Fearless Females #13…Moments of Strength I’ve told this story many times before. It is the story of how my great grandfather was smuggled from Hawaii. Each time I retell the story, I can’t help but think of the events and how they must have affected my great grandmother, Maria (de Braga) Pacheco. Sometime around 1904,…
Category: Azorean Roots
Maria and Theodoro’s Marriage Certificate
Fearless Females #4…a marriage record This is the marriage record for my great grandparents, Maria de Braga and Theodoro Pacheco. They were married 22 Dec 1895 at St. Sylvester’s Church in Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii. They were both 19 when they were married. The record is written in Latin. I found it amusing that they latinized…
A Story About the Role of Religion in My Azorean Family
[Written for Fearless Females, 1oth of March, The Role of Religion] I don’t know much about the religious background of my ancestors. My parents were both raised Roman Catholic, but were not religious. We were baptized but we never went to church or participated in church activities. My parents were firm believers that religion was…
Learning More from an Azorean Death Record
Portuguese death records are called “obitos”. For most years, those obitos will be found in church records. If you’ve worked with the records of the 1800s, you know that most obitos offer very little information. They give the name of the deceased, the date of death, their age at death, what parish they were a…
Exhausting the records in my ancestor’s village
In December, I began working in the records for Achada, Nordeste on Sao Miguel Island in the Azores. This is where my great great grandmother, Anna Jacinta de Mello, was born. I had not touched the records in over 10 years. Since they were digitized and put online, I had a new opportunity to explore…