Genealogy, History, Heritage, How To
The proper way to research a family tree is to go from the known to the unknown, from present to past. What do you do when you can’t find the known person in the records where they are supposed to be? You get creative. I am on a quest to find the baptismal record for…
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…
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…
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…
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…