From the book Chão da Vida – Memórias, by cousin Jayme de Barros (1901-1986)
My second great-grandfather was born in the parish of São Gonçalo, Campos dos Goytacazes, on 7 Sep 1843, and passed away in the same area where he lived his whole life, on 6 Nov 1909, almost two years to the day before my grandmother, his granddaughter, was born.
At first, finding his family was not easy because his siblings did not have the same surnames, and because Almeida was not found anywhere else in his tree. The way people get their family names in Brazil can be tricky, specially before the 20th century. There was no rule, just custom, often capricious.
Once I knew my way around the old issues of the Monitor Campista, José’s family came into focus. His father Manoel Ribeiro dos Santos died in 1879 and legal strife over the inheritance was published in the paper. His brothers, all of whom had their father’s names, as well as their mother, went through a lengthy estate settlement process.
Quitéria Maria do Espírito Santo was my second great-grandmother’s name, and I suspected Almeida was a surname that came through her. I was right, but getting proof of that was an ordeal. José’s birthdate was found on another document, and I could not locate the book with his baptismal record. I found his sister’s though, and it named both sets of grandparents: José Ribeiro de Barros and Anna Maria da Conceição, Manoel de Almeida Rabello and Joanna Maria de Souza Barros. Barros on both sides is not a coincidence, they were all cousins.
José Ribeiro de Almeida Barros married Rita Maria Ribeiro da Motta around 1868. I was able to find 13 children, though two of them remain a mystery, probably gone in infancy. Rita was the daughter of Miguel Ribeiro da Motta, the Baron and later Viscount of São Sebastião. Their children married cousins from the region, and became intertwined with the Wagner and Barroso families that make up the nucleus my grandmother was born into, the people I met and heard about throughout my life.
My grandmother said her childhood was happy, but not an easy one in terms of financial security. She did not elaborate, just saying whatever wealth they had was gone, in part due to gambling. I wrongfully assumed this involved her father. The accounts of two of her cousins who wrote their memories got the record correct.
The family went through a rollercoaster of boom and bust with sugarcane prices, but ultimately, the weight of mounting debt took its toll, and José died of angina pectoris, as it shows on his death certificate. His heart gave out. As Jayme de Barros puts in his memoir, his grandfather died of desgosto, of upset. He also played a high stakes card game akin to poker, often losing.
Cousin Mario Barros Wagner (1907-1967), who left for us a collection of chronicles that details the lives of the Barros and Wagner clan, including where they lived, says he died short after losing his penultimate plot of farming land. For the next 27 years, his widow Rita along with two children and a few grandchildren lived in the Chalé da Fazendinha, the quaint name for a grand albeit mostly shuttered home, where
“… in a drawer on the center table you would find his cigarettes and matches, as well as other objects carefully kept. Vovó Rita stood stoically in the midst of financial ruin. “
Reading these accounts give me a lot of context to understand what my grandmother mentioned in passing. These facts helped shape her family, affected her prospects in a town where money really mattered, and likely were part of what drove her father, Miguel Ribeiro da Motta Barros, to a similar end to his father’s in 1929, taken by sudden cardiac arrest aged only 57, still trying to make a living off the same industry, sugar prices in decline. Grandma Julia left not too long after her father’s death to find her life elsewhere.
The next three blog posts will come in quick sequence. My trip to Brazil was good. Primarily, I saw my mother and my paternal grandmother, both of whom are not in good health and can use that extra love and attention. For me, the long goodbye continues. I also met with uncles, aunts, and cousins I hadn’t seen in a long time, including a reader of this blog (Hi, Márcia).
I also visited the judicial- and the general state archives in my home state, where I was able to find probate and land records that will help develop the Furtado de Mendonça and Rodrigues Atalaia lines, both of them linked to grandma Maria Helena. She spares her voice and her breath these days, but she gave me enough information throughout my life that gave me a good foundation for research. I told her about some of my findings, she gave me encouraging smiles.
The archives are a work in progress.
I also got more first-person accounts of facts from my oldest maternal aunt, who has a sharp memory and opened the doors to some new lines of research, including half-uncles and half-aunts on my maternal side, likely gone by now as they would have been born in the 1920s. I will not be able to find them unless it’s through a DNA match with a descendant.
