While researching genealogy, I will on occasion run out of steam on researching a particular branch and then jump around to a different one. William Montgomery, I’m talking to you…anyway… While my family was vacationing a couple of weeks ago at Virginia’s Eastern Shore, I said semi-rhetorically, “What branch should I look at next?” My nephew Ben, who is now 14 and has the uncanny habit of unexpectedly paying attention when you think he’s absorbed in Roblox or something, said without skipping a beat, “You should work on Mom’s mom’s family.” Well okay then, the Partellos it is! Handily enough, the Partellos are also related to me by blood as well as marriage. I thought I would do the customary tracing of Partello family members up to the present day (or at least to the 1950 census); I didn’t think I would uncover a family scandal involving weird and/or important occupations, the Smithsonian, and Antonio Stradivari.
Dwight Joel Partello was my fifth cousin five times removed and Ben’s first cousin 5 times removed (my sister-in-law Cheryl’s first cousin 4 times removed). He was born 28 August 1841 in Bergen Point, New Jersey. Dwight’s 4G-grandparents, Joseph Crandall and Deborah Hubbard Burdick, were my 9G-grandparents. Dwight’s parents were William Phillip Utley and Charlotte Virginia (Sexton) Partello. William and Charlotte were married in 1838 in New Orleans; were in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1850; and by 1860 were living in Washington, DC. In that year’s census, William was listed as a clerk in a department store while Charlotte’s occupation was listed as “fancy store,” and Dwight as well as his younger sisters Flora and Catherlena were all working as “Swiss Bell Ringers.” I’m still trying to work that one out.
In 1862 in Richmond, Virginia, Dwight married Agnes M. Sheffield, and at some point became a lawyer. He and Agnes had two daughters, Carrie and Adeline; and a son, Dwight Joel, Jr. Around 1883 architect Emil Frederich designed a home for Dwight, Sr., at 5 Logan Circle, NW, in Washington, DC1. In 1885 Dwight, Sr., was appointed United States Consul at Dusseldorf, Germany, by President Cleveland, and it was in Germany in 1897 that his wife Agnes died. Dwight remained in Germany and was connected with many of Europe’s elite. And he started collecting musical instruments, including four Stradivarius violins. An American journalist living in Germany, Arthur Abell, befriended Dwight and wrote articles about him and his collection. He then ended up marrying Dwight’s daughter Adeline. About 1915 Dwight moved back to Washington, DC and decided to bequeath his collection (26 musical instruments) to the Smithsonian (then called the U.S. National Museum). Dwight died in August 1920 of sarcoma of the bladder2 and is buried in Washington, DC’s Glenwood Cemetery3.
After Dwight’s death, when the specifics of his revised will were made known, Arthur Abell and Adeline, who had apparently hoped to inherit the musical fortune, decided to contest the will. Adeline encouraged many of the musical greats of the day to write letters protesting the consignment of the instruments to a museum where they could no longer be played. For a year, the head of the National Museum refused to listen to these protests. Then in August 1921 Dwight’s other daughter Carrie, now the Baroness Carita von Horst as the wife of a German-American who had made a fortune in hops, returned to Washington, DC. Her husband had lost his fortune, and the now-impoverished Carrie produced a bill of sale from 1914 stating that her father had sold her his apartment in Berlin and everything that had been in it for $10. Once this bill of sale was given to the new District Attorney of Washington, DC, he ordered the Smithsonian to give all the instruments back to the Partello sisters. Shortly after that, they sold the instruments to a collector for what would today be around $4 million.
Interestingly, Carrie would produce yet another conveniently-timed bill of sale years later4. This time she claimed that the Partello family farm in Iowa had also been bequeathed to her. That time the judge immediately claimed the document was a forgery. So one has to wonder if the whole Berlin bill of sale was a fabrication as well.
While we can’t go look up our family violins at the Smithsonian, I was able to find a number of them online without much difficulty5. Dwight Partello is listed as the owner in 1887 of the “Falmouth” Stradivarius of ca. 16926. Another violin, this one by Francesco Rugeri in 1694, is nicknamed “the ex-Partello.”7 Dwight himself was apparently responsible for giving a 1690 Stradivarius the nickname “the Lord Nelson” because he erroneously thought the violin was on Nelson’s ship during the Battle of Trafalgar.8 So there you have it – a bunch of strange occupations, and a branch of famous Partello kin. Thanks, Ben.
- https://dcarchcenter.org/event/building-day-tour-5-logan-circle-nw ↩︎
- District of Columbia Public Library; Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C. Deaths, 1874-1945 ↩︎
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/145078491/dwight-j.-partello ↩︎
- https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/partello-v-white-no-890715054 ↩︎
- https://tarisio.com/cozio-archive/browse-the-archive/owners/?Entity_ID=2661&view=list ↩︎
- https://beinfushi.com/product/antonio-stradivari-cremona-c-1692-3/ ↩︎
- https://tarisio.com/cozio-archive/property/?ID=40215 ↩︎
- https://tarisio.com/cozio-archive/property/?ID=40764 ↩︎
