Ernesto do Canto Index

[Marcio Borba]

If anyone on the list is willing to share some of Cantos Index I would really apreciate it. Mainly Feteiras, Relva, Bretanha (if they exist)

 

Marcio Borba
Feel the Azores... visit http://azorean-roots.blogspot.com

[Hermano C. Pires]

OK, I'll ask again what is and where is this CANTO"S INDEX .
I have seen it mentioned a number of times before but have no idea of what it might be.
Please enlighten me :))
Hermano
 

---

Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 11:51:21 -0800
From: marciobo...@yahoo.com
Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Ernesto do Canto Index
To: azo...@googlegroups.com

If anyone on the list is willing to share some of Cantos Index I would really apreciate it. Mainly Feteiras, Relva, Bretanha (if they exist)

 

Marcio Borba
Feel the Azores... visit http://azorean-roots.blogspot.com

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[John Raposo]

"Ernesto do Canto, Dr., nasceu a 12.12.1831 na casa dos Prestes, em S. Roque e aí faleceu a 21.8.1900. Foi bacharel formado em Filosofia pela Universidade de Coimbra a 25.7.1856, sócio correspondente da Academia Real das Ciências, de Lisboa e de outras sociedades científicas, tanto nacionais como estrangeiras. Notabilizou-se como erudito historiador e genealogista, tendo sido autor do Arquivo dos Açores e de outras publicações de reconhecido mérito. Foi Presidente da Junta Geral do Distrito de Ponta Delgada e uma das figuras de maior prestígio da sociedade micaelense no decorrer do século XIX. Casou na ermida de Nossa Senhora do Amparo, anexa à casa-solar desta família em S. Pedro Ponta Delgada a 5.5.1859, com sua sobrinha Margarida Leite do Canto." (from Rodrigo Rodrigues).

Among many other things, Ernesto do Canto took an inventory of the existing vital records in the Azores and developed an index (the manuscripts are at the Archives in Ponta Delgada) which are an invaluable resource for beginners and even for those who hit "stone walls". For example, his index for the marriages in Santo António além Capelas lists marriages for which the records no longer exist!

I hope this helps.

John Miranda Raposo
--------------------------------------------

On Fri, 1/31/14, Hermano C. Pires <lago...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Subject: RE: [AZORES-Genealogy] Ernesto do Canto Index
To: "azo...@googlegroups.com" <azo...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Friday, January 31, 2014, 7:59 PM

#yiv3001787033
#yiv3001787033 --
.yiv3001787033hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;padding:0px;}
#yiv3001787033 body.yiv3001787033hmmessage
{
font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri;}
#yiv3001787033 OK,

I'll ask again what is and where is this CANTO"S
INDEX .
I have seen it mentioned a number
of times before but have no idea of what it might be.
Please enlighten me :))
Hermano
 

[Hermano C. Pires]

Many thanks John
It certainly helps. I at least no longer have to feel in the dark.
Are they availabe on-line ?
From the banter I gather that some people on the list have access to them. Is it possible for one to join that number?

 

> Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:16:49 -0800
> From: marr...@yahoo.com

[Cheri Mello]

Translation (of sorts),

Ernesto do Canto, Doctor, was born on 12 December 1831 in Prestes on S. Roque and died on 21 August 1900. He received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of Coimbra on 25 July1856, was a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisbon and was in other, both national and foreign scientific societies. He was distinguished as a scholar, historian and genealogist, having authored Arquivo dos Açores and other publications of recognized merit. He was President of the General Board of the District of Ponta Delgada and one of the most prestigious figures of the Azorean society during the nineteenth century. He married in the chapel of Nossa Senhora do Amparo, attached to the house-solar this family in S. Peter Ponta Delgada on 05 May 1859, with his niece, Margarida Leite Canto.

Now that I've kinda fixed the English (what's a house-solar) and fixed his wife's/niece's name from Daisy Milk Canto back to Margarida Leite Canto (there are just some things that should never be translated!) I'll share what I know.

I think Canto may have also been involved in politics. I swear I read that somewhere.  I don't know if he went to the various churches to borrow the books (this would be the latter 1800s) or had them sent to him.  From the original books, he created indices of SOME families of SOME freguesias.  Maybe the families had some prominence, maybe they were important to him. 

When was in Ponta Delgada, I looked at Canto's indices and I copied some of them.  The stuff I copied and typed up in Excel were the families that I was working on and where no film existed.  The only index I have an entire copy of is Achada.  I have a hard copy that was photocopied for me and I took it home and typed it up in Excel.

I asked for the list of Canto's indices.  I typed it up.  So attached is how it was written by Canto in the order that Canto wrote it down.  The only thing I could not capture in Word is the bracket { going down the side where he indicated that this particular group of freguesias was from Ribeira Grande or Nordeste or whatever.  I used Canto's spellings from the 1880s/90s.  So it is in "old" Portuguese.

