Author: The Creola Genealogist

My name is Anna Lima. I am the daughter of immigrants, born and raised in Massachusetts. I am the mother of two and a Speech Pathologist. My love of family history began as a child listening to my elders speak of “the old country”. Through their stories grew a love for the culture and traditions of my ancestors and I wanted to know more about who they were. My great-grandmother, our family Griot, was my greatest inspiration as she passed down stories and traditions that have helped me become the person I am today. I believe that remembering our ancestors strengthens who we are. I hope to continue my great-grandmother’s legacy, to continue to pass down the stories of not only my own family history but also the stories of the ancestors of anyone who wishes to remember. My blog is dedicated to the ancestors, those remembered and those yet to be found.

Hidden History of Cabo Verde???

I came across an interesting passage in a book called “Corografia Cabo-Verdiana, ou Descripcão Geografico-Historica” (Chelmecki, 1841) where the author, very matter of factly, stated that there was a tradition in Cape Verde that the island of Santiago was inhabited by Jalofs (Wolof) at the time of its discovery. Using the word “discover” usually implies “previously unknown”. But the islands were referred to by ancient writers, including Ptolomy, as Hesperedes or Gorgades. Ancient maps depict the island group off the coast of Africa well before the traditional “discovery” date of 1460 (even this date is debatable) by Italians under the Portuguese flag… But I’ll save that argument for another day. So it seems to me the more accurate description of the Portuguese arrival on the archipelago is “settlement” versus “discovery”.

The history of the Wolof people is said to have begun around the 12th or 13th centuries, when they migrated west to present day Senegal from Mali after the fall of the Ghanaian Empire in the 11th century. Their oral histories tell of their Fulbe ethnic origins. The distance between present day Mali and Senegal is roughly 700 miles. The distance between the coast of Senegal and Santiago is less than 405 miles. And we are to believe that they could travel over 700 miles by land but not 400 miles by sea? The volcano in Fogo is an historically active volcano with periodic eruptions. The eruption, smoke and ash would have reached the coast of West Africa. Yet we are to believe no one knew of their existence? Except for the Arabs who are said to have traveled thousands of miles to procure salt from the island of Sal. And the Ancient Greeks and Phoenicians traveled thousands of miles, and who wrote about visiting these islands and told stories of the “women of Gorgades” (this is also supposed to have been the home of Medusa).
The Chinese may have even visited the island of Santo Antão and left writing depicting their travels.

But somehow, the idea that people from the African continent traveling and settling there seems unfathomable according to many contemporary historians. Hmmm…

The Portuguese dealt with many insurrections of enslaved Africans during colonialism. On the island is Santiago it is said that many enslaved people escaped slavery and took refuge inland where the Portuguese didn’t occupy. They became known as “Badius” or vagabonds. It is also said that many “rebelados” or rebellious people were spread around to the other islands to lessen the danger of further insurrections. Chelmecki mentions that prior to the volcanic eruption of 1680 when masses of people from Fogo fled to Brava, there were about 200 descendants of “rebelados” living in Brava. Hmmm…

Aside from brief mentions in a few older books not much proof exists today that these Jalof/Wolof people were inhabitants of Santiago in 1460. Today there are many Cape Verdeans who are proud to call themselves Badius from the interior parts of Santiago. They may be the only group of Cape Verdeans who can claim to have fought colonial rule before our eventual independence in 1975. It would be interesting to have people with ancestry from this island have DNA testing to see if they resemble other Cape Verdeans who, on average, show to be 50/50 African and European. If there are people who show to be 100% African, would that prove that there were native people prior to colonization? Maybe, maybe not. But it would definitely add to the conversation of “what is a Cape Verdean?”.

The Four Years Voyage of Captain George Roberts

Forgotten Church in Brava

The island of Brava today is home to two parishes or municipalities, Sao Joao Baptista and Nossa Senhora do Monte, each with a church of the same name. Prior to 1910, vital records were in the form of church baptism, marriage and obituary records. In the past 4 years I have probably searched to thousands upon thousands of individual records from both parishes and traced my tree to the 1700’s.

The marriage records available start around 1806 for the parish of Sao Joao Baptista. What I found is a bit of a mystery – could there have been another forgotten parish? Take a look at this record for the marriage of Boaventura de Barros and Ingracia de Pina in 1808.

