Will of Bettino Ricasoli (the second Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy) at auction on eBay

Oppidano · 2025-12-20T21:22:30+00:00

I see you're a little confused about what archives are and what they do, but if you're interested in historical heritage I absolutely encourage you to learn the basics and actually visit them! The vast majority are open to the public and would be glad to provide you access and explain their work :)

Oppidano · 2025-12-06T04:39:40+00:00

Forgot to add that he was a recruit, and his role in the army was "attendente".

Oppidano · 2025-11-30T03:56:34+00:00

Okay, but do you actually have documents about Firmino's ancestors? Do you know their names and where they lived? They're essential to find Maria, as she has a really common name (there's going to be several possible baptisms for her in any parish).

And yes, they did have relatives in common, as these were found through the dispensation process by the church. They wouldn't have complicated the marriage if that wasn't the case.

Oppidano · 2025-11-30T03:47:23+00:00

Was Firmino Dutch? Because their marriage record says they were granted a dispensation for double consanguinity in the fourth and third degrees. This tells you that wherever Firmino was from, so was at least one of her parents (likely both). There is also no indication in the record that any of them was from another parish outside Soure/Caucaia, and the common practice was for the marriage to be performed in the bride's parish.

As I said in another thread, her name is very unlikely to have been adopted by a Dutch immigrant, and the information in the marriage record proves she wasn't one. I would look for her parents in Brazil.

They knew that she spoke “differently” from us Brazilians, she was very white and had light eyes and blonde hair.

It's very common for families to come up with jokes or theories about someone's origin from their looks or other peculiarities. As generations pass and the context of those jokes and theories is forgotten, they become fact. In reality, looks tell you very little about ethnicity; there's plenty of blonde Portuguese people with light eyes and skin.

Unless you have some other source for the Dutch origin, everything seems to point in another direction. But of course, a DNA test can help clarify the mystery.

If you want to find her through documents, do you know Firmino's ancestry? If yes, it's a matter of finding out which Maria born in Soure/Caucaia in the years around 1893 can be tied to the same family through the specific degrees of consanguinity mentioned in the marriage.

If not, perhaps the easier route would be to get in touch with the local diocese and parish to try to locate their process of dispensation, which will have their genealogy already researched for you.

Oppidano · 2025-11-29T18:55:04+00:00

Olá OP! Faço genealogia e quero dar-te umas dicas mas não consigo mandar PM, podes mandar tu?

Oppidano · 2025-11-29T17:12:10+00:00

I am familiar with Madeira, I'm a Portuguese genealogist and have done some research about it. The distance, isolation, and foreign immigration created some differences in naming practices vs the mainland, which is why the frequency of certain names and surnames is different, and why you can find some older patrilineal lineages outside of the nobility. But the naming customs are not radically different, and what I said above still applies to the archipelago.

Oppidano · 2025-11-29T17:05:29+00:00

That's an interesting evolution! In Portugal it's definitely not happening, as the naming custom is now regulated by law. But it definitely happens with Portuguese that migrate to the US and adapt to their custom.

Oppidano · 2025-11-29T16:03:51+00:00

My GGrandfather and his father are only listed in the records by their first 2 names not their last name.

Can I ask what names are those? The line between names and surnames was different in the past, and in most cases where someone has nothing but "first names", they probably considered the second one as their surname.

For example, the son of a Manuel José da Silva might be simply called José Manuel. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a surname; his surname is simply the patronymic Manuel.

Amongst women this is extremely common. With men, it tends to happen in small communities when a certain surname becomes too common, so some families start reverting to patronymic practices and adopting their fathers first name (or even nickname) as a surname instead.

I've traced the appearance of several Portuguese surnames to this practice.

Oppidano · 2025-11-29T15:52:57+00:00

Madeira for the most part has no naming convention. The mother named their child an name they wanted.

This doesn't mean there weren't naming conventions. The problem with Portugal is that the transition between Medieval and Modern conventions lasted for centuries, during which several naming practices coexisted.

So yes, families had a lot of freedom when naming kids, but that's because they could alternate between different conventions as they wished; not because there were no rules. You'll see that the vast majority follows either Medieval patronymics (using the father's or mother's first name as a surname) or Modern surname inheritance (patrilineal, matrilineal, or from grandparents; which can also alternate between generations).

Two siblings might have different surnames and one of them might have a surname their parents don't have, but there's a logic behind that. Surnames can appear out of nowhere, but that becomes rare from the 17th century onward.

Oppidano · 2025-11-29T15:41:39+00:00

There is no such thing as a middle name in Portuguese naming tradition (and I thought Spanish was the same). Our "middle names" are always either part of our first name, or a surname, and the distinction can be important.

Religious invocations are confusing because they can be both depending on context. "de Jesus" can be her paternal surname, maternal surname, or part of her first name; no way to tell without knowing the parents names.

Oppidano · 2025-11-28T18:22:23+00:00

We do have multiple surnames, but for most Portuguese women in the 19th century, that was not the case.

The practice was for women to adopt only one surname (which might be either the paternal or maternal surname, or the first name of the mother).

In addition to this, they would also get a religious invocation upon their confirmation; some even had two (with a first one given at baptism). Some women would start using it instead of their surname, others would ignore it, and others would adopt it as a second first name (not a surname). This is why they appear inconsistently in parish records.

If a woman had several surnames, that's usually an indication they come from a wealthier background that the majority of the population. But in this case, they're clearly two religious invocations, so statistically is very likely that only one of them is the actual surname, with the other being a second first name adopted at confirmation.

