"From Bona"

An important part of every family tree is the paternal line (your father, his father, his father, his father, etc) - from where your surname comes.

My dad had photos of his grandfather Leonard (right), whose father, Carmelo, had been given the nickname "La Karm".

The only information I had about Carmelo's father (my 3rd Great grandpa) was that he was born in Bona, but his parents were Maltese.

Some geographical research located Bona (Bone) in Algeria, North Africa. His birth there was estimated to be in the 1830s and he would've been part of the European Colonization of Algeria.

"Colonization by Europeans (½ of whom were French and the rest mainly Spanish, Italian, and Maltese) began c.1840 and accelerated after 1848, when Algeria was declared to be French territory. " http://www.columbiagazetteer.org/public/Algeria.html

Attempts to contact Algerian nationals via genealogy forums proved futile and when a reply arrived to one of my emails (a month later) it had nothing to offer.

Alas, for now I had given up of finding anything much about this important ancestor. But time would present other opportunities... will tell you all about it in the near future