KittyCat1 -

when we went to Sicily (knowing very little Italian) we found that the people in the towns went out of their way to find more information for us. When your family came from the town they invariably welcome you as "belonging". We wrote to the town before we went, so they expected us ...

Tessa - I think I saved them as thumbnails - should I have loaded them full size then done something else with them??

We will see if I got it!

When my husband Tony and I visited Sicily in 2005 we went to the town offices of both Marianopoli and Villalba - he has ancestors from both. In both towns we were given books on the history (and some families) in the town. Since they gave the same books to both Tony and I, we have duplicates of each ...

You find it by going through as many films as it takes. ;-) What I did - since you allready have a film from about the time the family lived there - go through and extract all with your surname . You are right that film only includes marriages from 1852-1854 but some with your surname may very well ...

That date makes sense with birthdates of the children.

I'm confused though as Josephs Declaration of Intent has them married in Alia Jan 3rd 1875. He was older then and maybe his memory had faded..or maybe for some reason they had to remarry?

If he was born about 1869 (census and passenger list ...

Hi,
Best way is to "rent" the microfilms and view at an LDS (Mormon) Family History Center - I drove the 40 miles each way weekly to the only one in VT but was able to trace family in Messina a long way back. This page shows 15 microfilms (of the actual records - not always easy to read but ...