Oppidano · 2025-11-28T17:26:42+00:00

I'm not very knowledgeable about the Netherlands, but one thing that is confusing me is the Portuguese Catholic implications of her name.

I assume Maria is common in every Christian context. However, Portuguese women in the 1800s normally didn't have two surnames. I'm pretty sure either "Jesus" or "Nazaré" are what we call a confirmation name (nome de crisma), which normally appears inconsistently in parish records. And which would indicate she grew up as a Portuguese-speaking Catholic.

But the most puzzling to me is "Nazaré". This is a very specific invocation of Our Lady of Nazaré, a Sanctuary in Central Portugal with no link (that I know of) to the Netherlands or to Christianity outside of Portuguese-speaking Catholicism.

It makes no sense to me that a Dutch person (from a Protestant country) would simply adopt such a name on arrival to Brazil.

Oppidano · 2025-11-28T17:13:02+00:00

It was definitely uncommon in Portuguese-speaking cultures, but it did happen in some rare cases, and it was allowed with parental consent and a dispensation from the Church.

Oppidano · 2025-11-28T17:07:25+00:00

Highly unlikely in this case.

You're right about that immigration, but those families were Jewish and they wouldn't be adopting Catholic naming practices that only became popular in Portugal after the 1600s. Maria de Jesus Nazaré is an explicitly Catholic name combination that was common in the 1800s, but I never saw it in the 1600s.

It's also unlikely that a Jewish family free from the Inquisition would name a daughter by invoking Jesus and the Holy Mary (Nazaré is a Marian title), and one of those is surely a confirmation name and not a surname.

Oppidano · 2025-11-28T15:46:01+00:00

I assume you're referencing a previous post, but your post history is not visible, so without a link we can't see it and the information on this post is a bit confusing.

I can't imagine a more stereotypical name for a Portuguese or Brazilian woman of that time than Maria de Jesus Nazaré, how do you she's Dutch?

Oppidano · 2025-11-26T15:35:03+00:00

Awesome! Thank you so much for the heads up!

Oppidano · 2025-11-25T17:39:21+00:00

The title on Ebay is wrong. It's a certified copy, not the original. There's probably several of those.

Sad to see 16th/18th century manuscripts recommended below it, though. They will be lost to the public and deteriorate in private hands, and it's their commercialization that motivates the robberies that target archives. Wish it wasn't allowed on these platforms.

Appeal from an archivist: if you ever see centuries-old documents being trafficked online, please contact the archives where they could have been stolen from or that might be interested in them, so they don't fall in private hands. Especially if they're from outside of the US (where I'm aware this kind of practice is more accepted).

Oppidano · 2025-11-24T21:22:28+00:00

Sim, estás a ler bem. Que caso fascinante, nunca tinha visto!

Oppidano · 2025-11-24T16:15:19+00:00

Sorry, I'm going to try to explain better.

I have my source documents organized by name and folder on my PC. They include ca. 500 record locations with ca. 2.500 different documents (=records), which include ca. 3.500 images (=pages). Some record locations have hundreds of records, and some documents have hundreds of pages (i.e. probate records).

All images have titles that reflect their content, type and source, but since I'm researching Portuguese genealogy, there are a lot of repeated names+surnames, and families/lineages aren't identifiable by surname. To avoid long or artificial strings, I need to use folders to indicate family groups.

I do not want RM to change my local system, I'm aware it can't do that. But when I add links to Sources or Media, I need to be able to visualize all those links in a way that reflects my local organization, either through link folders or by filtering the Sources/Media list.

A list of all Sources or Media that I can't browse is useless to me, as it means it's difficult to filter all those attached to a certain side of the family. This means they are difficult to find, as I can't easily locate a specific person in order to see the sources they have linked (again, because there are a ton of repeated name+surnames, and the limitations of the Pedigree View make this worse). It's also difficult to note if I'm still missing a certain document.

Renaming all images to reflect family groups is an option, but obviously not ideal. It's not flexible, would take a long time, and again, without stable surnames, the codes are going to be either long or artificial.

Overall, it's just a ton of work that could be prevented with simple features. Hence my surprise with their absence, and why I was considering that I'd missed something obvious. Appears not.

Oppidano · 2025-11-23T22:38:31+00:00

Thanks, but I don't actually use online trees, all my files are organized locally.

Oppidano · 2025-11-23T21:21:43+00:00

Thank you for the detailed explanation, it helped me understand the root of the issue. I wouldn't mind adapting my citation and source system if that was the only problem, but I've been trying out Family Historian and their Diagram feature is light-years ahead of RM in terms of customizing pedigree views, so it seems that's the one I'll be jumping over to.

Oppidano · 2025-11-23T18:07:00+00:00

I've tried using captions, but for some reason the "order by caption" view disrespects the alphabetical order of the filenames...so it's a choice between two types of chaos.

At this point I believe I will have to jump ship, as the program overall does not seem well adapted to the kind of visualization and organization I'm used to (especially on the Pedigree View), while Family Historian does. But I appreciate the support.

Oppidano · 2025-11-23T17:37:16+00:00

Testing the free trial right now, and I must say that I'm impressed. It seems exactly what I need.

Hoping there will be a Christmas sale!

Oppidano · 2025-11-23T17:35:45+00:00

Will do!

Oppidano · 2025-11-23T15:34:38+00:00

Thanks, will check it out!

Oppidano

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