Alberti Lost and Found: Detours, Potions and back to Pienza

Sometimes I think I should have paid better attention in my English and journalism classes in college. I use too many analogies, changes tenses constantly, use too many commas and don’t even get me started on my use of run on sentences. Luckily this is a blog. Blogs are more grammatically relaxed aren’t they? That is what I tell myself each time I sit down to sum up the latest Alberti family discoveries. I am sure someone reading this cringes at all the errors. That said, I have been paid a few very generous compliments on my writing style and research ability over the last few weeks. I have an incredibly awesome and supportive family. So with that confidence boost and a new laptop (thanks Brant!) I will share the latest finds in the hunt for Alberti.

To help set the scene for my superfluous research retelling - an analogy for you.

Remember when Alice lands at the bottom of the rabbit hole? She finds herself in a hallway full of locked doors. There is a key on the table, but it doesn’t seem to fit any of the doors around her. Finally, she pulls back a curtain she hadn’t noticed before and finds a tiny door. The key fits the lock but she is too large to go through the door and enter the beautiful garden beyond. So she drinks a mysterious potion and eats a tiny cake all in an effort to get through to the other side. Nothing works out and Alice ends up crying so much she is drowning in a sea of her own tears. She has to ask a little mouse to help her swim to shore and must abandon her hopes of passing through to the beautiful garden.

Hallway of Doors

I will explain this week’s Alice/Alberti analogy in two parts. First let’s talk about the key and the hallway full of doors.

As you know, I have been trying to find proof of our Alberti nobility. Logically this is accomplished by identifying the names of each previous generation from Alberto Alberti until nobility appears on a birth or marriage record. I know with 100% certainty that Albert’s mother and father were Giuseppe Alberti and Maria Fieravanti. This also confirms that the record that started it all (Alberto’s birth record) is in fact, our Alberto. Hooray!!

There are a few records that confirm this for me. These records are also all NEW finds since the last post:

1       Albert and Laura’s Niagara Falls marriage record. This is the first time Albert writes his mother’s proper Italian name (On other records they are Mary and Joseph. I think Albert had a bit of a sense of humor).

2    Albert’s original birth record from 1854 with his parents listed (untranslated by the Firenze researchers). 

Finding the marriage record with Maria’s name written on it was a huge confirmation. It’s time to move forward…or perhaps, backward to find the parents of Maria and Giuseppe. 

I already know from the 1841 Pienza census that Maria’s father is Serafino Fieravanti. No mother is listed for her at that time. The only hint I have for the parentage of Giuseppe is from Alberto’s birth record. On the very last column, under CONOME o NOME del Compare e della Comare (name of the godparent or midwife) is: Rogai Gaetano. We have talked about him before. It was very common for grandparents to be listed as godparents on Italian birth records from this time. That said, on the other sibling’s records there have been names listed in that column that don’t have any Alberti link. So who the heck is this Gaetano guy?

I know what you’re thinking right now. I thought she said this analogy was about doors that could not be opened. Finding two new Alberti records seems like two wide open portals to me. Weelllllll – sort of.

I blame myself and Ancestry.com for what happened next. In the last blog I posted about the “hints” that appear on the family tree and I promised to get back to you about the suggested parents of Giuseppe Alberti.

Potion and Cake in Trento

I’ve processed what happened and I am now ready to talk about Bona Bruschi and Pietro Alberti of Trento, Mori, Italy.

I like to start my research broad and work my way down when I find new clues. My first Google search of Alberti + Trento, Italy returned a nobleman. Vescovo di Trento Alberti, The Prince Bishop of Trento. This is the point where my desire for a noble Alberti took over my good ol’ Midwest common sense. I jotted that name down in my notebook and set off to find out everything about the Albertis of Trento.

I discovered very extensive birth records for their children. All nine of them. Two of the boys were named Giuseppe Alberto Alberti. One born in 1819 and the other in 1827. 

On the birth record for the older Giuseppe, under the godparent column on the far right, was the name Signore Francesco Salvadori del Wiesenhoff, a Nobleman (Nobile in Italian).

