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.