Carascon

Carascon is an Italian family name of hidalgo or noble Spanish origin. The surname was originally spelled Carrascón. The surname was Italianized in the early 19th Century. The founder of the Spanish House was Doctor Don Garcia Fernandez de Carrascón (ca 1480-1533), a wealthy Spanish churchman from Ágreda, Spain who was a protonotary apostolic and personal doctor to Pope Adrian VI as well as a canon of the Cathedral of Toledo, Spain. He left his fortune in the form of a mayorazgo or family trust to his nephew Don Pedro Carrascon and his descendents. Doctor Carrascon is buried in an elaborate chapel in the Church of San Miguel Arcangel in Agreda.

The founder of the Italian branch of the family was Don Francisco Carrascón (ca 1710-1780), a high ranking military commissioner of the Royal Spanish Army, and Senator of Messina, Sicily. Don Francisco had two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Don Bernabe (or Barnaba) Carrascon was a Colonel in command of the Provincial Regiments of the Kingdom of Naples. His second son, Don Antonio Carrascon, was a Lieutenant Colonel and Governor of the Fortress of Vieste on the Adriatic Sea. One of the daughters married a Cavaliere Pistorio of Messina and the other, Donna Berardina Carrascon married into the noble D'Espinosa Family and was godmother to Don Gabriele Manthone, a leader of the 1799 Naples revolution. Don Bernabe's son, Don Francesco Carascon, married Donna Isabella Monarca, a noblewoman from Sessa Aurunca and eventually reached the rank of Major in the Neapolitan Army. He fought in Calabria, Spain and Rome under the armies of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, Joachim Murat, brother in law of Napoleon, and once again of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies after the fall of Napoleon. He died in Messina during the peak of the Sicilian Revolution of 1820-1821.

Their descendants have lived in such varied places in Southern Italy as Messina, Naples, Vieste, Sessa Aurunca, Rome, Sulmona and Pacentro. It is a very rare surname, with only a few descendants in Italy, Spain, England, and the USA