You and your cousins
There are four of you — two brothers, and their two cousins. Half of your family tree is exactly the same as theirs. The other half has nothing in common at all.
Why? Because your mums are twins
Two sisters, born on the same day. One of them married ADD and MCD’s dad. The other married RFM and MJM’s dad. That single fact is the reason for everything else on this page.
Same grandma, same grandpa — and then nothing
The half you share
All four of you have the same grandma and grandpa on your mother’s side. So the D’Arcy family and the Falco family belong to every one of you — the soldier who guarded the convict ship, the surveyor who helped map Melbourne, the parrot that shouted “Come in!”, the falcon the Falcos are named after, and the priest at Arienzo in 1767. All four of you, equally.
The half you don’t
On your fathers’ sides you have nothing whatsoever in common. ADD and MCD’s dad brings four families from Croatia, Argentina and South Africa — three continents. RFM and MJM’s dad brings four families from Sicily and Calabria — three towns in the south of Italy. Not one name overlaps.
Three facts from your cousins’ side
RFM is named for his dad, Michael Rocco Mazza, who is named for his grandfather Rocco Arena, born at Scilla in 1924.
The Prostamo line goes back nine generations — older than anybody on ADD and MCD’s side. And it arrives through a great-grandmother, not the surname.
RFM and MJM’s four Italian great-grandparents lie in consecutive plots at Nudgee in Brisbane, buried in the order they died — nineteen years between the first and the last.