Vincente Minnelli - Early Life

Early Life

Born as Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago, he was the youngest of four known sons, only two of whom survived to adulthood, born to Marie Émilie Odile Lebeau (stage name: Mina Gennell) and Vincent Charles Minnelli. His father was musical conductor of Minnelli Brothers' Tent Theater. Minnelli's Chicago-born mother was of French Canadian descent with a strong probability of Native American (Anishinaabe) lineage included via her Mackinac Island, Michigan born mother. The family toured small towns primarily in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois before settling permanently in Delaware, Ohio.

Paternal grandfather Vincenzo Minnelli and great-uncle Domenico Minnelli, both Sicilian revolutionaries, were forced to leave Sicily after the collapse of the provisional Sicilian government that arose from the 1848 revolution against Ferdinand II and Bourbon rule. Domenico Minnelli had been Vice-Chancellor of the Gran Corte Civile in Palermo at the time he helped organize the January 12, 1848 uprising there. After the Bourbon return to power Vincenzo reportedly hid in the catacombs of Palermo for 18 months before being successfully smuggled onto a New York-bound fruit steamer. While traveling as a piano demonstrator for Knabe Pianos, Vincenzo met his future wife Nina Picket during a stop in Delaware, Ohio. Although there's no confirmation of Vincenzo working at Ohio Wesleyan University, he was indeed a music teacher and composer. Both the US Library of Congress and the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL have Vincenzo(e) Minnelli compositions in their collections.

Paternal grandmother Nina Picket, with whom Minnelli lived during his school days while his parents were touring their shows, descended from a line of teachers and civil servants, most notably early American educator Albert Picket. Albert Picket, reportedly once a student of Noah Webster's, conducted a girls' school in 1810s Manhattan and was an early member of the New York Historical Society. In 1811 he was an incorporator of The Society of Teachers of the City of New York. With his son John W. Picket he published an educational journal, The Academician, and a number of school books, including The Juvenile Expositor in 1816. After relocating to Cincinnati he was a founder of the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers, was a contemporary of William McGuffey (educator & author, McGuffey Readers) and Calvin and Harriet Beecher Stowe (author, Uncle Tom's Cabin) and played a role in establishing the public school system in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. In his later years he retired to Delaware, Ohio and died there in 1850.