Scilla

Scilla is the Scylla of the Odyssey — the rock opposite the whirlpool of Charybdis, at the narrowest point of the strait that separates Calabria from Sicily. The Castello Ruffo sits on the headland; below it, on the water, is Chianalea, a lane of houses built straight into the sea where the boats are moored at the doors. This was a swordfishing town, and it still is.

The geography is the point for this family. From Chianalea you can see Etna on a clear morning. The Scilla families and the Piedimonte Etneo family were looking at each other across thirty kilometres of water for generations — and met on the other side of the world.

Scilla was levelled by the 1783 earthquake and the tsunami that followed it, when a wave took a large part of the population off the beach at Marina Grande. As at Briatico, that is why the record here begins where it does.

Scilla is not in FamilySearch's full-text corpus — four searches place-matched to it returned nothing, and its Calabrian holdings are Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia. But Antenati has 57 volumes from the Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, births from 1850; marriages run 1905–1913 only.

The pre-unification Stato civile della restaurazione index is laid out far better than the Italian one that replaced it. Its columns are N. d'ord · Cognomi e Nomi dei nati · Patria · Professione · NOMI E COGNOMI DEI GENITORI · giorno della nascita. The index names the parents — a whole year's households of one surname read off a single opening.

And it will mislead you if you trust it. See below.

Every man the registers have named in this archive's Calabrian lines works the water:

There is now one exception, and it is worth naming rather than hiding: Giuseppe Arena, in 1870, is a cordaio — a ropemaker. He is a different Arena household from the tree's, and rope is a harbour trade, but he is not on the water. A pattern that admits an exception is a stronger claim than one that has never met one.

The family tree records not one of them as anything. Two provinces, three families, and the same trade — which is exactly what you would expect of Chianalea and the Costa degli Dei, and exactly what an undated pedigree cannot tell you. The Sicilian Mazza, up on the mountain, are braccianti and contadini to a man. The archive can now say what these people did, which it could not this morning.

Once act 45 of 1860 had moved Rocco Arena from Orazio Arena to Francesco Antonio Arena, a door opened that had been shut. Act 228 of 1861 gives Francesco Antonio an age — forty-two — and calls him, in as many words, figlio di Filippo. Forty-two in December 1861 means born about 1819. The Tavola annuale alfabetica de' nati in questo Comune di Scilla nell'anno 1819 has an A section of five entries, and the fifth is this:

5 · Arena Francesco · Filippo e Dom.^ca Costa · 25 9^bre · 186

Born 25 November 1819, he was forty-two years and one month on the day his son Rocco was declared. The fit is exact, and it hands the archive two people at once: Filippo Arena and Domenica Costa.

Four people in that table are not in Michael's export at all, and two of them are great-great-great-great-grandparents of Mia and Rocco. They cannot be drawn on this site's charts, because the charts draw the tree as it was given — so they are listed on For Michael instead.

A surname that keeps coming back. Francesco Antonio's mother is a Costa. Three generations later his grandson Rocco married Generosa Costa. On present evidence that is a coincidence of a common Scilla surname and nothing more — but it is the kind of thing worth writing down before it is needed, and the 1901 Neustria carried a Costa and a Donato of Scilla two lines apart.

Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Stato civile della restaurazione, Scilla, Nati 1819 — Antenati an_ua2002808, container 58rKlpd, Tavola at images 115–121.

The marriage act of 1851 gave Serafina Arlotta parents — Giovanni Arlotta, marinaro, and Maria Costa — and an age, twenty. The 1830 Tavola gives her a date and confirms the parents from a second, independent document:

2 · Arlotta Serafina · Giovanni, e Costa Maria · 13 Giugno

Born 13 June 1830, she was twenty years and seven months on her wedding day. Exact. Rocco Arena's mother now has a birth date, and his maternal grandparents are documented twice over.

It also corrects an age this archive had been carrying. Act 228 of 1861 makes Serafina 28, which would put her birth in 1833 — and this archive recorded that. She was 31. The register's own ages are the loosest thing in it, which is exactly why a birth act beats an age every time.

Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Scilla, Nati 1830 — Antenati an_ua2002840, container LaNd12r, Tavola at images 119–125.

The Scilla marriage register is the most efficient document in the whole system: it names both spouses' parents. This is the act the archive spent three sessions failing to find — first in 1858, then 1859, both wrong because the couple had married years earlier than their children implied.

