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…
The PGSH needs your help for SCOPO
A member of the Facebook Portuguese Hawaiian Genealogy Group posted this announcement. If you live in Hawaii and can volunteer, give the PGSH a call! Thanks! +++++ The Portuguese Genealogical & Historical Society of Hawaii are making plans for their SCOPO Convention, to be held on Oahu this year. Plus, they are also planning for…
Oh, the Pain
I’ve been on the hunt for my 3rd great grandfather’s land records this week. I went through the indexes for San Mateo County, California and hit a gold mine. It turns out Martin Kelly owned more land than I ever dreamed possible. The family lore said that he owned “a boardinghouse in San Francisco”. That…
This ain’t no genealogy bingo, it’s a jackpot!
I’ve spent the last few weeks working on my Azorean ancestors. While I still have work to do in Achada, Nordeste, I decided to take a break from reading Portuguese records. I saw that new records had been added at familysearch.org in the San Mateo County collection. I wanted to see if I could find…
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…