Sherman and Alberti History: Cassius Sherman Freezes to death in 1873

Sherman and Alberti History: Cassius Sherman Freezes to death in 1873: Cassius Sherman stepped from his cabin door January 7, 1873 and was greeted with a soft wind that held the promise of an early sprin...

Cassius Sherman Freezes to death in 1873

Cassius Sherman stepped from his cabin door January 7, 1873 and was greeted with a soft wind that held the promise of an early spring.  Drops of water trickled from the shingled eave of the roof onto the back of his head and neck. He could hear the distinct metallic pings of a maul as it hit a splitting wedge. The sound carried through the air from more than a mile away. His Mormon neighbor was already at his wood pile.   The only other sound in this unexpected mild morning was the scarcely audible cough of his bedridden mother wheezing through the cracks of the door planks.

 This was as good a day as any you could hope for in mid- winter in the middle of Minnesota. He would fetch his mother some cough and fever medicine from the withered old Ojibwe herbalist in Maine, Minnesota. Some renowned remedy she concocted from Black Gum Bark and slippery elm, mixed with other native botanicals she wouldn’t disclose. On his way to Maine he might stop at the blacksmith shop in Clitherall and see when one of the Whiting boys could attend Nestor, the fickle old plough mule had turned up lame again.

It was nearly twenty miles to Maine, Minnesota, so he would saddle up Bender, his best horse.  When he got there he would visit Isaiah, a friendly freckled youth he had befriended during a stint with the Maine Volunteers a decade ago, when they were both barely fifteen years old. He might have a meal at the Maine Hotel, where Isaiah’s pretty sister waited tables.

It was halfway to noon when Cassius left the cabin. He was dressed sensibly for unpredictable Minnesota weather, wool undergarments, a coarse cotton shirt, buckskin pants, woolen socks, heavy leather boots, a fur lined cap and a thick sheep skin coat. 

 This far west edge of Minnesota is mostly flat and slightly rolling like Nebraska. It has the added water feature of thousands of lakes that filled in the depressions left when the glaciers receded. This morning Cassius could see the far horizon as clearly as one of Willa Cather’s pioneer characters looking out over the Nebraska Prairie.  The sky was a uniform light gray. An odd dark band laid on the horizon like heavy sediment, a darker shade of molten gray than that above him. The contrast was out of the ordinary but Cassius wasn’t overly troubled by it, determined to take advantage of this January thaw.

Cassius was familiar with this land and his neighbors. They were a tight band of obscure believers,  uprooted and chased out of the Midwest for their Book of Mormon beliefs. About twenty families made up the core of the community.  They shared their resources and labor according to scripture and prophecy. They had followed Brigham Young for a while and then parted over polygamy and other beliefs. They called themselves "Cutlerites."

 Cassius saddled and mounted Bender. He decided to save time by taking the Chippewa prairie trail through the edge of government land, then cross over the Murdocks homestead to Clitherall.  After sorting out a time for the Whiting Brothers to attend Nestor, he would then head west to Battle Lake, and then turn north for the long stretch through unsettled Indian country to Maine. 

All was working according to plan until he was about mid trip in his long trek to Maine. He found himself in the middle of open prairie inhabited by the few remnants of Sioux and Ojibwe who hadn’t been relocated to the Leech Lake Reservation. It wasn’t Indians he was worried about. He had a fast horse and his U.S. Springfield rifle, from his days with the Maine Volunteers. It was the changing weather.

The wind had picked up and the heavy gray line on the horizon was growing thicker.  He pulled the flaps of his fur lined cap down around his ears and tied the leather strap beneath his chin. The Indian trail was not well marked here. He reached in his pocket for a strip of pemmican he had purchased at the General Store in Clitherall. He chuckled to himself, thinking he should have brought along “Walking Much,” the old Ojibwe outcast who had been sitting silently on a pickle barrel in the store when he left. That old Indian knew this territory from childhood, but his walking days are long over.

It was definitely getting colder. There were no good landmarks out here in the prairie.  The temperature had fallen far below the 32 degrees this morning when he stood outside his cabin door. The air from his mouth instantaneously formed a cloud of frosty fog. He could tell Bender had lost the path by his slowed pace, ears and head down, confused by the blowing snow erasing the trail.  The entire canopy of sky above them was now sullen and ominous, laden heavily with peril for those caught out in its grip.

