new with general questions

[d1jezek]

I've done a lot of work on my father's side of my tree and that part is all Czech.  I'll occasionally hire a live human to physically look at records but i mostly like to find what i can online or at the genealogy library.  I had a tree for my mom's Portuguese part going at Ancestry just based on other people's trees but now i want documentation and so i've deleted most of it because almost nothing i had looked trustworthy.  i've looked on one site that has names and dates but no images and then i found some other sites with scans of the church books.  the books are confusing me because the entries are numbered but then there's a big paragraph of handwritten notes and i don't speak Portuguese.  i have enough vocab that i can deal with basic information but i'm wondering if the paragraphs have any kind of standardized form so that i can find relevant dates within them.  it must be possible to read for that information because CITGEM did it. how did they not think organizing the books by name and date wasn't the way to do it?

[Cheri Mello]

Sorry, I don't know what you are looking at to understand what you are trying to explain.

The books are either baptisms, marriages, or deaths. They are written chronologically as the event happened. They do follow a form within one of 3 time periods. That's all explained here: https://www.azoresgenweb.org/Research_Aids/finding_roots_9.html

At the end of that page is a few examples in both Portuguese and English.

Happy hunting,

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

On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 1:32 PM 'd1jezek' via Azores Genealogy <azo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I've done a lot of work on my father's side of my tree and that part is all Czech.  I'll occasionally hire a live human to physically look at records but i mostly like to find what i can online or at the genealogy library.  I had a tree for my mom's Portuguese part going at Ancestry just based on other people's trees but now i want documentation and so i've deleted most of it because almost nothing i had looked trustworthy.  i've looked on one site that has names and dates but no images and then i found some other sites with scans of the church books.  the books are confusing me because the entries are numbered but then there's a big paragraph of handwritten notes and i don't speak Portuguese.  i have enough vocab that i can deal with basic information but i'm wondering if the paragraphs have any kind of standardized form so that i can find relevant dates within them.  it must be possible to read for that information because CITGEM did it. how did they not think organizing the books by name and date wasn't the way to do it?

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[Rich Mueller]

Cheri,

Is there a similar link for Madeira genealogy? Asking more for helpful links. We are stuck :)

Oluʻolu lā

Rich Mueller

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[jeff knight]

Cheri,

This helped me a ton. I'm new, so any info like this is fantastic. I'll start reading at the home page.

Rgds,

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[Cheri Mello]

Rich M,

Tombo.pt has everything except Cape Verde. They didn't digitize, so one would need to use FamilySearch.

1) Tombo.pt (click the British flag in the corner if you need to navigate in English).

2) Left navigation pane - It lists all the stuff for mainland Portugal first. Keep scrolling and you'll find the Azores and Madeira. A couple of other places are in the works too.

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

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/azores/CAC4EqsG6huaGrim2Yvn%3DPAE5Yux6aYXcVQcaBmc-FLm6D7A_yQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[David Jezek]

I’d seen the tombo site but hadnt figured out how to navigate it so that’s helpful. 

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[David Jezek]

Thats one site ive been looking at. My question is ‘is there a conventional way the paragraphs are written so that the first sentence tells the name of the baby or married couple or dead person and the second is the date or something like that?’

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[Donna Hinson]

Thought I would chime in about Ancestry.  I traced my American paternal side back to 1768 before Ancestry existed.  I had not done much on my maternal Portuguese side but for both, I never got around to uploading all the documentation I have.  Before Ancestry, Genweb & the surname email lists were how we all shared data and helped one another trace our families, along with visits to courthouses and genealogy libraries.  The surname lists as well as the old Azores list was very much like this Google Azores group.  Ancestry is very helpful for researching documents.  As far as Ancestry trees, I found I had more info than most on Ancestry and many trees I looked at would have incorrect data for my paternal family.  Often, people would just take my data for their own without asking me.  This wasn't how we worked in the past.  People were willing to work together to solve a puzzle! 

Ancestry can be expensive so many on Ancestry think they should be able to take data without ever contacting the "owner" of it.  My old genealogy friends and myself talked about this and how different research had become since Ancestry.  I think DNA has been a wonderful tool and thankful for Ancestry and FTDNA.  Because of the lack of sharing data like we did in the past, many of us old timers made our trees private.  Don't let that dissuade you from contacting that person.  I know many also complain that people don't respond.  I honestly do not like Ancestry's message system!  Some do not have notices turned on and don't visit Ancestry much.  Many like myself are happy to share data or help a new person.  But we hate seeing someone adding portions of our tree to their tree when it's an error.  I've often contacted some people to let them know they have an error and help them to correct it.  And, unfortunately, many seem to want information but don't want to share theirs either.  But what's so great about this group is so many are willing to help and share.  It's how it was before Ancestry!

