Every Family Has a Story

From a Sicilian hill town to Ybor City

Our family’s story begins in Contessa Entellina, a village in western Sicily founded by Albanian refugees in 1450. Between 1883 and 1914, the Tripolinos and Romanos crossed the ocean by way of New Orleans and Ellis Island, and made a new home among the cigar factories of Ybor City in Tampa, Florida.

This site gathers more than 25 years of research: hundreds of relatives, their stories, and the photographs they left behind.

Antonino and Andenzia Tripolino with sons Peter and Philip, Tampa, 1924