#52 Ancestors 2024 Week 9 Changing Names: Signor G

Ok.  I’ll just admit up front that this was a down-the-rabbit-hole adventure. I came across Signor G while researching a daughter who had married into a family I was researching.  He is only tangentially related to my family, but I just found his story irresistible--romantic, probably at least partly apocryphal, but just irresistible.  And the fact that he went by several different names at different points in his life made it only more of a challenging quest. I'm actually quite proud of myself that I managed to track him down as much as I have. 

Signor G was born as Gennaro Guisseppe Canninia Primicherio (Try saying that ten times fast!) in Naples, Italy, about 1810. His father was reputed to be an Italian nobleman and one-time mayor of Naples. He reportedly had several sisters who were nuns and a brother who was an artist. (However, I haven't been able to find the evidence for this.)

 At the age of ten, he was sent to a school in Naples, where he showed a remarkable talent for music. According to a family story related by Signor G's son, Gennaro attracted the attention of the King of Naples with his magnificent trumpet playing, (although I have seen other versions of the story where it was a clarinet or a French horn.  Perhaps he played them all.), and the King appointed the young man as the leader of his private band. 

Now, I do not know which school he was sent to, but I'm making a guess that it was one of the music conservatories which started out as welfare institutions for destitute and abandoned children and gradually developed into musical training institutes. And since Gennaro attracted the attention of the king, I'm making a further guess that it might have been the Royal Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella, shown at the left, founded in 1807 with the merger of two other schools. 

Gennaro's superior musical abilities as well as his favor with the king, again according to family stories, led to jealousy from some of the other students, who determined, if possible, to disgrace him. Accordingly, one day in 1824, several keys in a highly prized piano were broken, and Gennaro was charged with this malicious destruction. 

In order to avoid this disgrace, the teenaged Gennaro ran away.  

In 1824, Naples was often visited by US war ships as part of the Mediterranean Squadron that was sent to combat the Barbary Pirates which were attacking American merchant ships. As luck would have it, the officers on these ships were partial to music and had often attended concerts at the school and thus Gennaro was well known to the Americans. In his flight from the school, Gennaro ran into officers from the USS Era which was then anchored in Naples, explained his plight to them, and they agreed to take him on board their ship and bring him to America. (The picture on the left is not the Era, but it is a similar ship.) In another version of the story, the young man just stowed away on the ship and was discovered by the crew later. You can begin to see how this story takes on the elements of a classic fairy tale. 

Gennaro's trip to American took two years, during which time he served as a seaman and was, according to legend, once under the command of the famous Commodore Perry. During the voyage, the Americans apparently found his Italian name too confusing and simply called him George, which name he continued to use once he arrived in the states, sometimes with the variant Giorgio. Signor G. Giorgio or Signor George. 

He landed in Baltimore in 1826, where he married an English woman, Elizabeth Bentley, about 1830 and began a career as a music teacher, under the name of Signor G. George or just Signor G. The couple had three children while they were living in Baltimore: Amelia (1830), Mary Agnes (1832) and Michael Alexander (1836). In 1837, the family moved to Norfolk VA where Signor G became the leader of the US Army Band at Fort Monroe and was later sent off to fight in the Seminole Wars in Florida. 

To add further romance, there is the story that Signor George inherited a fortune when his Italian nobleman father died, leaving his fortune to his eldest son. Signor G. supposedly boarded a ship for Naples, but it was turned back by a fierce storm.  The superstitious captain determined that his bad luck was due to someone on board being destined not to reach Naples.  He determined that the unfortunate person was Signor G. and had him put ashore.  Signor G then discovered that a cholera epidemic was raging in Naples and again was prevented from going there. So, Signor G never made it back to Naples to claim his inheritance.  

By 1850, the census showed him living in Richmond VA as Segnor George with his wife and five children, all of whom had the last name of George: Michael (14), Frances (11), Angelina (7), Joseph (5) and Virginia (1). His eldest daughter Amelia had married in 1846 to Simon Bonavita, a Corsican immigrant, and was also pursuing a career in music. Signor George, "a distinguished tenor singer," and his daughter were apparently very popular performers on the music hall stage, as the advertisement at the right indicates. 

In Richmond, he worked as a Professor of Music at the Virginia Male and Female Collegiate Institute and was also the organist and choir director at St. Peter's Catholic Church. 

Signor George was also a composer, and I was able to find one of his pieces, a grand march composed for the centennial of Norfolk in 1836. 

In 1860, Signor G, occupation Music Teacher, was living in Norfolk, age 52, along with his wife Elizabeth (42), and children Michael (23), Frank (21), Lucretia (17), Joseph (13), Virginia (10), and Augustus (6).  

After the start of the Civil War, the family moved back to Baltimore and then, by 1870, to Indianapolis, where Signor G and his widowed daughter Amelia Bonavita, opened a Musical Institute.  Later in Evansville IN, Signor G continued to practice as a teacher of vocal arts and choir director at the Church of the Assumption. He also gave lessons in the Italian language. His daughter Lucretia (Cressie) married Irishman Philip Sheridan in Indiana in 1873, and his wife Elizabeth died in Evansville in 1878 and is buried there. 

By 1880, Signor G was living in Brooklyn NY with his daughter Virginia (Jennie), also a talented musician, and her husband George V. Watson. a tobacco merchant. He was described at that time as tall and stout, balding, with gray whiskers and blue eyes. Even after 50 years in America, he was said to speak only broken English. 

Sadly, Signor G's colorful story ends in tragedy. 

Although Signor George apparently continued to teach music privately, he gradually became more
enfeebled and began to suffer from dementia. In June of 1880, he wandered away from his daughter's home, and his decomposed body was found in a wooded grove near Locust Valley, Long Island, some weeks later; his head had been separated from his body, and it appeared that he had been robbed and murdered. He was identified by a letter that had been in his pocket and by the hat and cane he always carried. No one was sure how he managed to travel so far from Brooklyn. 

The story with its rather gruesome details and hints of mysterious strangers seen rowing away from the scene created quite a sensation and was reported in newspapers all over the country. 

In places like Baltimore, Richmond, and Evansville, where Signor G had lived and worked, there were many fond recollections of his tenure in their city.  The Richmond Dispatch remembered him as "noted for his refinement, affability, and gentlemanly manners." Another paper remembered that while he was the choir director of St. John's in Baltimore, that church had the reputation for having the finest music in the city. The Norfolk Virginian remembered him as "an excellent citizen and sincere Christian whose musical talents were highly appreciated." The Evansville paper fondly recounted a concert given by Signor G's music students. 

He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Just to add a little detail about name changes, Signor G's son, Frank, who served in the Navy as Frank George, later changed his family name back to Primicherio in case there were any further family inheritances that might come their way.