On the third line it says “parochial Nossa Senhora do Rosario da ilha Brava” or parish of Our Lady of the Rosary of the island of Brava?!?! I have seen records referring to chapels within a parish but this record clearly states it is a parish. These records continue in this way until about 1811. When I inquired about this to reps at national Archives of Cape Verde they said it may have been settled by people who came from a parish with the same name on a different island.

There exists parishes of Nossa Senhora do Monte on the islands of São Nicolão and Santo Antão but no one I have spoken to, in particular, older relatives have ever heard of there being one on Brava. The parish of Sao Joao Baptista probably came into existence as the island went from being known as São João to Brava in the 1700’s. In the writings of Captain John Roberts (written by William Defoe) in 1726 he refers to it as St. John. Nossa Senhora do Monte was established a hundred years later in 1826 but the church here was not completed until after 1841. I know I have ancestors born prior to 1826 who were naturals of the area of Nossa Senhora Do Monte. Could it be that they had established their own parish or chapel?

Cape Verde, the Duke of Arveiro and The Tavora Affair

Sometime after 1781, Galvao, a young man from the island of Santo Antao, Cape Verde, ran away from slavery to Lisbon where he worked for a member of the royal court. This “fidalgo” or nobleman, happened to ask him one day where he came from. Galvao, innocently, told him of the conditions he had escaped from in Santo Antão. Presumably, he would have told him of hunger, poverty, and the brutality of enslavement on the island. Immediately, the fidalgo made his way to the palace of Queen Isabel I, who had succeeded her father, King Jose I upon his death. He told her of the conditions on the island of Santo Antao and the enslaved people who he knew belonged to the Duke of Arveiro, Dom Jose de Mascarenhas.

Queen Isabel had for some time been attempting to correct all the sins of her father, King Jose I and his cohort, Sebastiao Carvalho, the Marquis do Pombal. Carvalho served in the position equivalent to the Prime Minister for the King and began to amass enough power to get rid of any elements of the Portuguese kingdom he saw as a threat. This included diminishing the power of the aristocratic families of the time and the Jesuit priests. Carvalho was successful in exiling the priests from Portugal while taking the power and influence of such families as the Tavora’s and Arveiro’s. The Marquis was also effective in leading Portugal after one of its worst natural disasters, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. His loyalty was to the King and he would destroy anyone who would threaten his sovereignty. It wasn’t very long before the King and Marquis created enemies within the kingdom.

King Jose was known to have kept a mistress, who happened to be the wife of the Marquis Dom Luiz Bernardo, a member of the Tavora family. The Marquis was said to have sought he help of the Jesuits and the Duke of Arveiro to kill King Jose. The conspiracy to kill the king included his parents and younger brother, Jose Maria, as well. The attempt to kill the King while riding back from a rendezvous with his mistress failed and all the conspirators and their families were arrested and condemned to death. The Duke of Arveiro and most members of the Tavora family were killed in the most gruesome ways, possibly to instill fear among and of the King’s other enemies, while others managed to escape Portugal to places like Cape Verde. Salt was poured on the lands belonging to these families so that nothing would ever grow there again.

When Isabel took the throne in 1777, one of the first things she did was to recall the Jesuits and appointed Dom Jose Maria de Mello, the Confessor of the Royal Conscience. By 1781, she had declared the innocence of all the individuals, living or dead, involved in the conspiracy to kill the King. Shortly after, the Queen went insane.

The account of Galvao, says that the nobleman he worked for “sought the conscience” of the Queen. It may have been Dom Jose Maria de Mello, himself, who had the ear of the Queen as the Royal Confessor. When the queen learned of Galvao and enslaved people in Santo Antao, owned by the Duke of Arveiro, she immediately declared their freedom. Galvao, who had unknowingly had a hand in the freedom of hundreds of people, returned to Santo Antao and his family a free man.

I’m back!

I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve added anything new to my blog. Life can sometimes get in the way of a really great blog entry.
In the past couple of months I’ve managed to grow my family tree back at least a generation in a couple of my branches and I have learned a lot more about what life may have been like in the tiny little village of Cham de Sousa in the parish of Nossa Senhora do Monte, Brava.
It seems that the same families have lived there for at least 300 hundred years and in fact, I seem to be a descendant of ALL of them. This is some of what I have so far;

My great-grandmother’s maternal and paternal sides have lived in the parish of Nossa Senhora do Monte since probably before it was created in 1828. Her mother, Rosa, was the the daughter Julio and Carolina. Julio’s mother was Angelica and his father, Francisco. I was able to get a copy of his baptismal record from 1859 which gave me absolutely no extra information since it doesn’t list grandparents. Unfortunately, Francisco and Angelica remain brick walls for me.

