De Santi of Mazara

The founder of the family was Giuseppe De Santi (1847-1923), son of unknown parents. Giuseppe married Maria Tumbiolo (1853-1926), the daughter of Alberto Tumbiolo and Maria Quinci.

Giuseppe and Maria had at least 7 male children: 

• Francesco (born in 1874), married with Caterina Giacalone;
• Alberto (born in 1880), married with Francesca Asaro (born in 1891);
• Vincenzo (born in 1881);
• Antonino (born in 1884), married with Marianna Quinci (born in 1892);
• Pietro (born in 1887), married with Rosa Adamo (1896-1919);
• Bartolomeo (1890-1964), married with Vita Palmeri (1899-1978);
• Leonardo (1892-1969), married with Giovanna Adamo (1898-1974).

The surname of the De Santi family in the older records is often found written with the De followed by an apostrophe, as in "De 'Santi". That truncation over the years has led several late XIX century clerks of the Mazara registrar office to understand the surname of the family as "Dei Santi", an interpretation the family fiercely opposed, as they kept requesting the tribunal to get the family name amended as "De Santi" in the records. Ironically, in the birth record of the founder, who was exposed to the wheel of the "Spedale dei Projetti" of Mazara on November 1, 1847, the then mayor Pietro Safina wrote "Giuseppe dei Santi" (here you may find page 1 and page 2 of the record).

The "nciuria", the family nickname,  was apparently "Diana" or "La Diana". One of Giuseppe's 7 sons, Bartolomeo, often shortened in Bartolo,  in 1928 had a Monterey clipper built in San Francisco, California, and named it "La Diana". Bartolo's son, Joe De Santi, a fisherman as well, bought the fishing ship by his father for $5 in 1939, and he used it to fish in the waters in front of San Diego until 2001, when he finally retired, and donated the boat to the Maritime Museum of San Diego, which restored it and kept it dry on a pier (here a recent photo gallery).

All the 7 male children of Giuseppe and Maria emigrated to the States, but 4 came back, so the descendants are mainly distributed between Mazara del Vallo, Sicily and San Diego, California.

The result of the research have been stored in FamilySearch and copied in Geni. The FamilySearch profile of the founder Giuseppe De Santi is https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/LT5G-F19.

Post scriptum: 

in the XIX century Mazara there was a different "Dei Santi" family, whose founder was Santo Dei Santi, born around 1831 by unknown parents. Santo married Susanna Rallo (born in 1841), of the Rallo family of butchers, and like many descendants of that family, also the namesake nephew Santo Dei Santi (1894-1985), son of Giovan Battista Dei Santi and Elisabetta Mulone and husband of Girolama Giacalone, emigrated to Saint Louis, Missouri, where his descendants still live.

The Mazarese ancestor of the Asaro of Castellammare

The Asaro of Castellammare are a branch of the Asaro of Mazara. 

I first read that in a website which reported as source an author called Silvio Garofalo, who in 1989 wrote a book about the town of Castellammare del Golfo ("Miscellanea di storia fatti notizie e dati su Castellammare del Golfo", Silvio Garofalo, Edizioni Campo, Alcamo, 1989). 

I have never read the book, but it is apparently full of genealogical information about the families from Castellammare. 

 Mr Garofalo was stating that the Asaro came from Mazara around 1682, so I did look into the church records of Castellammare, and found that a single Vito Asaro from Mazara, son of Andrea Asaro and Bartolomea, may be the common ancestor of all Asaro of Castellammare. 

The town of Castellammare had only 463 inhabitant by 1595, so its lords, the baron Alliata, asked the king a license to repopulate it, and started to incentive people to move in. 

It took a very long time and effort to convince people to move to Castellammare, it was a multi-generational endeavour, as the town at the time was in the front line of the continuous wars among the Barbary pirates and the Sicilian pirates, so not exactly easy to sell. 

Very likely either Andrea Asaro or his son Vito was one of those newcomers. Vito Asaro married in Castellammare the 5 September 1684 with Anna Messina. 

In their marriage record they are recorded as Vito De Asaro and Anna Di Messina, but in a couple of generations both families will loose the De/Di. Vito and Anna had a number of children, and all the Asaro from Castellammare are likely descendant from their male offspring. 

In detail, in Castellammare: 

• Andrea Asaro married Francesca Gioia the 29 April 1715. 
• Francesco Asaro married Rosa Gioia the 22 November 1716. 
• Pietro Luca Asaro married Antonia Lombardo the 27 February 1718. 
• Bartolomeo Asaro married Domenichina Di Giorgi the 1 September 1721. 

Of particular distinction is the branch of Pietro Luca, as one of his descendants, his great-great-granddaughter Maria Asaro, married in Castellammare a Gaspare Mattarella the 12 October 1841, and she is the maternal ancestor of the branch of the Mattarella of Castellammare which has given Sicily and Italy a number of politicians, judges and statesmen, including the current President of Italy, Mr Sergio Mattarella, who is the great-great-grandson of Maria Asaro.