My aunt told me this revelation was made by grandma Julia when she was old, that grandpa José had had children before marrying her in 1932, when he was thirty. It was not unusual at all for someone, specially a man, to have children out of wedlock at that time in Brazil. Men enjoyed plenty of freedom, whether they were single or not. This was justified, protected, even encouraged in a patriarchal society. I have a good collection of names of natural offspring fathered by ancestors, but none of them so close, so I will keep an eye on my DNA matches. There will be enough centimorgans hanging together that could offer a clue. Maybe someone who inherited the thinning hair genes, the left-handedness, the innate ability to do head math, the musical ear. This bit of knowledge was a nice plot twist.
A quick post because I am packing my bags to travel to Brazil in two days, hopefully returning with more documents, pictures and information for the tree. Here is a sweet pet story in two pictures.
How do you get two little girls to sit still to take a picture in front of the Christmas tree? You stand behind the camera holding something cute, like a cat.
Maria Luiza and Aldinha, circa 1952, Vila Velha – ES
As a reward, you let them hold their new pet kitten 🐈
Papers and documents disappear and can be inaccurate. The oral tradition of families, the stories that percolate in time and get to us, too, can disappear, be intentionally or unintentionally altered. They are often misremembered. DNA does not lie.
When I took my first genetic test, a gift from my brother as part of the now-concluded Geno Project, I found out my mitochondrial haplogroup is L0a1, which is linked to the Atlantic slave trade. There was an enslaved woman in my direct maternal line, a bit of family knowledge certainly lost in time, that surprised me because I assumed that all African ancestry I had would be through my paternal family.
The line I set out to trace back ran through Campos dos Goytacazes, my maternal grandmother’s hometown, the site of old cattle and sugarcane farms, where enslaved workers toiled to enrich the white elites. I knew my grandmother descended from some of the so-called “Sugarcane Barons” and thus would be unequivocally white. Through her mother side, we have the Swiss slice of my genetics, but that comes from my great-grandmother’s father. But this had to do with this wife, and I had to look at the Costa Guimarães branch, that I knew were Portuguese of somewhat recent immigration to Brazil, meaning they were not among the families that first settled in the ancestral Goitacá lands.
My second great-grandmother Anália died in 1887 and her mother has been hard to research. Anna Maria de Oliveira Bastos, like her daughter, likely died young, leaving small children. I was luckier researching Anália’s maternal grandmother, found a funeral mass announcement, which made it easier to locate probate records. Her name was Hyppolita Joaquina do Nascimento, born around 1790 in Campos to the Portuguese citizen Manoel Francisco dos Santos, and Brazilian-born Maria Rosa dos Passos.
The issue of color in a country like Brazil is complex. Old records will bring information about the subject’s race. For slaves, the origin in Africa would often be written down as Mina, Angola, Guiné, Jêje, or the vague “de nação”. Enslaved people born in Brazil were referred to as “crioulos”. Many enslaved and free people were biracial, and more often referred to as “pardos”, which was a generic term for people of darker skin, and it could also encompass free people of indigenous ancestry.
These descriptors were widely used in religious and legal records. In church books, specially when all parties in a baptism or marriage were people of color, be it the parents of a newborn, or the bride and groom, the record will mention their race, almost without fail. However, when one of the parties (the man) was white, this notation may or may not be present, something that lends itself to an interesting discussion about how that makes the couple white.
Since I knew that Anália, Anna Maria, Hyppolita and Maria Rosa descended from a woman that was brought to Brazil in bondage, I was hoping that one record out there would give us proof. I combed through the spotty São Gonçalo parish records and found the baptismal record of one of Maria Rosa dos Passos’s children. It is very interesting to see that the note “parda” was squeezed in after her last name, as if it was, at first, not there and was added afterward.
Maria, born 9 Aug 1818 in Campos, daughter of Manoel José da Costa Bastos, from the parish of Santiago de Figueiró (Portugal) and Hyppolita Joaquina do Nascimento. Paternal grandparents José da Costa and Rosa Maria. Maternal grandparents Manoel Francisco dos Santos from São Jorge, Porto, Portugal, and Maria Rosa dos Passos from Rio de Janeiro.
