This is the fifth entry in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The theme is Ploughing Through. I wonder how many researchers with Portuguese Hawaiian ancestry realize that their female ancestors were under contract, too? My great great grandmother was one of those women. This is the original sugar plantation contract that my great…
Category: Azorean Roots
52 Ancestors: Rosa Boteilho was a Tough Woman
This is my entry for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge, week 3: Tough Woman. It’s not easy to flesh out the stories of Azorean women. You are dealing with baptismal, marriage, and death records. That’s it. Often, women are elusive because of naming practices which involved taking a religious name rather than a…
Portuguese Newspaper Find: Photo of Seraphim de Braga
I am a believer in going back to databases from time to time and rechecking my searches. Sometimes I’ve learned things since the last search. Sometimes there have been updates to databases. Whatever the reason, it’s a good practice to get into. The University of Massachusetts has been adding Portuguese newspapers to it’s collection for…
Did the de Braga Family Meet the Same Fate as the de Mellos?
I remember when I showed my grandma this photo of her mother-in-law several years ago. Her comments come to me today. She said “Look at how her eyes droop. That’s from malnutrition. Poor Voe.” Voe being the Portuguese word for grandmother. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it has crossed my…
No More Descendants to Follow in my Mello Tree
When the records for Maia, Ribeira Grande, Sao Miguel Island came online, I was so excited. Finally, I would be able to fill in some gaps in my tree. One of my hopes was to find out if my ancestors, Felicianno de Mello and Rosa Boteilho, had anymore children that I might be able to…