When it came, it was hard and fast. If he were nearer the trees lining the Otter Tail Lake, the bare limbs would be whirling like dervishes, but this was all frozen bluestem and Indian grass as far as the eye could see. In the summer it was a mesmerizing sea of waving prairie grass and flowers. Now the sudden erratic wind swept across the frozen brittle grass, laying it low in one direction, releasing it, then sweeping it in another direction.

A half starved dog fell in behind them, his bony rib cage showing his dire predicament.  He followed for a ways. A small tan and white visage barely visible amidst the swirling snow as it trotted hopefully behind.  Cassius tossed him a slice of pemmican. The dog wolfed it down and seemed to consider the consequences and advantages of joining them on their journey in such weather. He chose wisely, and with tail lowered to half mast, reluctantly headed back to some unseen Indian camp for shelter. Cassius could have used the company.

 A freezing sleet began to pelt and sting his exposed cheeks. He wished he had a long beard like some of the older men.  For the first time it occurred to him that this was no run of the mill storm. He put his head down and wished he had followed that starving dog to whatever teepee, shack, or windbreak it had come from. He was exposed to the elements on open prairie.  What had started as sleet was fast becoming a howling snowstorm driven by winds that would topple trees and rip the shingles from a cabin roof.  He worried for his mother.

Temperatures had dropped so far that his cheeks and nose burned as if he had stood too close to a bonfire. He pulled the gloves off his hands and tried to retie the leather thongs of his fur lined cap. He found his numbed fingers were not up to that simple task. He clumsily reinserted his hands into his gloves and pulled them tight with his teeth.  He recalled a similar storm in 1867 when he and the Whiting brothers were caught out by Battle Lake while hunting wolves.  They had survived a two day storm by bedding down like deer in a thicket of tamarack and waiting out the storm. 

The seldom used and poorly marked Indian trail they were on was now completely obliterated by snow.  Bender was a seasoned horse and abruptly stopped.  Short of actual language his question to Cassius was “what are we doing out here?”  Cassius had to compel him with the heels of his boots to get him to move.  Shrouded by thick hard driving snow there were no landmarks.  Cassius could not see past Bender’s neck and mane.  Bender was looking into nothing but a snowy abyss.

Despite Bender’s reservations and horse sense, Cassius was confident.  At 27 he was in peak physical condition, a war veteran, a hunter, a trapper and he had weathered similar storms.  He was not aware that this storm was a killer that would surpass any in recent history. It would rage on for three days and bury cabins in twenty foot drifts. Hundreds would freeze to death. Some, like him, would be caught out in the open far from home, and some would die only a few feet from their cabin or barn door. No one kept accurate track of the loss of livestock and horses, but the numbers were high.

There is no way to know what thoughts were running through Cassius’s mind when Bender began to founder in the deepening snow.  Did Cassius question his decision to make this long journey on a day that started out with such promise? It probably centered on his failing mother left alone in the cabin, possibly too ill to tend the fire, although he had carried ample wood inside before he left.  At some point he probably prayed.  Then, after he had lost feeling in his arms and legs, he probably thought of William Mason, whose boot was spotted by trappers’ months after he froze to death in the 1867 blizzard. Who would find his own boot sticking up from the snow pack?  Probably that half starved dog, or one of the Indians from the camp he had passed. Somehow they survived these killing storms in skin covered tee pees and lean-to’s.

After the biting pain and loss of feeling in arms and legs, some say you fall into a numbing sleep, which is preferable to more painful avenues to death. There are a lot of untold stories beneath the ground here in Mt. Pleasant cemetery. If you are a Sherman, a Gould, a Whiting, a Tucker, or a Murdock, the men, women and children buried here at Mount Pleasant are probably related to you in some way, by blood, by marriage, or by their ties to the "Cutlerite" faith.

There is little factual information on how Cassius froze to death. We know he was on his way to Maine, Minnesota to get medicine for his mother.  We know he served with the Maine Volunteers during the Civil War.  We know that two brothers, Alex and Andrew Tweeten, found him months later, when the prairie grass was showing signs of life.

 Alpheus Cutler, my charismatic great great grandfather, is not buried here but it was his prophetic vision that led a small group of pioneering followers into this remote part of Minnesota when it was sparsely populated by white people. The "Cutlerites" were one of the many breakaway branches of the Mormon based Latter Day Saint religion, following the death of its founder Joseph Smith.

 They died here in Minnesota because they didn’t understand the cause or cure of disease, they died from horrendous accidents, and they died from the brutal Minnesota winters where temperatures of 50 and 60 degrees below zero are not that uncommon.  The cemetery is ironically named Mount Pleasant.