The record also bring the information that Maria Rosa was baptized in the city of Rio de Janeiro, so I was hoping I would find out more about her in one of the old parishes in town. I was in luck.
Marriage between Manoel Francisco dos Santos and Maria Rosa dos Passos – Rio de Janeiro – 19 Nov 1774
The marriage above does not have any mention of race because the groom was white, and it pushes us one generation back in time with his parents, Manoel Francisco and Joana Francisca de Pinho from São Jorge de Feira, and the parents of the bride, João de Souza Nunes and his wife Anna Ribeiro da Silva, baptized in the Mother Church of the See in Rio de Janeiro, and already dead by the time of this record. Another attempt at finding a marriage record ensued.
Marriage between João de Souza and Anna Ribeiro da Silva – Rio de Janeiro – 30 Jun 1754
Another generation uncovered, with a Portuguese-born groom and a Brazilian-born bride. João de Souza (Nunes), son of Manoel de Souza Moreira and his wife Josefa Nunes from the parish of São Martinho do Campo, and Anna Ribeiro da Silva, born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and here comes an important detail that cannot be overlooked: she was the natural daughter of José Ribeiro da Silva, a white man, and Joanna de Souza, a single woman, no race notation but we do not need that at this point, both of whom lived in Rio.
I do not know the nature of the relationship between Anna’s parents, but she was born out of wedlock to a white man and a black woman. She received her father’s surnames, but I do not know if she was born free. It is likely that her mother and herself, both, were born in slavery and were granted freedom later. I still search those documents in the Rio databases.
What I do know is that deep in each cell in my body I carry the evidence that one day, a woman was taken from her land and her people, endured a harrowing voyage, the erasing of their identity, their dehumanization. I believe Joanna de Souza was the daughter of one such woman. I treat this line of my research with deep respect, admiration, and gratitude. They live in me and in my siblings, in some of my cousins, my two children and two nieces.
Also very importantly, I found the term “parda” in my father’s ancestry, as well. This post is for Joanna, Anna, Maria Rosa and Anna Maria, but also, on my paternal line, for Vovó Aiquinha, and her direct maternal line consisting of Thereza, Joanna Pereira, Severiana, and Íria Maria, who was an enslaved woman. This post deserves a part two.
Oil on canvas by Antônio Parreiras depicting the moment Augusto Xavier de Carvalho, holding a crucifix, asks his son José Peregrino to surrender to the crown’s military officers.
A sad movie, as are many stories of people who die for their ideals. Here is the story of my Xavier de Carvalho branch, and the tragic end of my 1st cousin 5 times removed, José Peregrino Xavier de Carvalho, who was executed in the Pernambucan Revolt of 1817. His father, Augusto Xavier de Carvalho, and his uncle José Maria Xavier de Carvalho – my 4th great-grandfather, were also arrested for their involvement in it.
José Peregrino joined the military at an early age. His father requested a special dispensation, so he could join a military school, ”assentando praça com pão e soldo”, in 1804. He would be a mere six years old. According to Abilio Bandeira (see below), he was born on 18 Aug 1798 to the Portugal native Augusto Xavier de Carvalho, and his wife Jacintha de Mello Muniz.
The Pernambucan Revolt was a Brazilian nativist movement against the Portuguese crown’s absolutism, based on French Revolution ideals. The Portuguese court had moved to Brazil evading the Napoleonic troops in 1808, and the prosperous Brazilian Northeast, still producing plenty of sugar, was largely responsible for supporting its costly maintenance. The revolt had ample support among the military, whose wages were delayed due to the court’s high expenses, and the clergy. This movement was a precursor and gave momentum to what would come to pass in 1822 when Brazil broke its colonial ties with the metropolis. During the Pernambucan Revolt, the first proclamations of Brazilian independence from Portugal happened. In my family’s hometown of Mamanguape, this was carried out by my fourth great-grandfather.
