Alessi

The name "Alessi"

In the Italian language, "lessi" is a form of the word "leggere", "to read". The origin of the name Alessi is not clear, but it may have been used to describe the "town crier" who read aloud from bulletins circulated by the Church or civil authorities. More likely is the derviation from the Greek name Alexios (Αλεξιος, meaning 'helper', or 'defender'), because of the origins of the Alessi family in the Greek-Orthodox settled town of Marianopoli. (see below). The Sicilian/Italian pronunciation of the name Alessi is "uh-LAY-see"

The earliest known Alessi in our ancestry was Calogero Alessi, who was born in the mid-1700s in the town of Marianopoli, Province of Caltanissetta, Sicily. Marianopoli had been only recently founded, by Barone Lombardo Della Scala in 1726, and had been populated by "Greeks from Epirus", that is to say Greek Orthodox Christians from the town of Epirus, in Albania, fleeing the Islamic rule of the Ottoman Empire. The names Alii, Aliu, and Aliti are Albanian names, and Alexios (the name of at least two Byzantine emperors) is a Greek name which may have been the source of the name Alessi. "Calogero" may also have been derived from the Greek. "kalos geron" (καλος γερων, meaning 'beautiful elder'. Calogero's son Michelangelo ("angelos" or αγγελος, is a Greek word that means 'messenger'.) Alessi married Vincenza di Forte, also of Marianopoli. It was not until Michelangelo's grandson Calogero Alessi, a widower, married Angela di Giugno of Serradifalco that this branch of the Alessi family settled in Serradifalco, which is also in the Province of Caltanissetta.

Marianopoli was a very small town. In some years, only a half-dozen marriages were recorded. Because of the isolation and "campanilism" (not going so far away that you couldn't see the church steeple), marriages were sometimes between distant (and not so distant) cousins.

The earlier names in this list were found on the Mormon Church's microfilms of civil and church records of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths for Marianopoli and Serradifalco. The Ellis Island website also has some information on the family. I have used the given names that I believe were on the individual's birth records: Concetta, Maria, etc.; even though these names may have later been anglicized. Persons with a # after their name have contacted me. Click on the # to e-mail them. For protection, I have placed the characters nospam. in front of every e-mail address. You must remove the extraneous characters in order to use the address. For a complete list of the related persons in my data base, click here and "surf" the pages at GenCircles.com. That site also gives some information on birthplaces, immigration dates, passenger ship names, and so on. Entries marked with * had more than one partner.

Coniglio Family List	lo Guasto Family List
Antonio Coniglio Family	Giuseppe Coniglio Family

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