The Ustica Connection
Newsletter of the Congregazione di San Bartolomeo Apostolo
Issue 18 - 18 June 2020

 

Ancient origins of the Tranchina family of Ustica
By Chris Caravella

 

The Tranchina family of Ustica is one story we've known for quite some time. A family member, and apparently also an astute genealogist, prepared a massive family chart back in 70s or 80s. It got passed down to the society by Leonard and Mary Louise Culotta - Mary Louise being the Tranchina descendant in the family. The chart is incredible not just for its massive size - something like 6 feet by 12 feet - but also because it included information that only could have been gotten directly from the church in Ustica. This, also, done at a time when there wasn't the convenience of the internet.

A clip from the "root" of the massive Tranchina family chart - a major achievement for its time.


The Tranchina family of Ustica rank 12th in size making them one of the larger families from the island. They established quite a renowned presence in the turn-of-the-century New Orleans restaurant and entertainment scene which is a story deserving its own separate article. They are a first family of Ustica showing up in the church records in 1765 with the marriage of Domenico Tranchina and Nunziata Mollica, Nunziata's life would be short lived, dying in 1774 on Ustica. Domenico remarried that same year to Caterina Taranto and it is this union that would produce all of the Tranchina descendants from Ustica.

Both of Domenico's marriage records and his Ustica death record in 1800 document his parent's names, though one has a conflict for the given name of his father. So, two out of three records document his parents names as Felice Tranchina and Antonia Fallo. There is no evidence that his parents ever lived on Ustica.

Also, equally important, the 1774 marriage record lists him as a native of "S. Angeli". This is also conflicted by the 1765 marriage which documents him as being from Lipari. This is where that old family chart becomes even more significant. There are frequent references in the Lipari church records to "Terre, Santi Angeli" which in Italian would be translated as "Lands of the Holy Angels". The problem here is "Terre, Santi Angeli" is in Latin so the vowels at the end of the name aren't plurals in the sense that we use plurals in modern languages. Perhaps a rookie mistake but one that could easily point you in the wrong direction. The translation now becomes "Land of Saint Angelo" which is exactly how the family chart interprets it. More specifically, the chart reference is to the town of Sant'Angelo di Brolo. So, kudos to our unknown Tranchina genealogist for helping to unravel that mystery.

Sant'Angelo di Brolo is one of the towns in northeastern Sicily that was a hotspot for immigration to Lipari. And, in fact, there are Tranchina families that show up in the Lipari church records, however, they are always documented with the surname Franchina or Branchina. Research in the Lipari documents indicates that they were from Tortorici which is an area in the southwest corner of the "hotspot". Modern-day surname distributions for the the three surnames show Tranchina clustering around Palermo and Ustica, Franchina clustering around Sant'Angelo di Brolo, and Branchina clustering further south in east central Sicily.

Modern-day surname distribution of Tranchina, Franchina and Branchina across Sicily.


Because the surname distribution reveals there are no Tranchina in the "hotspot", that would suggest that Tranchina is either a derivation of Franchina or that on Ustica the surname was substituted for Franchina because it was a more familiar surname in the Palermo area. In either case, any further research into the family in the Sant'Angelo di Brolo region would probably start with a search of the surname Franchina.

Use the family charts at the Ustica Genealogy Homepage to discover your path back to the ancient origins of the Tranchina family of Ustica.