Another open question from the start of this project: do certain family lines live unusually long, or unusually short, lives? Here's what the tree shows once the comparison is done fairly.
The first attempt at this ran into an obvious trap: family lines with a lot of descendants who emigrated to Chicago looked dramatically longer-lived than everyone else — the "Rich" line (the Chicago-Americanized branch of Riccio) topped the list at a 73-year average, well clear of anyone else. But that's not a family trait. Most of that line lived their adult lives in 20th-century America with modern medicine and sanitation, not 18th- or 19th-century Sassano. Comparing that fairly against families who stayed in Italy for centuries isn't measuring genetics — it's measuring which families happened to catch a later, healthier era.
So the numbers below exclude anyone with a Chicago or Illinois connection entirely, comparing only people who lived and died in and around Sassano itself, and only counting adults — deaths at 15 or older, since infant and child mortality reflects a different set of causes than adult longevity does. Only surnames with at least 20 qualifying adult deaths are included, so a family of three isn't skewing the picture.
Against a baseline adult average of 58.4 years (median 62), the longest-lived line remains Miele at a 72.4-year average, backed by 32 qualifying adults. Delisa holds second. Borgia, which entered the rankings after crossing this page's 20-person minimum, holds third place at 68.6 years across 24 people — still a small sample, and one that can move a fair amount as more records arrive. Martucci, Caporrino, and Pizzi round out the rest of the top six. Stavola holds seventh, folding in a branch of the family recorded as "di Stavola" in some records — the same line under an older form of the surname, not a separate one, now combined into a single 266-person figure. The shortest-lived is Curcio, at a 47.6-year average; Baialardo and Truglio follow close behind, then di Lorenzo (52.8 years across 60 people), which entered the bottom five last update, and finally Vasquez at 53.0 — the same order as last update. Orlando (53.1 years across 53 people) remains sixth from the bottom, with Battista (53.1 across 45 people) and Barbella just behind it. This update's movement was in the top twenty-five: Pizzi slips from fifth to sixth as newly added deaths pulled its average down from 65.7 to 64.9 (now 52 people), letting Caporrino move up a place; Biancamano climbs from eleventh to ninth and Setaro from twelfth to tenth (63.0 years across 135 people), pushing Abbatemarco and Latella down to eleventh and twelfth; and Stavola holds seventh even as its average eases from 63.9 to 63.8. Further down, Arenare takes the biggest fall, from sixteenth to twenty-third, as two more adults joined its group (now 50) and pulled its average down from 61.8 to 60.5, while Rubino edges up from twenty-first to twentieth despite its own average slipping to 60.8. The gap between the top and bottom of the list sits at just under 25 years — a reminder that these rankings, especially near the bottom, can still move as the tree grows.
"Most of the 'Rich' line has a Chicago record — its apparent longevity is an era effect, not a family one."
| # | Surname | Avg. Age at Death | Median | Sample Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Miele | 72.4 | 74 | 32 |
| 2 | Delisa | 70.2 | 76 | 44 |
| 3 | Borgia | 68.6 | 72 | 24 |
| 4 | Martucci | 67.0 | 72 | 61 |
| 5 | Caporrino | 65.5 | 70 | 39 |
| 6 | Pizzi | 64.9 | 71 | 52 |
| 7 | Stavola | 63.8 | 68 | 266 |
| 8 | di Stefano | 63.1 | 72 | 26 |
| 9 | Biancamano | 63.0 | 68 | 148 |
| 10 | Setaro | 63.0 | 65 | 135 |
| 11 | Abbatemarco | 63.0 | 66 | 129 |
| 12 | Latella | 62.9 | 67 | 29 |
| 13 | Fornino | 62.6 | 66 | 115 |
| 14 | d'Alessio | 62.0 | 66 | 353 |
| 15 | Romano | 61.9 | 65 | 61 |
| # | Surname | Avg. Age at Death | Median | Sample Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Curcio | 47.6 | 46 | 31 |
| 2 | Baialardo | 50.8 | 58 | 48 |
| 3 | Truglio | 51.1 | 49 | 26 |
| 4 | di Lorenzo | 52.8 | 57 | 60 |
| 5 | Vasquez | 53.0 | 56 | 68 |
| 6 | Orlando | 53.1 | 55 | 53 |
| 7 | Battista | 53.1 | 57 | 45 |
| 8 | Barbella | 53.1 | 53 | 53 |
| 9 | Gruccio | 53.3 | 54 | 62 |
| 10 | Bellezza | 53.5 | 58 | 39 |
| 11 | Cecere | 53.7 | 58 | 42 |
| 12 | Picone | 54.1 | 55 | 35 |
| 13 | Petriello | 54.2 | 60 | 55 |
| 14 | Ricciardone | 54.3 | 56 | 83 |
| 15 | Martuccio | 54.7 | 56 | 70 |
This is a different measure entirely — average lifespan including infant and child deaths, which mostly reflects disease and circumstance rather than adult longevity. Several lines show a median age at death in single digits, meaning more than half the recorded deaths in that surname were children. This table was recomputed against the current tree using the same transparent method as the rest of this page (surnames with 20+ recorded lifespans); the previous version of this table used an older, undocumented methodology that couldn't be reconciled with the current data, so treat any comparison to a prior visit to this page with that in mind.
| # | Surname | Avg. Age at Death (all ages) | Median | Sample Size | Died Under Age 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camposano | 19.5 | 3 | 51 | 57% |
| 2 | Curcio | 24.0 | 9 | 65 | 42% |
| 3 | Crisci | 24.7 | 3 | 41 | 56% |
| 4 | Battista | 26.2 | 8 | 95 | 47% |
| 5 | Bellezza | 26.4 | 11 | 85 | 39% |
| 6 | Vasquez | 26.6 | 10 | 141 | 42% |
| 7 | Sofia | 26.7 | 4 | 26 | 50% |
| 8 | Caldacia | 27.2 | 10 | 34 | 44% |
| 9 | Abbondanza | 27.2 | 4 | 53 | 51% |
| 10 | Tramutola | 27.3 | 11 | 71 | 42% |
| 11 | Cecere | 27.4 | 12 | 87 | 39% |
| 12 | Caiafa | 27.4 | 10 | 122 | 46% |
| 13 | Conforti | 27.9 | 26 | 20 | 40% |
| 14 | Lombardo | 28.0 | 11 | 41 | 29% |
| 15 | Frabasile | 28.1 | 8 | 65 | 48% |
This table isn't restricted to Sassano-only records the way the two above are, since child mortality patterns are less likely to be confounded by the same era-of-emigration effect. Treat it as a starting point for which lines had the hardest time historically, not a genetic finding.