Open questions
Open questions
What this archive does not know, why it does not know it, and — where it matters — what it would take to find out. Published because the person holding the missing piece is more likely to be a stranger than the person who wrote this.
Doors that need a person
These are not research problems. They are things a machine cannot do and a human can.
The two Brisbane immigration files
NAA: J25, 1971/9830 and J25, 1972/4964
Paper only, held in Brisbane, not digitised. Case files of this era normally carry the sponsor, the addresses, the occupations, and often photographs. 1972/4964 is already marked Open.
What would open it: Anyone can order a copy through the National Archives of Australia.
The restricted Caserta images
FamilySearch, several Caserta collections
Some record images return “This record can only be displayed on certain accounts.” The index and the machine transcriptions are open; the scans are not.
What would open it: A visit to a FamilySearch centre or an affiliate library unlocks them.
The two un-scanned volumes
Archivio di Stato di Benevento
Arpaia births 1895 and Forchia births 1897 are not digitised — the shelf-marks run consecutively and skip those years. Between them they hold Angelo Zampiello's birth and Filomena Annecchino's, the two this archive cannot prove.
What would open it: Ordering or reading those two volumes at Benevento. See the Antenati page.
The processetti
Antenati — 258 volumes across four towns
Marriage supplement files: birth extracts, parental consents, and death certificates of parents already dead. One file can carry two generations backwards. None have been read.
What would open it: Time, and a reader of Italian record hands. This is the largest unworked seam in the project.
The Museo Alfonsiano, Arienzo
The old bishop's palace beside Sant'Andrea
It stands next to the church in which this family was baptised for two centuries, and may hold or know of parish material that was never filmed.
What would open it: A letter, or a visit.
DNA
MyHeritage / 23andMe
Matches on the Falco and Zampiello sides could confirm or break the Annecchino descent below, and could find living cousins in Campania. No register can do that.
What would open it: The family already has tests in play; the matches need working through.
Questions the records have not answered
Who was Matteo Falco's father?
The line's own frontier
Matteo was an adult by 1759 and fathering children from 1767. His marriage to Francesca Crisci — which would name his father — should sit in the Arienzo marriage register between about 1760 and 1766. It was searched for across 2,056 transcribed pages and not found. His baptism would fall in the gap the baptism register leaves between 1738 and 1761.
Where to look: Try the bishop's duplicate series, the Stato delle Anime, or Antenati.
Is Francesco Falco of Paolisi an ancestor?
1714–1726
The earliest Arienzo Falco household with a stated origin. The dates would allow him to be Matteo's grandfather. No document joins them, and this archive has not joined them.
Where to look: The 1672–1738 baptism register, read properly.
Filomena Annecchino's act of birth
10 April 1897, Forchia
The descent from Carmine Annecchino and Maria Carfora fits the tree exactly — including the grandfather's name — but her own birth record was not found. The harvest is capped by FamilySearch's paging limit and by fuzzy matching across Annecchino, Annecchini and Anicchino.
Where to look: Full-text search on the Benevento collection, or the Forchia register images.
Was the cross for gallantry?
Rome, 14 September 1938
The war itself is settled: the family's own papers hold the Croce al Merito di Guerra conferred on «all'operaio Zampiello Angelo di Tommaso» for operations in East Africa from 3 October 1935. What is NOT settled is the family's account that it was for saving many lives. A merit cross is given for service in a theatre; gallantry would ordinarily carry a Medaglia al Valor Militare instead. The bravery may be true and separately awarded, or it may be the family's gloss on this certificate.
Where to look: His foglio matricolare at the Archivio di Stato di Benevento — which would also give the First World War service of a man born in 1895, entirely untraced.
Angelo Zampiello's birth record
31 August 1895, Arpaia
His birth date is now corroborated by his memorial card, but the Arpaia births of 1895 are one of the two volumes not digitised, so the act itself is still unread.
Where to look: Ordering the volume at the Archivio di Stato di Benevento. See the Antenati page.
When did Carmine and Francesca arrive? — ANSWERED
Brisbane, 26 March 1964
The passenger list has now been pulled and read. NAA item 12100311 is the FREMANTLE disembarkation return for the ss SYDNEY of the Lauro Lines — and the Falco are NOT in it; that 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. At numbers 492 onward: «FALCO Carmine — Tourist — Naples — BRISBANE — 43 Mount Joy, Petrie Terrace, Brisbane — 2.9.63», and FALCO Francesca on the line below. The address was notified on 2 September 1963, nearly seven months before they sailed. The ship is the Sydney, official number 668, master Leopoldo Cafiero, Genoa to Brisbane, arrived 26.3.64.
