What Has Been Read
A search that found nothing is still a result: it stops the next person repeating it. This page records both what has been done and what is still outstanding.
What a paid subscription was actually worth here
The trial expires on 16 September 2026, so it was swept systematically rather than browsed. It is recorded in full, negatives included — the most useful thing a search can do for the next person is stop them repeating it, and two of the negatives below would otherwise cost someone a subscription to discover.
The find: the family's New York parish
Two of Rocco Arena and Generosa Costa's New York children were baptised at Our Lady of Loretto — Sarafina Arena in 1898 and Clementina in 1901. Loretto was the Italian parish of Little Italy, on Elizabeth Street, a few minutes' walk from the Mulberry Street address the 1899 manifest gives for Rocco.
So the archive now knows not just the street but the church. The transcripts are locked behind a tier above the trial — and they would carry the godparents, who in an Italian parish are almost always kin. That is the single most valuable thing still sitting behind a paywall.
The negative worth most
The "Italy Births, Marriages and Deaths 1806–1900" sets do not cover Scilla. The test was clean: zero Polistena across all three, for a surname with six emigrants in the Ellis Island index alone. They are FamilySearch-derived and their Italian coverage runs to Sicily and the north, not Reggio Calabria. Anyone hoping to shortcut the Antenati work through a subscription site should know that before paying.
The same sets were tried for the archive's oldest Sicilian question — Rosario Mazza 's marriage to Leonarda Bonanno, about 1870. No Leonarda Bonanno marriage exists in the set, and no Mariano Mazza birth, though 110 Nicotra marriages show it does reach the Catania area. That question stays where it was.
Method, for whoever comes next.
FindMyPast's search runs on a GraphQL endpoint —
POST /titan/marshal/graphql, recordSearch(filters, order, pageNumber)
under root { search }. Driving that directly turns a twelve-page click-through
into one loop, and the RecordMetadataId filter restricts a search to a single
record set. The whole sweep above cost a few minutes rather than an afternoon.
Done
| When | What | Scope | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Sep 2026 | MyHeritage GEDCOM export | 614 individuals, 212 families, 39 cited sources, 133 images. | Parsed in full. 15 duplicate records merged on evidence; 58 shared names left deliberately unmerged; 14 disconnected components identified. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | The 133 tree images | Signed MyHeritage links, due to expire 16 September 2026. | All 133 downloaded and stored in the repository, and all 133 published. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Component analysis | Is this one family tree? | No. It is 14 pieces. The largest holds 479 people; the second holds 111 Piedimonte Etneo Mazza joined to the rest by nothing. Recorded, not papered over. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Ancestral reconstruction from the living generation upward | Rather than downward from an assumed founder. | Michael Rocco Mazza has 59 recorded ancestors across 9 generations. The four quarters reach 1697, 1821, 1851 and 1879 respectively. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Brisbane Catholic Cemeteries register (Nudgee) | 18 surnames swept against the Archdiocese's own deceased register — the cemetery is not in the Brisbane City Council search. | 90 register rows; 19 matched to this archive with plot, register number and exact dates. Corrected the tree in 6 places. Found the four grandparents in consecutive plots V-1026 to V-1029. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | NAA passenger arrivals index, 1898–1972 | 18 surnames swept, then 18 targeted name searches against the National Archives of Australia's voyage-level index. | Named the ship for 9 of the 18 crossings, including Sebastiano Mazza (Toscana, 4 Oct 1949) and Michele Mazza (Palermo, 21 Apr 1925). Corrected four ports of arrival or embarkation. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Antenati — nine annual indexes, three comuni | Piedimonte Etneo Nati 1877, 1878, 1879 (+supplement), 1880, 1881; Mascali 1879; Giarre 1879. Archivio di Stato di Catania. | A NULL on Salvatore Mazza in all nine. Five Mazza births found: Antonino and Grazia (1877), Rosaria and Venerio (1879), Gaetano (1880); none at all in 1878, 1881, Mascali or Giarre. Acts 167 and 205 transcribed in full, documenting three Mazza braccianti of Via Terremorte. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Queensland BDM historical index | Free Registry index — deaths to 1996, marriages to 1951, births to 1926. Searched on the FATHER'S and MOTHER'S names, not the person's. | Six registrations. Proved Michele Mazza (d. 14 Nov 1926) and Rosario Mazza (b. 1899) sons of Salvatore Mazza and Maria Concetta Nicotra, and therefore Sebastiano's brothers. Confirmed Maria Nicotra's own parents, Sebastiano and Domenica as Mary Rosa's parents, and Maria Mazza's 1939 marriage to Rosario Coco. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | VA Nationwide Gravesite Locator | The three Polistena the tree places at Arneytown, New Jersey. | TWO people in ONE plot, not three. Joseph Polistena, PFC US Army, Second World War, Section O3 Site 8647; Santa Polistena entered as his wife in the same site. Confirmed the archive's merge of the two Joseph records and corrected Santa's death date by a month. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | FamilySearch full-text — Piedimonte Etneo | The endpoint recorded in the Falco archive's method notes, over parish registers and civil series Antenati does not hold for this comune (marriages there stop at 1893). | THE ARCHIVE'S CENTRAL QUESTION, ANSWERED. Salvatore Mazza's birth act (5 Jan 1873), his parish marriage (1898), his death act (1929), and marriage proclamations of 1898, 1902 and 1910 naming Rosario's age each time. Proved the 110 unattached Mazza to be the descendants of Salvatore's brothers, and produced a new generation, Mariano Mazza. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Antenati — Scilla, Nati 1870, 1892 and 1851 | Three annual indexes at the Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, plus two acts read in full. | Act 230 of 1892 gave Giuseppe Arena's exact birth (6 October, Via Grotte 75), confirmed Concetta Russo as his mother, and CORRECTED his father Giovanni Arena's birth year by eleven years — 33 in the act, so born about 1859, not 1870. Act 81 of 1870 gave three Arena generations but proved to be a different household. NO DONATO AT ALL in the 1851 index. |
| 10 Sep 2026 | Antenati — Scilla, Matrimoni 1913, index transcribed in full | All eleven index openings, images 75–85. The IIIF images are not rate-limited, only the portal's HTML is. | 58 marriages, 77 surnames — and no Arena, no Donato, no Polistena and no Mazza among them. The Polistena–Donato marriage is not in 1913. One index entry that read as a Mazza bride is Muzzi in the act itself. |
Not yet read
No Italian civil register has been opened for this family. That is the honest headline of this archive on the day it was built.
| Source | What would be looked for | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Antenati — Piedimonte Etneo, Nati 1875, 1876 and 1882 onward | Salvatore Mazza, if the year is further out than two. | Each volume carries its own index, so this is index reads, not volume reads. |
| Antenati — Piedimonte Etneo, Matrimoni | The marriage of Salvatore Mazza and Concetta Greco, c. 1870; and any Rosario Mazza marriage. | A marriage act names both fathers — the fastest route to Rosario. |
| Antenati — the acts behind index entries 164, 168 (1877) and 66 (1880) | The fathers of Mazza Antonino, Grazia and Gaetano. | Three more Mazza households for the cost of three crops. |
| Antenati / Catania | Salvatore Mazza, who died at Catania in 1929. | A large city's registers — a much bigger job. |
| Antenati — Catanzaro / Vibo Valentia, Briatico | The whole Prostamo, Melluso and Anile descent, 1809 onward. | Would convert eight asserted generations into documented ones. |
| Antenati — Scilla, Nati around 1859 | GIOVANNI ARENA, now known to be born about 1859 rather than 1870. The Bourbon-era index NAMES THE PARENTS, so one opening would give his father and mother outright. | The best single lead the archive currently holds. The restaurazione arks are not computable from the year — the series interleaves Nati, Morti and Matrimoni — so each year costs one portal page load. |
| Antenati — Scilla, Nati 1845–1860 for a Donato | MICHELE DONATO, absent from 1851 where the tree puts him. His eldest son was born 1878, so he is somewhere in that window. | This archive has now found the tree six years out on two Mazza births and eleven years out on Giovanni Arena. A wrong year is the likelier explanation than a wrong town. |
| Antenati — Scilla, Matrimoni 1899, atto 62 | Arena Domenico × Arena Maria, 30 November 1899 — named in the margin of act 81 of 1870. | Would name four parents and close out the 1870 household, which is not the tree's but is a real Scilla Arena line. |
| Antenati — Scilla, Matrimoni 1905–1912 | The eight remaining volumes in the window. Giovanni Polistena × Nunziata Donato is not in 1913. | Their eldest recorded child suggests the marriage is in range. |
| Antenati — Reggio Calabria, Scilla | Arena, Polistena and Donato, 1809 onward. | |
| National Archives of Australia — the nine remaining crossings | Domenica Prostamo, March 1951, is not in the index under either surname. | Nine of eighteen are still unnamed. |
| CEMLA — Argentine immigration | The Buenos Aires Prostamo. | |
| FamilySearch full-text search | Piedimonte Etneo and Briatico parish registers. | The technique that broke the Falco line open. |