Wiesenhoff is about as royal as it got in the 1800s. Trento is located very near the Austrian border. Italy was under Austrian rule at the time. The Wiesenhoff title was awarded by the Austrian crown to confirm the noble title of a very old and very noble Italian family from Trento: The Salvadori of Mori. In fact, some very deep searching generated a small mention of a Salvadori and Alberti marriage alliance in 1592.

While all this is extremely interesting and might make a delightful topic for a PhD dissertation on the noble families of 16^th century Italy, I have bad news. I pulled back the curtain in my hallway of doors and peeked through an opening that revealed a beautiful picture. As much as I want a connection to this little mountain town, and to tell you all that we are descendants of The Prince Bishop of Trento and the Baron Salvadori of Mori, we aren’t. I drank the potion and ate the cake and it still doesn’t fit.

A Sea of Tears

Yes, Bona Bruschi and Pietro Alberti had sons named Giuseppe Alberto Alberti. I can see how easy it was for other researchers on Ancestry.com to accept these people as the correct parents of our Giuseppe Alberti. The reason why I can’t allow this family a spot on the tree comes down to the dates the Trento Giuseppe’s were born (1820 and 1827) and the mysterious Gaetano godfather from Alberto’s birth record.

This is part two of the analogy. While I didn’t actually cry a sea of tears over this genealogical defeat, I did get extremely frustrated. I wasted a week searching through years of Trento records from the 1800s. I was drowning in records for Albertis from a different city, 250 miles from the confirmed ancestral home of Pienza.

Lead to Shore

It was time to go back and start over. I know from my research that Italian marriage records typically list the names of the bride and groom’s parents. So I returned to my safe little cove of Pienza records to look one more time through the years 1816 to 1860. Maybe I just missed something.

I know that Maria was around 15 in 1844, so that year seemed like a semi-comfortable place to start looking for their marriage record. Remember from the census I found a few months ago, Giuseppe is 17 years older than Maria. She was the only child living in the house with her father at this time. He was getting on in years and perhaps anxious to have her married off and cared for. I was a bit relieved when I found the May 8^th,1850 record of their wedding. Maria at age 20 and Giuseppe age 40.

Maria and Giuseppe’s Marriage record from 1850

 The best part about this find? Not only does it provide Giuseppe’s mother and father. It also shows the parent’s of Maria. Four new confirmed ancestors to research!

The mysterious godfather Gaetano has been identified at last. He is indeed Giueppe’s father. His mother’s name is also a familiar one, Assunta Pioli. She passed her name on to her third daughter Assunta or “Assontina” as we know her.

Maria’s parents are Serafino Fieravanti and Prlanina Mucciarelli. An interesting tidbit from this record is Maria’s occupation. She is listed as “Benestante” or well-off. We know her father was a Blacksmith/Landowner, but maybe there is more to that clue? I haven’t had much success following the Mucciarelli family yet. The records from the 1790s to early 1800s are very challenging to translate so it’s slow going. I haven’t given up on finding that family castle just yet.

This marriage record is the little mouse that led me to safer shores. It also led me to straight to a pretty surprising find. While I was looking for Maria and Giuseppe’s children last month, I only read birth records for 1854 and after. I was looking for Alberto’s records and those of this two mysterious sisters. Until I found this marriage record it never occurred to me to look at any earlier dates. What a surprise to find that there were actually six Alberti children born between 1851 and 1865!

Oldest to youngest they were: Albertina, Fanny, Alberto, Anna, Assunta and Gaetano

Albertina - born 2/17/1851

Fanny - born 1/29/1852

Alberto - born 3/11/1854

Anna - born 7/3/1855

Assunta - born 6/6/1863

Gaetano - born 2/27/1865

A much larger family than we ever knew of, and more sisters as well! There is a curious eight year gap between Anna and Assunta. I am looking in to what was going on in Tuscany during 1855. Probably some kind of sickness or another war. Maria was 34 when her last son was born. My guess is he was her last child. The town vital records available online end in 1865. Until I can get back to Italy this is all I can find out online. A bit of a dead end for now.

I will leave it here. As usual this is another long post. In the next few weeks I will be receiving some very exciting documents from the Jackson County courts. The Wills of both Laura and Albert, Albert’s official U.S. Naturalization papers and Albert and Charlotte’s divorce decree. Fingers crossed they provide more details into Albert’s life. Stay tuned!!

