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.
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.