The town of Asaru

I do have a conjecture about the Asaro from central Sicily, the area around Canicattì and Caltanissetta. If we look at a detailed map of Sicily, around 40km east of Caltanissetta we may notice a very small town, called home by slightly more than 5,000 people, but with a very long history: Assoro. In Greek it was called Assoros, but in Latin that was rendered as Asarus, and in Sicilian it is still called Asaru to this day. I think there may be a decent chance that the Asaro from central Sicily got their surname from that town. That is even more likely for the D'Asaro family, as they are indeed more prevalent in central Sicily than in Western Sicily, and D'Asaro could well mean both "from the Asaro family" and "from the town of Asaro". Having said that, I am not sure how well this conjecture could explain the higher prevalence of the Asaro in western Sicily (Mazara, Castellammare, ..), whose men are almost always sailors or fishermen. It is not impossible, but I sort of find hard to believe that some guy from a town on the top of a mountain in central Sicily may be the forebear of such a family of seamen :) It may well be that the western Asaro and the central Asaro and D'Asaro may just share the surname, but not the forebear.

Perniciaro of Mazara v0.2

So far I have found the following descendants of Girolamo Perniciaro & Maria Catalano, a couple of my ancestors that lived in Mazara in the second half of the XVIII century:

Perniciaro of Mazara v0.1

I have added a couple of generations to the Perniciaro ancestors of my great-great-grandmother Angela Perniciaro on FamilySearch and Geni.
I knew my grandmother Angela Asaro forename came from her own grandmother Angela Perniciaro, I have been knowing that since childhood, but I was not aware that the latter forename was due her own grandmother, my great-great-great-great-grandmother  Angela Carrato.
Perniciaro is already a not very common surname, but Carrato is quite uncommon.
Apparently nowadays in Sicily there may be only a handful of Carrato families, mostly living in Mazara, which are probably all related to our Angela Carrato in one way or another.
Pugliese and Cristaldi are much more common, the latter especially in Mazara, their current major goes by the name of Nicolò Cristaldi.

Mazara vital records 1820-1860

Please note this is a work in progress!

Here are a list of links to the Mazara vital records from 1820 to 1860, as published in the Portale Antenati site:

Birth records year index 1/3 2/3 3/3 1820 index a g p 1821 index a g p 1822 index a g p 1823 index a g p 1824 index a g p 1825 index a g p 1826 index a g p 1827 index a g p 1828 index a g p 1829 index a g p 1830 index a g p 1831 index a g p 1832 index a g p 1833 index a g p 1834 index a g p 1835 index a g p 1836 index a g p 1837 index a g p 1838 index a g p 1839 index a g p 1840 index a g p 1841 index a g p 1842 index a g p 1843 index a g p 1844 index a g p 1845 index a g p 1846 index a g p 1847 index a g p 1848 index a g p 1849 index a g p 1850 index a g p 1851 index a g p 1852 index a g p 1853 index a g p 1854 index a g p 1855 index a g p 1856 index a g p 1857 index a g p 1858 index a g p 1859 index a g p 1860 index a g p 1861 index a g p 1862 index a g p 1863 index a g p 1864 index a g p 1865 index a g p 1866 index a g p 1867 index a g p 1868 index a g p 1869 index a g p

Marriage records year index 1/3 2/3 3/3 1820 index A G T 1821 index A I 1822-1 index A Q 1822-2 index A G 1823 index A D N  1824 index A F 1825 index A D M 1826 index A I 1827 index A D S 1828 index A D N 1829 index A D P 1830 index A G S 1831 index A D O 1832 index A G P 1833 index A F P 1834 index A G Q 1835 index A G Q 1836 index A F P 1837 index a g p 1838 index a g p 1839 index a g p 1840 index a g p 1841 index a g p 1842 index a g p 1843 index a g p 1844 index A G P 1845 index A G P 1846 index A G P 1847 index A G P 1848 index A D O 1849 index A G P 1850 index A K p 1851 index a g p 1852 index a g p 1853 index a g p 1854 index a g p 1855 index a g p 1856 index a g p 1857 index a g p 1858 index a g p 1859 index a g p 1860 index a g p 1861 index a g p 1862 index a g p 1863 index a g p 1864 index a g p 1865 index a g p 1866 index a g p 1867 index a g p 1868 index a g p 1869 index a g p

Deaths records year index 1/3 2/3 3/3 1820 index a g p 1821 index a g p 1822 index a g p 1823 index a g p 1824 index A F O 1825 index a g p 1826 index A D N 1827 index a g p 1828 index a g p 1829 index a g p 1830 index a g p 1831 index A I R 1832 index A G P 1833 index a g p 1834 index a g p 1835 index a g p 1836 index A G P 1837 index a g p 1838 index a g p 1839 index a g p 1840 index A G P 1841 index A G P 1842 index a g p 1843 index a g p 1844 index a g p 1845 index a g p 1846 index a g p 1847 index a g p 1848 index A G P 1849 index a g p 1850 index a g p 1851 index a g p 1852 index a g p 1853 index a g p 1854 index a g p 1855 index a g p 1856 index a g p 1857 index a g p 1858 index a g p 1859 index A F P 1860 index a g p 1861 index a g p 1862 index A G P 1863 index a g p 1864 index a g p 1865 index a g p 1866 index a g p 1867 index a g p 1868 index a g p 1869 index a g p

Perniciaro of Mazara

I have started to collect the sources I find on Portale Antenati about the Perniciaro of Mazara on Pinterest: