Australia
Australia
The Italian half of this archive was built out of parish registers. The Australian half was built out of a cemetery index, and it answered a question the registers could not.
Two brothers married two sisters
This is the finding. The National Archives of Australia holds, in its Brisbane office, the immigration files of both couples:
Falco, Carmine; wife Francesca [nee Zampiello]; and child Giuseppina [known as Josephine]
Falco, Raffaele [Italian, born 1925]; wife Caterina [nee Zampiello]; and children Filomena and Antonio
Carmine (born Forchia, 1930) and Raffaele (born 1925) were brothers — both sons of Carminantonio Falco and Filomena Annecchino. Francesca (born Arpaia, 1928) and Caterina (born 7 July 1925) were both Zampiello. Two Falco brothers of Forchia married two Zampiello sisters of Arpaia, and both couples came to Brisbane.
And they were not the only sisters to come. Raffaela Zampiello arrived with her husband Angelo Michele Servodio; Filomena Zampiello , born 24 August 1932, arrived on the Roma in 1960 with her husband Umberto Miceli under the Australian–Italian Assisted Migration Agreement. Their father Angelo Zampiello has a Brisbane file of his own, dated 1964.
Giuseppina is recorded in her family's own immigration file as "known as Josephine" — the small administrative act by which an Italian child becomes an Australian one.
The voyage, 26 March 1964
The passenger index names four Falcos on one voyage:
| Name | Arrived | Port | Ship | Embarked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falco, Carmine | 26 Mar 1964 | Brisbane | Sydney | Naples |
| Falco, Francesca | 26 Mar 1964 | Brisbane | Sydney | Naples |
| Falco, Giuseppina | 26 Mar 1964 | Brisbane | Sydney | Naples |
| Falco, Antonio | 26 Mar 1964 | Brisbane | Sydney | Naples |
Carmine, Francesca, and their children Giuseppina — eight years old — and Antonio. Antonio does not appear in the immigration file, which names only Giuseppina; he is almost certainly the Anthony Falco of the family record, and this is the first document to place him on the voyage.
The Sydney was a Flotta Lauro liner, put on the
Europe–Australia migrant run in 1951 together with her sister the Roma, carrying 800
passengers from Genoa, Naples and Messina. A contemporary account has the pair setting
a whole new standard in migrant transportation
. It is a small coincidence worth noting that
Francesca's sister Filomena Zampiello came out on the Roma four years
earlier — the two sisters crossed on sister ships.
The list itself, read
The forty-two images have now been pulled and read, and they are open to any visitor — no RecordSearch login is needed. The file is the Fremantle disembarkation return for the voyage, and the Falco are not in it: the ship's Fremantle list runs DE CAIRES … D'ITRI … MARTINO and holds no F at all. They are in the Quarantine Service list bound in behind it, which covers the whole ship for every port:
492 FALCO Carmine Tour. Naples Brisbane 43 Mount Joy – Pitrie T.ce – Brisbane 2.9.63
493 FALCO Francesca " " " " "
494 FALCO Giuseppina
495 FALCO Antonio
So the family sailed from Naples and landed at Brisbane, and the address they gave was 43 Mount Joy, Petrie Terrace, Brisbane — notified on 2 September 1963, nearly seven months before they sailed. The head of the sheet gives the ship as the Sydney, official number 668, Lauro Lines, master Leopoldo Cafiero, voyage Genoa to Brisbane, arrived 26.3.64.
This corrects a date this archive had carried. The direct line said Carmine and Francesca reached Brisbane “about 1957”. That was never a record — it was an inference from the 1957–1977 span of their Brisbane immigration file. The passenger list is the first document to give the arrival a ship, a date and a street, and it says 26 March 1964. The 1957 end of the file's range still wants an explanation; it may be when the file was opened rather than when they arrived.
The passenger list is digitised and open: NAA: K269, 26 MAR 1964 SYDNEY, 42 pages, item 12100311 — the Falco are on page 27.