The movement had the support of the United States and from officers from the disbanded troops who served under Napoleon Bonaparte, that even had a plan to set him free from the island of Saint Helena, to take him to Pernambuco, and ultimately to New Orleans. The stuff of movies! Much of the history of this movement, including the involvement of the Xavier de Carvalho men, is found in the book O Brazil Heroico em 1817, by Alipio Bandeira.
My 4th great-grandfather proclaimed the independence of his town, along with the local priest. His brother Augusto was also enthusiastic about the independence, as was José Peregrino, who traveled to the neighboring province of Rio Grande do Norte to bring news that Brazil was severing ties with Portugal. During his absence, troops loyal to the crown arrived to Mamanguape, making arrests and looking for the conspirators.
The account of Augusto’s attempt to dissuade José Peregrino are dramatic:
Once it became clear that the locals would not prevail and the arrests started, Augusto and José Maria certainly worried about not only their fate, but José Peregrino, who was a soldier and would face harsher consequences, as Alipio Bandeira writes.
The hand of the crown, by the authority of the Count of Arcos (Marcos de Noronha e Brito), was swift, punishing the young officers who committed crime de lesa-majestade, a direct attempt against the crown. José Peregrino, arrested and sent to Fort Cabedello in Recife, Pernambuco, was executed on 21 Aug 1817, along with other members of the military. His body was quartered, his severed head and hands sent back to this home province of Paraíba, displayed at the steps of the Our Lady of Lourdes Church.
Plaque commemorating José Peregrino, placed on the site where his head and hands were on display.
Augusto and José Maria Xavier de Carvalho were sent to Salvador, Bahia, where they awaited their trial. Both brothers had their assets seized. A letter by my fourth great-grandmother, Antônia Maria de Padilha, José Maria’s wife, exists in the National Archives, though I have not yet been able to obtain a copy. It makes a plea for her husband’s return, noting she was left in their sugarcane farm with five young daughters, one of them being my third great-grandmother, Francisca de Paula de Vasconcellos e Carvalho, born around November 1815, still a toddler when her father was arrested. She would not meet him again until she was around seven.
Both José Maria and Augusto went through lengthy trials, and were eventually acquitted after four years in prison. Augusto Xavier de Carvalho went on to serve in public office, including member of the national assembly to draft the first constitution of Brazil as a free country, no longer a Portuguese colony. He cosponsored the freedom of the press bill. It is not known where and when he died.
José Maria returned to his home and due to the poor state of the Mamanguape church books I could not establish when he died, either. He returned not too long before, finally, Brazil became independent. Their lives were already changed, in great part, for they had been important agents on the local level to raise a movement that would cost lives, including his nephew’s, but it would propel the country towards the future. This ancestry line is interesting because it is widely mentioned in history books, and primary documents have survived in the Tombo Tower Archives in Portugal, enough to create a rich portrait of the lives of the Xavier de Carvalho family.
On a side note, I have two other ancestors who were imprisoned during the Pernambucan Revolt, for entirely different reasons, but this is a subject for another post, and their eventful lives, too, would make an interesting movie.
There is one common thread that weaves through any immigration story, and that is solitude, and it does not matter whether you are the one who departed, or if you are the one that stayed behind, there is always that void space alongside you.
This week’s post is about two of my third great-grandparents, Giovanni Cupolillo and Maria Rosaria Orlando, and their sons who left Italy for Brazil. My Cupolillo branch is well explored on a previous post (in Portuguese), and it is a family who has long roots tied to the city of Paola in Calabria. They had seven sons, one of whom died as a child. All others emigrated and established themselves in Rio de Janeiro; one of them may have returned to Italy, I could not track him back as we still do not have the 1910-1920 civil registry records publicly released yet. Even if Giambattista came back, Giovanni and Maria Rosaria went from having a full home to a much quieter one with five sons overseas, and they probably never met the majority of their grandchildren.
They certainly met my great-grandmother Norina because she was born in Paola, moving as an infant with her mother to Brazil to be reunited with her father. The family returned to Italy after the birth of the second child, my second great-uncle Alfredo, in Rio in 1905; the youngest child, Waldemira – registered as Baldimira – was born in 1907 in Paola. According to Uncle Alfredo’s memories, they lived in Italy for eight years, so the return to Brazil would have been around 1913. I do not know exactly when their grandfather Giovanni died, but I can place the date between 1910 and 1914, so not too long before or after Nicola and the family returned to Brazil, leaving Maria Rosaria alone, or possibly with Giambattista.
