped to move on from Albert to another relative next week, but Albert and his colorful past will take one more blog. Next week, I’ll include the reason all the Alberti men were exiled from Florence during the 15th Century, and give a little more info on the flamboyant retirement party at the Dupont hotel in Delaware that saved Albert’s pension. The hotel is still a classy place with rooms at $400.00 per night; and the “green dining room” where Albert hosted his guests, is still getting rave reviews even today from guests who visit there.

Albert Anatole Alberti--Part 4

This is a pass port picture of Albert and Laura Alice Martz. She is the reason Charlotte, his first wife, hired a detective. I find no pictures of Charlotte in the box and this is the only picture I can find of Laura. In describing Laura my mother’s scrabbled notes say this - (Small feet + Hands – Small in Stature –well built – smoked imported cigars – smelt good –.) I’m not sure why my mother uses capital letters. My mother notes that Laura was half Albert’s age. She’s not far off. Laura was 27 years younger and outlives Albert 25 years. An internet search reveals she was born in Oklahoma and had nine siblings. Three brothers, William, Edgar, and Theodore, come into play when the Kansas City Star publishes the scandal on the front page.

I promise I’ll get back to the scandal, but first we have to go back thirty or more years and deduce how Albert gets to this country.

After severing ties with the French Emigration Company in Marseille, Albert tried to increase his considerable savings by speculating in various Italian securities. This information comes from a reporter interviewing Albert for a retirement article. At that time in Italy there was a great deal of speculation in bank notes, gold, silver, and commodities. Albert gambles and loses his entire savings before you could say Jack Robinson.

At 25 years of age Albert was a seasoned, although disillusioned trans-Atlantic traveler. Understandably, he would want to avoid the hazards of entering the country through Ellis Island. Often, all passengers and crew members were quarantined if an infectious disease was discovered. There were other ports of entry. I suspect Albert entered through the port of New Orleans, Louisiana. It was the second-leading port for emigrants entering America. Many Italians entered there and it was serviced by French steamships that Albert would have been familiar with. Travel through New Orleans wasn’t without risks. Yellow fever and malaria were recurring hazards between the months of May and November. The Port of New Orleans was basically deregulated because the business community wanted it that way. There was much less chance of Albert being detained by picking this port. In addition, there were railway connections to New Mexico in1880, which is where Albert first finds employment.

His first job was in a print shop looking after a small engine for six dollars a week. There’s a Santa Fe, New Mexico online exhibit that includes a Virtual Print Shop. The museum has six vintage printing presses, and more than 200 objects found in early printing shops. I‘m unable to find a small engine in the exhibit that Albert might have maintained. He was soon promoted to general utility man. That job may have included keeping the presses clean and in top shape. Albert doesn’t name the print shop or shops he worked in, but mentions that he continued to find higher grades of employment and better pay. There were possibly more unnamed jobs. As a side income, he translated various foreign languages for one of the New Mexico unnamed newspapers.

In 1885, at the age of 30, ill health compels a move to Hot Springs, New Mexico. New Mexico was known as a “salubrious spot” to explorers and traders in the early 19th Century. When rails were laid into the region, the small stream of early health seekers turned into a flood. Albert was among them. Again and again, during the next 55 years of his life, he seeks out towns with mineral treatments for his health issues. There were numerous hot springs in the territory of New Mexico in 1885, but since he specifically notes Hot Springs, it may have been the town that re-named itself Truth or Consequences, in 1950, after the television show of that name.

New Mexico came a little late to statehood, so technically Albert was not actually in the United States in 1885. It became a state in 1912, when Howard Taft was president. The state has several amusing laws. Idiots are not allowed to vote, specifically those “mentally deranged.” Call it voter suppression if you like. The state voted democratic in 2016. It is also illegal to dance while wearing a sombrero.

Albert’s actual comings and goings between 1884 and 1890 are a little murky. The newspaper article on him is full of errors, condensed, and not exactly a model of investigative reporting. For my sake, I wish it had been. Albert’s proclivity for alternative facts didn’t help. Somewhere in 1884 Albert finds his way to Saint Louis and meets Charlotte Sarah Block (or Bloch). He may have been boarding with the Block family. She is one of Rabbi Aaron Block’s fourteen children. She is 16 and Albert is 29 years old. Their first child, my grandfather Wilford Alberti, is born in 1884 in Saint Louis. It doesn’t take a math major to figure out what may have occurred. The article notes Albert had been granted a vacation from the Hot Springs Company. It seems that while in Saint Louis a pregnancy may have materialized. Do rabbis have shotguns? He weds Charlotte, but there is no mention of a Jewish Wedding Ceremony. He does return to New Mexico, with his young wife Charlotte Sarah in tow. Two more sons are born in the New Mexico Territory. Ralph is born in 1886 and Paul in 1888. Paul only lives five years in one account, but my mother’s notes say he died of typhoid at 14. Ralph doesn’t live to be forty, but my grandfather Wilford lives to be 87.

Albert’s shenanigans between 1885 and 1890 are the ones he entertains his guests with at his swanky retirement party in 1916.