The files
| Series | Control symbol | Title | Dates | Item ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| J25 | 1971/9830 | Falco, Carmine; wife Francesca [nee Zampiello]; and child Giuseppina [known as Josephine] | 1957–1977 | 5115541 |
| J25 | 1972/4964 | Falco, Raffaele [Italian, born 1925]; wife Caterina [nee Zampiello]; and children Filomena and Antonio | 1959–1979 | 5054689 |
| J25 | 1964/1364 | Zampiello, Angelo | 1964 | 1692778 |
| J25 | 1972/5134 | Servodio, Angelo Michele; wife Raffaela [nee Zampiello]; and children Maria, Angelo | 1960–1976 | 5072004 |
| A2478 | MICELI U | MICELI Umberto b. 1934; Filomena (nee Zampiello) b. 24 Aug 1932 — per ship ROMA, 1960 | 1960 | 1415472 |
J25 is the Brisbane series of naturalisation and immigration case files. None of these are digitised — they exist on paper in Brisbane and can be ordered or read in person. They are the single most promising unread source for this family.
Nudgee Cemetery
Five Falco burials, with exact dates and plot numbers — and two corrections to what the family record said.
| Name | Born | Died | Plot | Who |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carmine Falco | 27 Apr 1985 | CHAP-082-B2 | Carminantonio, b. Arienzo 1901 | |
| Filomena Falco | 10 Aug 1988 | CHAP-082-B1 | Filomena Annecchino, b. 1897 — beside her husband | |
| Raffaele Falco | interred 30 Sep 1988 | V-0946 | b. 1925, son of Carminantonio | |
| Caterina Falco | 7 Jul 1925 | 14 Feb 2004 | V-0947 | Caterina Zampiello, Raffaele's wife |
| Francesca Falco | 27 Apr 1928 | 10 Sep 2022 | V-0949 | Francesca Zampiello, Carmine's wife |
Carminantonio Falco died on 27 April 1985, not in 1988. The family record carried 1988 — which is in fact the year his wife died. And Filomena Annecchino's death date, blank in the family record, was 10 August 1988. They lie in adjacent niches, CHAP-082-B1 and B2.
Raffaele, Caterina and Francesca lie in adjacent plots — V-0946, V-0947, V-0949.
How this was found
Among the photographs attached to the family tree was one that was not a photograph: a scan of a typed burial index dated 2 January 1991, listing four Falcos with page numbers. That scrap named a Caterina and a Raffaele Falco nobody had accounted for. Searching the Nudgee registers for those two names produced the plot numbers and dates; searching the National Archives for Zampiello — a surname with about 123 bearers in the world — produced the immigration files that explained who they were.
Plates
A hand-tinted paired portrait: Giuseppa Ferrara at the left, Angelo Zampiello at the right.
A memorial card, photographed on a crocheted cloth and rotated upright here: «ZAMPIELLO ANGELO — Nato il 31 agosto 1895 — Morto il 25 aprile 1972». It corroborates both dates from the family's own paper.
Two oval portraits mounted on card. The same photograph appears twice in the family scans, filed once under Angelo Zampiello and once under Carminantonio Falco. This archive cannot tell which couple it is, and says so rather than choosing.
Born 10 April 1897. Photographed in old age in a headscarf and crocheted shawl. The family remembers her hiding in a tree above her husband and his mistress.
Page 64 of a burial index. Four Falcos: Carmine Antonio and Filomena on page 504, Caterina and Raffaele on page 284. It was this scrap that led to the Nudgee burial registers, and from there to the Brisbane immigration files.
Quarantine Service passenger list of the ss «Sydney», Lauro Lines, master Leopoldo Cafiero, Genoa to Brisbane, calling at Fremantle on 26 March 1964. Numbers 492 onward: «FALCO Carmine — Tourist — Naples — Brisbane — 43 Mount Joy, Petrie Terrace, Brisbane — 2.9.63», and on the line below him FALCO Francesca. Two further passengers of the same surname follow them on the sheet; they are cropped out here and unnamed below, because this archive does not publish the living. Until now the archive dated this arrival to «about 1957» — an inference from the 1957–1977 span of the family's Brisbane immigration file, and it was wrong. The list is the first document to give the family a ship, a date and a street.
