Places

Six places carry this family: one parish held for two centuries, a short move of four kilometres that crossed a provincial border, and then the other side of the world.

Arienzo · Caserta 1672 – 1913

The home parish. The Collegiate Church of Sant'Andrea Apostolo holds baptisms from 1672, marriages from 1754 and deaths from 1733. Every Falco generation from Pasquale to Raffaele was born, married and buried here.

San Felice a Cancello · Caserta 1818 – 1818

Birthplace of Angela Rosa Morgillo, who married into the line in the 1840s. The next comune west of Arienzo.

Arpaia · Benevento 1913 – 1935

Across the provincial border, four kilometres from Arienzo. Gerardo Falco was born here in 1913; the Zampiello family were here through the 1920s and 1930s.

Forchia · Benevento 1930 – 1938

Where Carmine Falco was born in 1930. The comune takes its name from the Forche Caudine — the Caudine Forks, where the Roman army was made to pass under the yoke in 321 BC.

Benevento · Benevento 1955 – 1955

Where Carmine Falco and Francesca Zampiello married, and where Giuseppina was born in 1955. Capital of the Lombard duchy that gave southern Italy the personal name Falco.

Brisbane · Queensland 20th c. – present

Where the line arrives. Carminantonio Falco and Filomena Annecchino are buried at Nudgee Cemetery.

The Valle Caudina

Arienzo, Arpaia and Forchia lie within a few kilometres of one another along the valley road that runs east from the plain of Naples towards Benevento. The provincial boundary between Caserta and Benevento cuts across it. A family moving from Arienzo to Arpaia moved almost no distance at all — but it changed which archive holds its records, which is why the paper trail appears to break in 1913 when it does not.

Forchia takes its name from the Forche Caudine, the Caudine Forks, where in 321 BC a Roman consular army was trapped by the Samnites and made to pass under the yoke. It is the most famous humiliation in the early Republic, and it happened in the fields where this family later farmed.

Why the records split