P.S.

I visited the Alberti graves over the weekend. A homage of sorts, I suppose. It's the closest I will ever get to meeting my great grandfather.

While visiting the cemetery a feathered friend stopped by to watch over my activities. He let me get very close. I took a photo, thanked him and went on my way.

Megan, Money, and Miscellaneous

As you can see from the two previous blogs the ancestry of Albert (o) Anatole Alberti is still being discovered by the meticulous research of my great niece Megan Kunze.  I’m blown away at what she’s turned up!  I traveled to Kansas City last week and gave her everything I had in “the box” on the Alberti’s only to find she had most of the important documents already in her possession, neatly bound and filed in plastic sleeves.  She is very close to finding that elusive Alberti “beautiful estate” in Pienza, Italy. When she hits what appears to be a dead end she backs out and heads down another road. All things “Alberti” are now in Megan’s capable hands and I expect there will be another blog  written soon in her captivating style. It seems the “writing gene” is expressed most vividly in the “fillies” of our family

I will return to sharing what I have on the Sherman side of the family history.

If any other “family member” is willing to edit or contribute to the blog please contact me. 

While in Kansas City I had a short visit with my sister Sherry and asked her about the “blackout drills” that were occurring in our neighborhood during the war in 1944.  She was only five but remembered that men from the civil defense would come around and check to make sure the lights were completely blocked out.  She reminded me that the Standard Oil Refinery was a key target if any German planes were to reach the skies above us.  The refinery was less than a mile from our house.  I could stand in our side yard and see the top of the highest tower at the refinery and watch the flame from the top of it burning off excess gas.

I could see the top of the tallest tower from our side yard at 219 South Huttig

     In the letters written to my mother from my father in the spring of 1944 I try to get a sense of their lives.  Most of them are about the children, war rations, money, and missing each other. Here is a letter from May of 1944.  I re-typed it because it was written with such a light pencil it was hard to read.  I re-drew his pictures as close as I could.  His were better.

1944 :Letter from Air Base in Manhattan Kansas

  
There was never much money on my dad’s side of the family unless you go back several centuries to the Sherman cloth merchants in Suffolk, England.  My dad’s parents, Plinnie and Maud, raised seven children in a one bedroom home.  That single bedroom with its narrow bed never had a door. For privacy, Maud strung one of her hand made quilts on a rope across the entry. At night my uncles Ronald, Bob, Willard, Kenny, Everett and my dad Leonard, climbed a ladder into the attic where a single bulb illuminated what must have been interesting continuous camping site.  I was never up there so maybe it was roomier than I imagine. My aunt Joy, the single offspring of the female gender that survived to adulthood, was eventually housed in a little hobbit sized log playhouse by the creek. A small wood refinishing and upholstery shop building behind the house was the source of any income.  

           
           Any stories I have about my dad’s life are second hand.  His best friend Larry Good told me a few interesting ones.  As grade-schoolers, the two of them de-feathered a neighbor’s rooster that dared to pillage grandpa’s garden.  A few years later there was an ill fated attempt by Larry and my dad to raise mink.  Then, as teenagers they skipped school with two girls to go swimming.  That ended with Larry breaking the vertebrae in his neck doing a jack-knife dive. Throughout his long life Larry had to turn his entire upper body toward whoever he was talking to.  I’ll explain what I know of those stories in another blog. What jobs my dad had as a young man I will never know now that I’ve waited too long to ask.  Larry would have told me, or any one of my dad's brothers. I’m asking questions decades too late.

           I never spent much time at my grandparent’s home. After the accident we depended on others to give us rides.  Sometimes my Uncle Kenny would come and get us.  One Thanksgiving Grandpa Sherman came and got us in his Model-T.  They said he was legally blind and it may be true.  We hit a car in front of us and pies went flying. My sisters were with him another time when he rear ended some teenagers on Noland Road.

