NORTHFIELD — Patricia Preston’s career as a neurobiologist has helped make her a well-traveled woman.

The Spanish national earned a master’s degree in Seattle and now works in a research laboratory at the University of Tübingen in Germany, a job that has sent her to places like Boston and California for conferences. But the Labor Day weekend trip she took to Northfield was something of a homecoming, as she was in town to learn more about her great-grandfather Charles Leroy Preston, who spent time in 1918 secretly buying millions of dollars worth of platinum for the U.S. War Department so it could be used to make explosives to support the United States’ efforts in World War I.

“In the family, I always heard stories about the secret agent working in Russia and traveling from Boston to Russia,” she said inside Northfield Town Hall on Monday, less than an hour before driving with her family to New York to fly home. “I didn’t know exactly if it was all true.”

Patricia was accompanied by her husband, Andrea Burgalossi, and children Sofia, Adrian and Didac, in meeting with local officials and visiting sites that are significant to the Preston clan, including the memorial plaque that was commissioned in Charles Leroy Preston’s memory in 1928 and refurbished within the past few years.

“That was amazing,” she said of seeing the plaque. “I cannot really say another word that can describe [it].”

Patricia corresponded via email with Northfield Planning Board Chair Stephen Seredynski, and organized a trip that combined pleasure with some business in the Boston area.

Secret precious metal buyer

At the height of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Charles Leroy Preston was chosen to travel to Russia and assist the American Red Cross in establishing hospitals — all while carrying out his secret mission for the U.S. War Department on a volunteer basis. While in Russia during the winter of 1918, Preston secretly collected $2.5 million worth (equal to roughly $28 million in 2021) of platinum, even though the Japanese and Russian governments had made it a capital offense to buy or sell platinum.

“He did that at great risk to his own life — getting platinum out of Russia at that time was illegal,” Seredynski said inside Town Hall. “It had to do with the revolution and World War I. They used it for explosives. And it was punishable by death, if they caught you.”

According to the memorial plaque, Preston’s mission “required remarkable business ability, tact [and] unflinching courage,” and was “performed at great and constant personal risk and hardship.”

Preston was a U.S. Department of Commerce employee. He had lived in Russia for 12 years, spoke the language, and was familiar with the customs from his earlier work buying hides for a shoe manufacturer. He went undercover as a Red Cross agent, traveling by rail through Siberia.

“It reads like James Bond,” Seredynski said. “His day job was with the Red Cross, setting up hospitals. His night job was walking around with $2.5 million in cash to buy … platinum, and then he’d stash it under his bed.”

By Nov. 11, 1918, Preston had spent the money designated for platinum purchases. A copy of “The Diary of Charles Leroy Presley Covering His Mission in Siberia,” was given to the Northfield Historical Society in 1929. He wrote he “had the responsibility and worry of having a large sum of money and very valuable material” in his possession. After delivering the platinum, he wrote he felt “as though someone had taken off my shoulders more care and worry than I hope to be obliged to carry in the future.”

The United States was involved in World War I from April 4, 1917, to Nov. 11, 1918. After finishing in Russia, Preston began his travel home and stopped in Yokohama, Japan, before sailing to the United States. At this time, he said he felt “tired and rather under the weather,” but a U.S. Naval hospital doctor in Yokohama assured him he was “disgustingly healthy” and that his headaches came from “slight nervous strain or tension from overeating.”

“He put me on a diet, and now for a month I have not had the slightest sign of a headache and I feel fine,” Preston wrote in December 1919.

This, however, did not last. He got home to his family in apparent good health on Feb. 17, 1919, but within six hours suffered a medical emergency from which he never regained consciousness and died that day. The cause of death was unclear, but theories range from stroke to heart attack.

Following the war, Northfield residents recognized Preston’s accomplishments and commissioned the cast stone plaque in the then-new Town Hall in 1928. The plaque was created and installed for $300 at the time, by the renowned Art Stone Co., which operated in Millers Falls from 1906 to 1933. During a June 2020 Annual Town Meeting, voters appropriated $7,000 to fund its renovation and install a light for illumination in the Town Hall lobby.

Preston was nominated for the Distinguished Service Medal after his service in 1919, but it was denied by the secretary of war on what Seredynski described as a technicality — Preston was not part of the military at the time of his services.

In August 2019, Seredynski and other volunteers submitted to U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern’s office more than 130 documents detailing Preston’s efforts during World War I, including a letter to the U.S. Department of Defense requesting Preston be posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. However, Seredynski said, these efforts “reached a dead end.”

Family research

Part of Patricia Preston’s journey has been for the sake of separating fact from fiction. She was fascinated to learn her great-grandfather had purchased platinum — her grandmother’s stories had always mentioned only gold. Making the research more complicated was the fact that Patricia’s great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle were all named Charles Leroy Preston.

“It’s very messy, doing the genealogy,” she said, “and that’s why I use some of the softwares to do the genealogical tree.”

Patricia, 42, has learned of an aunt she did not realize she had and knows she has family in Florida, Texas and Colorado. She also learned the Prestons were one of Northfield’s first families. Patricia said her grandmother got divorced and moved with her young son (Patricia’s father) to Majorca, an island of Spain. Patricia was born in Barcelona in 1981. Her husband, who was born and raised in Italy, works as a professor at the same university in Germany.

Patricia said she is immensely proud of her great-grandfather and his bravery, as well as for his humanitarian work with the Red Cross.

“This is just, for me, very important,” she said.

Exploring Franklin County

Patricia and her family took themselves on some self-guided tours and stopped by Charles Leroy Preston’s former house just off Main Street.

“I love it. It’s so nice,” she said. “There is so much space ... here, in general, in the States, compared to in Europe, but also it’s so green. And ... the houses are kept [in] the classical style.”

The family stayed in Shelburne Falls and also made sure to take in some hiking, including at Chesterfield Gorge.

“We love nature,” Patricia said. “And I think … New England in general has a great landscape. The nature here, amazing.”

The family talked with locals as much as possible.

“We have good friends now,” Burgalossi said with a smile. He and Patricia said the family enjoyed eating breakfast at Mim’s Market and visiting tag sales. “I’d never been before to New England, so it’s really great.”

Seredynski said he was stunned to receive Patricia’s initial email and was thrilled to be able to share with her the town he has called home for nearly 40 years.

“I’m incredibly touched, and they were the nicest folks when they got here,” he said. “It was an incredible experience. It’s hard to describe.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.