Welcome!

These pages gather together much of what I have learned about my family's history and the places where my ancestors lived before they came to America at the turn of the 20th Century. I hope this site will become a valuable resource for anyone seeking to learn more about Sicilian and Italian heritage and genealogy, and about genealogy in general.

(NOTE: This site will soon be moving to a new Earthlink address. I hope to add all the missing pages when it has a new home. I will announce the new location as soon as I know it on "Il Circolo Mezzojusaro," The Mezzojuso Internet Mailing List. For information about this mailing list, please go to http://www.leaptoad.com.)

My parents were Anthony (Antonino) Schiro, and Helene (Elena) Pafundi. My father's parents, Fortunato Schiro' and Antonina Bausano, were born in Mezzojuso in the Province of Palermo, Sicily, and arrived in New York City at the beginning of the 20th Century. My mother and her parents, Matteo Pafundi and Carmela De Bonis, were born in Pietragalla in the Province of Potenza, Italy. Papa' Pafundi came to this country around 1891 by a circuitous route that included Argentina and, possibly, Brazil.

My Mezzojuso pages include: a summary of all the Mezzojuso Civil Records available on microfilm from the Family History Library; a database of birth, death, and marriage records that I have extracted; and a "photo tour" of the town. Sometime in the future, I hope to add similar pages for Pietragalla.

My pages on the Steamship Utopia will include some fruits of my research into a tragedy that could have prevented my family's immigration to this country (but, fortunately, did not): the death of my great grandfather in a shipwreck at Gibraltar.

Please follow the links above to explore this site and other sites of interest.