Prosperity (#52Ancestors, Week 8)

I never thought there was anyone prosperous in my family until I found this headline one day:

Capital Times (Madison, WI) July 17, 1953, p. 1

I was researching one of my favorite ancestors, Bruce Foley, whom you may remember from my "Favorite Photo" post in week one. Bruce's wife Esther and daughter Esther were candidates for last week’s “same name” post, and one day I will write more about Bruce, I promise. But today it’s his daughter Esther’s turn, because she is the one who married an Italian count. Here is a little bit of her story.

Esther Foley was born in Michigan on May 18, 1915 and married Byrlton Lohmiller, a physician in Madison, Wisconsin sometime in the mid-1930s. During World War II Brylton was an army air corps doctor. He died after the war, in 1946, in a drowning accident near Biloxi, Mississippi. Their daughter, Mary Esther, was 14 months old.

After her husband’s death Esther remained in Madison and worked as a bookkeeper and then as office secretary in a doctor’s office. One day in 1951 Professor Gian Orsini (a Comparative Literature professor from Italy teaching at the University of Wisconsin) and his wife Margaret introduced Esther to a graduate student from Italy. His name was Alessandro De Asarta. Count Alessandro de Asarta.

Capital Times (Madison, WI)
July 17, 1953, p. 1

Capital Times (Madison, WI)
July 17, 1953, p. 1

Esther’s life was never the same after that. Her relationship with the count flourished and they were married in Italy on May 21, 1953. But this wasn’t just any wedding. They were married in St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome (by the same priest who had married Tyrone Power and Linda Christian, if that means anything to my readers!). The wedding ceremony was an intimate affair but the reception hosted 250 at Alessandro’s residence in Rome, and the guests included Italian royalty.

St. Peter's Basillica, Rome, Italy
image from Wikimedia Commons

Esther returned to Madison in June of 1953 to wrap up her affairs there. Then she literally set sail for her new life. She and Mary Esther departed from New York to Genoa, Italy on July 22, 1953 on the Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria (whose maiden voyage had just taken place in January of that same year. This ship will make another appearance in this blog soon). 

Andrea Doria
image from Wikimedia Commons

Evidence of Esther’s prosperity popped up again in a 1961 passenger list from a Pan American airplane coming back from London. Esther's address is on Madison Avenue in New York City, just a block away from Central Park. Did she live there with Alessandro? I don't know. I wish I knew more about her life as an Italian countess. I can find that she visited the States from Italy once in a while, and then eventually she and Alessandro moved to the United States and settled down in Florida in their later years.

Central Park, New York City
image from Wikimedia Commons

 I wonder if  Esther's daughter Mary Esther is still out there? Mary Esther, wherever you are, I would love to hear about your childhood growing up as the step-daughter of an Italian count. I hope that you and your mother shared a life not only of prosperity but of happiness and fulfillment.