On the other hand, Carolina’s branch goes back a little further and includes many siblings and cousins. She had at least 5 of them, which include twin girls. Her parents, Joaquim and Theresa show up in many records as parents and grandparents where we intertwine with many other families I have researched from Brava, including the de Senna family, descendants of the first island military governor of which Eugenio Tavares, writer and poet belongs to, the do Valles, who were actually de Senna’s before the two brothers, Eusebio and Jose Pedro, had a falling out and split the family, as well as the Cosme’s, dos Reis, and Gilmette’s.
Carolina’s father, Joaquim, was the son of Maria Pereira, which is like “Jane Smith” in Cape Verdean genealogy. I probably have 100 Maria Pereira’s, Maria Pires’ and Maria de Pina’s in my tree! He had a brother, Antonio, who married his wife’s sister, Joanna. Carolina’s mother, Theresa, was the daughter of Victorino and Isabel, who must have been born around 1800 since they have their first child in the late 1820’s. They are my brick wall in this branch. I haven’t been able to find anything thus far to tell me who they were or who their parents were, not even obituaries, but I know they were alive in the late 1840’s when they have the youngest of their children which I have been able to find.

My great-grandmother’s paternal side is a bit more interesting and goes back further. I was able to find many more records for these people. Her father was the son of Jose and Clara. Jose was the son of Marcelino Jose, who was the son of Francisco and Claudina, whose marriage record I have from 1811.
Clara was the daughter of Celestino and Aniceta. Celestino was the son of Zacarias and Isabel, married in 1817, who are the children of Luis Goncalves and Maria de Pina(!) and Joaquim and Leandra.
Joaquim and Leandra were married in 1811 and were probably born between 1780-1790. He was the son of Antonio de Barros and Maria Pires(!). Leandra was the daughter of Angelo Dias and Maria Pereira(!). Antonio, Maria, Angelo and Maria were probably born between 1740 and 1750.

Not bad considering I started my research with nothing more than memories of names in stories my great-grandmother told me when I was younger. Almost everyone I have in this part of my tree is identified as being a natural of this parish which is interesting considering they were born much earlier than 1828, when the Bishop of Cape Verde decided to make Brava his residence and headquarters. The church of Nossa Senhora do Monte began construction at that time and wasn’t completed until the late 1840’s when the first marriages begun being held there.

In the last few months, I have also gotten more DNA matches with people of Cape Verdean descent and my tree has continued to grow tremendously! I am still trying to make sense of my African DNA information, specifically, the Bantu people. Turns out, there are many tribes within the Bantu’s. Without a record showing someone as a natural of one of the mainland countries, I haven’t been able to narrow it down to any specific region of the continent of Africa but I am keeping my fingers crossed!

DNA update!

In previous entries, I have written a bit on my DNA results which show that my genetic make-up is Mandinkan/Yoruba and Tuscan Italian. My mtDNA showed origins in West Africa/North Africa/Mediterranean areas but not much else. FamilytreeDNA.com continuously upgrades results as new advances come along in the technology and it’s always possible to log-in and find something completely different everyday.

Today, my mtDNA results seem to have been updated and I now have a ton of information on ancestral origins in Africa than show quite a few matches who are mostly Bantu (Fang, Ngomba, Galoa, Ndumu, and Punu)!!!!

I will update more info later on as I research more information on these particular tribes.

In Honor of a Great Man: Benedito Pires Gibau

Weeks before he passed away, my step-father, Bene, called me, my sister and two brothers into his room to talk to us as if he knew he didn’t have much more time with us. He said that there was nothing more important than family and that without it nothing else matters much. He looked at the four of us and said that he was a lucky man to have been a father to the four of us. He said that if all he had left in this world was one dollar, he would want us to share it equally because although he was my step-father, he raised all of us and we were all his children.

I can remember breaking down at that moment for the first time since we got the diagnosis of his stage four cancer.

When they married in 1975, I was only two. My memories always included Bene. I can’t really remember him not being there. My favorite memories are of sitting with him on our recliner on Saturday afternoons watching wrestling matches – Captain Lou Albano and Andre the Giant were my favorites. He made the best tuna fish sandwiches with a little onion and “malagata” or hots and taught me how to make rice and beans with potatoes in it.