And what you see may not be what you get (if you go there to look at these indices). Achada says it is for marriages only, from 1695-1729.  Rodrigo Rodrigues went back through Canto's work and added more families and tried to clarify what Canto could not read.  The index starts in the 1680s and has more families than what Canto extracted or considered important (to him) or may be prominent.

Cheri Mello
Listowner, Azores-Gen
Researching: Vila Franca, Ponta Garca, Ribeira Quente, Ribeira das Tainhas, Achada

[Hermano C. Pires]

Cheri,
Many thanks. I was aware of this one because you sent it to me me before (eons ago). I actualy thought it to be "The Ernesto do Canto Index" .
I now know otherwise :))
Solar (fazenda) is basicaly a Manor, have I heard it said to be a Manor House. I believe it to actualy include the property and not just the house.

 

---

From: gfsc...@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 19:13:16 -0800
Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] Ernesto do Canto Index
To: azo...@googlegroups.com

[Cheri Mello]

Hermano,

That's only what exists for Canto.  Ponta Garca has an index created by who knows in the 1980s.  Ribeira Quente has a marriage index in the Insulana book (it's a series).  Fr. Joe Viveiros made a whole Gedcom that serves as an index for the Carlos Machado genealogies.  And a bunch of us have made our own indices for the freguesias that we research the most. 

I really ought to start a thread, round up people, and figure this out.  Maybe after Salt Lake though.  My plate should be more clear by then.

--

[Hermano C. Pires]

Thanks and have a great time in Salt lake
 

---

From: gfsc...@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 20:15:15 -0800

[John Raposo]

Thanks Cheri for providing the index. You are right; both Ernesto and José do Canto were movers and shakers in latter 19th century
Azorean society and politics. José do Canto's mansion and gardens in Ponta Delgada are now part of the University. When you go to Furnas, there is a real gem of a neo-baroque church right at the edge of the lake, and next door to a pink chalet-manor house. That was José do Canto's country estate and the church he had built as a mausauleum for himself and his wife. Alas, the church is falling into ruin! Sic transit Gloria mundi!

Ernesto wanted his index as part of the movement to establish a civil registry (wich the church resisted). Even in his day, many records had already been lost. Take for example do Cant's index of Bretanha records which go back no further than 1703. Yet, an 18th century vicar in Bretanha developed an index of whatever records dating back to about 1550 were still in existence. That index is all we have left of marriages and births pre 1703 and there are many gaps. The early records of Santo António, indexed by do Canto, no longer exist. Thank God for his index!

John
--------------------------------------------

On Sat, 2/1/14, Cheri Mello <gfsc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] Ernesto do Canto Index

To: "Azores Genealogy" <azo...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, February 1, 2014, 3:13 AM

[Cheri Mello]

HI John,

Great, now I'm going to translate Latin!  LOL  And for those who are curious, I can "kind of" read a teensy tiny bit of Portuguese and get a vague gist of what is going on.  So I use an online translator to help me (I used Google Translate) and then I go back, sentence by sentence to see if makes sense and is grammatically correct in English.

Google Translate has a "Detect Language" button.  So I pasted John's "Sic transit Gloria mundi!" and let it auto detect.  It said it was Albanian and didn't translate it.  Well, it said, "Sic transit Gloria beat!"  So I clicked the arrow to the right of "Detect Language" and found Latin and John said, "Thus passes the Glory of the world!"

John R, I have a couple of photocopied pages from a book somewhere.  I haven't looked at them in quite a while.  So José do Canto was the politician and not Ernesto?  My memory may have morphed their occupations together. 

I remember seeing the pink building at Furnas.  I didn't know what it was and I didn't go over there.  Is the pink manor house falling into ruin too, or just the church?

I knew by the time Ernesto do Canto saw the records (1870s/80s/90s) some were lost and some had deteriorated.  I'll just use Achada as an example.  Because that is one of the freguesias that I heavily research, I was very familiar with the film and the condition of the books.  The books were crumbling.  When the Genealogy Society of Utah (GSU, today called Family Search) filmed, they literal filmed the fragments.  What I was viewing was a fragments from various records. It was like a jigsaw puzzle someone needed to put together.  Yet, there was Canto's index, making sense of it.  He must have attempted to piece it together to create that index.  And in 1929, Rodrigo Rodrigues did the same thing.  On the front (title page) of Canto's index for Achada, Rodrigues wrote that he tried to correct and amend to what Canto did.  So Rodrigues must have had access to the books too and tried to piece those fragments together.  These guys tried real hard!!!

The first book of baptisms for Bretanha exists.  I was told it is kept in the current priest's bedroom.  Back in my AOL chat days, a man went to Bretanha and met with the current priest.  He pulled the book out from under his bed and let the man look.  The priest told the man that when the government came to "steal" the books to create the vital records/civil registry, that the priest at the time (1910-1911 or so) gave him all the books but kept the earliest baptisms.

I don't know if the story has evolved over time.  Maybe the earliest book of baptisms was being used or was misplaced when the books were to be turned over or sent into the government.  Maybe the priest did withhold that one book as a kind of protest.  I understand that the way the government went about obtaining the books to create the registry system created a lot of ill will.  Today (over 100 years later) it makes sense to have a central registry and have the books in some type of protected environment.  Under a bed does not sound like a good idea to me.

