Lisa, thanks for sharing the cousins found story. I had a similar experience on Sao Miguel last May. Taxi driver found the family name in the village and I met a few cousins and saw the old lava rock home. It was a joyful happy tearful experience for me after searching microfilms for so long for my grandmothers side. Everyone was so helpful and friendly. I also had documentation and pictures with me. Hope you get to go soon. It's so beautiful. Nancy H.
________________________________ From: "lisahb...@aol.com" <lisahb...@aol.com> To: azores@googlegroups.com Sent: Monday, September 2, 2013 7:12 PM Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Azores Trip - Cousins Found 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 -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to azores@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores. -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to azores@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
