When my sister announced her second daughter would be called Elisa, my paternal grandmother was delighted because that was her own grandmother’s name. Elisa Dulce Travassos Serrano, née Peres Campello Travassos, is this week’s blog subject.
Elisa was born on 29 Aug 1859 in Recife, Pernambuco, to Victorino de Souza Travassos Júnior and Josefa Amélia Peres Campello. The couple had married just over nine months before, Elisa was the firstborn and would remain an only child after Josefa died on 23 Mar 1860 due to tuberculosis at age 20. Victorino did not remarry, and it appears that he faced a number of health problems and financial setbacks in the coming years. I was able to read about that in newspapers, with more context later, when I made a surprising find inside his father-in-law’s massive probate files.
Elisa Dulce’s maternal grandfather was Captain José Peres Campello, a reformed naval officer who had been arrested during the Pernambucan Revolt of 1817, declared innocent, later turned sugarcane plantation- and mill owner. When he died on 12 Oct 1869, none of his children were alive. Besides Josefa, he had a son named Preciliano who passed prematurely and unexpectedly 6 months prior. With that, the named heirs were five grandchildren: four by Preciliano, and Josefa’s only child.
There are several copies of coming-and-going mail regarding Elisa’s whereabouts that were unknown when her grandfather died. The mystery was eventually solved when she was located living in the neighboring province of Paraíba alongside her ailing father, where he had sought better weather in Campina Grande. I have ongoing research that hints at some of Victorino’s mother’s family also living there, but right now this is merely speculative. Elisa would not be there much longer, though. Her father died on 15 Jul 1871, back in Recife. She was only 11.
Elisa’s grandfather’s probate file had the aforementioned big surprise tucked within its almost 500 pages. It contains the transcription of Victorino’s last will and testament. He talks about his health problems and how they forced him to move, taking Elisa along, and how that had been detrimental to her education. He asks that after his passing, she stays in Recife to live with his brother Marcolino de Souza Travassos, and that Elisa goes back to school to finish her education with nuns.
The same day Victorino died, his will was brought to the judge to be unsealed. The carrier was a law school student named Anésio Augusto de Carvalho Serrano, the brother of Enedina Augusta de Carvalho Serrano, Marcolino’s wife. Anésio was in Recife pursuing his degree in the city’s renowned college, one of two that existed in Brazil at that time.
Whether it was one of the many practical matches made by families of that time, or if it was true love, I do not know, but Anésio and Elisa became husband and wife on 9 Dec 1876, when he was 26 and she was 17. In total, they had more than twenty children, according to my grandmother. I could not find documents for all of them (current tally is 17), as the family moved a few times within the neighboring provinces of Pernambuco and Paraíba during the 1880s and 1890s, and ultimately to the Southeast, to my home state, moving within it a few times.
My great-great-grandfather was elected representative for Paraíba in 1891, a two-year term, during a time when Brazil was still a young republic and the political landscape was very tumultuous. In 1895, he was appointed judge in Espírito Santo, when he and Elisa moved with a brood of at least five children. Again, hard to know exactly how many were born where and when, specially in Esp. Santo where records are scarce. Two of Anésio’s single sisters moved with them: Zulima and Francisca, who died in Guarapari in 1898. Zulima eventually moved back to Paraíba.
The last child born to Elisa and Anézio was my great-grandmother Noêmia, in Guarapari on 7 Feb 1903. When she was still a toddler, one of her older sisters, named Laura, passed away aged around 22. The number of children who reached adulthood, not counting Laura, was six: José Mário (1879-1954), Maria das Neves, a.k.a. Neva (1880-1970s?), Martha (1891-1970), Rômulo (1895-1980), Carlos Augusto (1900-1965) and Noêmia (1903-1989).
Vovó Elisa became a widow on 21 Jul 1917. Sometime after the last of her children got married in 1924 (my great-grandma Noêmia), she moved in with daughter Martha in Aribiri in the city of Vila Velha, but often traveled to visit Rômulo and his family in Salvador, Bahia. I found the record of her last travel accompanied by granddaughter Maria Isaura, known as Marisa, on 11 Feb 1946. She would remain in Salvador until her death on 17 Jun 1948 from metastatic breast cancer, aged 88.
My grandmother has told me of many stories about Elisa’s life, and up until I started researching document-based family history, some of them sounded somewhat fantastic, as it happens with stories who get recounted many times over the decades. Vovó Lena says Elisa inherited a village after her parents died, but an uncle stole the village from her. This in its face already sounds absurd. Who owns a village? Turns out there was some basis to the tale.
The sugar mill owned by Elisa’s grandfather was large, it was named Engenho Roncador, and there was housing built around it. Roncador and other sugar mills in the area formed the village of São Lourenço da Mata, today a Recife suburb. The probate records show that, because all the heirs were minors at the time of his death, they needed legal tutors to administrate and protect their interests. Marcolino Travassos was Elisa’s, and one of José Peres Campello’s nephews was in charge of Preciliano’s kids. Their mother was still alive but was largely outside the process; as a matter of fact, newspaper clippings show the dealings with her late husband’s family were contentious, with her going to the judge, decrying the fact that her family was destitute. I did not find any evidence that Preciliano’s children have ever taken possession of the lands or the mill, and like Elisa, they did not have any wealth. Rather, we see that Preciliano’s children’s tutor turns into a lessee and sole administrator of the business during the next couple of decades at least, past the time when the heirs became of age. So, there is where we find the proverbial nugget of truth to the story of the uncle who took everything away.
