Giarre
A town named by a document, contradicted by eleven of its own years, and then answered by its first. The largest comune in this archive.
Six words on a printed form
Piedimonte's Matrimoni allegati of 1872, fascicolo 20, holds the publication certificate for Giovanni Nicotra and Venera Cassaniti. The 1872 form prints «nato a ____» separately from «residente a ____», and the clerk filled both:
TRA GIOVANNI NICOTRA — nato a GIARRE — residente a MASCALI — di professione bracciante — di età anni trentuno
That sentence is why this comune is in the archive at all. It is also, so far, the only evidence that anybody in this family was ever here.
Eleven years read end to end, and he is in none of them
Giarre's annual Tavola is alphabetical and names both parents, so a Nicotra of a Rosario would identify itself without an act being opened.
| Year | The N section | What is around it |
|---|---|---|
| 1835 | — | not read yet — container wE7KJgX banked, 87 images |
| 1836 | — | not read yet — container wE7KJKX banked, 89 images |
| 1837 | — | not read yet — container wk94Jr2 banked, 122 images |
| 1838 | two | THE N SECTION HOLDS A NICOTRA. atto 2, 9 January 1838: NICOTRA ALFIO, patria Giarre, son of NICOTRA SALVADORE and LA SPINA ROSA, × Cesaro Venera of Giarre. Also atto 21, Nicolosi Salvadore, which is not a Nicotra |
| 1839 | none | the alphabet runs L, M, then P — Pulvirenti, Pennisi, Pagano under the heading, checked at full width because the capital could be read either way. No N section |
| 1840 | none | the whole Tavola read, first heading to the blank leaf after V: A, B, D, C, F, L, M, P, S, T, V. M runs into P and the letter was checked at full width, because this clerk does not order his sections either |
| 1841 | empty | N written and left blank, and O beneath it, between 49 Mauro Salvadore under M and the P section — Patanè, Grasso, Russo, Pappalardo. The alphabet here IS ordered: M, N, O, P, Q, R, S |
| 1842 | none | M runs straight into O. The two headings after 7 Messina Giuseppe read O and P at full width, NOT N and O — read at band width they look like N. No N section at all |
| 1843 | one | the one N entry is NICOLOSI Mro Angelo × Leotta Gaetana, atto 29, his patria CATANIA, parents Nicolosi Antonino and Musumeci Angela. Not a Nicotra. O beneath it is written and blank |
| 1844 | two | atto 54, 19 August 1844: NICOTRA D.r D. ALFIO, patria GIARRE, son of Nicotra D. Giuseppe and CALTABIANO D. GIOACHINA, × Consoli D. Antonina — the same parents Riposto wrote for its Don Alfio in 1838, so ONE MAN MARRYING TWICE. Also atto 8, Noscia Mro Ignazio × Castorina Anna, not a Nicotra |
| 1820 | two | the FIRST year Sicily registered at all, and the N section holds two plainly-written NICOTRA households: atto 198 Nicotra Rosaria, of NICOTRA SIMONE and Marianna Dadone, 13 April · atto 228 Nicotra Carmela, of NICOTRA ROSARIO and Rosa Providenza, 1 May. No Don, no Donna. Also in the section: Nicolosi Pietro, Nota Alessandro, Nucifora Alfio |
| 1838 | none | the alphabet runs M straight into P |
| 1839 | empty | the N heading written and left blank, then O — Oliva Alfio — then P |
| 1840 | none | M runs straight into P |
| 1841 | none | M runs into O; appendices F and B, neither an N |
| 1842 | none | appendices T, P, B and F, none of them an N |
| 1843 | empty | the N heading written and left blank, and the O beneath it too |
| 1844 | empty | the N heading written and left blank; one appended G on the last image |
| 1845 | none | M runs into P; appendices F and T |
| 1846 | one | NICOTRA SALVADORE — Nicotra D.r D. Alfio / Consoli D.na Antonina, 5 November |
| 1847 | one | Nicolosi Giuseppe — Nicolosi Angelo / Leotta Gaetana, 31 January |
| 1848 | one | NICOTRA SALVATORE — the same Don Alfio household again, 2 January |
The only Nicotra household at Giarre in eleven years is a titled one. Dottor Don Alfio Nicotra and Donna Antonina Consoli name a Salvatore in November 1846 and a Salvatore again in January 1848 — which is what a family does when the first child dies. Giovanni's father was a bracciante. Different household, different condition.
