About 13 years ago I decided to trace back my family tree. My dad's family was from the villages of Gioiosa Jonica and Martone in Reggio Calabria, Italy. To my surprise, the Mormon Church had microfilmed most birth, marriage, and death records from these villages from years 1809-1910.

But, this could only get me so far back. I had always hoped their would be a technology that could let me know where my ancestors came much further back in time, especially since I knew Calabria had a history of many different ethnic groups crossing through this region.

In 2002 I found a company called FAMILY TREE DNA, and I tested my own Y-DNA, which I inherited pretty much unchanged from my original Loccisano ancestor 1000s of years ago. I found out that my Loccisano ancestor was not a European line, and infact, it originated in the Caucauses mountains.

It would be great to get other Calabrians to take a Y-DNA test to find the origins of their father's surname or an mtDNA test to find the origins of their mother's mother's line. You can learn more about this on my website or on National Geographic's website. Both projects are exactly the same, but if you decide to ordere, please do it through my project so I can compare your DNA data with other Calabrians and so I can include you in my database. Please let me know if you have any questions.

www.calabriadna.com
www3.nationalgeographi...nographic/

Thanks,
Louis Loccisano

Hi Louis!

Thanks so much for coming by and telling us a bit about the project. You know how interested I am in it. Me thinks its time soon to sumbit my own DNA to see where we tie in.

Can you send me a copy of your family file again..I had it on the old PC but I can`t find it right now and I`m interested in comparing surnames.

It looks like a great project and I wish you great success with it. It is important research for the Calabrese people!

Thank you so much, Cathy! I am defiantely hoping that this will project will add to our knowledge of who we are as Calabrese. Your website looks wonderful also, and I will be looking at it in more depth shortly. Thanks so much for adding my project as a link.