From the Schenectady Gazette in 1931 comes the unlikely story that “Alco Worker’s Violin May Be Stradivarius.”
The violin that Adam Swarski, 400 Cutler street, has played accosionally [sic] to amuse himself for the past few years, may bring him a fortune, if it lives up to recent expectations.
Swarsky [sic], a carpenter for American Locomotive, states that he recently noticed the inscription “Antonio Stradivarius, 1736,” directly under one of the sound holes of the violin. Stradivarius died in 1737 and is credited with making two violins in 1736. A “Strad” recently discovered in Virginia brought $40,000.
The present owner, born in Poland, says that the violin was brought here by a Polish artist he knew slightly in the old country. The artist was killed in an auto crash in New York city, and the violin passed into the possession of a Glens Falls man. Swarsky purchased it from him for a small sum, he said.
Uh huh. The internet hasn’t heard of Mr. Swarski’s Stradivarius again, but in 1936 the Rome Daily Sentinel ran the story of Miss Stella Kurdziel, who made a startlingly similar discovery, down to the year. She was inspired to inspect her instrument on reading of the claim of William Brown of Old Forge, who also believed he had found a Stradivarius in his possession.