Yes! Among the newly posted Ponta Garca records is a comprehensive index under 'indices' : One seems to be for baptisms and one is for marriages. You'll have to poke around, but the one gives baby's name plus parents and the other the happy couple. J
Also, look at the back of the marriage books, and see if there is an index. From: Pam Santos [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 8:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] Re: Ponta Garca baptisms are indexed!! Is there any index for marriages or no? On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Eileen Leite <[email protected]> wrote: The indexes are in the volumes of records from Ponta Garca, posted at the CCA website. They are not published separately, they are at the back of the books, sometimes at the end of each year, and sometimes at the end of the entire volume of several years. You have to look carefully. The latest book of baptisms for Ponta Garca right now is 1857-1860. The index at the back seems to cover the entire book, which ends in the middle of 1860. The rest of 1860 is indexed in the next volume. From: Bremen [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, January 19, 2014 5:13 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Re: Ponta Garca baptisms are indexed!! would you please inform the link for that index? Thank you On Friday, January 17, 2014 10:43:41 AM UTC-2, Eileen Leite wrote: Got your attention, didn't I? haha. Read on: there are no computer databases, but still, you can save hours of searching. I made these notes for myself several years ago, when I was doing microfilm research. It's a bit long, but worth it if it helps! Some of the Ponta Garca NS da Piedade church records were indexed by devoted souls. Even so , the indexes can be very tricky to figure out. These are the old indexes, handwritten in the church books, not modern searchable databases! As delighted as I was to find this time-saving blessing, it was very frustrating figuring out how to use the index to find the actual record. It made me crazy to see a baby of 'my' couple in the index and not be able to find the full record. I have found indexes in the back of volumes of records, so know that they apply to the previous pages, not the following. If a volume has records covering several years, there may be an index for each year, tucked in after that year, or the index may well cover several years. So go to the end of the year and then to the back of the book. An index may only be a couple of pages and can be easy to miss. One way to tell an index is, that the records themselves leave a clear margin on the sides, but the index lists names on the left. The baptismal indexes I've found list first names in the left column, then parents' names, and then page number where the record should be found. Some priests numbered each baptism for the year in the book, but the indexes I've seen always give the page number, not the baptismal number. Sometimes there is a V after the number, which means on the left hand page, which can mean on the opposite page to the numbered one or sometimes on the next page. Each page isn't numbered, rather as you turn the pages the number in the upper right hand corner of the right page goes up by one with each turn. Some lists start all parents' names with "de", meaning "(child) of". That was annoying and made it harder for me to find the name I was looking for! The parents' names are frequently abbreviated. If you are new at this, go carefully and keep an open mind. If you like to scan for a particular name, looking for its shape, don't. Your eye might miss it. Read every line carefully. J with a tiny superscript o or e, is Joao or Jose; Medeiros might be Med or just M with a superscript d. So "Joao de Medeiros" might be written as "Jo dMed". (The formatting might not come through, but I think you have the idea.) and of course you all know that names are flexible, especially for the women. Also remember that numbers may not be shaped like you would today and ink fades so what appears to be a "3" may be an "8". Remain open minded! Baptisms are indexed by the babies' first names, first in alphabetical order, then in the order they appear in the book. This can be very helpful. There is also a little "Whoops" list at the end of the index giving names the priest skipped. Knowing the names are in order can be helpful as the page numbers in the index are sometimes (make that, frequently) wrong. I have found more than one record a page or two after the number in the index. Also, I think the wonderful priest who went through and indexed one book might have gotten cross eyed and read the wrong line on his notes. Like buttoning your sweater wrong, one misread page number can put the next 6 names off. I always note the entries two or three before and after my family name. If I can't find my baptism, I'll look for the one after it. If I find it, I know that my Antonio is the one before it, and just go back until I find him. One name was the fifth from the last Maria for the year. I couldn't find her! I started with the last record and went back , looking at the names in the margin, carefully counting each Maria baptized. I found the five after her and the one before her, and so knew she had to be between them, and started reading all the records there with great care. Ah ha! The name in the margin was so faint and blurred that it didn't look like Maria. If I had not narrowed down the search, it would have taken me much miserable eye strain in that very hard to read, very poor quality microfilm, to find that child. May your searching be successful! Eileen Leite -- For 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. 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