Maria Rosaria was not born in the same place as her husband, though her hometown was a quick jump away down the train tracks. She hailed from San Lucido, a village that today has just over 6,000 inhabitants and faces the expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Researching further back on Maria Rosaria’s line I discovered her ancestors were from Paola, and given the lack of post-1910 records I cannot tell how long she lived, where she spent her remaining years, but I relate to her as someone who lives far from a big part of the family. Even harder for her, with no fast or reliable means of communication, I wonder how she kept in touch with the sons in Brazil. Unfortunately, I don’t have any documents, no pictures, no letters exchanged between them.
Life in Calabria at that time was difficult, the circumstances of my family members who emigrated were hard, the urge to find a better life somewhere was imperative. Giovanni and Maria Rosaria saw them pack and leave, one by one, knowing that their return would be unlikely. In 1902, eldest son Fedele died in Brazil, and a few weeks later Nicola went to work with their bothers in Rio as they had a burgeoning newspaper distribution business and were now one man short. I hope eventually the sons were able to send back some good news of their professional success, and financial support to help the parents in their old years. Giovanni had been a contadino his whole life, he worked in the fields, there was no retirement, no income after you stopped.
Not wanting to see your children live a life of hardship and uncertainty is what gives a parent the strength to support a decision to emigrate. I thank Giovanni and Maria Rosaria for that, for letting their boys go. I hope they found friends and relatives who helped them when they needed it, and I hope someday I can find out where they were laid to rest, make the way back as a way to say their great-great-great grandchildren are alright, that their sacrifice was worthwhile.
Statue of Cilla in San Lucido, based on the legend of a young woman who fell in love with a sailor lost at sea.
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.
Elisa’s baptismal record – September 1859
Elisa’s portrait in a cameo, made likely around the time of her engagement.
Circa 1900
With great-grandson Sérgio Vereza Miranda circa 1946
Elisa’s children, from left: Martha, Rômulo, Noêmia, Carlos, Neva and José Mário.
This will be my first 52 Ancestors entry featuring deeper ancestry, one from my maternal side, and one from the paternal. Both of them are from the 17th Century, therefore I cannot flesh out any of their story with anecdotes. All I have is what the documents brought me, and in both cases their deaths were in very unfortunate circumstances, hence my choice to bring those to this week’s theme.
Matheus Coelho was my 9th great-grandfather. He is my brick wall in the Travassos family, one of three Azorean branches I have. Alas, Matheus did not use the name and I can only infer his father or mother had it, so did his children. It was not uncommon for surnames to skip one or two generations My line to him is through my great-grandmother Noêmia Travassos Serrano (1902-1989), Elisa Dulce Peres Campello Travassos (1859-1948), Vitorino de Souza Travassos Jr. (1827-1871), Vitorino de Souza Travassos, born in Rosto do Cão in the São Miguel Island, died in Recife, Brasil (1800-1865), Francisco de Souza Travassos (1765-1826), João de Souza Travassos (1742-1791), Bartolomeu Travassos (1700-1786), Francisco Travassos, born in Santo-Antônio-além-Capelas on 4 April 1666, and died in São Roque do Rosto do Cão sometime before June 1740. Bartolomeu was one of the children of Matheus Coelho and Maria Ledo.
Matheus was a widower when he was found dead on 6 Jan 1705 outside Capelas, in São Miguel. I am not certain exactly when wife Maria Ledo died, but she was already gone when daughter Margarida Travassos married Miguel Martins on 13 Oct 1685. This couple also has descendants in Brazil. According to the burial record written by the priest, Matheus was living as a beggar and was seen lying on a roadside in the days before he was pronounced dead. Passersby did not notice whether he was alive or not, which is heartbreaking. He was buried on the São João da Apresentação church courtyard, with the costs covered by funds sent by son-in-law Miguel Martins that lived on the other side of the island. Miguel also paid for six Masses to be said in Matheus’s memory. It appears that none of the children were still living in Capelas when he passed away.
