Ustica sape

Today is the official feast of St Bartholomew, patron saint of Ustica


Buona festa!

Today is the official feast day of St Bartholomew, patron saint of Ustica, and namesake of our organization, Congregazione di San Barotlomeo Apostolo. The society was founded 134 years ago in New Orleans and has been in continuous operation since then, representing families descended from Italian immigrants from Ustica.

CSBA members and their guests will celebrate this Sunday in New Orleans with a Catholic mass, in which we will proceed as a group fronted by the society banner (weather permitting) and the Italian and American flags. Mass is followed by a lunch at Redemption Restaurant, where besides a great meal, we will raffle off some sacks of lentils from Ustica and be entertained by singer Joe Denone, and it’s rumored that Maria Compagno will have some special treats for us to share. Each member present will also get their Cousinator report which lists how members are actually related to each other. That should spark some interesting conservation!

The Cousinator is a new feature of the CSBA members’ webpage, myCSBA, at the Ustica Genealogy Homepage. It is up and running and all CSBA members can generate their own reports and also drill down further to see the genealogical path of related members to their common ancestor. It has taken many, many years of research and documentation at Ustica.org to finally get to this point and we are proud to be able to offer more interactive content at our website. Another feature added to the UGH for CSBA members is the display of current obituary photos and actual images of documents. These appear when clicking on an individual’s first name in the UGH family charts to bring up the documents associated with that person. Photo and image content is currently limited to what I’ve gathered in the past few years (128 obit photos and 871 obit images), but in time the backlog from the past 13 years will also be added.

Thanks to everyone for your support and participation. The website will continue to evolve with content and improved functionality for both CSBA members and the public in general. Becoming a CSBA member is the best way you can ensure that an organization exists to represent our Usticesi heritage here in the U S, and, you can join for as little as $25. Please consider adding your voice to our community. Details are available at the CSBA membership page and myCSBA.

Have a great feast day!

Chris Caravella,
President, Congregazione di San Bartolomeo Apostolo