Arienzo civil death register 1842, atto 41, 20 July. «Sono comparsi VINCENZO CIOFFI, di anni quarantasei, di professione VINIVENDOLO, regnicolo, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA, E GIUSEPPE FALCO, DI ANNI CINQUANTADUE, DI PROFESSIONE COLONO, regnicolo, DOMICILIATO IN STRADA CAMELLARA, i quali han dichiarato che nel giorno diciannove del mese di Luglio anno corrente, alle ore ventitré, è morta nella sua propria casa MARIA MAGGIORE, di anni settanta, vedova di Aniello Diglio, figlia di Vincenzo Maggiore defunto.» A new sighting of Giuseppe Falco on the line's own street, in the trade the register always gives him. It also sharpens the age problem rather than solving it: the register makes him THIRTY-SEVEN in 1817, FIFTY-SIX in 1828, FIFTY-TWO here in July 1842, FIFTY-SIX again in May 1843 and FIFTY-FIVE in August 1843. Fifty-two and then fifty-six ten months later cannot both be measurements. The archive publishes the series rather than choosing a birth year from it. And the neighbour matters too: a third Cioffi is now attested on strada Camellara, after the Luca and Giovanni Cioffi who reported Chiara Rivetti's death there in 1843 — the Falco and the Cioffi were neighbours on that street across both years.
Arienzo civil death register 1842, atto 55, 25 August. «Sono comparsi ANTONIO CIOFFI, di anni trentadue, contadino, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA, e GIOVANNI CIOFFI, di anni quarantasette, contadino, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA, i quali han dichiarato che nel giorno ventiquattro del mese di Agosto anno corrente, alle ore ventidue, è morto nella sua propria casa MATTEO FALCO D'ANNI DUE, nato in Arienzo, domiciliato ivi, FIGLIO DI MICHELE FALCO, di professione contadino, domiciliato ivi, E DI ANTONIA MIGLIORE, domiciliata ivi.» A Falco household this archive did not have: MICHELE FALCO and ANTONIA MIGLIORE, on strada Camellara, both named without «fu» and so both alive in 1842. The child's name is worth pausing over and not worth over-reading. Neapolitan custom named a first son for his father's father, and this boy was called MATTEO — the name of the man at the head of this line, Matteo Falco who married Francesca Crisci. That is a reason to look for Michele among Matteo's sons. IT IS NOT EVIDENCE THAT HE WAS ONE. No act names Michele Falco's parents, and the archive is not going to supply them from a naming habit. One thing the act does settle: GIOVANNI CIOFFI, forty-seven here, is forty-eight when he reports Chiara Rivetti's death on the same street thirteen months later. In a register that gives Giuseppe Falco four different ages, this clerk got one right.
Arienzo civil death register 1841, atti 72 and 74, 16 and 19 October, side by side. Both open «Terra di Lavoro, sono comparsi GIUSEPPE FALCO … di professione COLONO, regnicolo, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA». The first gives his age as CINQUANTASEI, the second, three days later and in the same hand, as CINQUANTATRE. This is the plate that ends the argument about his age. Across twenty-six years the register makes him thirty-seven, forty, forty-six, forty-six, forty, fifty-six, fifty-six, fifty-three, fifty-two, fifty-six and fifty-five. They are not measurements of a man; they are what a clerk wrote when nobody had the paperwork. No birth year for Giuseppe Falco is derived from any of them. What the acts do establish is steadier and more useful: over twenty-six years, the same name, the same trade — COLONO, a share-working farmer, not a day labourer — and the same street.
Arienzo civil death register 1841, atto 1, the first act of the year. «Sono comparsi [GASPARO] CRISCI, di anni cinquantasette, contadino, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA, E BENEDETTO FALCO, DI ANNI QUARANTA, di professione contadino, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA.» A Falco this archive did not have, born about 1801, on the line's own street. He is recorded and he is NOT placed: no act names his parents, and nothing ties him to Giuseppe Falco, to the Michele Falco of the 1842 volume, or to the direct line. He appears once in ninety-one acts. Two cautions belong on the same page as the find. The surname is a strong reading rather than a certainty — this hand's looped capital serves several letters, and it is the shape together with the street that carries it. And the first declarant's surname could be CRISCI or CIOFFI; the archive is not choosing, because a Crisci on strada Camellara would mean something and a coin-toss is not evidence.