At the party, Mr. Fiske, the senior vice-president of Metropolitan Life refers to Albert’s short employment in New Mexico with the Acheson railroad as “a mysterious episode.” As a side note, in yet another of Albert’s alternative facts, he tells my mother he was one of the vice-presidents of Metropolitan Life. He was a very successful superintendent but never a vice-president. Mr. Fiske preceded Albert at the speaker’s podium. Several other speakers gave laudatory remarks on Albert’s service to the company. A fourth vice-president presents him with a diamond medal and a deputy superintendent presented him with a “loving cup” to commemorate his service. The cup was probably a smaller version of the two handled cups given to winners of athletic competitions.

When it came time for Albert to speak, maybe the good food and expensive wine loosened his tongue. To some degree he clears up the “mysterious episode” Mr. Fiske referred to earlier in the evening.

Here is an exact quote from a reporter attending the party: “Mr. Alberti created a great deal of amusement by reciting incidents from his early career in America, especially when he was Chief Engineer for the Acheson road without any training in civil engineering.” The actual railroad and proper spelling was the “Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.” It took six months for the railroad executives to discover that the Chief Engineer they hired probably had little clue to what a civil engineer actually did. I wish I had a time machine. I would like to have heard details about the other incidents.

Let me digress for a moment. This lavish party orchestrated and primarily funded by Albert himself is an attempt to save his retirement pension after being fired or forced to resign after twenty five years of service.

I may have mentioned Albert’s first wife Charlotte Sarah hired a detective, suspecting that Albert was philandering. This was the year previous to the retirement party. Albert and Charlotte were living at 1100 Bales Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri. Albert was working for Metropolitan Life in the American Bank Building in downtown Kansas City. The detective was good at his job and caught Albert and his secretary (Laura) in a downtown hotel. Supposedly, the well paid detective was overzealous and marched Albert and Laura naked into the streets. This is scandalous news indeed if it occurred. I’ve tried to access newspaper files of the incident with no success. In any event, it was an embarrassing situation for the prestigious Metropolitan Life Company. Mr. Stewart, Albert’s direct supervisor, fires Albert for misconduct two days before Christmas. We know Albert paid dearly for this expensive tryst. Albert had $75,000 dollars in multiple bank accounts. Calculating that value in today’s money it comes to well over a million dollars. According to my mother, Albert got up in the middle of the night and spent $25,000 dollars in an attempt to buy out the entire Morning edition of the Star. Maybe he was successful, since I can’t find any evidence of the article. As the story goes, it headlined the news on the front page. Charlotte Sarah, his wife, was paid second. She had his bank accounts at First National, the Commerce Trust Company, the Southwest National Commerce Company, and the German-American Bank frozen. Albert and Miss Clayton failed to show up at the court proceedings and were fined twenty six dollars and fifty cents. In addition Albert had to pay Charlotte Sarah the twenty five thousand dollars she had sued him for. So far Albert’s peccadilloes have cost him fifty grand. But it’s not finished.

The brothers of Laura I mentioned earlier come to town. Remember Edgar, William, and Theodore? They force Albert to settle the remaining twenty five thousand on her. The court order signifies Mrs. Laura Clayton, so Laura was evidently also married. Her maiden surname is Martz. As it turns out Albert divorces Charlotte Sarah and marries Laura. Whether he was encouraged by the collective weight and persuasive measures of the three brothers, or if it was the easy path to re-join some of his money, is not evident.



To be continued next week:

Albert Anatole Alberti part 3

As a regular student not being groomed for a role in the church Albert may have had more freedom than I imagine. He was darkly handsome and may have turned the head of some girl in a nearby village or town and talked her into a confessional booth.. In America many acts of passion were routinely interrupted by the town constable shining his light into the back seat of a Chevy. On his regular beat in Lover’s Lane he would not be shocked- only the two illuminated lovers would be traumatized. All three parties must have been shocked when the Priest opened the door of the confessional. I’ve googled pictures of confessional booths and some are quite accommodating but I didn’t see anything as comfortable as a cushioned spring loaded Chevy seat. Albert possibly fell victim to the Italian machismo obsession and envisioned himself a young Valentino. Later in life an affair with his secretary threatens his pension and empties much of his substantial savings.

When giving information for a news article near his retirement Albert states he left the monastery at the age of 17, not 14 as he told my mother. He did not stow away on a ship headed to America, at least not as a teenager. This was yet another tall tale he told my mother. He actually travels only a short distance, whatever the distance might have been from the probable Certosan Monastery in Galuzzo, to the building that housed the Mayor of Galuzzo. An internet aerial view of Galuzzo shows it is a short straight shot to the Mayor’s office, and all down hill from the Monastery. After successfully passing an entrance exam Albert takes a position as a clerk in the Mayor’s office. He remains in this clerical job for two and a half years. Without aspirations of becoming the Mayor of Galuzzo this was a dead end job and Albert was without doubt ambitious. With his position in the Mayor’s Office he kept his eyes and ears open for news of better opportunities. The ebbing economic tide in Italy, which was so hard on uneducated and unskilled workers, provides profitable employment for the multi-lingual Albert. He becomes an instrumental part of one of the greatest mass emigrations in Italian history.

