Miosi, Cassiere, Di Piazza, Terracchio

Maternal line: Miosi, Cassiere, Terracchio (Bagheria and Palermo)

Dario's mother, Giuseppa Miosi (born 22 July 1956), is the daughter of Filippo Miosi (1923–2000) and Maria Antonia Terracchio (1928–2023). Below is what the civil registration records of Bagheria and Palermo (FamilySearch, full-text search) confirm or correct compared with the MyHeritage tree.

From top to bottom, from the earliest ancestors down to Dario. A vertical line between two couples means that one of the spouses below is a child of the couple above. Dashed boxes = unknown parents or hypotheses; gold border = foundling.

1. Alfonso Cassiere was a foundling too

The Bagheria marriage banns of 27 August 1893 (no. 76) concern Cassiere Alfonso, 24, shoemaker, and Di Piazza Antonina, 21. Alfonso is recorded as «son of an unknown father … son of an unknown mother», born in Palermo. Among the attached documents is the consent of the Superintendency of the Foundling Institute of the Province of Palermo, which signed in place of the parents. Antonina was the daughter of Giacomo Di Piazza and Lucia Scimeca, all resident in Bagheria.

So Dario has a foundling on both sides: Antonio Verghe (Chiusa Sclafani, 1898) on his father's side and Alfonso Cassiere (Palermo, c. 1869) on his mother's. The surname «Cassiere», like «Verghe», was very probably assigned by the foundling hospital.

2. Antonina Di Piazza: died in 1945, born in 1872 (not 1880)

Bagheria death record no. 106 of 1945: Di Piazza Antonina died on 18 March 1945 at via Spano 30, aged 72 years and 8 months. She was born in Bagheria, daughter of the late Giacomo and the late Scimeca Lucia, widow of Cassiere Alfonso. One of the witnesses is Sorci Francesco, husband of her daughter Giovanna Cassiere (married 1931). The birth year 1880 in the tree should therefore be corrected to about July 1872: with 1880 she would have been 13 when her son Domenico was born (1893).

3. Antonio Miosi: born 24 December 1894

Bagheria birth record no. 775 of 1894. Antonio was born on 24 December 1894 at via Pero 1, to Maria Di Bernardo (22), wife of Filippo Miosi (30, baker). The birth was registered on 28 December by Elisabetta Scirè, 58, his paternal grandmother (see below). The tree gives 1895, which is roughly the registration year: the correct date is 1894.

An older sister, Paola Miosi, was born on 24 June 1892 in via Raffadale. At that time Filippo (28) and Maria (19) recognised her as their natural daughter: they were not yet married in a civil ceremony. The civil marriage therefore falls between June 1892 and December 1894, and the record should name the parents of both.

Beware: in Bagheria there were at least two Filippo Miosi at the same time. The other was married to Francesca Morici and also had a son Antonino in 1895. They are easy to confuse.

3b. Filippo Miosi and Maria Di Bernardo: marriage, Filippo's parents, widowhood

Civil marriage: 11 May 1895. In the margin of Paola Miosi's birth record (1892) there is a note: «By marriage record of 11 May 1895 the above-named was legitimated as the daughter of Miosi Filippo and Di Bernardo Maria». The civil marriage therefore also came after Antonio's birth (December 1894), and he was legitimated by the same record. The Bagheria marriage register for 1895 is not online, either on FamilySearch or on Antenati.

Filippo's parents: Antonino Miosi and Elisabetta Scirè. This comes from the Ficarazzi marriage banns no. 41 of 18 November 1901. «Miosi Filippo, widower», a farm worker living in Bagheria, is the son of Antonio (Antonino) Miosi, farm worker, then alive and about 76, so born around 1825, and of Elisabetta Scirè. He remarries Rosa La Monica of Ficarazzi, daughter of the late Giuseppe.

The confirmation comes from a detail: Elisabetta Scirè, aged 58, is the person who registered Antonio Miosi's birth on 28 December 1894. She was therefore the newborn's paternal grandmother, not a midwife, and Antonio was named after his grandfather. By 1901 Filippo was already a widower: Maria Di Bernardo died between 1895 and 1901.

A brother: Stefano Miosi. On 26 April 1885 in Bagheria he married Giuseppa Zarcone (daughter of Vincenzo and Anna Tornatore). The record names him as the son of Antonino and Elisabetta Scirè, aged 26, so born around 1859. The marriage of Antonino and Elisabetta therefore falls around 1856–1858. I checked the Bagheria marriage promise indexes for 1855, 1856 and 1857 on Antenati without finding them. The 1858 register is missing.