Arienzo civil death register 1840, atto 50. «È morta nella sua propria casa MADDALENA CIOFFI D'UN ANNO, nata in Arienzo, di professione contadina, domiciliata ivi, FIGLIA DI RAFFAELE CIOFFI, di professione contadino, domiciliato ivi, E DI FRANCESCA FALCO, domiciliata ivi.» This is the third act naming the couple, and the earliest. Raffaele Cioffi and Francesca Falco, of strada Cioffi, buried three children in four years: MADDALENA at one year on 17 August 1840, LUIGI at one day old on 2 January 1842, ANTONIO at seventeen days on 10 June 1843. Both parents are named without «fu» in all three, so both were alive throughout. The archive first published this woman's name, from an unenlarged strip of the 1843 act, as «Domenica Falco» — and flagged it at the time as a hypothesis rather than a finding. Three acts, three clerks and one spelling have now corrected it. What none of them gives is her own parents, and the archive still does not guess at them.
Arienzo civil death register 1840, atto 28. «È morta NEL CONSERVATORIO DI SAN FILIPPO [NERI] — MARIA GIUSEPPA SCARPATI D'ANNI SETTANTADUE, nata in Arienzo, DI PROFESSIONE SORORA DEL CONSERVATORIO, domiciliata ivi, FIGLIA DI DON STEFANO SCARPATI defunto, di professione POSSIDENTE, domiciliato ivi, E DI DONNA SERAFINA CIMMINO defunta.» Two things at once. First, Arienzo had a SECOND religious house: everything this archive had found until now happened at the Ave Gratia Plena, and this is a conservatorio — confirmed from the other direction by atto 46 of the same volume, which names a strada San Filippo Neri. Second, she is almost certainly the sister of the ARCHPRIEST. The 1842 register buries Don ANGELO SCARPATI, seventy-six, arciprete of Arienzo, «figlio del Signor STEFANO SCARPATI defunto, POSSIDENTE, e della Signora FAUSTINA CIMMINO». Same father's name, trade and rank; the mother's surname is Cimmino in both; the children born about 1766 and 1768. The one discrepancy is the mother's forename — Serafina here, Faustina there — which is exactly the sort of thing a clerk gets wrong. This is published as a strong inference with the discrepancy named, not as a proven sibling pair. What it does establish outright is that the archpriest came from a propertied house which put a daughter into a conservatorio and a son into the parish.
Arienzo civil death register 1839, atto 36. «Sono comparsi RAFFAELE CIMMINO, di anni trentotto, di professione vaticale, regnicolo, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA, E VINCENZO FALCO, DI ANNI QUARANTADUE, DI PROFESSIONE COLONO, regnicolo, DOMICILIATO IN STRADA CAMELLARA, i quali han dichiarato che nel giorno quattordici del mese di Marzo anno corrente, alle ore due, è morto nella sua propria casa ANDREA CIOFFI d'anni ottantadue, vedovo di Maria Laudato.» THIS IS GENERATION THREE. Vincenzo Falco — born 1793, married Andreana Crisci by act 26 of 15 December 1814, dead at Arienzo on 15 May 1875 — alive, on the family street, and described by the trade the register reserves for a share-working farmer rather than a day labourer: COLONO, the same rank it gives Giuseppe Falco. His stated ages are as unreliable as Giuseppe's. The registers make him TWENTY-ONE at his marriage in 1814, THIRTY-FIVE at a son's birth in 1816, TWENTY-SEVEN at another son's birth in 1818, and FORTY-TWO here. Thirty-five in 1816 and twenty-seven in 1818 cannot both be true of one man. The identification therefore rests on none of them: it rests on a single Vincenzo Falco household on strada Camellara, a colono, in a year he is documented to have been living.
Arienzo civil death register 1839, atto 57. «Sono comparsi GIUSEPPE FALCO, DI ANNI CINQUANTATRÉ, DI PROFESSIONE CONTADINO, regnicolo, DOMICILIATO IN STRADA CAMELLARA, e ANIELLO CIOFFI, di anni quarantaquattro, contadino, domiciliato in strada Camellara, i quali han dichiarato che nel giorno tre del mese di Giugno anno corrente, alle ore sedici, è morta nella sua propria casa FILOMENA CIOFFI d'mesi quattordici, figlia di Gaspare Cioffi.» The 1839 volume holds BOTH men of the line: Vincenzo Falco, forty-two, a COLONO, in March, and Giuseppe Falco, fifty-three, a CONTADINO, here in June — the first time this archive has found the two of them in one year's register, on one street. It also shows that Giuseppe's TRADE wavers as freely as his age. The registers call him COLONO in 1828, 1841, 1842 and 1843 — a share-working farmer — and CONTADINO here, a day labourer. The two words mark a real difference in standing, and the clerks used them interchangeably of the same man. His stated ages across 1817 to 1843 now run 37, 40, 46, 46, 40, 56, 53, 56, 53, 52, 56, 55.
