I was just doing lots of Terceira research today and ran across a very common situation that might confound a beginning researcher.
In 1816, I found a marriage of a couple where the bride's parents are listed simply as Manuel Machado and Maria Josefa.
These are about as plan a pair of names as is possible to find.
So while I searched my database for the parents of this bride to see if I already had them in my database, I found 9 couples who matched.
None of them were simply Machado for the father. The match was for a couple named Manuel Machado de Barcelos and Maria Josefa, who raised their family in this same village.
And that additional name makes all the difference in the world.
Not only does it tell me where on Terceira it is most likely the family lived, having traced most of the Barcelos families on Terceira and I know where they often resided,
but immediately differentiates this family from all the other Machados, like Machado Corvelo, Machado Cota, Machado de Avila, Machado Dutra, Machado Codoniz, Machado Luis, Machado Cardoso, etc, etc.
The point is that one will always eventually be forced to trace not only ones own direct ancestor, but many or all of their siblings.
This bride above didn't have her father's second surname listed, Barcelos, but maybe her sister or brother did. And maybe the baptism records of the children of Manuel Machado de Barcelos and Maria Josefa sometimes listed the father with Barcelos and sometimes without it. The lack of consistency is actually something you will find very consistent. :-) You can count on it. But no doubt your first encounter would and should give you pause.
Only further research will reveal the whole picture.
If you are thinking maybe the father could have been Manuel da Costa Machado and wife Maria Josefa, that is not really likely.
Of course, this would open up the possible matches further when I did the search. I found another four named Manuel XXX Machado and Maria Josefa:
Manuel Silveira Machado, Manuel da Rocha Machado, and Manuel Martins Machado.
But if a surname is going to be shortened from time to time by the recording priests, it is far more likely they will drop the second surname.
So most of the time you don't need to look for Machado being in the second position.
There are some cases where the husband sometimes went by two names. For example, maybe he was usually listed as Joao da Costa Fernandes in most cases, but sometime as just Joao Fernandes here and there.
But this is far less common than the above examples.
Variations are often found for women's names, but that can wait for another time.
Doug da Rocha Holmes
Sacramento, California
Pico & Terceira Genealogist
916-550-1618
Sacramento, California
Pico & Terceira Genealogist
916-550-1618
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