One last thing!  I suggest anyone who's getting up in age to make sure your research is shared with your family and donated to a genealogy library before something happens to you.  I discovered the genealogy done my great-grandmother's cousin which allowed me to join the DAR was lost after her death.  She was working to prove her father was a direct descendant of a Revolutionary Patriot as the one submitted was a spousal line.  To complete it, I had to repeat her lost research.  I was pretty aggravated that her relatives tossed it out after her death and contacted no one.  I learned from that.  At some point, one needs to pass their work on to the younger generation.  Hopefully there will be someone happy to continue the work.  I am in that process now since my husband has health issues and I have little time for genealogy or hobbies.  I shared all my Portuguese data with relatives who expressed an interest and hope they will continue the search.  I was able to send a file of my data attached to an email which was easily opened.  I hate to tell anyone that I was still using the old PAF program! It still works on Windows 11!  There are several newer programs that can open PAF files without having to do a Gedcom file. I've told my relative group about you and hope they will join you.  You all are so helpful!  I think it's wonderful because it's important for us to know our Portuguese ancestors and their heritage!

On 8/4/2025 12:35 PM, 'd1jezek' via Azores Genealogy wrote:

I've done a lot of work on my father's side of my tree and that part is all Czech.  I'll occasionally hire a live human to physically look at records but i mostly like to find what i can online or at the genealogy library.  I had a tree for my mom's Portuguese part going at Ancestry just based on other people's trees but now i want documentation and so i've deleted most of it because almost nothing i had looked trustworthy.  i've looked on one site that has names and dates but no images and then i found some other sites with scans of the church books.  the books are confusing me because the entries are numbered but then there's a big paragraph of handwritten notes and i don't speak Portuguese.  i have enough vocab that i can deal with basic information but i'm wondering if the paragraphs have any kind of standardized form so that i can find relevant dates within them.  it must be possible to read for that information because CITGEM did it. how did they not think organizing the books by name and date wasn't the way to do it? --

[Cheri Mello]

David J,

Yes there is. However, I have a late day today (Tues) and and early day tomorrow (Wed) so you'll have to be patient until I can explain in more detail. Probably Wednesday afternoon or evening in PDT.

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

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/azores/686055682.2104994.1754403719447%40mail.yahoo.com.

[David Jezek]

i did the core of my Jezek research in a genealogy library with microfilm and then a Czech heritage society library with binders of typewritten transcriptions of chaotic village property records and then i hired someone to go in the Czech archives in person. there was no ancestry. com yet.  there was an earlier thing called genealogy. com but i found a tree where my grandfather was listed as the father of some of his younger siblings and some other wild errors so i never used it.  i joined an online group and it led me to a distant relative who had tremendous amounts of helpful research and she'd only just discovered my branch of her family so we shared a lot of stuff back and forth til we had both cleared up a lot of questions for each other.  then another distant relative got the idea to do a DNA test and she sent me one so we could see how we linked up and that led me to the much better ancestry which i now use mostly to store the information i have since the program i was using became obsolete.  i had been doing what i consider the casual kind of adding people by way of hints on my Silvias but then i decided i needed to get real information there and that's what i've been hunting.  some of the people i already had checked out but above my great grandfather things didn't add up so i deleted that part of the tree and i'm starting over.  i have DNA matches there but they are people with no tree on the site so i have only contacted a couple of them.  i'm always hoping for the kinds of random breakthroughs that happen in these group situations.  people turn out to be cousins and their family will have a story or a bunch of pictures that lead somewhere.  if i have to i'll hire someone but that's not as much fun.  the difficulties i'm seeing so far are the randomness of everyones' last names and the way the records that have been scanned look.  the voter rolls are alphabetical by first name and the baptisms are numbered with no names or dates until you read the paragraph someone wrote. there's one site where someone has extracted names and dates, which is fantastic, but finding the page they read it from is still going to be a task because they weren't the person who scanned them and the two things are separate.

 

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[David Jezek]

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~azrwgw/research-aids-a---l/finding-your-portuguese/finding-your-portuguese-9/

 

this link leads to where i found the answer to that question.

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