 My great grandfather Cutler Almon Sherman is buried here.  He was loading wood from his wagon into a boxcar in New Clitherall when the west-bound freight train came in. It scared his team of horses. They jumped, knocking him from the wagon and crushing him between the load of wood and the boxcar.

A Frederick Sherman is buried here. Nina Gould, sister to my grandmother Lenna Maude Gould, said he was a fur trapper.  He was found frozen to death in his shanty with a match in his hand.  It appeared that, while visiting his traps, he fell into a shallow swamp.  His clothes immediately froze to his body and he died before he could light a fire.

 Charles Sherman is buried here; an odd out of touch bachelor who always talked too loud.  One day the neighbor’s bonfire got away and set his barn on fire. He tried to save his horses but failed.  He was burned so badly that he died two days later.

Many family members and followers of Alpheus Cutler are buried here.  They died of pneumonia, typhoid, tuberculosis, whooping cough, cancer, drowning, accidental gunshot wounds, suicide, and Minnesota’s brutal weather.  A storm caused the death of the first person buried in the cemetery.  It was William Mason, a shoemaker, who was caught in a big blizzard in 1867, and froze to death.  He was not found until spring when a company of men headed to Alexandria to purchase flour and saw his boot sticking out of the ground.

Cassius Sherman froze to death and was found in a similar way. Cassius was the son of Jacob Sherman, the son of Edward Sherman, who came to America from Liverpool, England.

 

The Mount Pleasant cemetery is full of my pioneer ancestors with interesting, often tragic stories.

 

The Last Chapter of "Earl Stories."

The Last Chapter

 

“Well, Lrae, while Unkel Dan is staring at the ceiling, why don’t you show me around the neighborhood.”

 Lrae stood on the front of the time machine, and they lurched away from the launch site, two intoxicated chickens on a Segway.  With Earl trying to navigate , and Lrae obstructing his view, they soon crash landed through the roof of one of O’Brien’s Mac County chicken houses.  The broiler house chickens were startled by these featherless aliens and their strange looking time machine, and amidst a great deal of clucking and flapping, vacated the immediate premises of the crash site.

“Where are we Lrae?”

“Well, hek, Earl, it ain’t exactly where I amed to bring ya, but its close enuf.  I wanted to show you these genetikally inhanced broilin hens, cuz theys a pekular new-fangled kind of berd!”

“When you say broilin hens, you don’t mean that’s the name of the breed?”

“No, no Earl, these is bein bred speshal for the frying pan, or the rotissorary. These hens have been dummed down and transfixed by mixin ther molecular partisipals with them shmoos, and other cartune characters.”

Lrae pulled out his small flask of lethal corn liquor, and Earl and Lrae continued to get schnockered as they sat lackadaisically against the damaged remains of the time machine.  Earl is telling Lrae a long fractured story about the famous rooster Chanticleer and the crafty fox Reynard when they noticed something was up.

“Say, Earl, somethins up!  Are you seein what I’m seein, or mebbe my vishun is blurred?”

“These chikens look like they’re on steroids Lrae.  Look at the size of those thighs!”

“They luk bigger by the minut!”

“Buggers, they aren’t bigger. They’re closing in on us Lrae!”

“They got em a meen luk Earl.  I thenk these here chikins are sum a them “Angry Chikins” that’s been stirrin up truble here in the county.”

Earl and Lrae were suddenly surrounded by a hundred and twenty “Angry Chickens,” which was exactly twelve per cent of the thousand chickens that were crowded into this broiler house.  Some of the “Angry Chickens” had beak rings and razor blade spurs, and a nasty ammonia laced aroma.  The ring leader was a super sized leghorn, who was currently appraising the reason for all the commotion Earl and Lrae had caused.

“I say, I say, and I repeat unkindly one more time, what have we here?  Appears to me boys, appears to me boys, that we have here not one, but two inebriated plucked and puny chickens.  I say, plucked and puny chickens. Do I need to repeat repeat? Plucked and puny!  Puny! I say, I said, and said again!”

This cartoon like rendition of Foghorn, the famous comic strip Leghorn, led the “Angry Chickens” in several verses of the Camptown races, and in truth, they weren’t that bad.  They harmonized all the Doo Dah Day, with some deep vocalization improved by the heavy steroids they were on.

“I say, and I say again, what do you scrawny motherless mutants have to say for yourselves?”

