The Queensland Register
The Registry's historical index is free, it is authoritative, and — the part that matters — it can be searched by a father's or a mother's name. One search returned three of Sebastiano Mazza's siblings.
The Queensland Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages publishes a searchable historical index: deaths to 1996, marriages to 1951, births to 1926. Every death and birth entry carries the names of both parents, and the search box will take a parent's name as the query.
That turns it from a lookup into a reconstruction tool. Searching "Salvatore Mazza" in the father field returns the deaths of his children — and each of those names their mother, which is how a family asserted by the tree became a family on the record.
Michele Mazza was Sebastiano's brother
Michele Mazza landed at Brisbane on the Palermo on 21 April 1925, aged about sixteen, and died the following year. The family tree asserted he was kin and produced nothing to show it. The archive has carried the question since the day it was built: was he the reason they chose Queensland?
The Registry's index answers it:
Michali Mazza · death registration 14 November 1926 · 1926/C/3983 · father Salvatori Mazza · mother Maria Lecota.
Lecota is the index's rendering of Nicotra — and the same search returns Rosario Mazza, born 1899, whose parents are given in full as Salvatore Mazza and Maria Concetta Nicotra. The same couple, spelled properly.
So Michele Mazza was a son of Salvatore Mazza and Maria Nicotra, and therefore Sebastiano Mazza 's elder brother. He came out first, alone, at sixteen. He was dead within nineteen months. Twenty-four years later his family followed him to the port he had landed at.
The archive should say what it still cannot: whether anyone was waiting for Sebastiano in 1949, and whether the family knew where the boy was buried. The index gives a date and a registration number, not a grave. C in the registration means a country event — he did not die in Brisbane.
Four deaths, and what each one proves
| Date | Name | Registration | Father | Mother |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 November 1926 | Michali Mazza | 1926/C/3983 | Salvatori Mazza | Maria Lecota |
| 19 March 1986 | Rosario Mazza (b. 1899) | 1986/2455 | Salvatore Mazza | Maria Concetta Nicotra |
| 24 September 1963 | Maria Nicotra Mazza | 1963/B/61348 | John Nicotra | Venera Cassaneti |
| 3 August 1968 | Mary Rosa Mazza | 1968/B/936 | Sebastiano Mazza | Domenica Postamo |
Michali Mazza — Lecota is the index's garbling of Nicotra. Makes Michele a SON of Salvatore Mazza and Maria Nicotra, and therefore Sebastiano's brother. C = country event, outside Brisbane.
Rosario Mazza (b. 1899) — Gives Maria Nicotra's full name. Confirms Rosario as another son. Matches the Nudgee interment of 22 March 1986, plot V-0117.
Maria Nicotra Mazza — Confirms the family tree's parentage for her exactly. Matches the Nudgee interment of 25 September 1963, plot V-0044.
Mary Rosa Mazza — Confirms Sebastiano Mazza and Domenica Prostamo as her parents. Matches the Nudgee interment of 10 August 1968, plot V-0165. She was sixteen.
And two marriages
| Date | Name | Married | Registration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 December 1939 | Maria Mazza | Rosario Coco | 1939/C/4207 |
| 8 January 1949 | Rosario Mazza | Annie Vergina Di Mauro | 1949/B/20688 |
Maria Mazza — Confirms this archive's Nudgee identification of "Maria Coco, 1922-2012" as Maria Mazza.
Rosario Mazza — Not in the family tree. Whether this is the 1899 Rosario, and how it sits with the Angela buried beside him at Nudgee, is unresolved.
Rosario, born 1899, dates his father
This archive still cannot find Salvatore Mazza's birth — six years of the Piedimonte Etneo register, plus Mascali and Giarre, and he is in none of them.
The Queensland index has just handed over the way in. Rosario Mazza was born in 1899 to Salvatore and Maria Concetta Nicotra. An Italian birth act states the declaring father's age. Find Rosario's act of birth — Piedimonte Etneo, 1899 — and it dates Salvatore to within a year or two, which turns a blind sweep of the register into a single lookup. The queue →
Method
familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au — free to search, no account needed; images are paid and
were not bought. The form's useful fields are Father's/parent's name(s) and
Mother's/parent's name(s), which work on births and deaths only. Search the
parent, not the person, when you are trying to find siblings. Spellings in the index are
as the clerk wrote them — Michali, Salvatori, Lecota,
Postamo — so search loosely and expect the surname you want to be mangled.