There were untitled Nicotra at Giarre after all
The eleven years above are still eleven years, and they still do not hold Giovanni. But the sentence they seemed to support — that Giarre's Nicotra were all gentry — was never what they said. It was what eleven years of one register could not see.
Riposto's marriage Tavola for 1844, atto 39, marries Nicotra Salvadore to Maria Barbagallo. The patria column gives his as GIARRE. His parents are written plainly, with no Don and no Donna: Alfio Nicotra and Rosa Pappalardo. He then registers two children at Riposto, in 1845 and 1847.
That is an ordinary Giarre Nicotra family, documented — and invisible in Giarre's own birth indexes. Salvadore married in 1844, so he was born about 1815 to 1824, which is before the earliest year this archive had read here. It does not find Giovanni. It does something better for the argument: it shows that a Nicotra can be nato a Giarre, be entirely absent from the Giarre years that have been read, and turn up in Riposto's registers instead — which is exactly what Giovanni's certificate and Giarre's silence together require of him.
The decade was wrong, not the town
Salvadore Nicotra's marriage pointed at a birth around 1815–1824, so the first Giarre volume was opened: 1820, the year civil registration began in Sicily at all — there is nothing before it anywhere south of the strait. Its N section was read whole.
It holds two Nicotra households, and neither carries a title.
So the sentence this page carried for a day — that Giarre's Nicotra are gentry — was never a fact about Giarre. It was a fact about eleven years of it. Eighteen years earlier the surname is here twice over in one volume, written plainly, the way a labourer's name is written.
And the second father is called Rosario, which is the name this archive has been hunting for a week. It is not him. Giovanni's father was a working bracciante in October 1872; a man fathering a child in May 1820 would be well past seventy-five by then. What a Rosario Nicotra of Giarre in 1820 is is the generation a grandson would be named after — and naming custom is evidence, but weak evidence, and this archive has been burned by treating it as more. The name is recorded, the join is not made, and the way to test it is Salvadore Nicotra's own birth act, which would say whether Alfio, Simone and Rosario are brothers.
The alphabet starts again after Z
The 1848 index says so itself, in the clerk's own hand, in the Osservazioni column beside the Nicotra entry: «in fine dell'alfabeto riportata altra volta la lettera M» — at the end of the alphabet the letter M is entered a second time.
Giarre's Tavole append extra letter-sections after Z for acts registered late. Nine of the eleven years do it; 1846 and 1847 do not, and end at Z with a blank leaf. So a volume with no appendix looks exactly like a volume whose appendix you have not reached, and «the alphabet finished» is not the same as «the index finished». Every one of the eleven years above has had its tail read as well as its main run. The instruments →
What Giarre holds
808 volumes — the largest holding of any comune in
this archive, and the listing that proved s_size=500 is a page and not a ceiling.
| Fondo | Record type | Years | Volumes | Openable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| italiano | Cittadinanze | 1866–1893 | 25 | — |
| italiano | Cittadinanze, allegati | 1872–1893 | 11 | — |
| italiano | Matrimoni | 1866–1893 | 46 | — |
| italiano | Matrimoni, allegati | 1870–1893 | 42 | — |
| italiano | Matrimoni, pubblicazioni | 1866–1893 | 46 | — |
| italiano | Matrimoni, pubblicazioni allegati | 1871–1893 | 35 | — |
| italiano | Morti | 1866–1893 | 57 | — |
| italiano | Morti, allegati | 1866–1893 | 22 | — |
| italiano | Nati | 1866–1893 | 63 | — |
| italiano | Nati, allegati | 1872–1893 | 20 | — |
| restaurazione | Diversi | 1820–1860 | 31 | — |
| restaurazione | Matrimoni | 1820–1862 | 85 | 10 |
| restaurazione | Matrimoni, memorandum notificazioni ed opposizioni | 1841–1860 | 48 | — |
| restaurazione | Matrimoni, processetti | 1841–1864 | 44 | — |
| restaurazione | Morti | 1820–1862 | 90 | — |
| restaurazione | Morti, annotazioni | 1852–1893 | 1 | — |
| restaurazione | Nati | 1820–1865 | 101 | 14 |
| restaurazione | Nati, esposti | 1820–1860 | 41 | — |
Giarre holds two copies of every year. Each register appears twice under different segnature — 63 Nati volumes for roughly half that many years, and the same doubling in 57 Morti and 46 Matrimoni. A leaf lost in one copy may survive in the other, which is a resource this archive has nowhere else, and has not yet needed to use. Unlike Mascali it does have 1844.
