Rosario Mazza

The tree gives him no death and dates his birth to 1850. The death act gives 15 NOVEMBER 1924, an age of SEVENTY-NINE (so born 1845, as this archive had already derived from the marriage proclamations), a trade -- CONTADINO -- and, crucially, BOTH HIS PARENTS: Mariano and Maria Catalano. The deepest Sicilian generation was an inference until this act; it is now documented.

The tree gives 1850. Act 64 of 1845 gives the day: born at eleven in the morning of 2 JUNE 1845, declared the same day by his father MARIANO MAZZA, thirty-six, BRACCIALE, with the mother named as MARIA CATALANO, thirty-six. The parish of the Chiesa Maggiore returned the baptism notice on the same day.

Four in the afternoon in the casa comunale, before Barone Mariano, sindaco. Both spouses single, both born and living at Piedimonte Etneo, both BRACCIANTI. He is entered as twenty-six, which his own birth act makes twenty-five and eleven months. Witnesses Salvatore Greco, calzolaio, 38, and Antonino Di Lava fu Giuseppe, bracciante, 46.

HE IS IN THE FAMILY TREE; HIS PARENTS ARE NOT. This row exists only to carry the join: it anchors MARIANO MAZZA and MARIA CATALANO, both named in his own birth act, onto the export person the charts draw. Without it the chart closed his line with «Before Piedimonte Etneo, 1850» -- a card that reported the tree's silence and read as though the registers were silent too. They are not. He is the top of the Sicilian spine in the export; the two people above him are documented and the chart now draws them.

Death -- missing entirely — DIED 15 NOVEMBER 1924 at PRESA, Piedimonte Etneo, aged seventy-nine, a CONTADINO; certificate 15. His death act also names his father MARIANO and his mother MARIA CATALANO, and his wife Leonarda Bonanno.

Birth year — Born 1845 at Piedimonte Etneo. His death act makes him SEVENTY-NINE in November 1924. This archive had already derived 1845 from the ages the marriage proclamations gave him in 1898, 1902 and 1910; the death act agrees.

Trade -- missing entirely — CONTADINO -- a peasant farmer. Which sets the Sicilian Mazza against the Calabrian Arena exactly: four generations of Arena sailors on the water at Scilla, and the Mazza contadini on the mountain at Piedimonte.

Birth date — BORN 2 JUNE 1845 at Piedimonte Etneo, at eleven in the morning, in his parents' own house. Act 64 of the births of 1845. The tree is FIVE YEARS out. Both parents are in the act: Mariano Mazza, 36, bracciale, and Maria Catalano, 36.

Marriage -- missing entirely — MARRIED 30 APRIL 1871 at Piedimonte Etneo, act 14, at four in the afternoon. Both single, both born and living there, both braccianti.

The chart says less than the archive knows — HIS PARENTS ARE NAMED IN HIS OWN BIRTH ACT: MARIANO MAZZA, thirty-six, bracciale, and MARIA CATALANO, thirty-six, Piedimonte Etneo Nati 1845 atto 64. The card is not a research wall -- it is the chart reporting that the FAMILY TREE has no parents for him, because the chart draws the tree and these two people are documented additions rather than tree people. The card's year is wrong too: 1850 is the tree's birth year and the act says 2 JUNE 1845.

Age — a third confirmation — TWENTY-SEVEN on 13 February 1872, when he registered his son Mariano's birth in person -- so born about 1845. That is now THREE independent statements against the tree's 1850: his own birth act of 2 June 1845, his death act of 1924 making him seventy-nine, and his own word at a registration desk in 1872.

A child the tree does not have — FIVE, AND THE ELDEST IS MARIANO, born 12 February 1872 in contrada San Basilio and named for his grandfather exactly as the naming custom predicts. Salvatore follows on 5 January 1873, eleven months later -- so either Mariano died in infancy or the births are ten and a half months apart. His death has not been sought.

A sixth child, and the custom called him — SIX AT LEAST. MARIANO, born 12 February 1872, named for his father's father; and GAETANO, born 5 May 1880, named for his mother's father GAETANO BONANNO -- which is exactly the order the Sicilian naming custom prescribes, first son for the paternal grandfather and the maternal grandfather next. Both in via San Basilio, both declared by Rosario in person, both absent from the family tree.

Declared age drifts three years — THE REGISTER ITSELF DISAGREES BY THREE YEARS IN 1880. He is twenty-seven in February 1872 and twenty-eight in January 1873 -- both fitting a birth in June 1845 -- and then THIRTY-TWO in May 1880, which would put him in 1848. His own birth act and his death act of 1924 both say 1845. RECORDED RATHER THAN AVERAGED: a declared age is a statement, not a measurement, and the act of birth outranks all of them.

Where the two disagree, the chart above still draws the tree as it stands. This archive does not silently rewrite what it was given — the acts are here.