Twice — and Three Times — Blessed: The Twins and Triplets of Castelbuono, Sicily
A discovery from the civil birth registers of a small Sicilian hill town
Tucked into the Madonie mountains of northern Sicily, Castelbuono is a town of around 8,000 souls today — and considerably fewer in the 19th century. It is a place where everybody knows everybody, where surnames echo through the generations, and where the past feels remarkably close.
As a genealogy researcher based here, I spend much of my time immersed in the town's civil birth registers — meticulously handwritten records dating back to 1820, when official record-keeping began. Page by page, year by year, I piece together the family trees of Castelbuono's past residents and their descendants scattered across the world.
What I didn't expect to find — at least not so frequently — was multiple births.
Eighteen sets of twins... and counting! Spanning nearly a century of records, from the 1820s to the early 1900s, eighteen pairs of twins were born in this small hilltop town. Some survived. Some did not — infant mortality in 19th century Sicily was heartbreakingly high, and twins faced particular risks. But all of them were here, breathing the same mountain air, recorded by the same careful hands in the same leather-bound registers.
And then there are the triplets.
In all those decades of records — through boom years and lean years, through the great emigration waves that carried so many Castelbuonesi to America, Argentina and beyond — so far, there is only one recorded set of triplets. One family, in one extraordinary moment, welcomed three new lives at once into this tiny, ancient town.
That family is the Cardella family.
The Cardellas were once one of Castelbuono's most prominent dynasties — a name so common in the town's records that it appears on page after page, intertwined with the most influential families of the Madonie. Today, the surname has almost vanished from Castelbuono itself. The Cardellas, like so many others, scattered across the world — to America, to northern Italy, to places far from the mountains where their ancestors were born.
One of their descendants, an American named Dave, found his way back to Castelbuono through a photograph — a simple grave photo taken on his behalf through the Find-A-Grave network. That photograph led to a conversation, which led to research, which led to a friendship, and eventually to a road trip through the Madonie mountains together.
Dave knew a great deal about his Castelbuono roots. But he didn't know about the triplets.
Not many people do.
And the tradition of multiple births in Castelbuono? It continues to this day. As I write this, a litter of kittens born right here in our home serves as a daily reminder that life — in all its surprising abundance — has always found a way in this remarkable little town.
Are you researching your Sicilian roots? Your family tree may hold surprises you never imagined — twins, triplets, foundlings, lost connections and living relatives waiting to be discovered. Get in touch with YpsiRoots to find out what's hiding in your family's past.