I don’t remember him ever missing a day of work at the leather tanning factory he worked in for over twenty years – the same factory that exposed him to the very chemicals that may have caused his cancer. When I was twelve, my parents bought a single family home down the street from the triple decker my grandmother owned. We had lived on the third floor.

After receiving my masters from the University of Massachusetts- Amherst, I returned home that summer to look for a job to complete my residency. I found a position that would eventually move me to Connecticut. One afternoon before leaving, my step-father asked me to give him a ride to the store. As we were pulling out of the driveway, he said that he wanted me to know that no matter how old I was or what I was doing in life, I always had a home there. He knew he couldn’t give me much more but he could always give me a home.

He was a man of very few words but when he did it made a great impact in my life. No one ever had an unkind word to say about him and he was always there, in the background at times, because he was never one who liked to be the center of attention. He had a garden in the backyard that he tended faithfully. We always had corn, beans, zucchini, squash, cucumbers and strawberries. We had an apple and a pear tree in our yard and he grew grapes on a vine that covered most of our driveway and he even made his own wine. Every year, family and friends harvested the food and all were welcome to take whatever they could carry. That was the kind of man he was.

The summer of 2011, I drove home to Massachusetts from Maryland almost every weekend. I watched my step-father grow weaker. The man who was part of my foundation was withering away into someone almost unrecognizable. Even while taking medication as his pain became unbearable, he would still ask us if my mother was ok and if she had her dinner yet (he was the cook in the house). He passed away in October of that year. It’s still hard to walk into my childhood home and not see him sitting in his recliner or hear him whistling as he tended to his pets in the yard or tending his garden.

—————-

I think part of the reason why some of us do this genealogy “thing” is that we never want to forget people who are important to us. We don’t want others to forget either. My youngest niece was only two when my step-father died and there are things that I would want her to know about her grandfather like how he would get up very early every morning and make breakfast for the grandchildren when they stayed over. To this day, all the grand kids, my son included, remember that “Papai” made the best pápe or cream of wheat ever and no one has been able to replicate it since. I want her to know this and other stories about him and to never forget that this man, who raised me as his own, existed and though he was a man of very few words, showed us through his actions that he loved us all very much.

—————

Benedito Pires Gibau was born in Cham de Sousa, Nossa Senhora do Monte, Brava and was the son of Eugenio Rodrigues Gibau and Julia Turíbio Pires. He was the grandson of Querino Gibau and Rosa Rodrigues and of Turíbio Matheus Pires and Anna da Lomba Neves da Conceiçao. He was the great-grandson of Matheus Pires and Julia Gibau Fernandes of Pe de Rocha, Nossa Senhora do Monte, Brava. The were originally from Madeira and may have immigrated to Brava in the 1850’s.

Bene’s father, Eugenio, traveled around the world several times over working as a cook on several ships and also lived a short time in New Bedford. He was said to be one of the best chefs in Brava. His maternal grandfather, Turíbio Matheus, along with two brothers, Francisco Matheus and Jose Matheus, were American citizens arriving in San Francisco, California in the early 1900’s during the rebuilding of the city after the great earthquake in 1904. Turíbio returned to Brava in retirement while Jose stayed in California and Francisco settled in Hawaii.

Bene’s maternal great-grand uncle was Julio Gibau Fernandes, a whaler and ship captain married to Domingas do Canto, who lived on Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford at the turn of the century. Domingas was the godmother of my great-grandmother, Joanna, whom I’ve written about before. It was with them that she lived with in New Bedford when she arrived in 1917.

Famine and drought in Cape Verde

In the 1930’s and 1940’s, there were events and shows taking place in New Bedford and other Cape Verdean communities in the United States to raise funds to send food and other necessities to Cape Verde where thousand were starving to death. So many people were dying that there wasn’t enough time to record their deaths and children and infants were the hardest hit.

I had the opportunity to present a series of slides that were part of Famine Relief slideshow originally presented in New Bedford in the late 30’s and 40’s. In trying to keep true to what I thought was the original intent and spirit of the original show I focused more on the actual images and was not very successful in telling the story of what was actually going on in Cape Verde that made the need for the slideshow necessary.

