Mike, reading your post reminds me of the many days I spent trying to find my son-in-law's geat-grandfather's island of birth. The research I had done prior to looking for him was so easy because I knew exactly where the immigrant was born. Once I had that first church record, I followed the trail back to the beginning of the records. Not so easy here in the US to find the place of birth, other than, Portugal or Azores. Francisco Sousa Sequeira (Frank Sequeira here) died in 1906, in San Leandro, CA. I had that family info. He was married and had 10 children. Again, from oral family history, I knew the names of the 10 children. I tried to find him listed in the San Leandro City Directory and found that San Leandro only listed those that lived within the city limits. Of course, he did not. I did not think he had been naturalized so that was not another avenue to search. The family lore was that he and his brother had sailed their whaling ship around the horn to San Francisco, CA, where he left his brother and settled there. It was said that the brother returned to the east coast and possibly settled in New York??? I searched the Catholic church records for the parish in San Leandro where the lived and found the baptisms of his children. No indication as to where he or his wife had been born. I did not find a marriage record either. The next thing I did was go to San Breuno to where the federal records are kept. I there looked in the 1900 census (then on microfilm) for any name that began with an S and had a long list of kids. After spending hours looking through all of San Leandro, I found him. The name was spelled Skayda!!! If you pronounce Sequeira in Portuguese, that is what is must have sounded like to the person who wrote the census. Of course, the census did not give me anything besides "Portugal" for place of birth. Back to family oral history. Someone "thought" he was born in St. George. A clue; however, not enough to go on. The more I questioned those living that may know more info. the more they thought about what they had heard years before. Finally, my son-in-law's mother said she thought she remembered hearing about something that reminded her of "rosary" when her husband had mentioned his family. Bingo, Rosarias, was a good possibility. Joao Ventura was able to find his baptism with record with this information. Another strange thing I found when looking for Frank's information was that even though I had an obit for his death, the county of Alameda could not find his death record. I bugged them enough that someone finally found that there was a death record for the date in 1906 when he died. The name on that record was, "Joseph D. Sequeira," his oldest son, who had been the informant for his father's death record. The son and the father's name had been transposed on the death record. Once again, things can get mixed up when the language being spoken is not really understood by the person asking the questions and writing records. Once the Church record was found in Rosaias, I found another interesting bit of information. Frank was his wife's uncle. I began to ask about this possibility when I saw family members and finally, one of them said, "Oh, yes, there was some talk about an uncle marrying a niece or something like that." That led me to find the rest of the story. Don't give up, look in every possible place and keep an open mind as to what things your questions discover.
Celeste Perry [email protected] ________________________________ From: Mike <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 9:10 AM Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] family history center I live in western NY, I didn't learn anything new except that the center near me specializes in our local area only, but they did tell there is a central center in the city that will have access to everything they have. They also told that there is a genealogy society that meets at the main branch of the city library and I might be able to get some help from them. So my search continues to try and find out where on Faial and Pico my family is from, I've gotten names of my GGGgrandparents but nothing else... On Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:22:18 AM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: Mike, where do you live? If you are in California and live close to >Monterey let me know. I work at the FHC here and have a lot of the >Portuguese films. Also there are other FHC's in CA that have many of the >films of the Azores. Our FHC has many of the premium websites for free; >Ancestry, Vital Search, Genealogy Bank, the Heritage Quest sites etc. >Also, since you are a beginner, you should find out if the local FHC has >classes to teach you how do do your research. There are new things coming >online daily so it pays to attend Seminars and Conferences and monthly >classes that the local genealogy societies may present. > >Rosemarie >> > >I'm going to our local family history center today, and I'd like to ask >> what type of things can I look for there that can't be found on their >> website? I want to know where to concentrate my efforts. >> >> Mike >> >> -- >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> mailto:azores%[email protected]. Follow the confirmation >> directions >> when they arrive. >> For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail >> (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the >> right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my >> membership." > > > -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." -- To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership."
