Quest to find family tree branches into book Author finds Scicilian ancestors Times Picayune 03-18-2010 Submitted By NOVA ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Algerine Frank J. Palisi III is the author of "From Sicily to New Orleans and Beyond," the fruit of 60,000 hours of research over 15 years. "Originally, I just started out working on my own family tree." He grew frustrated after close relatives were unable to answer his questions about their heritage, so he set out to discover the family story. "That was my quest. "Algiers was like Little Italy back in the day, but so many families have dispersed." He started out with census records, which gave him the names of Sicilians living in New Orleans at various points, but he "also used the ship manifest records to determine who came over, when and why." His research started well before genealogical resources were widely available online. "I used the old- fashioned method -- go to the library, find the microfilm, put it on the reader, transcribe it." He found lists of all the Sicilian passengers entering the Port of New Orleans, straight from Europe. "All you typically hear about is the Italians coming into Ellis Island." Of those who arrived here, "Ninety-eight percent of them came straight to New Orleans." Palisi documented the families coming into New Orleans, then matched the names against the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 census records. "All of the people who came over appeared on the 1900 census, but only a fraction of those appeared on the 1910. That was the first mystery I uncovered." Had they moved back to Sicily? "My search was greatly broadened." He found records of many of the families, but they had moved on to places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago and Cleveland. "My next endeavor was to find out why." He started examining the newspaper records from 1890 to 1910, reading article after article. Eventually he found "several high-profile incidents that occurred in New Orleans, involving Sicilians and the police." The first story he unearthed involved an assassination, false accusations, imprisonment and persecution. "As a result of that assassination," of the city's police chief, "a lot of Sicilians were arrested and thrown into jail." "The townspeople were angry. They formed a vigilante squad, broke into Orleans Parish Prison and killed a bunch of Sicilians, whether they were the ones involved or not. It was just a slaughter." It happened right here in New Orleans, but "it was front-page news across the country and worldwide. That incident caused Italy to pull all of its ambassadors out of the United States. Italy was on the brink of declaring war on the U.S." That crime and its repercussions caused many Sicilians to leave New Orleans, but it didn't end there. Extortion, kidnapping and the murder of a 7-year-old boy caused another round-up of Italians. This time they ended up in Angola. "An 18-year-old boy was hanged for committing that murder. He was innocent, but the public was satisfied. The rest were released and that's when the mass exodus occurred." Sicilians who had come straight from Italy to the Port of New Orleans scattered across America. By 1907, the local Italian community had dwindled to a very few. Some, though, considered Algiers far enough from the city to be a safe place to make a new start. Palisi says that many Sicilian-Americans who were involved in the events, either directly or indirectly, are buried in Algiers cemeteries, Saint Mary's and Saint Bartholomew's. The families were sufficiently scattered, though, that much of the history was lost for a long time. "I have very close relatives," now living far from New Orleans, "who have no idea where they came from or why they ended up where they did." There are Sicilian names very familiar to us in Algiers. The Palisi family had a grocery store on Opelousas, and there was a Giglio Grocery as well. The Santa Lucia Society has a big mausoleum in Saint Mary's cemetery. However, it seems the history of our Sicilian neighbors has not been widely understood. Palisi's passion has been to share those stories, and the research that brought them back to life, with his relatives and the rest of us. "I never really dreamed of writing a book. As I was researching our family tree, and documenting the stories, other family trees started being built. And they all came from the same little town in the middle of nowhere, Chiusa Sclafani," about a 10-minute drive from the better-known Sicilian town of Corleone. Yep, that Corleone. "At that point, I had the voyage data, knowledge of the incidents and the desire to bring these families back together." So he did indeed write a book, compiling the genealogical records of the Sicilians who came to the United States via the Port of New Orleans. His research didn't stop with records available locally. He traveled to Sicily, to Chiusa Sclafani. "It's a beautiful little town -- agricultural, very secluded, a beautiful, beautiful town." He went to the town hall and studied the birth, marriage and death records. Plus, he met relatives still living in the town his family had left over a hundred years before. Palisi and his research were welcomed with open arms. "They all cried, you know." Their ancestors had left for the United States decades before, and they had lost touch. "They used to send cards and gifts back and forth, but that stopped in the 1960s." At this Saturday's Algiers Historical Society meeting, you can learn more about the Sicilians of Algiers and their relatives across the United States and back in the homeland. Palisi will be presenting his research and his book, "From Sicily to New Orleans and Beyond." The event, to be held at 10 a.m. at the Carriage House behind the Courthouse, 225 Morgan, is free and open to the public.