When a Red Flag goes up.

[Richard Francis Pimentel]

Tips and tricks in working with church records.

I have been working on filling out data on families in my data base and this morning I came across a situation I have encountered previously.  I had already found 9 children in this family born between 1853 to 1870. In birth records for 1866 I found a son born, and he was named Joaquim. In my data base record I looked and found a sibling of the same name that was born in Jan 1864, and had married in 1890 where his age was given as 26 years old which matches the birth year of 1864. I rechecked all the records I had found on this sibling I based the information on him, and was satisfied I had entered it right. The red flag was why would the parents name another child the same name as one earlier I had found and lived well beyond the he birth of his sibling born later also named Joaquim. My thinking was the information was wrong and the marriage was attributed to the wrong Joaquim, as while the custom was families having more than one Maria at the same time did, most all other names were limited to only one alive at the same time.

My solution I was I needed to check all the obituaries from the first Joaquim to see if in fact he had died before the birth of his sibling of the same name was born.  It was a quick search as I had a good starting point, the birth date of the first Joaquim and a defined ending date, the birth of the second Joaquim. Luckily the records were easy reading with the name of the deceased clearly written in the margin of each entry. With in a few minutes I found the death of the first Joaquim at age of 9 months in October of 1864. I can now say the Joaquim that married in 1890 was the second Joaquim and he was 24 years old at the time, instead of 26 as written in the marriage record.

This is not the first record I have found like this so I hope this helps in your searching.

Rick

Lee, NH

 

Researching, Riberia Grande, Riberinha, Achada Grande,  Bretanha, and Ponta Delgada,  Sao Miguel, Acores

[nancy jean baptiste]

Good research!

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From: azo...@googlegroups.com <azo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Richard Francis Pimentel <ah.da....@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2025 11:56:52 AM
To: azo...@googlegroups.com <azo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] When a Red Flag goes up.

 

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[Fábio Márquez]

Eu tive  problemas deste tipo também, Richard. Uma ascendente minha chamada Caetana teve dois filhos mortos, e ela sempre colocava o mesmo nome no que vinha após o falecido.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/azores/MW3PR20MB3513E386E50B807AEBE8BF79D6ADA%40MW3PR20MB3513.namprd20.prod.outlook.com.

[Donna Hinson]

I have seen similar in mine and my husband's American genealogy.  American census records have errors on ages as well.  Unfortunately in American genealogy, birth and death records didn't exist until it became law to record such records...around 1913.

[Carlos Melo]

Hi Rick, 

Excellent research. I've come across the same issue. Sometimes parents named their children with alternate names, for example, Joaquim Jose and Jose Joaquim, or multiples Marias, all of whom with a different second name as adults, which remains a common practice to this day in the Azores. But when you see a repeated name among siblings, invariably, the older child passed away.

Quite often, I've also come across errors regarding the ages reported in marriage records, which can be off by several  years sometimes. 

I've just detected an error in a consensus line on Ancestry, My heritage and FamilySearch. All these platforms indicated that my ancestor Rosa Maria was the child of M. Medeiros and Maria de S. Miguel. But  right next to the birth record of Rosa Maria was another Rosa whose mother was a Maria de S. Miguel from a different parish and an unknown father. This birth record is quite unusual (attached). When I found the marriage record of the supposed parents, I confirmed that the Maria de S. Miguel married to M. Medeiros was from Ribeira Seca, unlike the mother of my ancestor, Maria de S. Miguel from Agua de Pau. I have no idea why she'd go to Ribeira Seca to abandon the child, but the fact is that Francisco Dias Branco's maternal grandmother was from Agua de Pau, as clearly stated in the baptism record. 

Ultimately, nothing like confirming everything with birth and marriage records. These platforms often suggest the wrong ancestors. 

Best regards,

Carlos

[lisa...@gmail.com]

I found that when I had my great great grandmother's baptism translated, it stated she was the SECOND of that name prompting me to look for the prior Virginia that had died.

Lisa Caetano Parkin

Pico & Sao Jorge

[Richard Francis Pimentel]

For what is is worth I just came across another today, same thing as with Joaquim only this time the name was Albina.

Rick

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