As for the man who went to Bretanha...you'd have to give me time to think.  The only thing my brain is coming up with is Sev..... I think that's part of his last name.  And his email had a "ix" in it, maybe for Roman numerals? Sometimes that math brain in me remembers the weirdest things!  And if I find his email, it would be from 15 years ago and is probably invalid :(

Cheri

--

[Eliseu Pacheco da Silva]

John,

Just to let you know that the University Gardens and Main House were
property of the Visconde of Porto Formoso, not of José do Canto.


Eliseu Pacheco da Silva
Researching Açores (São Miguel and Graciosa) and Alentejo
( http://gw.geneanet.org/eliseumanuel )

[Eliseu Pacheco da Silva]

John,

... also your theory about the Canto Index is indeed a very interesting one!
The state of the art "states" that the Civil Registry was implemented after
the fall of the Monarchy. The Monarchy felt in 1910 and the decree that
creates the Civil Registry was in the next year. The Índices from 1860 on
were mandatory. It was the Republican Regime that stated it.
... also the copy of the Church Books was not done (in the most of the
cases) by Canto. He paid to have them copied (this why there are so many
typos on it).
... also the Church is not falling apart :) (may be some painting was needed
in the outside and the outside gates were "vandalized?"... :) Some time ago
there was some work done in the area by the Azorean Government to enrich the
area around to give better access to tourists to the area near the Lagoa.

[Eliseu Pacheco da Silva]

... also as time went by books were lost by all means you may imagine: fire, earthquakes, rain, poorness, stupidity… you name it!

 

The records were made in duplicate. One of those was supposed to be sent to The Vatican. It looks like this was never done…

 

When the Civil Registry Law was implemented the priests sent one of the copies to the Civil Registry and kept the other. Of course a lot of problems occurred, being one of them the priests laziness allied to the laziness of the clerks.

 

If you go to the Public Archive of Ribeira Grande you will see that all the documents made by the Ouvidoria (The main Office of the Church in the area) are there. This is why I was able to found the dates of the marriages that are in the missing book of marriages of Porto Formoso. So it seems that some Concelhos are better organized then others…  

[John Raposo]

Both Ernesto and José were politicians, Ernesto more so than José. That story from Bretanha has a grain of truth to it. There were six deteriorating records in Ajuda (going back to 1606) which are now at the Archives along with that famous index of the now lost records.

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 2/1/14, Cheri Mello <gfsc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] Ernesto do Canto Index
To: "Azores Genealogy" <azo...@googlegroups.com>

Date: Saturday, February 1, 2014, 6:46 PM

[Marcio Borba]

thank you Cheri

Do you happen to have Joao Ventura email adress?

 

Marcio Borba
Feel the Azores... visit http://azorean-roots.blogspot.com

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Cheri
Mello
Listowner, Azores-Gen
Researching: Vila Franca, Ponta Garca, Ribeira
Quente, Ribeira das Tainhas, Achada




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[Cheri Mello]

Marcio,

I didn't reference Joao Ventura in this post about Ernesto do Canto.  Which one do you mean?  I looked at my post,but I didn't mention him.

Joao Ventura, archivist: heroi99 at yahoo.com

Joao C. Ventura, computer guy: joao at venturas.org

[Marcio Borba]

The archivist. Thank you

 

Marcio Borba
Feel the Azores... visit http://azorean-roots.blogspot.com

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[Lisa S]

It looks like these are some books from Ernesto do Canto in the link below.  Are any of these the indexes that everyone is talking about please?

https://archive.org/details/archivodosaores01cantgoog/page/n15

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[Margaret Vicente]

Canto’s indexes are another great tool for research.  There’s books at the Arquives in Sao Miguel.  A few genealogists, professionals or perhaps others may have acquired a copy but it’s out of print.  It is not related to the link you provided.  Canto was also the Editor for the Gov. Archivo dos Acores at the time.  The Archivo do contain some chapters of genealogical interest, from time to time, but it’s mostly about matters of Gov, observations, happenings, etc. related to Sao Miguel, or it may include some other islands.  These books are downloadable.

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[Cheri Mello]

Lisa S,

The Ernesto do Canto indices that I have worked with are not published books. They are books of his handwritten notes, where he indexed SOME families. He didn't index all and he only did some parishes (I guess where his interested was).

Canto had different formats at different times. Later, Rodrigo Rodrigues went through Canto's work and added onto it. Canto's writing is the nicer writing, where Rodrigues' writing is more of a scrawl (it's the darker writing). I've attached the image and pasted it as well, so hopefully most can see it one way or the other.

You have to go there to view them. Joao Ventura is on the island of Terceira. I don't know if he would be able to access them if you hired him to do your research for you.

Hope this helps,

Cheri Mello
Listowner, Azores-Gen
Researching: São Miguel island: Vila Franca, Ponta Garca, Ribeira Quente, Ribeira das Tainhas, Achada