Matheus Coelho’s death record
My second ancestor this week also had an unusually unfortunate end. His name was Father Antônio Barreira Gonçalves. Alas, he was a priest, and my 8th great-grandfather. He had at least two children by different women. My ancestor through this line is Catarina Barreira, a child born around 1670 with Ana Vieira, a single woman from the village of Salgueiros in Vieira do Minho. Catarina married Francisco Ribeiro on 25 Jan 1688. The marriage entry lists her as a child born out of wedlock whose father, already deceased, had been the clergyman.
Catarina Barreira and Francisco Ribeiro’s marriage record
My line to the priest runs through my Nunes family: José Nunes Faria (1902-1978), Beralda Nunes (1872-1951), José Nunes de Carvalho (1822-1902), Mariana Lathaliza França (abt. 1800-1839), Mariana Josefa Ribeiro de Carvalho (1765-1841), her father, Portuguese cavalryman Simeão Ribeiro de Carvalho, born in Vieira do Minho on 1720, died in Minas Gerais in 1803, Manoel Ribeiro de Carvalho (1692-1766), son of Catarina Barreira and Francisco Ribeiro.
Death or Burial books are typically the hardest to find, and to read. They were the last ones to become mandatory after the Rituale Romanum instituted by Pope Paul V in 1614. Father Antônio Barreira died by stab wounds produced by a knife on 18 Aug 1669 in his parish of São Paio located in Vilar Chão.
The record says the priest was “matado a faquadas”
Given that these records are so old, it is very unlikely I will ever find out what happened. I would like to locate the de genere et moribus diligence process that preceded Antônio Barreira’s ordination, hopefully add a bit more to his history and find out who were his parents and where they were from. I can’t be certain, but can’t stop speculating either, whether the priest’s murder had anything to do with his affairs with single women in his parish.
Regarding Matheus Coelho, it intrigues me that I cannot place him among the well-documented Travassos family of São Miguel. There are still baptism and marriage books I can search to find more information on him and his wife, Maria Ledo. If I can make the jump and connect him, I may be able to trace the family all the way back to continental Portugal. This is a big goal for me.
Until further discoveries, I leave these notes about two ancestors who died tragically, and I light a (virtual) candle in their memory.
João Bastos Bernardo Vieira was my paternal grandfather’s father, from whom I got the two family names I have on my birth certificate: Bastos and Vieira. Bernardo is an interesting surname, as it is most commonly seen in Brazil as a patronymic, Bernardes.
I heard a great deal about Vovô João when growing up. He died ten years before I was born, but his memory and stories about him were always a part of family conversation. He was known foremost for his writing as a published poet and a newspaper critic, but was able to learn more about him as a citizen and a member of his community through his affiliation to different organizations, thanks to digitized newspaper archives. Unfortunately, the largest newspaper in Vitória, A Gazeta, founded in 1928, does not have its archives online, but other news outlets do. Vovô was a literary critic for A Gazeta until his death. This news organization, founded in 1928, still exists, though it no longer has a print edition.
One interesting finding I made while going through his papers that a cousin keeps shows he was an honorary member under number 5 with Rio Branco Atlético Clube, a soccer team founded in 1908. The team built its second stadium in 1934, around the time I believe this identification card was issued, judging by his looks on the picture.
The collection of news clippings I have about him show his involvement in several other organizations. He started as a writer with a local newspaper, as he also worked as a school teacher. He worked for several news outlets, and in 1933 was a founding member of the Associação Espírito-Santense de Imprensa, the state press association. There he is, standing up wearing a dark suit right in the center of the picture.
Vovô João was also involved in politics, and was elected state representative in 1936. He served as Secretary of Education but never quit publishing his poems and literary critic column on A Gazeta, until his death in 1962 following a stroke that happened while on a hunting trip with friends.
In loving memory of Maria Helena Schneider Bastos Vieira
(21 May 1925 – 1 Jun 2023)
Originally published 15 Mar 2023.
Bingo!
My maternal grandmother Maria Helena ´is typically the one to shout it out first. Now aged 97, she has not been attending any social functions anymore, but she used to be active in many organizations such as my hometown’s Lions Club and several church groups, one of which promotes a great yearly bazaar where expertly crocheted doilies and table runners are sold, all proceeds to help people in need in the local community.
