First of all, let me explain how I obtained the information to format this Colloraffi family tree. As my father grew older, he missed his Colloraffi family. He had not met, seen, or talked to, or heard of another Colloraffi since his father, Vincenzo died, around 1947. He often said that he was the "last of the Colloraffis", since he had had four daughters. He would sadly sigh and then say, "When I die, the Colloraffi name will die with me."

I was working on a book for my children and descendants on my mother's basically Scotch - Irish family and it continued to grow into a very interesting and thick volumne, as I learned more about their history and family stories. My father also loved history and knew a great deal about it, so we would discuss what I had found out about my Thompson/Wilson ancestors. He urged me to "write to the Mormons", as he was of the mistaken belief that the Colloraffi Family history was stored in their salt-mine vaults, containing records, in the state of Utah. I did investigate this and discovered that of the 300 million names that the Mormons had some information on, not one was a Colloraffi of any spelling. I also learned the process for finding out more information about our Colloraffi family.

While my father was alive, through a national phone directory on the computer, I was able to locate and write to two different families, living in the United States. I wrote to both of them and they were kind enough to write back and tell me a little about their families. None of us knew if we were related. My grandparents were from Sant' Agata di Militello. General Joseph Collorafi's family lived in San Piero Patti, and the family of Peter S. Collorafi had come from Patti. All families had lived in Sicily, no more than 100 miles apart. However, my father died at peace and a happy man that he was not the "last of the Colloraffis". I promised him that I would research and try to learn as much as possible about his family and write it down for our children, grandchildren and descendants.

I knew that this would be a very difficult and time consuming project, and I didn't even know if I could do it since I would be trying to read Italian and the only words I knew were cooking ones such as "pizza".

I also knew that this had to wait until I retired from my job as a school counselor because of the time and effort that would be required.
In December, 1998, I attempted to locate all of the Colloraffi and Collorafi families in the world. First, I found the name in the phone directories of Italy and the United States of America. We also located several e-mail addresses. One was in France and another in Australia. My father knew little about his family, but told me all that he could remember. I asked family members to please share with me any information on their own family or the Colloraffi family in general. I received several e-mail messages and about five letters. From this I knew that our family had lived in the Librizzi, San Piero Patti, Patti, and Sant' Agata di Militello areas of Sicily.

I then went to the Latter Day Saints (LDS) Family History Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan - a nearby town- and found the microfilm numbers for the civil records that they had photographed in these places. I ordered the microfilms, two or three at a time, and when they were mailed from Salt Lake City, Utah, I sat at the microfilm viewer and looked at each one, line by line, until I located our name. I then enlarged and copied the document, brought the copy home, and with the help of my husband, who knows Latin - and Italian dictionairies, I tried to interpret the handwriting, find the information and slowly place family groupings together.

Person by person, family by family, our tree has grown. It took me over two years to read the records which have been copied. These are: the census of 1681, the census of 1715, and civil records from 1820 to 1910. Information after that time have come from many, many Colloraffi family members, all over the world!

Our son, Robert Anschuetz II, who lives 1500 miles away from us in Orlando, Florida, has been a tremendous help. He created a web page for our Collorafi/Colloraffi family and this has allowed other family members to find out about the Colloraffi Quest project, contribute to it, and learn more about our family. Robert is kind and talented enough to update the web site every few months with new, corrected, or updated information. The Collorafi/Colloraffi Famiglia web page is at: http://geocities.datacellar.net/Heartland/Prairie/8358

In order to know more about our family, my husband and I have been trying to learn as much about the culture and history of Sicily as possible. We are studying Italian and we have also visited Italy twice in the past two years. We were fortunate to stay on the island of Sicily for over two weeks and travel with Grand Circle Tours, which is an educational organization. The goal of the trip was to learn about the people ,history and culture of Sicily. We ate lunch in a farm kitchen in the mountains of our ancestors, saw folk dancers and singers, drank the local wine, visted markets, museums, ruins and historical sites, ate the food, and had lectures and trips led by experts in many areas of interest such as history, politics, language, and so forth. I continue to read and learn more about Sicily and our proud and noble history each week.

One of the many joys of this project has been to meet other members of our small, but wonderful, Colloraffi family in person, by e-mail, phone, or letter. Because of this project, cousins, who have lost track of each other through the passing of time and distance have been reunited!
This book is being written on a computer and published on the web so that, like a family, it can grow. We have organized it so that family pictures, stories and chapters can be added, errors corrected, and new events such as marriages and births can be recorded.