Sessa-Tropea Branch: Don Ferdinando and his descendants
Don Ferdinando was born around 1789 in Sessa, the cadet son of Antonio and Maria Anna Colacicco and grandson of Don Domenico (born in 1721).
During the 19th century he moved to Pizzo in Calabria, for work, having become “Tenente dei Dazi Indiretti” (equivalent to the current Lieutenant of the Guardia di Finanza for customs areas).
In 1821 Don Ferdinando married, at the age of 31, in Monteleone (today Vibo Valentia) Donna Raffaela Ciaccio1 (25 years old), daughter of a landowner of Monteleone. They had seven children (including the first two, who died a few months after birth), all born in Pizzo and Tropea. Don Ferdinando, having meanwhile become “Controloro” or Captain, died at the age of 48 in Tropea in 1837, a few weeks after the birth of his youngest child, leaving his wife and five children (Salvatore, Maria Giuseppa, Giuseppe, Alfonso and Filomena).
Raffaela Ciaccio, left a widow with five children (the eldest only 9 years old), remarried in 1840, again in Tropea, with Francesco Maria Conti, an usher2 (today's court bailiff) at the Court of Tropea and son of a chancellor.
From Tropea to Catanzaro
Raffaela Ciaccio's husband may then have been transferred for work from Tropea to Catanzaro. It is in any case a fact that the whole life of this Monarca branch then takes place entirely in Catanzaro until the end of the 19th century: the children of Don Ferdinando and Raffaela Ciaccio all married in Catanzaro, and Raffaela Ciaccio herself died there at the age of 86 in 1883, the widow of Francesco Maria Conti.
Ferdinando's family grew in Catanzaro with the birth of numerous grandchildren. However, at the beginning of the 1900s the various descendants (generally active in sectors of public administration and therefore subject to frequent relocations) left Catanzaro for work and spread across Italy: today no Monarca lives in Catanzaro any more.
