30 years

[pi...@dholmes.com]

I just ran across something from the year 1894 in which the age of someone was written as "trint'annos" and I had to look really closely to be sure what I was seeing.

I have never seen this contraction used before and suspect it could be something only this priest did and is not reflecting the majority of priests.

I doubt this would be proper these days, but I know there were far fewer standards in 1884.

Related to this is another thing I have seen many times, such as the use of this apostrophe d'a Rocha or d'o Carmo or d'a Conceição.

It might go unnoticed by most but when I extract a document I try to type the exact thing where possible.

It can't be done with most word processing programs in some cases for documents dating from the early 1600s or before.

What comes to mind is when the second letter is written directly above the first letter.

Of course, I can't show it here, but it's similar to something like pº or aº or gº or cª.

For the heck of it, can anyone tell me what is the full name for these four abbreviations?

pº

aº

gº

cª

What will you win? ... I guess you win my respect for your ability to decipher old documents! :-)

These should be pretty easy for any expert.

Are you game?

Doug da Rocha Holmes
Sacramento, California
Pico & Terceira Genealogist
916-550-1618

www.dholmes.com

[mances]

Hi Doug,

Are you talking about given names?

pº - Pedro

aº - Afonso

gº - Gonçalo

cª - Catarina

Manoel Cesar Furtado

[pi...@dholmes.com]

No surprise, Manoel.

I knew you would get them. :-)

Yea, these are given names, like you said.

Abbreviates family names can be a real problem and sometimes can only be figured out after a lot of research in the freguesia where you find it.

The priest obviously felt it was a common name there.

I was just looking at this name "d'Ultra" (D'ULTRA) and was beginning to believe it a valid name because it was recorded that way by the priest.

But then I saw a witness (father of the groom) sign his name as Dutra which confirmed what I thought it must be.

I suppose it has something to do with how it sounds in the location where it's written.

I recently ran across a BEZERRA family with Pico origins but I think it was found in São Miguel or somewhere other than Pico.

It had changed over to BIZARRA in this new location. And it was written this new way on many instances, not just one single priest making a mistake.

Doug da Rocha Holmes
Sacramento, California
Pico & Terceira Genealogist
916-550-1618

www.dholmes.com

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[mances]

Hi Doug,

As you know, Bezerra, feminine gender for Bezerro, means calf, and Bizarra, feminine gender for Bizarro, means weird.

It is a curious example, because usually the variations of a surname tend to keep its etymological root, but that is not the case with Bezerra and Bizarra.

Manoel Cesar Furtado

[pi...@dholmes.com]

Yea, that's why it was so strange - Bizarre!

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