The Mazza Name Line
On the morning this archive was built the Mazza name reached back four generations and stopped at a man with no dates. It now runs seven, and every step in Sicily is a document.
The archive opened with an embarrassment: the family took its name from its shallowest line. The Mazza of Piedimonte Etneo could be followed back four generations to a Rosario Mazza about whom exactly one thing was asserted — that he fathered Salvatore — while the Calabrian Prostamo ran nine generations to 1697.
That is no longer true. On 10 September 2026 the Sicilian registers gave up Salvatore's act of birth, and with it his father's age, his father's street, and his father's father.
Piedimonte Etneo, Nati 1873, atto 3
…è comparso Rosario Mazza di Mariano, di anni ventotto, bracciante, qui domiciliato, il quale mi ha presentato un bambino di sesso maschile che dichiara essergli nato il giorno cinque corrente Gennaro alle ore sette antemeridiane, dalla di lui moglie Leonarda Bonanno di Gaetano, seco lui domiciliata nella casa di sua abitazione sita in questo Comune Contrada Terremorte, al quale figlio dichiara di dare il nome di Salvadore.
Three things in one sentence. Salvatore Mazza was born on 5 January 1873 — not 1879, as the family tree has always said. His father Rosario was twenty-eight, which puts Rosario's own birth about 1844. And Rosario is «di Mariano» — son of a Mariano Mazza whom nothing in this archive had ever named.
Archivio di Stato di Catania, Stato civile
italiano, Piedimonte Etneo, Nati 1873, atto 3 — Antenati an_ua83486, images 3–4.
The line, generation by generation
Aged THIRTY-SIX when he declared his son Rosario's birth on 2 June 1845, so born about 1809. A BRACCIALE then; 'fu Mariano gia contadino' by his son's death act of 1924. Named in the birth act of 1845, in the marriage act of 1871, in his grandson Salvatore's birth act of 1873 and in Rosario's death act of 1924 -- four records.
Married Maria Catalano. Aged THIRTY-SIX at her son Rosario's birth in June 1845, so born about 1809. 'fu Catalano Maria gia casalinga' in 1924. Named in the birth act of 1845, the marriage act of 1871 and the death act of 1924.
Source: Piedimonte Etneo, Nati 1845 atto 64; Matrimoni 1871 atto 14; Nati 1873 atto 3; Morti 1924
BORN TO A DAY. Act 64 of the Piedimonte births of 1845: born at eleven in the morning of 2 JUNE 1845, in the house his parents lived in, and declared by his father Mariano the same day. Aged 28 in January 1873, 31 in 1877, 32 in 1880, 53 in 1898, 55 in 1902, 65 in 1910 and 79 at death -- eight records, one man. A bracciante, later contadino, of Contrada Terremorte, via Grotta Nicodemo and Contrada S. Basilio.
Married Leonarda Bonanno. Daughter of GAETANO BONANNO and ANNA CAVALLARO of Piedimonte Etneo, named together in the couple's marriage act. A BRACCIANTE in her own right in 1871. Married Rosario on 30 APRIL 1871, act 14. Still living in 1910, when she and Rosario consented in person to their son Ignazio's marriage.
Source: Nati 1845 atto 64; Matrimoni 1871 atto 14; Nati 1873 atto 3; Nati 1877 atto 168; Nati 1880 atto 66; proclamations 1898, 1902, 1910; Morti 1924
Born at seven in the morning in Contrada Terremorte, Piedimonte Etneo. NOT 1879, as the family tree has it.
Married Maria Nicotra. Daughter of Giovanni Nicotra and Venera. Married 25 April 1898 in the parish of Piedimonte Etneo.
Source: Nati 1873 atto 3; parish marriage 25 Apr 1898; Morti 1929 atto 9
Piedimonte Etneo. Sailed on the Toscana out of Genoa, 4 October 1949.
Married Domenica Prostamo. Of Briatico. Buried beside him at Nudgee, plots V-1026 and V-1027.
Source: Nudgee register; NAA passenger index
Dates withheld — 80 or younger.
Married Nancy Arena. Of the Scilla Arena.
Source: family tree
Dates withheld — 80 or younger.
Married Stefanie D'Arcy.
Source: family tree
Dates withheld — 80 or younger.
Source: family tree
Six years, and eight wasted registers
The family tree gives Salvatore Mazza as born 1879 at Piedimonte Etneo, died 1929 at Catania. Acting on that, this archive read the birth registers of Piedimonte Etneo for 1875, 1876, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881 and 1882, and those of Mascali and Giarre for 1879, and found no Salvatore Mazza in any of them.
He was born in 1873, six years earlier, and he died at Piedimonte Etneo, not Catania — in the frazione of Vena, at Contrada Grotta Nicodemo, on 19 September 1929, aged fifty-six.
The lesson is about search strategy, not about the tree. Eight registers were read on the strength of one undocumented year. What actually broke it open was working from a different record — the Queensland death index, which gave Salvatore's son Rosario a birth year of 1899 and his wife her full name — and then finding the parish marriage of 1898 and the civil death act of 1929, each of which names Salvatore's parents. Three records converged on the man before the register was opened at the right page.
Mariano
The second component of the family tree — the hundred and ten Piedimonte Etneo Mazza joined to this family by nothing — is headed by a Rosario Mazza born 1850, and it contains a Mariano Mazza.
The register now gives a Rosario Mazza born about 1844 whose father was Mariano. That is a second, independent correspondence on top of the Orazio one — and it is the strongest reason yet to think the two halves are one family. It is still not the document that joins them. What would do that is Rosario's own marriage act, which would name Mariano with an age and a wife. The queue →