Earl and Lrae had enjoyed the singing, and were going to ask for an encore, but the Leghorns were giving them threatening looks. Earl and Lrae looked pale and sickly leaning against the broken time machine. Their goose bumps were accentuated beneath the fluorescent fixtures by their nakedness and escalating alarm. Earl still wore his tin foil hat, even when showering, but he had forgotten why.

“You boys, you boys, you’ve disrupted our chicken house!  We’re “Angry Chickens,” we’re bona fide “Angry Chickens,” and we, we don’t like being disrupted.  We’ll teach you interlopers not to drop in uninvited!  Teach you a lesson you two won’t forget!”

“The “Angry Chickens” pressed in close, and Earl and Lrae were just about to lose control of their non-existent bladders, and it appeared a small tear was coming out of Earl’s non-existent tear duct when the nursery room fairy appeared just in the nick of time.  Earl and Lrae looked at one another in disbelief at the little fairy dressed in her slightly soiled pearl and dewdrop dress.  The hundred and twenty “Angry Chickens were also momentarily taken back at the diminutive winged creature.

In a soft fairy voice you’d expect from a palm sized fairy, she spoke to Earl, “I am the fairy that normally takes care of well loved nursery room toys, and when they become too old and decrepit I make them real.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

“I’ve come to make you real Earl!”

Earl thought about this.  Here he was surrounded by a hundred or more “Angry Chickens” who were bent on mischief, and out of the blue a little fairy appears with a way out of his dilemma.  Just in the nick of time! 

The “Angry Chickens” began kicking chicken litter onto the little diaphanous wings of the nursery room fairy to the tune of “Bet my Money on a Bob-Tailed Nag.”  Not having ever seen a nursery room fairy they were a bit cautious, particularly since she was taking a swing at them every once in a while with her little wand. 

Earl was thinking fast.  Was the time machine still operable?  How good was Lrae in a real hen house brawl?  Why hadn’t these hens been de-beaked?  What if the “Leghorns” murdered the little nursery room fairy before she could turn him into a real chicken?

Lrae interrupted by asking the litter soiled fairy whether Earl would be fighting  the “Angry Chickens” as a featherweight or a bantamweight after she made Earl real.

Earl suddenly realized that this sweet fairy with a developing attitude was about to do the same number on him as she did on the Velveteen Rabbit.  He would be a real chicken in a real chicken house of “Angry Leghorns!”  That couldn’t be good!  Earl kicked a little chicken litter on the fairy himself in answer to her quest to make him real.

“No thanks, little fairy!  I have an ideal life as a rubber chicken, and at Julie’s I’m at the top of the pecking order, not the bottom.  There’s also the fact that these chickens here are nearly full grown, and about to hauled off, electrocuted and butchered.”

All hundred and twenty “Angry Chickens” stopped kicking chicken litter in unison at the news.

 Earl couldn’t resist a little rap, and chirped, “What’s it gonna be when they come for you?”

Again in unison, they all cocked their heads, and gave their razor spurred ringleader a questioning cock- eyed look.

“I say fellows, I say, don’t get your hackles up.  He’s just funning us, just a funning.  Right sport?  Ain’t that right?

There’s never a good time or place to end a story that has no story line so it might as well be right here.  All I can say is if you read this whole thing bow to stern you are living a sad life, so grab a life preserver, jump overboard, and swim for shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Albertis of Eureka Springs: A tale of Insanity and Inheritance - Part 2

If you are a regular reader, and invested in the timeline and history of Albert and Laura, I highly recommend reading Part 1 of this story before you keep going:

https://shermanalbertihistory.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-albertis-of-eureka-springs-tale-of.html

Alice is at it again kids. This story, all the research hours and work that have gone in to it have been a beast. I’ve struggled to sit down and write this. I am worried I won’t do it justice and it will consume me whole. It is my Jabberwocky, my Bandersnatch. A pile of documents and facts that I have been staring at for months unclear how to proceed. In Alice Through the Looking Glass, the Jabberwocky is a nonsense poem about a monster that Alice finds in a strange book. It is written in a language that appears to make no sense at all. Eventually she figures out that she is traveling through an inverted land and holds a mirror up to the page and reads the following poem:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought–

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Even though Alice can read the words clearly they still don’t make very much sense. My hope for this blog post is that it doesn’t leave you feeling like Alice. Confused, bewildered and ready to just go home.