Hindsight is always 20/20 but here is some of what may have made the presentation better-

The arquipelago of Cape Verde is located along the Sahel which meant that land which may have been lush and green was prone to the same conditions as the area around the Sahara. With the population growth, there was a greater need for wood for shelter and cooking. Livestock was brought in from abroad that fed on any greenery further affecting the already delicate environment. There are other factors that play on Cape Verde’s history of drought and famine that resulted in a total of more than fifty years total of drought since the 1700’s

While researching my family line in Brava, I can recall feeling a lot of sadness going through pages and pages of deaths of children, some on the very same day as their parents. Among those were my great-grandmothers aunt and uncle,who lost at least three children in the early and mid 1890’s. During the same period, my great-great grandmother, Rosa, born in 1887, lost her father in 1893 and her mother in 1896. She also had younger sister, Maria, born in 1890 but there are no records for after that. Sadly, Maria may have been one of the scores of people whose deaths weren’t recorded because there were too many at once. A devestating drought took hold of Brava during this time period and it is very likely my family members died from starvation. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the fact that Rosa was the sole survivor in her immediate family.

It’s a very sobering thought made worse when you think about why she may have survived. What kinds of sacrifices might her parents have made so that she had enough to eat?

When I first started putting all the pieces to this story together, I called my aunt to tell her what I had found. The next morning she called me in tears because the knowledge of what happened to our ancestors made her remember the severe drought in the late 1940’s. There was no food and the death toll was rising. She remembers my grandmother splitting one mango among her siblings one particular morning. She herself had nothing to eat. My aunt told me that as children they would try to find games to play to take their minds off of their hunger. But that day it wasnt helping much. My grandfather was working in São Paulo, Brazil and hadn’t yet been able to send anything that month. Later on I learned that he was working in a bakery and being paid the equivalent of pennies a day. He was barely surviving himself and had lost so much weight when he returned to Brava that he was barely recognizable.

My aunt went on to tell me how my grandmother got word later that day that they had received mail from America. A family member had sent them twenty dollars and my grandmother was able to buy rice to sustain her family. She remembers the excitement and probably relief that day like it was yesterday.

Then there are the stories of drought in Fogo in the 1930’s and how my grandfather walked miles to get food, finally getting one single egg to feed his younger siblings.

These stories and hundreds more would help to understand the task that Cape Verdeans in America undertook to save hungry family members at home in Cape Verde. This particular show raised around $3500! Twenty dollars and an egg meant survival for many of my ancestors!!!

Because of this slideshow and the people depicted in these slides, countless people were saved from starvation.

Many of us are alive today only because of our ancestors sheer will to survive through unimaginable hardships and sacrifices; and because of Cape Verdean – Americans who never forgot where they came from and who responded to the poet, Pedro Cardoso, plea to the Cape Verdeans to “show the world their worth” and help their brothers and sisters in Cape Verde, in a poem written to the Cape Verdeans of the United States.

This past weekend, my family had our first family reunion. Well over 300 people attended, among them were veterans, nurses and teachers, many people who in their own ways contribute to our society. We released butterflies in honor of our ancestors. I can only hope that they are looking down from heaven knowing that we are grateful for everything they experienced so that we could gather on a summer afternoon and celebrate our family.

Our Cape Verdean Legacy: 1935-2013

Save the Date: July 1st

Two Events for Cape Verdean Recognition Week

5:00-7:00 Cape Verde Book Fair: Books about Cape Verde and Cape Verdean culture and history will be on sale in a book fair conducted by the National Library of Cape Verde. In past years, there have been children’s books, cook books, fiction and nonfiction, and various books about the culture, history, music and literature of Cape Verde

7:00-8:00 Our Cape Verdean Legacy: 1935-2013: Anna Lima Delgado, the Internet’s “Creola Genealogist” blogger will present and interpret the “Cape Verde Poor Relief Stereopticon Show”, a slide show of images of the Cape Verde Islands from 1935. Ms. Lima Delgado will draw upon her extensive knowledge of Cape Verdean history, genealogy and culture to bring life to a famine relief slide show that was created in 1935 by New Bedford visitors to the Islands. The show will include seldom seen slides from the collection of the Library featuring daily life in Cape Verde in 1935 and notables Eugenio Tavares, Baltasar Lopes da Silva and Pedro Cardoso.

New Bedford Public Library, 613 Pleasant St., 3rd Fl

All events are presented by the New Bedford Public Library, the Cape Verdean Recognition Committee and the New Bedford Historical Society and admission is free to the public.

Back to the Roots Travel Show

http://www.backtotherootstravelshow.com/

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