Grandma has been an organizer in several of these initiatives, and I grew up watching her embroider and crochet beautiful pieces. She taught me to make a basic chain stitch, but I sorely lack any skills for needlepoint work. She used to have a closet where she would collect, organize and price tag the handiwork of several of her group’s volunteers, each piece carefully ironed and starched, so they would make a good display at the bazaar. Not many went unsold, and those leftovers she would buy herself. They were highly coveted as Christmas presents for me and others in the family, and they are today treasured items in my home. You can never have enough kitchen towels with crocheted borders!
The house where she lives also has a couple of other nooks where other interesting items are stored: the many prizes she won on raffles and bingo games throughout her life. Silverware, porcelain tea sets, serving trays and dining table accents, she won several sets of housewares, to the point that some of her friends would playfully “withdraw” from the game whenever she went in. No cheating, no hijinks, Grandma is just very lucky. I don’t know if she has ever played the lottery, but since she is no millionaire, I would assume she hasn’t. There’s still time!
Grandma, or Vovó Lena as we call her, was born in Vitória on 21 May 1925, the firstborn child of Godofredo Schneider and Noêmia Travassos Serrano. At that time, her father was a public defender in Benevente, modern-day Anchieta, Esp´írito Santo, but the children were born in the state capital. In 1929, the family would move to Vila Velha, to be near Godofredo’s parents, on the place that is dearest to me, Inhoá, named for the rock upon which my father’s family home was built and where they have lived for over a century, starting with Bernardo Schneider and Maria Luiza Furtado (Aiquinha), my grandmother’s paternal grandparents.
Circa 1927
My grandparents Maria Helena and Rinaldo got married on 14 Dec 1946, my father Rinaldo arrived nine months later, followed by my late uncle Orlando, who was my godfather, in 1949. My grandfather worked at a bank and the family moved to Santa Tereza, in my home state, then to Jaboticabal in São Paulo, where my aunt Ligia was born, the third child. They would be back to Vila Velha when grandma was expecting my youngest uncle, João. The house where she still lives was under construction, finished sometime around 1956, and she never moved again.
Grandma and me, just a turn of the clock ago, in 1973
Vovó was a very active woman, intellectually and physically, and even as an almost-centenarian she still remembers entire poems, songs, historical facts and general trivia. She used to swim in the ocean and go horseback riding, she could write beautifully, speak eloquently in public, she could sew, she learned Orpheonic singing in school and up until not too long ago could hit impressive notes.
As another way to keep her mind sharp, she loved making lists of all kinds. Next to the recliner in front of the TV, where she also did her needlework, there was a small notepad. In my young years, spending a lot of time with her in that now empty den (she can’t use stairs anymore), she would have her aha moments and ask “let’s remember surnames that are also plant names”, or animal names, or songs named after women. Anything would do, she would jot down anything we came up with, the lists would go on for months. This is all from a pre-Google era, and after the world became a big digital beehive we still could not, or should not, pull out the cell phone to cheat. The same goes for anytime she is trying to remember anything, a movie or song title. The only search engine allowed is your brain, and she would likely beat you to it.
My grandparents’ house was my playground as a kid. The house sits on a pristine plot with native woods and a diverse fauna. I used to spend weekends there on sleepovers, hang out with her, go on walks after dinner to help with digestion as she would say, and on Sunday we would attend Mass together. Sometimes, during the rainy season when we have spectacular thunderstorms, the power would go out. Grandma would light a candle, and we would talk as the wind blew and made the wooden shutters moan and creak. I was a scared kid, but she would let me sleep either next to her, or in the bedroom right across the hallway, both of our doors open.
She still spends her nights in that same room. Her brain is a bit foggy these days, wandering in and out of the ten decades that span her life, remembering names, dates and people involved in events at any point in that lengthy timeline like they were just happened. Sometimes she mistakes a TV presenter from her favorite Catholic channel for someone she knows and strikes a conversation. It’s all good, she feels connected and strong in her faith, that’s what matters. Grandma is a religious woman and used to be very active in her parish until mobility became limited, keeping her from attending in-person services. She lives her faith in the ways that truly matter: she has helped countless people, she taught us not to judge others and to be purposeful and kind in our words and actions.
