For over a year now, I have dedicated a lot of my time researching my family tree. Up till now my research centred mainly on the towns of Delianuova, Santa Giorgia and Santa Cristina, in the province of Reggio di Calabria. Some of my research led me to Sicily in search of my maternal grandmother’s Sicilian roots.
The last few days I decided to spend researching looking for my 2 x great grandmother Santa Mariangela Fortunata Paladino’s roots in Scylla (RC).
My research led me to discover that besides my 2 x great grandmother; there were seven other siblings, one of them already known to me, Maria Teresa Paladino, because she married a cousin of my 2 x great grandmother’s husband.
Inevitably, the research led me back in time to the Napoleonic Era.
When I reached the year 1815 I made a gruesome discovery, the death of a good number of people in one single day and no motive recorded in the death records of each of them.
That fateful January of that fateful year 1815, the fortress in Scylla was struck by a cataclysmic event with disastrous consequences for the military personnel stationed there and for the civilian population as well, who lived under its ramparts.
This discovery stirred my curiosity and, thanks to the online search engines, I was able to find out what happened on that day:
On the 14th of January, 1815, a lighting strike hit the munitions room causing an explosion, 48 of the soldiers of the “IV Regiment of the Light Infantry” died as a result. Their ages ranging from 19 to 35.
The explosion caused the collapse of part of the fortress, rocks and detritus fell on the civilian houses below causing the death of a good number of civilians, the youngest of which was 3 year of age, his name: Giuseppe Barresi, son of Pasquale Barresi & Camilla Martello.
Among all the civilian deaths the most tragic was the death of two entire families: the family of Giuseppe Paladino and Domenico Giovanni Paladino, the two most probably cousins of Giuseppe Paladino (my ancestor and son of Santo Paladino and Flavia Ungaro), who was still single at that time. They perished along with their wives and children.
Besides the 48 military victims, 27 civilians lost their lives that day.