SicilyFour

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Isle of Ustica

Page Four

Here we are landing at Ustica, we took a Siramar Hydrafoil boat. Ustica is 35 miles off of Palermo. Tom wanted to see it, plus his great,great,great grandmother, Maria Manfre was born here in 1816.

We took several long hikes up into the hills. Here we have a view of the present town and the old town, that is higher up. We were looking for the ancient church, but no one we asked knew where it was. We were walking past farms.

Here is one of 8 wayside alters. Makes it easy to stop and pray. We had hoped that the Municipio office had a birth certificate of Maria Manfre, but their records only went to 1820.

Here are some of the homes in the older part of town, where our ancestors would of lived. The newer part of town is closer to the harbor, in the 17 and 1800's they would of been away from the port because of the pirates.

Had to add this, it was our friendly mascot that followed us up the 2 mountains of Ustica. He really knew his way around and was such a good companion. We hated to leave him.

This is one of the Paleo-Christian Tombs we found along our hike past the bronze-age neocropolis (2000 B.C. burial grounds)

Here is the one church, San Ferdinando. We needed to talk with the Padre here to try and find the birth record of Maria, but most of the day the church and Padre were busy with a big funeral.

That afternoon we missed our boat back to Palermo, had to spend the night , was able to meet with Padre Laoro, and he and town historian Vito Ailara were able to find Maria's birth record and also inrtoduce us to the present Maria Manfre. Our cousin.

This Maria is a descendant of our Maria Manfre, so we are 5th cousins. Here is Tom and I with Maria, daughter, and 3 of the grandchildren.We also learned that the Manfre's were one of the first 60 families that had colonized Ustica in 1763.

Our new cousin Maria invited us to her house where we met 2 more cousins, her sister Rose and cousin Pietro Bertucci. We had coffee and Italian rolls and alot of good conversation, Italian and a little English.

Here is the port with city in background as I waited at the boat and Tom got our tickets. We sure didn't want this boat to leave without us !! You can see pictures and inf. of Ustica by going to their website, http://ustica.org/

The next morning, after sleeping in our clothes , Tom and I were up at the crack of dawn, to be the first in line for a ticket on the boat back toPalermo, our hotel and suitcases. Most Italian towns have these lights up in the Piazzas at night.

Click on Pictures for Enlargement or Click on Flag for the Next Page!!

Well, here is Tom, and the boat is still there !! We made it !! Our plans had certainly changed, but we praised God for His Plans, we now had live cousins !! Ustica is part of Palermo. We made it back in time for the lovely hotel breakfast buffet !!

This is an Ustichese Goat looking at us, wondering what we are doing hiking thru these hills and dales We were on the way to another fort used in the 1700's to discover Pirates.