[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…
Category: Azorean Roots
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…
Third time is the charm for finding Estevao’s mother
This week I decided to concentrate on the early 1700s in Achada to see if I could take my tree back any further in that village. It’s becoming clear to me that many of my lines originate in other villages. I wanted to focus my work on the lines that I know stayed in Achada…
The Demotion of X, Y, and Z in Portuguese Names
I’ve been working exclusively with the records of Achada in the Azores for the last month. I’ve worked from the 1870s back to the early 1700s. I’m getting a snapshot of spelling conventions and how things change over time. It’s interesting to me to see how widely used the letters x, y, and z were…