The Spine
The longest descent the family tree asserts: from a man said to be born at Briatico in 1697 to two children born in Brisbane. Its top four generations carry no source — see Testing the 1697.
This is not the Mazza line — for that see the Mazza name line, which is documented at every Sicilian step. This is the longest line, and it belongs to the Prostamo of Briatico. Read it with the audit beside it: the archive has documented this descent back to Domenico Prostamo, and the four generations above him — 1785, 1760, 1726, 1697 — rest on the family tree alone. Testing the 1697 →
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1697.
Married Agnere Polito .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1726.
Married Caterina Scangiaterra .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1760. Died at Pizzo, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1829.
Married Caterina Di Meio .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1785.
Married Maria Fragala .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1820.
Married Giovanna Ventrice .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1858.
Married Caterina Melluso .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1900. Died at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1983.
Married Maria Rosa Melluso .
Born at Briatico, Vibo Valentia, Calabria in 1928. Died at Brisbane, Queensland in 2010.
Married Sebastiano Mazza .
Buried at Nudgee, Brisbane, Queensland.
Born at Brisbane, Queensland.
Married Nancy Arena .
Born at Brisbane, Queensland.
Married Stefanie D'Arcy .
The two children this archive was assembled for. Between them and Franco Antonino Prostamo of Briatico there are ten generations, three countries and about sixteen thousand kilometres.
Where it stops, and why
Above Franco Antonino Prostamo the tree is empty. He was born about 1697, which puts his own baptism in a parish register kept at Briatico under the Kingdom of Naples — well before civil registration began there in 1809. Nothing above him has been looked for yet, and the archive should not pretend otherwise. What is being looked for →