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 1st.
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.
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