Her parish is Nossa Senhora do Rosário, the third oldest in the country, facing the small bay where the Portuguese settlers arrived to colonize the region in 1535. For a while she attended Mass at the little Navy School chapel next to her house, she was friends with the chaplain and with a good reason. His services were never dull, he was a funny man and celebrated two of my uncles’ weddings. We called him Padre Herbert, he passed away in 1994, shortly after receiving the honorific title of Monsignor Herbert Burns.
Even though she has lived almost her entire life in the same place, my grandmother got to travel many times. In the 1960s, when she and my grandpa were members of Lions Club, they traveled to events on the regional and national level. There is a shelving niche in her house displaying the many miniature plates and other souvenirs they brought from those trips. Every year, their local club would set up a stand selling refreshments as a fundraiser during Festa da Penha, a traditional religious festival honoring the patron saint of my home state, on the foothill of where there is a convent dedicated to Nossa Senhora da Penha, or Our Lady of the Rock on a free translation.
The festival happens, you guessed it, right where Grandma lives, the same area where we all revolve around. The local Lions Club had a food stand, and there she sold her famous hot dogs made with sliced franks cooked in a tomato and ground beef sauce, served on a bun. I know chopping up a hot dog sounds horrific to an American, but come to think of it, the whole thing is not too far from a chili dog. And yes, it was delicious and sold well. I was in charge of picking up the soda in the chest cooler and bringing it to the customers to help wash down the food.
Later in life, she traveled by herself, my grandfather was more of a homebody. Sometimes her brother, my great-uncle José Luiz and his wife Maria Carmen would accompany her. Grandma also came to the US a few times to be with my Aunt Ligia during the years she lived here from 1974 to about 1982. Grandma was present when both my cousins were born in Buffalo, NY and faced the weather with aplomb, for someone who tends to be cold at the slightest drop of temperature when the South winds turn in Vila Velha.
She was also a very important presence and part of the support team when my parents got divorced, also in the early 1980s, and throughout the following decades, until my siblings and I were on our own. Grandma drove a Fusca, as we call the VW Beetle, and that car took us everywhere. There were actually more than one, same model, same color. I do not know how many they actually were. She would come over and whisk me away to go to her place, for an ice cream treat, or for shopping trips at the co-op affiliated with the bank Grandpa worked for. At the time we did not have the newer bridge that goes from Vila Velha to Vitória, we had to go around the longer way, and that was a journey typically planned days in advance. The same trip today takes 20 minutes, and has none of the excitement anymore.
My brother and I by Grandma’s ride.
I have a lifetime of memories to share about my grandmother. As it was with the post about my mother, it feels strange to write about a living person. I am not eulogizing her, I just want to have some of my impressions out there, so a family history researcher coming from somewhere further down the space-time continuum can find her, find Inhoá, and by extension find all of us.
Morro do Cruzeiro, Inhoá – Circa 1950
There is another way in which she is very lucky, and it must be shared: She had all of her three siblings up until she was 95 years old, when one of her sisters, great-aunt Carmita, born one year to the day after Grandma, passed away in 2021. José Luiz and Laurita are still around and in fairly good health. In keeping with the week’s theme, I should say we are the lucky ones to have them around for so long. How fortunate am I to have enjoyed her in my life for more than a century and counting? It is also monumental just to realize she is almost double my age. Hard to fathom, when I think about the span of my own lifetime, to think how much more she has seen, felt, lived.
Grandma always says we do not lose anything we age, we only accumulate all the experiences. There is no dismay in thinking that I will be 51 in a few weeks. If I can sail through the second half of my century with just a fraction of her wit, her memory and vitality, I can count myself as a very lucky person, though I hardly ever win any material prizes of any sort. I am, as we call it in Brazil, a “pé frio”, literally a cold foot, not very lucky on games or drawings. If you ever see me at the bingo, you do not need to do like Grandma’s friends. Pull up a chair, grab your card, you may have a shot at winning.
