Hello Everyone!
I gathered some genealogical clues for my uncle who took a trip to the Azores.
This is his story which he gave me permission to share. I thought everyone
here on the list would enjoy it! It's inspiring me to plan my own trip!!!
Lisa Caetano Harley
Southern Cal
Researching: Topo, Sao Antao and Ribeira Seca on Sao Jorge
Piedade, Lajes do Pico on Pico
Lisa,
We had a great trip ! 13 days in Terceira visiting with Shirley's
7000 cousins and one day in Sao Jorge looking for any relatives I might find.
I was concentrating on relatives of Isabella (on the Caetano side)
since she stayed in Sao Jorge and the Descendants list you gave us had her
husbands name and the names of her 5 children. We went to the Civil Registry
office in Angra de Heroismo in Terceira because all of the records for the
central group of Azorean Islands are now kept there and are fully
computerized. However, since the data we were interested in was old , we could
only get it in the Civil Registry in Calheta in Sao Jorge. They did call
Calheta and they sent us some information (not much).
Through some of the folks on Terceira who knew somebody who knew
somebody in Sao Jorge , we arranged for a taxi driver who was originally from
the Topo area and was old enough to possibly know many of the families in that
area. We flew to Sao Jorge (Velas) , met our driver, Antonio, and took him
for coffee at a small café to discuss what we wanted to do . At first, he
didn't seem like a very outgoing guy and we were concerned that he wouldn't be
as helpful or as interested as we might like to be able to accomplish our
mission. He later proved us wrong ! He said that he knew some people in the
Topo area with that name. Our first stop after that was the Civil Registry
office in Calheta. There were two people working there and no other customers.
It was slow at first when we asked for information but after a little bit (we
showed them the 2 old family photos which I figured were from 1894 and 1914)
they really got into it and were whipping out old tattered books and and
getting pretty excited looking for Goncalves family information. They found
information starting from Isabella's children down (4 of the five were deceased
(no surprise there) and we ended up with some information about Isabella's
grandchildren, and where they might live. At that point, our driver said that
he thought he knew one of them. By that time, we had been there about 40
minutes to an hour or so.
So we drove to Santo Antao (which looked like the end of the world to
me) and our driver stopped at a small store (really small) to ask a guy he knew
about the family. The road at the corner was Canada de Castanha mentioned in
the death certificate for my great grandmother, Victorina. The man said that
the house was still there but uninhabited. He also told us where to find one
of Isabella's grandsons. We walked up the road and took a picture of the old,
small house . There was a cow in front and I looked in the windows but
couldn't see much but Shirley took some pictures.
Then we went to the house where he said the grandson lived. In the
Azores, they don't seem to have doorbells so you just stand outside and shout
and hope somebody comes out so that's what the driver did and a guy looks out
the window and comes outside. We explained who we were and we were looking
for possible long-lost relatives. He was skeptical at first but then , after
showing him some documents and the pictures of our great grandparents, he
became interested. We talked to him at length and found out that he was
Angelo Goncalves, son of Jose Silveira Goncalves , son of Isabel. He is 72
years old, but he looked young, like in his late 50s, a nice-looking guy,
short and was friendly once we established our relationship. His wife had
passed away and he lived with his son in a small but modern-looking house. As
we were talking, his son came home for lunch – he is a bombeiro (fireman).
He's a handsome-looking fellow, tall and dark and quite friendly also. His
name is Antonio Goncalves. We took pictures and then Angelo told us where his
sister Natalia lived up the road a piece.
Went there, our driver Antonio shouted again at the door and Natalia appeared.
Introduced ourselves and she too became immediately engaged – friendly and
welcoming. She got out tons of family photos. Her husband was present – also
very friendly. She told us about her two cousins who lived up the road a piece
and we went to meet them also. In the meantime, because Antonio had expressed
to her how interested I was to see the Faja de Alem, she phoned her son to
arrange for him to take Roger down to the property. The Faja de Alem was where
our great-grandfather lived when he died.
(Note: There are several "Fajas" in Sao Jorge – these are small relatively
flat areas below cliffs close to the ocean that people inhabit and farm
because the land is quite fertile. Our family's Faja is no longer inhabited
but Natalia's family still has property there and a few crops.
Her son, Natalia and her husband were gracious enough to take me down to the
Faja (Shirley and Antonio stayed at a little drink shack in Faja de Sao Joao).
He had a jeep pickup truck with 4-wheel drive which turned out to be the only
way we could navigate along the side of a steep cliff. The entire dirt road
with boulders sticking out al over the place, was quite narrow and barely fit
only the 4 wheels of the truck. When I first got in I started to put on my
seat belt and Natalia's son looked at me, laughed and said, "you don't need to
do that"! So I took off my seat belt figuring, "okay, you die, you die" and I
didn't want to look "chicken". Besides, even if I had my seatbelt on, the fall
off the cliff would kill us all anyway!
After about 3/4 of a mile, the road ran out and we had to go the rest of the
way on foot. After a 5 minute walk, we arrived where the house was situated.
It was a cluster of about 5 lava rock houses – one where they cooked, one where
the children slept, one where they kept supplies, etc. The rock houses were
obviously built by hand with no cement to hold the rocks together. It appeared
to me that the rocks shown in the photos you gave me of the great-grandparents
were of similar structure as the ones that I saw. I went inside the house that
was the kitchen and they showed me the rock furnace oven where they cooked. I
also went into two of the other houses/rooms. Everything was extremely
primitive. Roofs were intact but I'm sure they were not the originals , added
after the great-grandfather died, because surely the originals had collapsed
due to earthquakes, storms etc. These are basically "ruins".
The family still does some "farm" activity there…but it appeared to be minimal.
When we were walking toward the houses, the son brushed aside some leaves of a
plant on the trail and took off a cluster of purple grapes and handed it to me
to eat. Which I ate while taking photos – the cluster in one hand and the
camera in the other. I probably spent about an hour there – taking photos,
talking to the relatives and taking in the sheer magnitude of where I
was…indescribable feeling !!
Walked back to the place where the so-called "road" ended and all of us watched
as the son, guided by his father, maneuvered the pickup back and forth against
the edge of the cliff about 10 times before he completed the reversal of
direction. Then we renewed the terrifying ride back to the Faja de Sao Joao
where Shirley and Antonio were waiting. Said our goodbyes to the cousins then
made our way back to Velas.
That's it for now…more later.
Uncle Rog
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