My name is Gary Peter Vincolo, Vincola, Van Cola, VanCola!....My grandfather was a "Foundling" in Sicily, Italy, an Abandoned-Orphan!....My Grandfather Peter Vincola was born: Pietro Vincolo!....Named by nuns: Vincolo (VINK'-o-lo), means: "the chains of Christ".....Location: Sicily 1896 ---- Ancient crossroads by seafaring cultures for 1000's of years; Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Greco-Persian and Roman.....Much later the Vikings, Moors, Ottoman, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, English voyagers sailed-by, and Mediterranean pirates.....This chapter of the story opens with a little 10-year-old orphan in 1906, leaning under the sparse shade of an olive tree on the side of a warm stony mound of earth, standing-watch over his small herd of white Agrigento goats. Young Pietro looks far beyond the falling hills of Misilmeri, Sicily, down to the flat azure sea, thinking; Who am I?...Where is my family?

...."VINCOLO": Supposedly a commonly used "term for an Orphan" in Italy back then, why this particular Foundling was “given the name Vincolo", whether by happenstance or precisely by circumstance, and whomever left-him at that orphanage on July 21,1896, forever a mystery...

....But, more specifically during my research: (Vincolo) is a "totally unknown and unused name" to Sicily in particular!

....Now, with searching into the past of our grandfather’s family, the only catch, there aren't any "Vincolo's in Sicily", nor today either,
and I can't find that there were ever-any other Vincolo's living in Sicily specifically...In Italy, yes, but not in Sicily!

....No one else, other than this little boy who had to grow-up in that orphanage, hired-out as a farmhand at age 10 to help tend goats and deliver milk...

-----Seven years pass very slowly for one so small and alone....

....Never looking back, he dreams and plans for when that day finally arrives. He and his best friend, a fellow-foundling left with a Marker, they have earned their tickets on the S.Guglielmo sailing today from Palermo bound for the United States, 1913....And just ahead of angry seas soon to come during the Great War of 1914, their ship of opportunity will be sunk in the very near future by the German Wolfpack U-boat submarine: U-63, on January 8th, 1918…..But that's another story.

-----Each boy now stares outward across the sea, then back to Palermo one last time...Only this time far beyond the horizon due-West toward that fabled-land where their American Dreams await. (Little does young Pietro know what fates lay in-store, he anxiously stands alongside his future brother-in-law.)
......Such is Life!-----

***Now, switching "back to Italy, and back here to America" through Ellis Island’s open-doors, the following Surnames have entered the United States over the decades, back to the 1800s.
And though, by accident or design, these names changed along the way, and many of them if not all on those ship's manifest records were originally spelled "VINCOLO".... Then, as well, on many future US Census Records."

....E.g. Surnames; Vincolo, VinColo, Vin Colo, Vinnicolo, Vincalo, Vincoli, Vincolis, Vincols, Vincola, VinCola, Vin Cola, Vinicola, Vinnicola, Vancola, Van Cola, VanCola, Vanicolo, Vancole....

eMail: Gary Peter VanCola…..VINCOLOfamily@aol.com

To join the (VINCOLO Surname Project) please fill out FTDNA order form, FREE, with your choice of a FamilyTreeDNA test-kit to be automatically mailed out next-day...Good Luck!