            I remember one Christmas night at my grand parents small home when I was five and there was a spindly Christmas tree in the living room with its branches brushing the quilt that was hung across the opening to their bedroom.  We had arrived late and there were several very small presents beneath the sparsely adorned tree. I assumed there had been more presents and that my cousins had arrived earlier and left taking their presents with them. I began to cry non stop. Grandma was probably looking on with dismay, that poor woman who had worn herself out bearing and rearing so many children, none of them as spoiled as the grand-son she was now watching bellowing and mewling beneath the tree. She should have taken a switch to me but instead she must have alerted the two remaining Uncles who were out back.  The sun had already set, but somehow Ronald and Kenny returned with a brand new Radio -Flyer wagon. With stores closed I don’t know where they got it.  Seventy years later I am mortified remembering this incident and my selfish behavior.  

The letters are a stark reminder of what inflation can do to the buying power of the dollar.  For some reason my father gives an exact accounting for his first two week paycheck in March of 1944.  After $3.25 was deducted for tax he received $106.42.  He had to spend two nights in a hotel and complains that it cost $1.50 a night.  Cereal, milk, and grapefruit juice for breakfast cost thirty cents.  Dinner at the hotel cost fifty cents and consisted of roast beef, carrots, peas, mashed spuds, salad, and milk.  Supper was fish, sauce, vegetables, and milk for forty-five cents.  His entire hotel bill for two nights and six meals came to $4.25.  A note at the side said referring to the expense says “No good!”  At the end of the letter he adds:  “I will write kids again tonite but I may send it all in one envelope, which could run into money, with stamps at 3 cents each.”

My mother writes back; “Don’t scrimp on your meals, please honey, we really are managing fine and can do on less because we have the food in the basement and it really needs to be used before the year is over.”

           

            At the base of our stairs there was a narrow room to the right that had once been filled with coal for our furnace, until our house was converted to gas heat.  At the time of the letter shelves had been added to the coal bin room and they were lined with Mason jars packed with green beans, tomatoes, and the dreaded beets. When I was older I would sometimes brace myself, brush away the cobwebs, and try to identify some of the unknown things my mother had put away, and pray that those jars would never be opened.

            My mother was raised in a family a rung up in the ladder of accessible money in comparison to my father’s family..  Both her grandfathers were relatively wealthy.  Her father Wilford made a decent living and all the pictures of her before she was married show her in nice dresses and a number of fashionable hats. I can find no whiff of regret or complaint about the lack of money or the back breaking amount of work she signed up for in this marriage.

           

            With no intention of “comic irony” my mother writes this in one of her letters.

       

        “The sun came up and it’s a lovely day, the wash is done, babies to school, Danny bathed and fed, and beds made, now I can start on my day’s work.”

       

            This letter includes information on what must have been the end of the road for the chickens and the rooster  housed in the small chicken house at the back edge of our property.  On my short visit with Sherry last weekend she reminded me of her ingenious method of removing the heads of the chickens.  Closing the heavy chicken house door on the chicken’s neck was much easier than the unpredictable and dangerous hacking away with a hatchet.  Was Judy on the other side of the door stretching the chicken’s neck?

            Here’s an excerpt from my mother’s letter on the chickens:

           

“The chickens didn’t bring such a good price – by his (the buyer's) scales the rooster only weighed six and a half pounds, so you see there is quite a difference in the way they figure and the way we figured.  He figured 73 lbs of hens at .23 cents and six and a half lbs. for the rooster at nineteen cents.  He gave me $18.03.  I objected, said I know the rooster weighed more, but it was the last weighed and he had weighed the hens in bunches and already had them in the car.

        The water heater broke down after I was through with the wash – Chris is coming after the saw.”

            In addition to being strapped for money my parents were planning to move us all temporarily to Manhattan Kansas.  My mother had lined up a renter for our house at $45.00 a month and she was selling all of my father’s tools.  The outcome of the war was shifting in our favor and the move never occurred.

           

            Here’s a line in one letter that sums up how she must have felt many times.

“I’m tired – tired – tired –all the kids have colds.”

Searching for Alberti Part 2: Starting Over, Second Wives and Snapshots from the Past

Last night I spent a few hours searching through 1800s Pienza birth records for Giuseppe Alberti (Albertos father). No dice. This guy’s early life remains a mystery. I sat back from my laptop and accepted the fact that I had finally hit a wall. This was bound to happen eventually right? The internet can’t provide a never ending stream of Alberti records. When I get stuck my first response is to pivot instead of giving up. By pivot, I mean that I approach what I am searching for from a different angle.