We're All Mad Here

I obtained medical records for Laura back in September from the Missouri Department of Mental Health. Getting them was a bureaucratic maze of a process. No one could legally confirm the existence of the documents without a court order. There is a process in place to request records from the state without a court order, but only if you know they exist in their archive. That makes sense. Deciding the easier path was to try to obtain a court order, I wrote a letter to the Court Clerk of Vernon County (the county the Nevada State Asylum #3 was located) asking for permission to request Laura’s medical records without knowing if they even existed. It was a long shot but the worst they could say was no, right? A few weeks later I received an envelope from the MO Secretary of State containing a signed copy of the court order issued by a Vernon county judge ordering her medical records, minus treatment notes, to be sent to me. A few weeks after that I got a phone call from the MO Dept of Mental Health confirming my email address and just like that, digital copies of the documents were in my inbox. I had no idea what to expect. I only knew from Laura’s probate records that she was declared insane. Not a single clue as to how or why.


Her medical records show that on December 5th she was admitted to the Robinson Sanitarium by her family doctor, Dr.Ketron, to get some rest. While she was resting, her nephew made quick work of having her declared insane by the Jackson County court on December 16th. She spent Christmas in the Sanitarium and three days later was packed in the back of a State Troopers vehicle and driven 94 miles south to her new home at the Nevada State Hospital #3.

The main piece of evidence in proving Laura’s insanity is a letter written by Guy Bowen. I’ve looked a bit deeper at Guy’s history to try to understand why he was so motivated to have Laura committed and become the ward of her $400,000 estate. At the time he was working as a Freight Agent for the railroad in Kansas City. It is either due to luck, poor health or some creative maneuvering that he evaded serving in both WWI and WWII. He met and married Laura’s niece Zora less than a year after the death of his first wife in 1919. He had a five year old daughter from his previous marriage. It’s hard to believe that he spent much time with Laura Alberti from 1920-1943. The Albertis lived on the East Coast for ten of those years, operating among the social elite of the DC area. Then moved to Eureka Springs for the remainder of the those years, traveling south for winter months to take the mineral waters near Tampa, Florida. I imagine they were very occupied with Albert’s failing health and not making too many trips to Kansas City. Guy and Zora Bowen don’t appear on the scene until after Albert’s death when Aunt Laura became the sole heir of a very healthy estate.

Guy Bowen’s letter states that Laura had no health trouble prior to 1936 when an inward goiter (an enlargement of the thyroid gland) developed and started to cause her “much nervousness”. She was hesitant to have an operation as a doctor told her that removing too little or too much of the thyroid could affect her health and mind. Guy also states in the letter that Albert researched the risks of the surgery and was also concerned that the operation might affect her mind. The next part of the letter explains that Laura had her thyroid removed in 1936 and experienced no mental issues. It wasn’t until the death of her husband in 1940 that her “condition” developed.

The letter says this:

“Each winter she would appear to have no interest in life, be very quiet, until late spring, when she would become very talkative, and nervous, which generally would last until fall. She never caused any trouble to the family or outsiders, and it was only this fall - about November 15th - that her mental condition caused us and outsiders considerable concern. She became unmanageable. Her fears are that people are watching her and following her and that the FBI is protecting her. Her husband did some work in Washington in World War I. She now talks of finishing that cause and is eager to work for the government.”


So what do you think? Sounds a little crazy doesn’t it?

New Year in the Mad House

On the first day of the new year 1944, Laura Alberti turned 63 in a room with bars on the window. The day before she was given the early birthday gift of hydrotherapy treatment to try to adjust her “aggravated” and “aggressive” state.

Her patient history states, “Patient cannot explain any reason for being here except to state that she is now working for Uncle US. She refuses to tell us the date of her birth and when we asked her to confirm her Social History she readily did so, stating it was correct, and telling us to talk more quietly as she did not want the other people around here to know how old she was. We feel confident that she knows all about her birth and birthdate.”

Laura was described by her doctors as extremely noisy and talkative, but also restless, agitated, and hyperactive. She was very friendly and happy at times and at other times surly and belligerent. It tooks three people to hold her down for a physical examination. Her records state that she would talk openly about anything but herself. When asked a personal question, “she immediately makes a sign by crooking her thumb and index finger together, snapping it, and making a lisp with her mouth, and tells us frankly that she isn’t going to answer that question.”

She did share however that her married life was very happy. She told doctors that she worked for eight years as a stenographer for Metropolitan Life. Her husband retired three years after their marriage and they took a trip to Europe spending three years in Italy and France. They traveled all over the US and have lived simply near Eureka Springs, Arkansas since 1929. When asked if she drank alcohol, she responded that she did not but that she “did like a highball”.