Where to look: Closed, and it CORRECTS this archive. The direct line said Carmine and Francesca reached Brisbane «about 1957» — an inference from the 1957–1977 span of their Brisbane immigration file, never a record. The arrival is 26 MARCH 1964. What is still open is CARMINANTONIO and FILOMENA, the generation above: neither is on this voyage, and neither has been found in any passenger list. The 1957 end of the file's date range also still wants an explanation; it may be when the file was opened rather than when anyone arrived.
Two Carmine Annecchinos
Forchia, 1883
One with a wife Maria Carfora, one with Maria Giovanna Crisci — and children twelve days apart in September 1883. Two men, or an indexing error.
Where to look: The Forchia baptisms, read directly.
Which Raffaele is generation four? — ANSWERED
Arienzo, 1816, 1817 and 1818
Vincenzo Falco and Andreana Crisci named a son RAFFAELE twice: act 56 of 25 April 1816, and act 47 of 10 May 1818, both born in their own house on strada Camellara. Ordinarily the first of two children sharing a name has died before the second is named — but no burial had been found, so this archive carried generation four as DISPUTED rather than assert the likelier answer. The 1817 death register settles it. On 28 OCTOBER 1817, «Raffaele Falco figlio di Vincenzo Falco, e d'Andreana Crisci» was declared dead at seven in the morning, aged about eighteen months. That is the child of April 1816. The Raffaele of 10 May 1818 is the one who lived, married Angela Rosa Morgillo and died in 1880. Generation four is documented.
Where to look: Closed — and it closed something else on the way. The burial was declared by GIUSEPPE FALCO, 37, massaro di campagna of strada Camellara, who with Sabato Vassallo is recorded as a «PARENTE» of the family. Giuseppe is a documented son of Matteo, which would make him this child's great-uncle. It is the second time the Arienzo registers use the word kin of a Falco declarant on that street. And the age problem the two birth acts left behind — Vincenzo thirty-five in 1816 and twenty-seven in 1818 — IS NOW SOLVED. His baptism extract, found in his marriage dossier, has him baptised on 1 FEBRUARY 1792. He was twenty-six in May 1818, so the 1818 act's twenty-seven is right by the reckoning these clerks used, counting the year a man is in. He was twenty-four in 1816, so the 1816 act's thirty-five is simply an error. The extract also explains the name: he was christened VINCENZO RAFFAELE, and was passing on his own second name to both sons.
Arcangelo Crisci, twice — ANSWERED
Arienzo, 1817 and 1820
He appeared both as Andreana Crisci's father and as the husband of Anna Falco: one man twice married, or two men? The 1817 birth register settles it — TWO Arcangelo Crisci declare births in that single year, one aged 52 and one aged 30. And the 1820 death register now says who Anna Falco was. She died on 23 August 1820, aged twenty-five, «moglie di ARCANGELO CRISCI … FIGLIA DI PASQUALE FALCO … E DI CHIARA RIVETTI» — a daughter of this line's own generation two, and a sister of Vincenzo. Seven months earlier she had buried a two-day-old son, Fortunato Crisci, on strada Camellara.
Where to look: Closed, and now confirmed a second way. The younger Arcangelo, born about 1787, married the line's own Anna Falco, born about 1795; the elder, born about 1765, is Andreana's father. ANDREANA'S BAPTISM, found in her 1814 marriage dossier in September 2026, proves the second half by arithmetic rather than inference: she was baptised on 30 November 1796, so her father was a married man with a child that year — the elder was thirty-one, the younger was NINE. Two men, and both of them married a Falco or fathered a Falco's wife. Note that this archive previously said Anna died «at 22» — the act says TWENTY-FIVE.
Sara Ruggiero's death — ANSWERED. She did not die.
Arienzo, 1815 read in full
The last thing standing between this archive and a closed Arcangelo Crisci question. The elder Arcangelo could only ALSO have married Anna Falco if his wife Sara Ruggiero had died between December 1814, when she consented before a notary to her daughter's marriage, and about 1818. The 1815 death register — the only unread year in that window — has now been read end to end: 77 acts, no Sara Ruggiero. And act 4 of 9 January 1815 does better than a negative: «CARMELA CRISCI figlia d'ARCANGELO CRISCI, e SARA RUGGIERO, di giorni sette, domiciliata strada Camellara» — SHE BORE A CHILD IN THE FIRST WEEK OF 1815. A new daughter of the family, Adriana's baby sister, born three weeks after Adriana's wedding and dead at seven days. The declarants are the two families side by side: ANDREA CRISCI, 42, and GIUSEPPE FALCO, 30, both of strada Camellara, both «vicini» — neighbours, and this archive does not upgrade that word.