«Documenti del Matrimonio tra Vincenzo Falco di Pasquale, e di Chiara Rivetti, ed Andreana Crisci di Arcangelo, e di Sara Ruggiero» — four parents named before a single act is opened. The pencil 16 is the bundle number that hid this file from an earlier search looking for act 26.
Copied from the parish register (liber IX, fol. 47 a tergo) by the archpriest Giacinto Morgillo on 13 September 1814 for his marriage file. «…baptizavi infantem natum ex Paschale Falco, et Clara Rivetta Conjugibus … cui dedi nomen Vincentius Raphael.» The document that settled the seven-way age conflict — and revealed that he passed his own second name to two sons.
«…baptizavit infantem natam ex Archangelo Crisci, et Sara Ruggiero Conjugibus ex mea Parochia, cui dedit nomen Adriana.» Liber IX, fol. 94 a tergo. Her name at the font — the root of the Andreana, Andriana and Andrea the registers give her — and the end of the Crisci-versus-Cioffi conflict.
Before the notary Felice Morgillo: «li conjugi PASQUALE FALCO del fu MATTEO, e CHIARA RIVETTI del fu NICOLA, domiciliati … strada Camellara … prestano il loro rispettivo consenso a Vincenzo Falco loro figlio». Vincenzo was 23, under the Code's threshold of 25, so his parents had to speak. The earliest document that names Matteo Falco — and the earliest that proves him dead.
Before the notary Salvio Morgillo: «li conjugi ARCANGELO CRISCI fu NICOLA, e SARA RUGGIERO di Pasquale … strada Camellara … prestano il libero rispettivo consenso ad ANDREANA CRISCI loro figlia». Two names never recorded before — Nicola Crisci, already dead, and Pasquale Ruggiero, still living — and the Crisci placed on the Falco street.
Publication act 33, read by the sindaco Vincenzo Morgillo before the door of the town hall at one in the afternoon. It states four ages at once: Vincenzo 23, his father Pasquale 60, his mother Chiara Rivetti 47, and Andreana Crisci 17 compiti. The two young people are right to the year; the father is wrong by fourteen.
«Numero 8 — Comune Corpo d'Arienzo — Documenti pel Matrimonio tra LUIGI FALCO figlio di SEBASTIANO, e di COLOMBA MONTEFUSCO, e [C]ecilia Vecchio(?) figlia del fu Sabbatino». Found by sweeping all 385 images of the volume: the bundles are bound OUT OF NUMERIC ORDER — bundle 1 sits at image 20 and bundle 2 at image 3 — so nothing but a full sweep would have reached it.
«…Parochus Ecclesiae Parochialis S. FELICIS MARTYRIS hujus Terrae Argentii, DIOCESIS S. AGATHAE GOTHORUM … libro VII baptizatorum … fol. 148 … Die vigesima septima mensis Februarii millesimo septingentesimo nonagesimo septimo 1797 … sacro fonte expiavit infantem natum ex legitimis Conjugibus SEBASTIANO FALCO et COLUMBA MONTEFUSCO.» The San Felice Falco belonged to the parish of San Felice Martire, in the diocese of Sant'Agata de' Goti — a jurisdiction this archive has never worked in.
From the family's own scans. No photograph of a living person is published here — a further nineteen photographs in the family tree show living members and are held back. Their names are published; their faces are not.
Still to do
These, and every other open question in the archive, are collected at Open questions.
- Order the J25 files. Now that the ship and date are known, these files should add the sponsor, the addresses, the occupations, and often photographs. Both J25, 1971/9830 and J25, 1972/4964 can be requested; 1972/4964 is already marked Open.
- Read the 42 digitised pages of NAA: K269, 26 MAR 1964 SYDNEY to find the family's own line — age, occupation, and intended address in Australia.
- Angelo Zampiello's 1964 Brisbane file may settle whether he emigrated or was merely sponsored — and may carry his Abyssinia service.
- Giovanni Zampiello , born 1 December 1911, appears in three files as an Italian prisoner of war or internee in Australia, 1939–46, PWI60047. Whether he is kin is untested — but Zampiello is a one-village name, and that village is Arpaia.