Albert Gouveia albert.gouv...@gmail.com It was sometime in the 1970s, during which period I was very early on in my career at the National Insitute of Oceanography. When I came across a page written by my grand-uncle giving some details about the family up to his parents and no more, I was eager to know more. But I put that curiosity on the backburner; my scientific work at NIO was quite time-consuming.
Forward to 2006 when I was sick. I had to take almost five months off from work. It was then that I suddenly remembered the piece of paper and decide to flesh it out with the details I could find. So I opened every drawer and searched for letters, photos and in fact anything connected with the family. Soon I had enough to start. At this point, I realised I would need some tool to put this data into shape. Ideally, this would need to be one that had the capacity to not only store the data but which could help me visualise it and create all sorts of reports. Obviously, I was looking for something in the Free Software domain. It was not long before I hit upon a genealogical research software called Gramps [https://gramps-project.org/]. I spent a week getting familiar with the software and in the process put in the little data that I had found. Then what? It is at this point that I had to take a decision as to what was the purpose of my data collection. After much thought, I decided to keep it simple. The idea was to collect and depict in a format so that my grandchildren would have a ready reckoner to the family tree. You see, my son had just got married a few months earlier. It was of course quite possible that there may be no interest, but I could anyway stick up a chart somewhere in the house that would make them pause at some time or the other. Additionally, the software had the capability to take in all sorts of data -- like photographs, letters, and so on. All this is fine, but you need data to begin somewhere. So I marched off to the village church to look at what was possible and came across these registers that were all in Portuguese. I soon realised that it was no mean task to get data from the church records. But something my younger son said stuck in my mind. He said, "Just leaf through the pages till the logic jumps out". If it was English maybe it would have been easier, but Portuguese? Anyway I did what he suggested, using my limited knowledge of French. Within a week it was clear. For records before 1910 or so you have to scan record by record unless you already knew the approximate dates of birth, marriage or death of your ancestors in question. After 1910, many of the records have an index at the end. This helped. But even here there are many pitfalls. For instance, was the maiden name used or not? Such a search must be also coupled with visits to as many relatives as possible, to pick information and clues. It is important that you do not badger them with questions beyond the first few. Just let the talk and note relevant details as they come along. Too many interruptions and the flow will dry up. Another thing I learnt (and I wonder if this is a Goan characteristic) is that if you send a long set of question to any of your relatives, you will almost surely not get answers. This happens for a variety of reasons. After a fair amount of time spent waiting for replies and a little soul searching, I chanced upon a clue. It struck me that everyone was perhaps too busy with their day to day life and therefore had no time to fill out the full questionnaire. So they would probably put it on the back burner to fill later. They would also perhaps decide to send to you only when it was complete. This probably meant never. So, one sent off another email or letter requesting the relatives to please not search for data but answer only what they could immediately lay their hands on, or already knew. The result was amazing. Lots and lots of information poured in and continues to trickle in, either when they remembered, came across something or when I gently prodded them again. I did go to many a church. Depending on the various church policies, I was able to slowly get more data. Obviously, along the way, I picked up data of many a *Gouveia* who shared a surname and whom I came across. My database now has 4872 individuals, connected to each other in some way or the other. This includes about 101 Gouveias. Many of my nephews and nieces have received a PDF file of their relevant family tree and, hopefully, it will be useful. It also helps fill up the database when they find bits of data. One of my nieces, Dr. Michelle Gouveia, printed out the family tree for my granddaughter Kiara and stuck it in a place where she could read it as she grew up. I end by adding that while I have used the software for a very simple purpose, it could be used for far more by those interested. There are many interesting features to the software. For instance, its ability to show the geographical spread of families, store important events of every family member spread over their life, and so on. One output is called the 'book output' which offers various information of the people. One of my cousins is using this as a base to write about the Dias family (my paternal grandmother's family). There is also another genealogical site, http://www.geni.com. One of the curators on this site is Faust Desa who lives in London who has put in a lot of Goan data. Much data from 1910 to about 1990 is available with the Church of the Latter Saints, which can be found via https://wiki.fibis.org/index.php/Goa_Church_Records Information can also be culled from the Directorate of Archives And Archaeology both from the birth and death records and from property records. I must confess though that I have done very little of a search there. -- Albert Gouveia, IITian and scientist, retired as the head of the National Institute of Oceanography computers department. He is known for his support to Free Software and Open Source in Goa. Send your comments and queries to him (address above), with a cc to goa...@goanet.org Read Goanet (including its archives of many years) here: http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org You can join the discussions by posting to the list (whether subscribed or not) via goa...@goanet.org Goanet has been connecting Goans and people interested in Goa worldwide for the past 25 years. Almost. Goanet Reader is compiled and edited by Frederick Noronha fredericknoron...@gmail.com who welcomes well-written Goa-related articles for circulation worldwide.