For example, if I search by first and last name and get no results – I might try looking at all the records of that type for a specific year. If that doesn’t work, I move on to search records by location. Or looking for a different kind of record all together from a different source. I find myself casting wider nets and narrower nets over and over again until I locate a new piece of information.

I am not a genealogical expert. There are probably some professional tricks of the trade I would benefit from, but I really enjoy the hunt using my own tactics for now. And boy oh boy did I pivot like a pro in the early hours of July 1^st.

What I uncovered has been found by logically breaking down facts, dates, locations and family relationships. I have a notebook that looks like the journal of a mad scientist.

It is full of notes about each Alberti, their birth and death dates, residences, spouse, children and so on. Each person has a page. Next there are questions I want to answer about them, followed by sources I have searched for that information and other leads that popped up along the way.

A family member recently posted a photo to the Facebook comments for the blog- it was of a wall covered in newspaper clippings, pictures and notes connected by multi colored string. The kind of thing detectives in a crime movie might find in the den of an obsessed conspiracy theorist. While I don’t have space for such a wall in my office (or trust me I would), my brain probably looks just like that chaotic wall if you could peek inside while I string together clues about our ancestry.

Pivot like Poirot

Now back to that pivot…I think I have to give credit to watching episodes of Hercule Poirot as a kid for this one. I remember him always going back to beginning when solving a mystery. The first place I searched for Alberti was Ancestry.com. Want to guess what I found at that time? Absolutely nada. A few photos from FindAGrave.com of headstones I already knew about.

It felt like a long shot to return to this website. Blame it on the lateness of the hour and my desperation to find more information about the elusive Albertis of Pienza, but I went for it. I activated my 14 day free trial and decided to start building out a virtual family tree.

Ancestry.com is actually very user friendly. I was zipping along for hours. Entering names, dates and attaching records to each person. Before long I was staring at the sum total of 4 months of my investigational labors in a tidy timeline. Little green leaves included, just like the commercial promised. Each leaf provide a hint to more information about a member on your family tree.  

One leaf for Alberto Alberti and one for his father Giuseppe. The leaf for Giuseppe Alberti revealed another Ancestry.com member who located the his birth place: San Stefano, Mori, Trento, Italy. Her entry also includes the names of G’s mother and father: Pietro Alberti and Bona Bruschi both born in Italy. I quickly sent a message to this user in hopes that they can provide me with how they located these facts. Stay tuned on this one…potentially this information could lead me one more generation into the past.

Laura Alberti Opens Doors

The second leaf led me to another user’s profile. A living descendant of Alberto’s second wife, Laura Alberti. On their page were two photos I have never seen before.

Alberto Alberti at age 74 standing in front of the Arno River in Florence, Italy. 

Kara and I stood in nearly this same spot on our last night in Florence. We lingered quietly there for a while. It was a really peaceful spot. Knowing now that we were standing in the footsteps of our ancestor some 90 years later is just awesome! 

The user included that on the back of the photo was a note that read:

Dear Allena, Me by the river Arno with the old bridge in the background.

Love and Kisses, Uncle Albert.

*Another person to research – one of his siblings had a daughter named Allena.

The second photo is of Alberto and his second wife Laura, on what appears to be the boardwalk at Trieste, Italy. I love this photo. Even at 74, Grandpa Alberti still looks polished and fit. Laura on the other hand is looking a bit weary. Perhaps she was ready to return to the States. 

According to Alberto’s US naturalization paperwork from 1925 and a shipping manifest from the SS Cellina from 1928 - They were traveling back to the United States (to San Francisco) from Italy after an extended stay of about 3 years.

Albert’s son Ralph was tragically killed by a hit and run drunk driver in Washington, DC on January 12, 1925. Perhaps the loss of another child (Paul died at age 15 in 1903), motivated his return home to spend time with his family in Florence to grieve.

I’ve been chatting online with Laura’s 2x great niece and she is asking around in their family to see if any more Alberti photos or family artifacts are out there. Fingers crossed everyone! I’ll leave it here for now. I really hope you enjoy the new photos. I am meeting up with Uncle Danny in person next week to talk more about Laura and her timeline. Like all things Alberti, her life has some mystery to it. I hope we can post more about her and the Martz family of Bates County, MO very soon.