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.