Three towns, one strait, and a suburb of Brisbane.
Piedimonte Etneo · Briatico · Scilla · New York · Buenos Aires · Brisbane — a family assembled from three corners of the Italian south, and the ships that carried it.
This is an archive of the Mazza of Brisbane — and of the three southern Italian towns they came out of, none of which had heard of the other two. It is not a pedigree: of the 707 people recorded here, all but a handful never continued the line. Only 95 of them have a death recorded anywhere — which is a measure of how much of this tree is still undated rather than of who is still alive.
This archive opened with the Mazza name reaching back four generations and stopping at a man with no dates at all. One day in the Sicilian registers took it to seven generations and Mariano Mazza and Maria Catalano, and joined a hundred and ten cousins to the line — every step a document.
The same day cost the archive its other headline. The Calabrian Prostamo were said to run nine generations to 1697. Audited, they are documented to a sailor dead before 1886, and asserted for four generations above him.
It is a public archive with one rule: a living person is named and nothing more — and dates are withheld for anyone eighty or younger, living or not. And a second rule, which is harder: every claim says how well it is known. Documented Inferred Family lore
Where this family can actually be put
Calabrian towns on one side of the strait, four Sicilian comuni within ten kilometres on the other, and a Brisbane parish where the quarters met. Every dot is a place this archive can put a named person in, and its size is how many stand there. The biggest are labelled; the colours are this archive's own regions. The coast and the borders under them are real — Natural Earth, clipped to this frame — so a dot can be read as somewhere rather than as a position in an empty box.
Where they came from
Four grandparents, three towns, and about six hundred kilometres of coast between the furthest two. Nothing in the Italian record joins these families to each other. They were joined in Queensland.
Prostamo, Melluso, Anile, Barbuto, Ventrice. A comune on the Tyrrhenian coast that sent people to New York, to Buenos Aires and to Brisbane in three separate departures.
Arena, Polistena, Donato. The rock and the fishing quarter at the northern gate of the Strait of Messina — the whirlpool of the Odyssey.
Mazza, Nicotra. Literally the foot of the mountain: a town on the north-east flank of Etna, and the origin of the surname this archive is named for.
Four days ago this line was two names on a Queensland death certificate. It now reaches generation six on both sides, across forty-three read index years — and the man it is named for is still missing.
Where Maria Nicotra was born on 8 December 1875, at half past nine in the evening — found after fourteen years had been read in the wrong town. Etna swallowed the place whole in 1928.
The town a document names and eleven of its own years contradict — until its first year was opened. 1820 holds two untitled Nicotra households, and one of the fathers is called Rosario.
The lower town, fifteen hundred metres from Giarre and registering separately for seventy years. Its 1844 marriage Tavola holds a Nicotra born at Giarre and registering his children here — the shape the whole search had only guessed at.
Where the four lines met. Thirteen of them lie at Nudgee — the same cemetery as the Falco.
Elsewhere in the archive
93 people across ten generations — counted against the 2,046 there ought to be. Complete for grandparents, 13% complete by the seventh generation, and one thread at the tenth.
The archive's largest open question, answered on the day it was built: a hundred and ten Piedimonte Etneo Mazza who turned out to be the families of Michael Rocco Mazza's great-great-uncles.
Four generations this morning, seven tonight — from Mariano Mazza, born about 1815, to two children born in Brisbane.
Thirty-nine Arena of Scilla in a single unbroken family — the counter-example, and the reason a surname tells you least about a family.
Michael Rocco Mazza has four grandparents and they came from four different places. Three towns in the south of Italy, and the shipping line that brought all four to one suburb of Brisbane.
The archive's largest claim, audited: two Prostamo generations proved, four shown to rest on nothing, and a family of sailors the tree had recorded as farmers.
The Calabrian coastal comune that sent its people to New York, to Buenos Aires and to Brisbane in three separate departures.
The town on the north-east flank of Etna that gave the family its surname — and the shallowest line of the four.
Homer's Scylla, and a fishing village on the Strait of Messina. The Arena and the Polistena came from here.
Eighteen recorded arrivals and departures, in two distinct waves fifty years apart: New York before the Great War, Fremantle and Brisbane after the second.
Thirteen of this family are buried in one Brisbane cemetery — the same ground that holds five of the Falco.
Mazza is one of the commonest surnames in Italy, and it was coined many times over. What that means for anyone searching it.
What this archive does not know, written down — and what it has closed, including the identification that joined a hundred and ten Piedimonte Mazza to the line.
The line, ten generations
Back to the 1690s in Calabria, with the two generations that rest on the family tree alone marked where they fall.
The joint here will not bear weight. This generation rests on the family tree alone.
1 child recorded show ↓ hide ↑
5 children recorded show ↓ hide ↑
2 children recorded show ↓ hide ↑
Brothers and sisters · 4 show ↓ hide ↑
Her line has no archive of its own yet, so the register names her parents and nobody else.
1 child recorded show ↓ hide ↑
Brothers and sisters · 1 show ↓ hide ↑
Her line has no archive of its own yet, so the register names her parents and nobody else.
6 children recorded show ↓ hide ↑
7 children recorded show ↓ hide ↑
Brothers and sisters · 5 show ↓ hide ↑
Her line has no archive of its own yet, so the register names her parents and nobody else.
6 children recorded show ↓ hide ↑
Brothers and sisters · 9 show ↓ hide ↑
4 children recorded show ↓ hide ↑
Brothers and sisters · 11 show ↓ hide ↑
The families who married in
Every surname this archive holds, ranked. Each is here because a person married a person. The marriages, in full →
Every surname the archive holds154
- Mazza121
- Prostamo82
- Arena65
- Polistena46
- Donato25
- Cavallaro14
- Melluso14
- Bova13
- Nicotra13
- Anile12
- Costa9
- Arlotta8
and 142 more, all named below
What this archive has established
A claim, tested
The Prostamo were said to reach 1697. They are documented to Domenico Prostamo, a sailor of Briatico dead before 1886 — and asserted, by a tree already shown to be six years out elsewhere, for four generations above him. The audit →
Four plots in a row
All four of Michael Rocco Mazza's grandparents — born in three towns six hundred kilometres apart, arrived on four different sailings — lie in consecutive plots V-1026 to V-1029 at Nudgee. The register →
Nine ships, named
The family tree recorded eighteen crossings and not one vessel. The National Archives passenger index named nine of them — the Toscana, the Surriento, the Roma, the Palermo. The crossings →
The hundred and ten, joined
The export arrived as fourteen disconnected pieces, the second holding 110 Piedimonte Etneo Mazza attached to this family by nothing. Five register acts proved them the descendants of Salvatore's brothers. The argument →
Fifty-eight names it refuses to merge
Four men called Rosario Mazza, four called Giuseppe Arena, none with a date between them. The archive keeps them apart rather than inventing a descent. The method →
Dates are withheld for anyone 80 or younger
Everyone in this tree is written up in full — name, places, family, photographs, records. But 131 people who would be 80 or younger today, and whose death is not recorded, have their dates withheld. Those dates are stripped in the build, not hidden by the page: they are not in the HTML and not recoverable from this site. A removal request is honoured within days, without argument and without requiring a reason. The method →
The archive in numbers
Every one of these is a link to the page that earns it.
What is still missing
Written down with the document that would settle each one, and where that document is — because a question with no test beside it is a wish, not a research plan. The deepest claim in the archive, the Prostamo line to 1697, rests on a tree that has already been shown wrong by six years elsewhere and is marked accordingly. Open questions →
Nothing here is taken on trust because it appears in a family tree. Where a record has been seen, it is cited; where it has not, the claim is marked. See Method.