The Research Journal

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 trace into the present.

I have been working on death records exclusively.  As I got into the 1860s, a pattern emerged.  One after another the children of Felicianno and Rosa died.  It appears that in the early 1860s some epidemic came through the village.  In 1861 twice as many people died than 1860.  Almost all those who died that year were children.  For Felicianno and Rosa, 1863 was a bad year.  They lost 3 children aged 6 months, 2 years, and 3 years old.

Rosa died in 1869.  Her obito (death record) states that only three of her children were living.  I had known that two of their children had families by the 1880s.  I was holding out hope that the third survived too.

But it is not to be.  Felicianno died in 1884.  He did not remarry.  His obito states that only two children survived him.

I now need to see if my ancestor’s brother, Jose de Mello, and his wife, Maria Joaquina Rosa, had any children who had families of their own.  Otherwise, it appears the end of Felicianno and Rosa’s line stops with my ancestry.  Well, at least I’ve found all those distant cousins on the East Coast from the other lines.