Family Tree of the Algarve

Nuno Inácio decided to research his own family tree when his daughter was born – but what started out as a private research project turned into a Herculean task that has already lasted six years. What’s the motive, we wondered?

“This project opens up a whole series of potential avenues,” he explains. “The first has to do with curiosity - as it allows people to learn about their roots and where they’ve come from. Then, it also serves as a means of scientific investigation – allowing for the calculation of birth rates, deaths, for average ages for marriages, etc. It shows us, for example, the evolution of borough populations. It could be useful to resolve inheritance issues – or for foreigners that would like to claim Portuguese nationality”.

Just to give an idea, analysing a single parish “can take anything between 18 months and 3-4 years”. Inácio needs to use documents like parish registers (which began in 1575), and in which all marriages, baptisms and deaths are noted, and then introduce the information, bit by bit into his specially-adapted IT programme.

The «Genealogia do Algarve» project was officially presented on 12th September 2009 – with just the data relating to the parish of Portimão. Later, on 9th June 2010, it was expanded to include information relating to Albufeira – the urban part of the town.

Other sources of data are the various “judicial” processes of the infamous Inquisition (“santo ofício”), from 1470 - and with which Inácio says it is actually possible to go back further in time, to the middle of the 15th century.

All these documents are in archaic Portuguese, and written by hand. Deciphering them has become “a question of habit”. A lot of the time “at least an hour is wasted just getting a hang of the calligraphy”, Inácio tells.

A machine that reads microfilms is at the heart of Inácio’s research. He bought the films at Lisbon’s Torre do Tombo. The idea that the 1755 destroyed “a lot of things is just another myth”!

“Normally, registers go back to the 16th century, so it’s possible to go back 25 generations from present day”, he explains.

Ironically, it’s the more modern times that have caused the most headaches in Inácio’s research.

“Because of data protection laws we can only access records that are more than 100 years old. This is why the whole thing has to stop at 1910”. One solution “is to invite people to provide (contemporary) information voluntarily”. Meantime, the most recent records – from 1850 to 1910 – are only available from Faro’s district archives.

But genealogy is much more than the simple collection of names from the past. It’s the whole discovery of where people came from, and where they went. “I was surprised to learn, for instance, that in the 16th century Monchique was populated by people from Oporto and Trás-os-Montes. It’s intriguing to wonder what motivated these people to come here!”

“Another strange bit of information is that Portimão is the parish that has more openings with the outside world – the most number of people with families in other parts of the world. Since the 16th century we’ve had Germans, Italians and French arrive here and opt to stay – with their descendents still living here today. In present times, a lot of these people have lost their original surnames – but the links remain”.

“On the other hand Albufeira was an extremely closed parish – and we’ve only got registers relating to it that date back to 1833. We know, for instance, that it was a very sectioned-off kind of place. For example, the women from Sítio da Terras Novas, in 99% of cases, only married men from the same area.

There was probably strong rivalry between the rural communities around Albufeira – and they were extremely shut-off from the rest of the world. It’s even stranger to discover that this was the case in the19th century! Yet now, look at the hive of international tourism that it has become! In a way, we can see in a very clear example how much mankind can change – particularly when it comes to mentalities!”

For better or worse, genealogy also shows us who we are – whether as individuals or collectively. “If you take a determined family of landowners from the 19th century, naturally their descendents today will have a very different standing to those that worked the land over a century ago”, Inácio explains.

His data base also has records of hundreds of Negro slaves shipped into the Algarve. In fact, he’s discovered that he himself is descended from one of the last slaves in Monchique – a woman called Joana Maria. “She was my great-great-grandmother, on my father’s side”.

Knowing facts like these “allows us to look at people in a different way. Racism will exist as it’s probably normal for any race to think it is better than another, but this is actually a very false pretext, as there really aren’t races anymore – just a great big mixture of people. Even when someone appears to have white skin, the truth is that their genes can tell a totally different story”.

Harking back though to the Algarve of the 19th century, illiteracy in those days was “horrendous. In a small place like Guia, for example – which had around 1000 inhabitants – only 20 or 30 could read and write.”

Thus “we’ve had an incredible evolution, in human terms, over the last 100-odd years”. When you see what was called the “orphan inventory” – the obligatory list of property owned by someone who died leaving underage children – “we can appreciate how much things have changed. People had a chest, sheets, a chair – some may have owned a donkey – but nothing more”.

“And up until the 19th century, the entire Algarve had a population of more or less what you’ll find in Portimão today – around 50.000 inhabitants. The region was practically a desert!” And, because of this, “primitive Algarvians” (the ones that go back five generations) are practically all cousins”!

Inácio is also involved in genealogical tourism. He told us of a case of a Canadian who wrote to him asking for information on his Portuguese ancestors, and who is now coming over to catch up with his roots.

Just in the Algarve there are 40 active genealogists – many of them inceasingly intrested in sifting through historical archives…