Where to look: Closed. TWO Arcangelo Crisci, and Anna Falco married the younger. THE TRAP THIS NEARLY FELL INTO IS WORTH RECORDING: a Sara Ruggiero DID die at Arienzo on 13 December 1817, and she was married to an ARCANGELO. She is a different woman — daughter of the late Raffaele Ruggiero and Fortunata Villano, wife of Arcangelo SOSSI, not Crisci. Two women of one name in one town, both married to an Arcangelo. And the families are linked: Fortunata Villano, that woman's mother, stood godmother at Adriana Crisci's baptism in 1796. Noted, not built on.
Chiara Rivetti's age — three answers, none agreeing
Arienzo, 1767 / 1763 / 1772
The banns of September 1814 make her FORTY-SEVEN, implying a birth about 1767. Her burial of 1843 made her EIGHTY, implying 1763. The family tree says 1772. The same 1814 act gets her son's age and her son's bride's age right to the year, so the clerk was not uniformly careless — he was careless about her.
Where to look: Her baptism, in the Arienzo parish register. Not on Antenati.
The Arienzo parish baptism register, liber IX
cited 1814, location unknown
The 1814 marriage dossier quotes it twice — folio 47 a tergo for Vincenzo Falco's baptism of 1792, folio 94 a tergo for Adriana Crisci's of 1796. So in September 1814 the volume was in the hands of the archpriest Giacinto Morgillo at Sant'Andrea Apostolo. IT IS NOT ON ANTENATI. If it survives it holds the baptisms of this entire generation, and it reaches a generation earlier than the civil registers begin in 1809.
Where to look: Ask the parish of Sant'Andrea and the Museo Alfonsiano at Arienzo. Not attempted.
Pasquale Falco's age, off by fourteen
Arienzo, September 1814
The banns call him SIXTY, implying a birth about 1754. His baptism is 24 October 1767, which makes him FORTY-SIX. The same document gets his son and his son's bride right to the year. This is not an open question about who he was — he is documented — but about how much weight any stated age in these registers can carry. It is recorded because this archive publishes the failures of its sources as readily as their successes.
Where to look: Nothing to search. The baptism stands; the banns age is wrong.
Eight people the family graph REFUSES to merge
the tree against the registers
The person graph joins a register household to a tree person only when the name AND a date agree, or when the name is unique on both sides. Where two or more people in the tree share a name and none of them matches a date, IT REFUSES and counts the refusal. Eight names stand refused: ANDREANA CRISCI (2 in the tree), ANGELA FALCO (2), ANGELO FALCO (4), CRESCENZO FALCO (3), FRANCESCO FALCO (4), GIOACCHINO FALCO (2), and two more. These are not bugs. They are the archive's open identity questions, and forcing them would manufacture a genealogy.
Where to look: Each needs a date from a record. ANDREANA CRISCI is the closest: her baptism is now documented — 30 November 1796 — and it has been added to the tree, but the household side of her record carries only 1818 (her age at her son's birth), so the years still do not overlap and the merge is still refused. It will join the day a record gives her a 1796 event on the register side.
Twelve people joined to nobody — one fewer than there was
the registers, 1815-1843
Twelve of the 549 people in this archive have no parent, no spouse, no child and no sibling. They are: Antonio and Giovanni Cioffi (of the Michele Falco household), Giuseppe di Guida, GIOACCHINO FALCO, a Giuseppe Falco, LUCRETIA FALCO, MARGARITA FALCO, MARIA ROSA FALCO, a Matteo Falco (possidente, strada Porta di Sopra), Francesco and Giuseppe QUOTOLO, and Don Giuseppe Rivetti. SILVESTRO QUOTOLO HAS LEFT THIS LIST. The graph was taught on 13 September 2026 to read the register's own prose — 2,768 rows that say «named as a parent of X», 544 that say «named as the spouse of», and a third phrasing that names a child by FORENAME ONLY and appends the household. Silvestro's row is one of those: «named as ANNA's father … Don Nicola Rivetti & Donna Anna Quotolo». A bare forename is not an identification, so it is resolved against that household and nowhere else. He now has his daughter.
