More About Ustica and New Orleans

The relationship between Ustica and New Orleans is fascinating, and I was fortunate to be able to interview via email two people who live in the New Orleans area who are partly of Ustican descent. One is the manager of the outstanding website called http://www.ustica.org/ which has the most accurate and detailed information on Ustica and its relationship to New Orleans that I have found. He is Chris Caravella.

And the other is a New Orleanian, now living in Houma, Louisiana, who is a lawyer and an expert of Sicilian/ Ustican genealogy. He also happens to be my cousin, Kerry Byrne. His last name is Irish, but his mother's side of the family -- Debelo/DiBello -- is from Ustica.

I asked Chris about the percent of people in New Orleans who could be descended from Ustica. He said, "A typical 3rd or 4th generation Italian American can probably claim a few cities in Sicily as our grandparents freely intermarried in the US thus clouding the dictinction of being 'from Ustica.' The closest I've come to generating statistics is the 1880 census. From that census, I estimate that the Usticese were about 15% of the total Italian American population of New Orleans. The 1880's were just the start of the mass migration from Ustica so I would expect the percent [would increase] in the following decades. Today [there] are estimated that easily 30 to 50,000 Italian Americans in New Orleans area can claim some ties to Ustica."

Chris added that Usticese people are Sicilians and share the same culture and language.
"What set them apart, " he said, " were the circumstances of living on an island that is only a mile and a half across." The island became over populated and thus people needed to leave. The largest population of emigrants went to New Orleans, California, Algeria, Tunisia, Sardinia, and Naples. Some went to New York.

I asked Chris about the infamous lynchings of Sicilians in 1891 in New Orleans (discussed in my other article on Ustica below). He said that no one from Ustica was lynched in the incident, but that the restaurant called the Oyster Restaurant was somehow involved in the incident and was owend by a family named Verdichizzi which was from Ustica.

Chris also mentioned that the foods on Ustica are Sicilian and that Ustica is known for lentils and capers and wonderful desserts called Giggi (which is like Piniolata) and Cassateddi, a horseshoe-shaped pastry.

Here is Chris' link to Usticese pastries www.ustica.org/san_bartolomeo/catalog/baking.htm

He added that Palermo, Sicily is the closest large city, and that this means there have been many ties between the two. But most of the people on Ustica originated from the island of Lipari near Messina.

My cousin Kerry had some other interesting things to say about Ustica. The island of Ustica started with about 300 families, most from Lipari. This grew to a population of about 5,000. Then people transplanted to New Orleans where there are about 50,000 Usticese descendants today. The population of Ustica today is only about 1,500.

Kerry said that about 95% or more of the people in New Orleans claiming to be "Italian" are actually Sicilian or from the nearby islands like Ustica.

Of his own family --and mine through my uncle-- some of the Sicilian or Ustican names are Mascari, DiBello, Caezza, and Verdichizzi. Also, he told me that several mayors of Kenner, Louisiana (a suburb of New Orleans) were of Usticese descent. Most of Kerry's Sicilian relatives came to New Orleans in the 1860's and 70's.

The impact on the city of New Orleans of the Sicilian and Usticese culture has been tremendous affecting various fields from operating small businesses and groceries, to food services, restaurants, to even participation in law and politics and, of course, religion. (Note: The map above is from Wikimedia Commons of Ustica and the region.)

--Adrian