Beware of namesakes. In Bagheria in the same period there are at least two Filippo Miosi: ours, son of Antonino and Scirè, and the one who married Francesca Morici in 1884. There is also another couple «Miosi Antonino × Di Bernardo Maria», who legitimated a son through a marriage of 31 March 189x.

4. The Terracchio family is from Palermo (Brancaccio), not Bagheria

The marriage of Isabella Benedetta Terracchio (17, sister of Maria Antonia) to Gaetano Mazzotta, celebrated in Palermo in February 1944, records her as born and resident in Palermo, daughter of Pietro (then alive) and Fisicaro Girolama.

In the tree, Pietro Terracchio is linked to Giuseppe Terracchio (b. Brancaccio 1827) and Grazia Di Noto (1820). This is chronologically impossible: Pietro had daughters in 1926–1928. The Brancaccio records instead show a Pietro Terracchio, labourer, born around 1866, married to Isabella Tumminello (born around 1860). Their children include Gaetana (8 March 1894) and a baby girl in 1902. The name Isabella of Maria Antonia's sister suggests this couple were the grandparents, and therefore that the tree skips a generation: Giuseppe (1827) → Pietro (c. 1866) × Isabella Tumminello → Pietro × Girolama Fisicaro → Maria Antonia. This hypothesis needs to be checked against the birth record or the marriage of Pietro junior.

4b. Who was the father of Pietro Terracchio (husband of Girolama Fisicaro)

There are two Pietro Terracchio from different generations, and MyHeritage has merged them into one person.

• Pietro Terracchio, born in Brancaccio (Palermo) on 2 January 1866, son of Giuseppe Terracchio, labourer, and Grazia Di Noto (42 in 1866). The 1866 birth record is on FamilySearch, Palermo Births. He is the labourer who married Isabella Tumminello in Palermo on 17 September 1885 (Palermo marriage index 1876–1885). In 1887 he lost a 4-month-old daughter, Grazia, named after her paternal grandmother Grazia Di Noto. Pietro was 28 in 1894, when his daughter Gaetana was born, and 36 in 1902.
• Pietro Terracchio, husband of Girolama Fisicaro, father of Isabella Benedetta (c. 1926) and Maria Antonia (1928), alive in 1944. He cannot have been born in 1866, let alone be the son of a man born in 1827: he belongs to the next generation, born around 1895–1905.

The most likely reconstruction is Giuseppe Terracchio × Grazia Di Noto → Pietro (1866) × Isabella Tumminello → Pietro × Girolama Fisicaro → Maria Antonia. The main clue is the name: by Sicilian custom the first daughter is named after the paternal grandmother, and Maria Antonia's older sister is indeed called Isabella. What is still missing is the birth record of Pietro junior (Palermo or Brancaccio, c. 1895–1905), or his marriage to Girolama Fisicaro, which would confirm it. On MyHeritage it would be best to detach Giuseppe (1827) and Grazia Di Noto from Pietro, husband of Fisicaro, and insert Pietro (1866) and Isabella Tumminello in between as «to be verified».

Still to find

• Miosi–Di Bernardo marriage of 11 May 1895 (Bagheria): it is the only record that names Maria Di Bernardo's parents. It is not online and must be requested from the Commune of Bagheria (Civil Registry Office) or the State Archives of Palermo (Tribunal duplicates). Alternatively there is Maria's death record (Bagheria, 1895–1901).
• Marriage of Antonino Miosi and Elisabetta Scirè (c. 1856–1858; the 1858 register is missing on Antenati), or their death records (after 1901), to go back another generation.
• Birth of Antonina Di Piazza (Bagheria, c. July 1872) and marriage of Giacomo Di Piazza to Lucia Scimeca.
• Alfonso Cassiere's abandonment record (Palermo, c. 1869) and his file at the Foundling Institute. The same kind of research as was done for Antonio Verghe.
• Marriage of Pietro Terracchio and Girolama Fisicaro (Palermo, c. 1920–1926). FamilySearch full-text search does not find it: the annual index has to be browsed.
• Miosi–Cassiere marriage of 15 July 1917: on Antenati the Bagheria registers after 1910 are almost empty (2 images per register). An extract should be requested from the Commune of Bagheria.

Extended tree and collateral relatives

For each ancestral couple, all the children found in the records or on MyHeritage are shown, with their spouses and children down to Dario. People shared between several trees (for example Filippo Miosi and Giuseppa Cassiere) appear in each. suggested by MyHeritage, not yet verified in the records For lines with living members, only Dario's direct ancestors are shown.

Miosi – Scirè (Bagheria)

Di Piazza – Anello (Bagheria)

Siblings, children and other collateral relatives (with sources)