Where to look: 22 edges added and 3,291 REFUSED, under the same rule the rest of this site uses for a name: an edge is made only when both sides answer to exactly one person. The yield is small against 2,768 because most of those rows name people this graph does not hold — it has 429 distinct names against the register's 5,074. THAT, and not an oversight, is why the twelve remain. GIOACCHINO FALCO HAS LEFT THIS LIST TOO. On 13 September 2026 the alphabetical index bound at the front of the Arienzo death register for 1851 was read: «7. FALCO GIOACCHINO | Arienzo | CONTADINO | FALCO MATTEO, e CRISCI FRANCESCA | 14 Febrajo». A record names his parents at last, and he is a documented fifth child of the founding couple. The archive had suspected it since 1816, when he and Giuseppe Falco declared the death of Crescenzo Rivetti as «parenti» — Crescenzo being the husband of their sister Angela. The inference was right, and it is now a document. Eleven people remain joined to nobody.
The unnamed child
25 November 1777
Matteo and Francesca baptised a child that day whose name the transcription does not carry.
Where to look: The register image.
Was Chiara Rivetti gentry? — ANSWERED. No.
Arienzo, 13 September 1843
This was the oldest open question in the archive. Chiara Rivetti married Pasquale Falco of generation two, and the only record that named her parents was a Latin burial entry calling her «filia quondam NICOLAI et ANNA» — two forenames and nothing else. TWO couples of Arienzo answered to them: the gentry DON NICOLA RIVETTI and DONN'ANNA QUOTOLO, both with acts of their own; and the labouring NICOLA RIVETTI, contadino, and ANNA DI RUGGIO, named in the 1821 death act of their son Carmine. The archive weighed them, said the labouring couple was the better fit because Chiara married a contadino and lived among day-labourers on strada Camellara, and then refused to claim it — because a preference is not a record.
Where to look: THE CIVIL ACT SETTLES IT, and the preference was right. On 13 September 1843, at eight in the evening, «è morta nella sua propria casa CHIARA RIVETTI VEDOVA DI PASQUALE FALCO, nata in Arienzo, di anni OTTANTA, di professione CONTADINA, domiciliata ivi, FIGLIA DI NICOLA RIVETTI DEFUNTO, DI PROFESSIONE CONTADINO, domiciliato ivi, E DI ANNA DI RUGGIO DEFUNTA». The father's trade is written out: a contadino, not a Don. The gentry couple is ruled out. And CARMINE RIVETTI, the man buried in 1821 as a son of the same couple, was Chiara's BROTHER — born about 1768, five years after her. Her death was declared by two Cioffi of strada Camellara.
Angela Falco's death of 1829 — PROBABLY SOLVED
Arienzo — parish register vs civil register
This archive relied on a parish entry read through machine transcription in which Pasquale Falco is named WITHOUT «quondam» on the death of a daughter ANGELA, dated 1829 — evidence he was then alive. But the 1829 civil death register, read image by image, contains no Angela Falco and no Falco of any name. THE 1820 REGISTER NOW OFFERS A BETTER CANDIDATE: on 23 August 1820 ANNA FALCO, twenty-five, died on strada Camellara, and her act names her father Pasquale Falco without «fu» — exactly the shape of the entry the archive was relying on. Anna against Angela, 1820 against 1829: both are the kind of slip a machine transcription makes.
Where to look: Very likely the same event, misread and misdated. What would settle it: the parish register image for 1820 and for 1829, read directly rather than through the transcription. Either way the point is now moot for the line — Pasquale is independently documented alive in August 1820 and dead on 1 October 1834.
The siblings who stayed in Italy
Arienzo, 1898 and 1913
Raffaele Falco and Costanza Maione had children at Arienzo besides Carminantonio, who emigrated — Giovanna in 1898 and Gerardo in 1913. Neither has been traced beyond their birth record. Their descendants would be the closest living relatives of this family still in Campania, and nobody has looked for them.
Where to look: The Arienzo civil registers after 1900, and the Caserta indexes; ordinary research, not a blocked door.
The emigrant generation is only half followed
Brisbane, 1925–1972
Carminantonio's son Raffaele reached Brisbane, married Caterina Zampiello and is buried at Nudgee; his family has not been worked through. Four Zampiello sisters reached Queensland and two married out, into Servodio and Miceli — both surnames are named in the immigration files and then dropped.
Where to look: The NAA files already identified, and Queensland records.
Is the third Maria Falco kin? — ANSWERED
Arienzo, strada Camellara, 1823–1828
A third Maria Falco, wife of FRANCESCO COSSI, buried five children on strada Camellara between 1823 and 1828 — Antonia in June 1823, Giuseppe in March 1824, Giuseppa in April 1825, Giuseppe in May 1827, Mariantonia in October 1828. GIUSEPPE FALCO of the same street declared every one of them. But the register called him «vicino» — neighbour — every single time, so this archive recorded the relationship as NOT ESTABLISHED and refused to join the households, though five turns for one family is a great deal of neighbourliness.
