The August 20th San Bartolomeo feast day celebration in New Orleans is fast approaching! Please visit the CSBA homepage for details, a lunch menu and a sign up form. Here’s a challenge for you all. Can anyone identify the person and church in the photo accompanying the announcement? More on that later. Biscotti baking is well under way for the feast day favors and this year I will bring along Ustica posters from our inventory. Participants can choose one from the loot pile! The CSBA homepage is www.ustica.org/san_bartolomeo
The CSBA tomb roster has been rebuilt to fix the old links that no longer worked. Names of the interred are now linked to the family charts at the UGH. A map for directions to the tomb has also been added at the beginning of the list. The tomb roster is at the CSBA homepage. Click on “The Society Tomb” from the menu on the left side of the homepage.
Speaking of the CSBA tomb, Phase II physical restorations to the roof of the tomb are well under way and should be completed in the next month or so. Below are two photos. The first is an aerial view showing the exposed bricks resulting from Phase I restoration and cleaning. The second photo is from the ground showing the completed restoration of the badly deteriorated back corner. More photos to come as the restoration progresses. Exciting!!!
In our last zoom session we discussed the tomb roster for the Societá di Mutua Beneficenza, established in 1850. The link to the zoom recording is at the CSBA homepage, just under the feast day announcement, for those who would like the full story. Many burials in the tomb are for the earliest Usticesi to come to New Orleans. The SIMB tomb list is available from the Ustica Genealogy Homepage which is at www.ustica.org/genealogy Click on the “Favorite Links” flag icon and scroll to the bottom of that list. Usticesi are highlighted in green and their last names are linked to the family charts at the UGH.
A friend recently rediscovered a 2019 article on Ustica and immigration to NO, for which both Vito Ailara from Ustica and yours truly were interviewed. I remember the interview but lost track after that, so this was a nice find. (Or maybe I already sent this and my memory is worse than I think!) The link to the article is at https://italoamericano.org/ustica/
Membership renewals for 2024 will be sent in September. Please help us keep the the society strong by your financial participation. That tomb restoration ain’t cheap!
Have a blessed summer and I hope to see many of you at the feast day celebration or on the next zoom (yet unscheduled).
Chris Caravella
president, Congregazione di San Bartolomeo Apostolo