L'anno mille ottocento cinquantuno il dì sette del mese di Febbraro… sono comparsi nella Casa comunale Francesco Arena di anni trentuno, nato in questo Comune, di professione marinaro, figlio di Filippo, di professione stessa, e di Domenica Costa… E Serafina Arlotta di anni venti, nata in questo Comune, figlia di Giovanni, di professione marinaro, e di Maria Costa.

Thirty-one on 7 February 1851 means born about 1819 — and act 186 of 1819 gives 25 November 1819. Exact. The promise was made on the 7th and the church celebrated it on the 16th.

Three generations of sailors, and now a fourth beside them. Filippo Arena, his son Francesco Antonio, his grandson Rocco — and Serafina's father Giovanni Arlotta. Every man this act names works the water.

And a third Costa. Filippo Arena married a Domenica Costa; Giovanni Arlotta married a Maria Costa; and three generations later their great-grandson Rocco married Generosa Costa. A Lorenzo Costa was lodging with Rocco in New York in 1900. On the evidence this is a common Scilla surname recurring, and it has now recurred four times.

How this was found, and the mistake on the way. The marriage Tavola's number column was first read as 19 and 20. Acts 19 and 20 were duly opened and turned out to be Bruno × Calario and Papalia × Briganti. The archive then wrote that the tavola must index some other series — and it was wrong. The numbers are 13 and 6. It had misread its own digits and blamed the document. The lesson is small and worth keeping: when a record does not match, check your own reading before you theorise about the record.

Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Stato civile della restaurazione, Scilla, Matrimoni 1851, atto 13 — Antenati an_ua2002614, container LD6brxB, image 15; Tavola at images 88–96.

Four days of this archive have gone on one contradiction: the tree makes Rocco Arena the son of Orazio Arena and Giovana Zirilli; act 228 of 1861 says Francesco Antonio Arena and Serafina Arlotta. The 1860 Tavola settles it, and not by arithmetic.

Francesco Antonio Arena and Serafina Arlotta had a Giuseppe and a Rocco, twenty-one months apart. The tree gives Orazio Arena a Rocco and a Giuseppe and nothing else. It is the same sibling pair, in the same order, hung on the wrong father.

And Orazio's real children are now on the page. Across four years of the Tavola — 1856, 1858, 1859 and 1860 — Orazio Arena and Giovanna Zirilli produce:

No Rocco. No Giuseppe. Not in any of the four years read. The couple is real, well documented and busy — and neither of the two children the tree assigns them ever appears.

A lead that was written here and has since been withdrawn. This paragraph originally argued that because Orazio's first son is Domenico, twice, naming custom made his father a Domenico Arena. Two Orazio Arena birth acts have since turned up and neither father is a Domenico — the better candidate, matching the tree's own year of 1821, gives Giuseppe. The retraction and what it teaches are below.

The same A section also holds Arena Domenico, act 43, of Giovanni e Longordo Maddalena — a Giovanni Arena fathering a child in 1860, so an adult born in the 1830s, and not the Giovanni Arena this archive wants. Recorded so the two are never merged. Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Stato civile della restaurazione, Scilla, Nati 1860 — an_ua2002931, container wr9rbv8, Tavola at images 136–142.

The 1859 volume was opened looking for Giovanni Arena, whom act 230 of 1892 had just relocated from 1870 to about 1859. He is not there. The A section holds exactly three Arena births — and the first of them is worth more than the one that was wanted:

Orazio Arena and Giovanna Zirilli are the couple the family tree names as Rocco Arena 's parents — and until now this archive had been unable to find either of them in any register at all. The 1861 act said something else entirely, and the honest reading was that the tree might simply be wrong. It is not. They were at Scilla, and they were having children.

What this does and does not settle. It does not make Rocco their son: the 1861 register contains exactly one Rocco Arena and he belongs to Francesco Antonio Arena, marinaro, and Serafina Arlotta. What it does is move the likely error from the parents to the year — and this archive has now caught the tree six years out on Salvatore Mazza, six on Orazio Mazza and eleven on Giovanni Arena. A Rocco Arena di Orazio in some other year is now a specific, findable thing rather than a hope.

Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Stato civile della restaurazione, Scilla, Nati 1859 — Antenati an_ua2002928, container 5vEYzey, index at images 156–163. Read from the whole uncropped page: after the 1861 misalignment, this archive no longer reads parentage off a cropped index column, because on a full page you can see for yourself that the child's name and its parents sit on the same ruled line.

The pre-unification Tavola annuale alfabetica de' Nati is the best-designed index in this archive's whole territory: Num. d'ordine · Cognomi e Nomi de' Nati · Patria · Cognomi e Nomi de' Genitori · Giorno della Nascita. It names both parents, so a whole year's households can be read off one opening without opening a single act. For Michele Donato — Nunnziata Donato 's father, who sailed from Palermo and landed at New Orleans on 11 March 1908 — it should have been one crop.

The D section of 1851 runs from entry 65 to entry 75, and there is no Donato in it. Eleven births: seven Di Franco, two Dormì, one De Marco, one De Alessandro. Entry 64 is the last C and entry 76 begins the F, so the block is complete and nothing is hidden by a page turn.

The explanation is above. Act 162 of 1892 makes him thirty-six in July of that year, so born about 1856 — the archive was reading a volume five years too early. What follows was written before that act was found, and is left standing because the reasoning was right even while the conclusion was still open:

Two explanations are open, and this archive has evidence for only one of them. The tree's birth years have been wrong before — six years out on Salvatore Mazza, six on Orazio Mazza, and, as of act 230 above, eleven years out on Giovanni Arena. His eldest recorded son was born in 1878, which puts his own birth anywhere from about 1848 to 1858. A wrong year is likelier than a wrong town, but that is a hypothesis and it is filed as one.

The same opening yields one further fact worth keeping: the 1851 A section holds a single Arena birth — Arena Maria, of Pasquale, at Scilla. The Arena of Scilla were not numerous in the 1850s.

Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Stato civile della restaurazione, Scilla, Nati 1851 — Antenati an_ua2002901, container LeJQDD6, index at images 123–131. These scans are small — about 1000 × 1500 pixels, against 4600 × 3700 for the Italian-era volumes — which is why the IIIF request must ask for /full/ and not a width, and why the 1861 index misled this archive earlier in the day.

With Rocco Arena reassigned to Francesco Antonio Arena and Serafina Arlotta, the obvious next question was how many other children that couple had — and the obvious place to look was the years the archive had not read. 1852, 1853, 1854 and 1855 are now read in full.

The first son is called Filippo — and Filippo is exactly who he should be. Act 186 of 1819 gives Francesco Antonio's own father as Filippo Arena. Calabrian custom names the first son for his father's father. The archive did not go looking for this; it fell out of a sweep run for a different reason, which is the strongest kind of confirmation there is.

It also moves the marriage again. The couple were married by 1851 — which is the real reason they are absent from the Scilla marriage indexes of 1858 and 1859, and it retires the guess that Serafina was married in her own comune. That may still be true; it is simply no longer needed to explain anything.

One honest caveat on act 48. The 1852 index writes the father as "Ant.^o" where 1853 writes "Francesant.^o". So the identification rests on the surname plus the wife's distinctive name — Arlotta Serafina — and not on the father's forename. A different Antonio Arena married to a different Serafina Arlotta is not impossible, only unlikely.

And Orazio's first child was a daughter

The same 1853 opening gives Arena Teresa, of Orazio e Giov.^a Zirilli, 17 October — three years before the Domenico of 1856, and the earliest child of theirs the archive has found. 1852, 1854 and 1855 hold none.

That vindicates the retraction above: Domenico was not Orazio's first child, so no argument about first sons could ever have been run on him. And custom gives the first daughter her paternal grandmother's name — where act 10 of 1821 makes Orazio's mother a Teresa.

It is still not settled, and here is the part that does not fit. If the 1821 Orazio is ours, his father was a Giuseppe — so his first son should be Giuseppe. Orazio's first son is Domenico, and 1852 to 1855 are now read with no earlier son to rescue the point. So the daughter's name supports the 1821 candidate and the son's name argues against it. The archive is not going to pick whichever half suits it. Orazio Arena's own birth stays a candidate, not a finding.

Scilla, Nati 1852 — the acts are an_ua2002904 (container wX9avAO) and the Tavola is bound separately as an_ua2002907 (container LNolBvO, images 33–40), the same split as 1856 and 1875. Nati 1853 an_ua2002909; 1854 an_ua2002911; 1855 an_ua2002914.