Where to look: Closed by the fifth act. On 24 October 1828 the clerk wrote it differently: «GIUSEPPE FALCO, di anni cinquantasei, di professione POSSIDENTE, domiciliato in strada CAMELLARA, PARENTE DELLA DEFUNTA» — and used the same word for the second declarant, Cesare Cossi. Kinsman, not neighbour. THE DEGREE IS STILL UNSTATED and this archive does not guess it. One caution travels with the answer: Giuseppe Falco is fifty-six and a possidente in this act, and forty and a colono eighteen months earlier — so it is not yet certain whether the man who declared all five acts is one person or two.
How old is Giuseppe Falco? — the register answers, badly
Arienzo, strada Camellara, 1817–1843
Giuseppe Falco of strada Camellara, a documented son of Matteo Falco, appears seven times as a declarant. His stated age runs 37 (1817), 40 (1825), 46 (1826), 46 (1826), 40 (1827), 56 (1828) and 56 (1843) — and his trade runs massaro di campagna, massaro, massaro, massaro, COLONO, POSSIDENTE, colono. The archive carried this as a straight either-or: one man with careless clerks, or two men on one street.
Where to look: THE 1843 ACT DECIDES IT, or nearly. The register gives him as FIFTY-SIX in October 1828 and FIFTY-SIX AGAIN in May 1843 — fifteen years apart. No man is the same age fifteen years later, and two different men would not land on the same wrong number. This is what a guess looks like. The archive now leans to ONE Giuseppe Falco, born about 1780, whose age was estimated at the desk by whoever was standing there. It is not proof, and a birth act would settle it; but it is enough to stop treating any single stated age in these volumes as a date.
Cossi, Crisci, or Cioffi? — ANSWERED, BOTH HALVES
Arienzo, 1823–1843 — a reading, not a fact
PART ONE. The household carried since 1823 as «Francesco COSSI and the third Maria Falco» of strada Camellara — the house whose five dead children Giuseppe Falco declared — is FRANCESCO CIOFFI AND MARIA FALCO. The 1825 volume, read at full resolution, writes the Camellara family with a dotted «i» after the C (Cesare Cioffi, Francesco Cioffi, Giuseppa Cioffi) and, in the same hand and the same book, writes the unrelated family of strada Cossi without one (Domenico Cossi, Crescenzo Cossi). The 1816 volume, in a wholly different hand, writes Cioffi plainly on the same street twelve years earlier. The correction is published, not swapped: the reading logs keep the original text under a banner.
Where to look: PART TWO IS NOW CLOSED TOO, AND BY ACCIDENT. On 4 December 1827 a priest was buried — «Don Giuseppe C—, cinquantasei, SACERDOTE, figlio di ANDREA —, POSSIDENTE, e di ORSOLA ZIMBARDO» — and no magnification would separate Crisci from Cossi in that hand. On 3 June 1843, sixteen years later and in a different hand, the register buries CELIA CIOFFI, eighty, of strada Porta di Sopra, «figlia di ANDREA CIOFFI defunto, di professione POSSIDENTE, e di ORSOLA ZIMBARDO defunta». Same father, same trade, same mother, spelled plainly. THE PRIEST WAS DON GIUSEPPE CIOFFI, and Celia was his sister. What remains is smaller: the household this archive holds as «Marcello Crisci & Maria Rosa Mauro» from an 1823 act, which the 1828 register writes as «Marcello Cossi» with the identical wife. On the balance of everything above, Cioffi is the likelier third reading — but it has not been seen written, and so it is not claimed.
Two daughters called Maria
1789 and 1790
Pasquale and Chiara named a daughter Maria in September 1789 and again in October 1790. Ordinarily that means the first died. No burial has been found.
Where to look: The Arienzo death register, 1789–90.
Where the searching has already failed
Recorded so that the next attempt does not repeat it. Matteo Falco's marriage was searched across 2,056 transcribed marriage and death pages, including 173 carrying 1750s Latin date-words and 58 carrying 1760s ones. Filomena Annecchino's birth was searched across 681 harvested Annecchino records. Angelo Zampiello's birth was searched to the limit of FamilySearch's deep-paging cap in both directions. Trove is a dead end for this family — its newspapers largely stop at 1955, before these people arrived in Australia.
If you are a Falco
There are other Arienzo Falco households in these registers that have not been joined to this line — Francesco & Maria Angela Ulivieccio, Giuseppe & Gelsumina Vigliotta, Antonio & Carmela Guida, Vincenzo & Angela Pellone, Angelo & Maria Cimmino, Nicola & Carmela Terracciano. Several are probably cousins. If one of them is yours, the households are the place to start, and a correction is the most valuable thing you can send.