Three readings, and none of them proved
Giovanni Nicotra's certificate says Giarre. Giarre's registers, read for eleven consecutive years in both the main run and the appendix, do not hold him. Something has to give, and this archive does not yet know what.
- His ages are wrong again. He is trentuno in October 1872 and ventotto in December 1875 — already six years apart in three. The windows either side of the read decade are 1833–37 and 1849–53, and neither has been touched.
- He was registered at Riposto, the lower town, which has registered separately since 1821. This reading now has a case of its own behind it: Nicotra Salvadore, patria Giarre, married at Riposto in 1844 and registered his children there. It is still not Giovanni, and one man's habit is not a rule — but it is no longer an inference from general history alone.
- «Giarre» is loose for a frazione — Macchia, Trepunti, Altarello, San Giovanni Montebello. This one now has a documented precedent, below.
Nothing above is a finding. It is what is left when a document and a register disagree and both have been read. The Nicotra line → · The open questions →
An untitled Nicotra marrying at Giarre, and a grandfather behind him
Seven of Giarre's ten banked marriage years are now read whole. Rosario Nicotra is in none of them. What 1838 holds instead is the plainest Nicotra household this archive has found here:
Set that beside Riposto's marriage of 1844 — Nicotra Salvadore, patria Giarre, son of Nicotra Alfio and Rosa Pappalardo — and the two acts give an alternating Alfio and Salvadore running three generations deep at Giarre, which is precisely what Sicilian naming custom produces when the first son takes his paternal grandfather's name.
They are not joined here. Both mothers are a Rosa and neither surname matches the other, and naming custom is evidence, but weak evidence — the rule this archive adopted after four undated Rosario Mazza were once fused on a name alone. What the two acts do settle, together with its first year, 1820, is that ordinary labouring Nicotra were at Giarre continuously from at least 1820 to 1844, in a town whose eleven read birth years show none of them.
1842 nearly became a false negative. At band width its alphabet appears to run M, N, O. At full width the two headings are O and P — the year has no N section at all, which is a different and stronger fact. 1835, 1836 and 1837 are still unread, containers banked.
The same man is «of S. Giovanni» here and «of Giarre» there
Giarre's marriage Tavola for 1844 holds the wedding of the Dottor Don himself — atto 54, 19 August 1844: Nicotra D.r D. Alfio of Giarre, son of Nicotra D. Giuseppe and Caltabiano D. Gioachina, marrying Consoli D. Antonina. They are the couple whose Salvatore appears in the birth index in 1846 and again in 1848.
Six years earlier, Riposto's marriage Tavola records atto 15, 23 April 1838: Nicotra D. Alfio, son of fu D. Giuseppe and D. Gioachina Cattabiano, marrying Ligresti D. Angela. The same two parents. It is one man, widowed and remarried — not two namesakes, which is what this archive had written down while it had only one of the acts.
And the two registers give him two different birthplaces. Riposto's clerk wrote his patria as «S. Giovanni». Giarre's wrote «Giarre». San Giovanni Montebello is a frazione of Giarre — so both are true, and the difference is only which name the clerk reached for.
That is the third reading, documented, in this family's own surname. It does not prove anything about Giovanni Nicotra. It proves the thing his case needs to be possible: that a man of this district can be «nato a Giarre» in one register and entered under a frazione's name in another, and that a reader who trusts one word will look in the wrong book. Riposto → · The Nicotra line →