Her records paint a pretty clear picture of her feisty personality. I have researched the Alberti’s lives extensively and based on my findings I don’t believe that she was as many crayons short of a box as her family thought she was. Instead I think she was a grieving widow, probably suffering from some seasonal depression and anxiety. Just a little over two years had passed since she buried her husband of 26 years. She likely suffered from a thyroid imbalance. It was also the height of WWII, a stressful and scary time for any person who had already lived through a world war, sane or not. What she tells the asylum doctor about working for the government appears to be plausible, if not entirely true, but everyone thinks what she is saying is a delusion.

First let’s establish some of the timeline and major events in the Alberti’s lives leading up to 1943. These events were found in a mix of newspaper articles, passport applications, census records and of course good old history books.


1913 married in Niagara Falls, NY

1916 Albert has official retirement ceremony from Metropolitan Life in Wilmington, Delaware

Feb 1917 Albert and Laura travel to Tampa, Florida to take the waters

April 1917 United States officially enters WWI and Albert’s son Ralph joins the Navy

1918 WWI ends on November 11

1920 census, Laura and Albert live in the Forest Glen area of Silver Spring, Maryland

1924 Albert and Laura apply for passports to travel to Italy and France

1925 they are living in Italy. Ralph is killed in a hit and run accident in DC and Laura’s mother passed.

1928 they return from Italy through San Francisco

1930 census, Laura and Albert live at 41 Vaughn in Eureka Springs, Arkansas

1932 a large stone fireplace was added to 41 Vaughn house

1933 Albert’s 78th Surprise Birthday Party is held at 41 Vaughn house

1936 Laura has her Thyroid removed

1939 Hitler invaded Poland - WWII begins in Europe

June 1940 Italy enters the war on side of Axis powers

1940 Albert dies on September 18, a nation wide draft is implemented by Executive order that same week

1941 US officially entered WWII


These facts are critical in establishing a baseline for you as a reader and painting a picture of the life Laura and Albert lived. It was an active life full of traveling and entertaining friends. It was also a life of loss and coping with chronic health problems. It was a life that saw two world wars. Just think about what that must have been like for Albert and Laura. It turns out, World War I played a larger part in their lives then I could have ever imagined.

A note in Laura’s medical records stuck with me after I read it, “It is impossible to get the patient to directly admit to any of her ideas, but in various conversations with her she has intimated that she is working with the FBI for her Uncle Sam and that she is engaged in some work connected with the war. She tells that she is unable to give out any information about herself because if she does Uncle Sam would soon get her.”

At face value that certainly sounds like something a crazy person would say. In Laura’s case, most of that statement could have been entirely accurate.

The Albertis and the War Effort

In 1917 the Albertis lived in Forest Glen, Maryland. Just a 25 minute drive from Washington D.C.. Albert’s son Ralph was working as a Cashier at the Merchants Trust Company in D.C. He later joined the Navy and was stationed on the USS Henderson transporting troops to the front line in France. According to an internal MetLife publication called The Intelligencer, Albert may have officially retired but he never really stopped working for the company. He is mentioned over and over in the publication. Recognized for acting as a mentor and aid to offices all over the east coast. In 1917 the company was charged by the US government with selling War Saving Stamps, agents and Veteran Superintendents from all over the country were involved in the effort. Any guesses as to who was recognized for their hard work aiding the war effort? That’s right - Albert Alberti. The men weren’t the only ones involved. The women of MetLife were also contributing. In 1917 the FBI hired a number of stenographers for confidential reporting jobs throughout the war. Now how are you feeling about what Laura told her doctors?

Here’s the catch. I don’t have any proof that Laura was one of those stenographers that worked for the FBI, but I do feel like it’s entirely plausible that she did exactly what she told her doctors she was doing during the war. It’s sad that they treated what she was saying as delusional. Even after Albert’s retirement in 1916, he and Laura were still very involved at the highest levels of the company and especially during wartime. Perhaps even involved in confidential work for the government. I’ll make another assumption here. I would bet my lunch money that they weren’t writing home about it. So it only makes sense that when she started mentioning it to her family upon the outbreak of WWII, well... they thought she was nuts.

The last chapter of this story, part 3, will wrap up what happens to Laura and her estate from 1944 until her death in 1965. How it took me to Eureka Springs to conduct some on the ground investigating that proved very fruitful! I know it's hard to believe but the Alberti Saga gets even more interesting. Stay tuned family!