The Daily Messenger
(Canandaigua, New York)
17 Aug 1936, Mon • Page 2 Column 1
"One of Sextuplets Predicts 'Fireworks' For Dionne Babies
ALBION--There probably will be 'fireworks' when the baby Dionnes get a little older.
So says Alberto Bushnell who, as one of the famous Bushnell Sextuplets, narrowly missed being a ward of the British Government himself.
Alberto declares that Queen Victoria was ready to 'subsidize' him and his triplet sisters and twin brothers, and probably would have done so if his parents could have been persuaded to consent to the arrangement.
From his room in the Orleans County Home, where he has lived for several years, one of the three living Bushnell's said somewhat ruefully that he wished Queen Victoria had had her way and that he had been put in a 'glass cage' for all the world to look at, as are the Dionnes.
Another of the original Bushnell sextuplets lives in Perry, where she is known as Mrs. Alinca Parker. A third is somewhere in the West, although Alberto doesn't know exactly where because he hasn't heard from her in years. Her name is Mrs. Alice Hughes.
Sees Individualism Periled
What Alberto, also known by his friends as Al, Albert and 'Tamarack,' believes will happen to the Dionnes is that the five lusty Canadian sisters will rebel when they reach 10 or more years old and resent being a 'circus' feature.
The will either rebel, he declares, or they will lose what individuality they possess, and go on through life as a sister act.
Alberto, now 67, is white-haired but spry. Until this summer he walked to Albion each Sunday to church, a three-mile hike. He goes now sometimes in the car of a friend, or stays to listen to church service conducted at two - weeks intervals in the home.
Born in Chicago tow years before the fire, the Bushnell Sextuplets were name by their mother, a French woman of British birth. Their father, James Lewis Bushnell, was an American, born in Phelps, and at the time of the Chicago residence a grain merchant.
Names given the individual Bushnell's showed the mothers' French ancestry. One of Alberto's brothers was Layeburto and the other Norberto. One sister was Linca Lucy and another was Alinca. The third sister was just plain Alice.
The big Chicago fire burned out the Bushnell's, but not before Layeburto and Linca Lucy had died, the former at four and the latter at eight months. The Bushnell's packed the remainder of the sextuplets off to Buffalo, where he became a clothier.
The Bushnell's had one circus offer for their offspring, from Dan Rice, then a showman, but they again refused to consider breaking up their home. Norberto, Alberto, Alinca and Alice lived with the parents until, when Albertino was eight years old, the mother died in Lockport where they went from Buffalo.
The sextuplets were the first and only children of the Bushnell's. Alberto is unable to recall what each child weighed at birth.
Once Worked in Medina
After leaving Lockport, where he was a grocer, James Bushnell went to Medina and later came to this village, where he was a book keeper for a quarrying company.
Alberto worked for a time as his father's assistant and then became an 'od job' man, laboring as a blacksmith's helper and on farms.
Alberto is unable to remember he says, how or why Queen Victoria made her offer, but believes it to be because a his mother was a British native."
