ALESSANDRI
(Coat of Arms)

ALES - ALESI - ALESSI
The names are contracted forms of Alessandri from south Italy. In Sicily where this lineage began, a region settled by the Greeks thousands of years ago, Alessandri was revered in memory of the Greek hero - King Alexander the Great. -- From the L.A. Examiner.

Albania -- 15^th Century

In approximately 1460 the Albanian Army was crushed by the Turks. Their leader Scanderbeg (George Castriota), fled from Albania with a large group of patriots to Sicily, and settled an area approximately 30 miles from Palermo, called Piana DeGreci.

The people in this village, today are descendents of these Albanians. Mostly they married among themselves. Over the centuries Sicily was ruled by the French and Spanish, so their must have been a mixture French, Spanish and Sicilian bloods. The dialect spoken by this area today is a mixture of the Sicilian and Albanian language.

In 1848 the City of Palermo overthrew the Spanish rulers. In 1861, Garibaldi from Genoa started the civil war in Sicily that united all of Italy in 1870.