Earlier the same day this archive wrote, and labelled clearly as a lead rather than a finding: "Calabrian naming custom gives the first son his father's father's name, and Orazio's first son is Domenico — twice. On that custom alone, Orazio Arena's father was a Domenico."

Two acts now say otherwise. Scilla has two Orazio Arena births in the right era:

Neither father is a Domenico. The 1821 act is much the better candidate — the family tree dates Orazio to 1821 and gives no source for it, and here is an Orazio Arena born 14 December 1821.

The instructive part is why the inference failed. It was not the custom that was wrong. It was the assumption underneath: that the first child this archive had found was Orazio's first child. The Scilla indexes for 1850–1855 are unread. A son Giuseppe in any of them — named for a paternal grandfather Giuseppe, exactly as act 10 of 1821 would predict — would restore the custom perfectly and leave Domenico as the second son, named for Giovanna Zirilli's father.

The rule this leaves. Naming custom is only as good as your knowledge of the birth order, and a register read from 1856 onward cannot tell you the birth order of a couple who married before 1856. The inference should never have been made from a partial sweep — and it is written up here rather than quietly deleted, because the reasoning is the part worth keeping.

Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Scilla, Nati 1821 — an_ua2002812, container 04rZVeY, Tavola at images 94–99; Nati 1833 — an_ua2002847, container 5B6RQPk, Tavola at images 94–100. The 1821 mother's surname is read from a single index line and is not certain.

Act 162 of 1892 puts Michele Donato 's birth at about 1856. So the 1856 Tavola was opened, and then 1859 for good measure. Neither has a Donato in it, and neither did 1851. Each D block is complete — bounded by the last C above and the first F below — so nothing is hidden by a page turn:

Three years spanning the whole window his daughter's act allows, and the surname is simply not there. Meanwhile the 1892 index has two Donato households — Donato Annunziata di Michele at act 162 and Donato Domenico di Rocco at act 38.

That is a different question from the one this archive started with. It is no longer "which year was Michele Donato born at Scilla?" but "when did the Donato come to Scilla, and from where?" — because on this evidence the surname arrives somewhere between 1859 and 1892. Michele was very likely born in another comune and settled here; his sailing from Palermo to New Orleans in 1908 is at least consistent with a family that moved.

This is three sampled years, not a proof. 1852–55, 1857, 1858 and 1860–65 are unread, and the surname could be sitting in any of them. But a negative that repeats across a spread of years is worth much more than one that does not, and it is the reason this archive will now look at his marriage rather than his birth: a marriage act names the groom's comune of birth outright.

Antenati's Scilla marriage series runs 1905–1913 only. The 1913 volume's container was already in hand, and — unlike the portal's HTML, which rate-limits after about three page loads — the IIIF images are not throttled at all. So all eleven index openings came down for nothing, and the year is transcribed here in full.

The reason for opening it was Giovanni Polistena's marriage to Nunziata Donato, which would name four of Angela Polistena 's grandparents in a single act. It is not here. Neither is any Arena, any Donato, or any Mazza:

A negative result is still a result, and this one is cheap to state and expensive to re-derive. The Polistena–Donato marriage is either outside 1905–13, or it was not celebrated at Scilla. Eight volumes remain in the window; this archive has done one.

The surname distribution is its own small finding. Fifty-eight couples produced 77 surnames, and the commonest of them — Bueti (6), Catalano (4), Oliveri (4), Bellantoni (3), Cambareri (3), Infantino (3) — is the population the Arena, Polistena and Donato households were marrying into.

Reading the 1861 index, this archive recorded Rocco Arena's parents as «Giuseppe e Zirilli Grazia» — and noted that while the rare surname Zirilli agreed with the family tree's Giovana Zirilli, both forenames did not. It was filed as a candidate, not a join, with the words "read the act itself before joining".

The act says Francesco Antonio Arena and Serafina Arlotta. The index's parents column had been misaligned by one row: it is a wide ruled table photographed across a gutter, and once the columns are cropped apart the row a name sits on is not reliably the row its parents sit on.

That caution is the only reason the archive does not now carry a wrong set of great-great-grandparents. Had the surname agreement been treated as sufficient — as the Venerio reading was, earlier the same day — it would have been merged and published.