He travels to the port city of Marseille, France and takes employment with a firm of emigration agents. He was twenty years old and received three to five dollars in American equivalency for each passenger he put on board French steamships headed to the Americas. Southern Italians were desperate to leave due to extreme poverty, the problems in acquiring land due to the unification of Italy, and organized crime. Most of Albert’s clients went to South America. Many were illiterate and didn’t know the difference between South America and North America. Too few of the emigration agents were honest enough to tell clients the difference. It was of course a monumental difference and an immoral non-disclosure that affected the lives of many Italians. I hope Albert was forthcoming and honest with his clients. Any sins committed in a confessional booth would pale in comparison to the sin of misleading a poor and uneducated emigrant to thinking he was headed to the America of his dreams only to end up as a virtual slave on a plantation. There was a great need there for unskilled labor on the coffee plantations and in the mines. South America was undergoing a transition similar to that in North America with its emancipation of slaves. Venezuela had actually abolished slavery in 1854, a year before Albert’s birth

One can only imagine the difficulties that indigent and frequently uneducated southern Italians faced in preparation for traveling to America. Many southern Italians had to sell all their belongings to pay for the fare and needed guidance in disposal of their property. They were allowed only minimal baggage since there was limited space on the ships. With his language skills I assume Albert was instrumental in shepherding them through the paperwork necessary for both selling their property and then traveling to France and boarding a steamship.

Once an emigrant reached the port city of Marseille, they had to pass physical exams, where they were also checked for conjunctivitis and trachoma.

The lengthy steam powered trips were risky ordeals. Space and privacy were both hard to come by. Passengers in steerage slept in narrow packed bunks below deck. During storms the door to the upper deck was latched and left closed. Some sea hardy passengers adjusted to the constant rocking and bouncing of the ship. Many others spent the entire voyage bedridden with nausea.

Food included hard biscuits, wheat flour, oatmeal, rice tea, sugar and molasses. Some steam ship companies supplied travelers with even less variety. Eventually, various countries began regulating minimum requirements for food on board and requiring that each passenger be supplied with three quarts of water a day. Too often, upon landing, a large percentage of emigrants went straight from the ship to the hospitals, where survival rates were grim.

Beginning in 1876, when Albert would have been 21, he began a series of trips to South America in the interests of his French employers. They had a contract for the colonization of Brazil. Two years later he left this position to work for a competing French steamship company with a contract for the colonization of Venezuela.

I don’t know if Albert had the same accommodations as the passengers or if he had better quarters. I’m not sure precisely what his responsibilities as a traveling agent were, but I presume he was shepherding his clients through the paperwork and also acting as the liaison and translator at the destination port. He was probably quite good at his job. French was spoken by the crew, Italian by the passengers, Portuguese by the Brazilians, and Spanish by the Venezuelans. He was fluent in all of these romance languages.

In 1879 on a return trip from Central America, the steamer he was on became disabled. He was 24 and had been back and forth across the Atlantic numerous times. There is no information on how long the ship was disabled but it must have been near disastrous. It prompted a sea change in the direction of young Albert’s life. I seek forgiveness for the “sea change” phrase. Think of the troubles when a modern day luxury liner becomes disabled. A recent Carnival Cruise ship crippled by an engine room fire left 4200 passengers adrift for five days. There were shared horror stories by the passengers recalling unsanitary conditions and food shortages. Think of conditions on a steamship over 100 years ago. The steamship Albert was on was adrift in the Atlantic for two weeks. The perishable food would have definitely gone bad. The drinking water was compromised so dysentery would be in play. Disease killed more emigrants at sea than shipwrecks did during this time of sea travel. Illnesses often spread through the ships in epidemic proportions due to crowded or unsanitary conditions. Typhus, cholera, and dysentery were the biggest threats.

Albert was making a lot of money for a man of his age, but this ill fated trip alarmed him and made him aware of the risks he was taking each time he boarded a ship to South America. I’d like to think conscience played a small part since many of the poor Italians booked by unscrupulous agents were unaware of the ship’s destination. On his return he submitted his resignation to his French employers and set sail for other opportunities.



Albert suffered from stomach issues most of his life. He laid the blame on that final trans-Atlantic voyage. Perhaps dysentery or some other food related bug contracted on that steamship was the origin of his digestive problems. Amoebas, protozoan’s and bacteria can get into drinking water. On one of my mother’s written note sheets she added sentences sideways in the space of the left margin. “Overate 14 biscuits – almost did him in- but lived to be 85 years old”. Her lines and squigglys actually confuse her two grandfathers.. It was her other grandfather, Alson Alexander White, who was the biscuit eater. Alson, overweight, died after falling down the basement stairs in his fifties. Albert had his own “non-biscuit” health issues and always gravitated toward spa towns in America for the medicinal mineral water treatments.. My mother adds “Had to have his stomach removed”. Even today removal of the entire stomach is a difficult and risky procedure. Albert may have had some surgery done on ulcers or removal of a small portion but I doubt it was his entire stomach. His death certificate notes a bad liver as the ultimate cause of death.

To be continued