Arthur Middleton (1795-1853)

He was born in England at Clifton, Gloucestershire, and graduated from Harvard (1814). After being called to the Bar in 1823, he established a plantation at Niewport. He lived abroad for most of his life, notably in Paris, and for eight years from 1837 he was secretary and chargé d'affaires to the U.S. Legation at Madrid. In 1821, he was married at Washington D.C. to Ann, only daughter and sole heiress of John Peter Van Ness who grew up at the Van Ness House. After her premature death in childbirth (with their daughter), he moved to Italy where to the dismay of his family he was married again in 1841 to an impoverished aristocrat, Paulina, Countess di Bentivoglio, daughter of the Governor of the Castle of San Angelo. They were the parents of two children (Henry and Angelina Basile) and he remained in Italy and died near Naples.