Thanks Cheri for providing the index. You are right; both Ernesto and José do Canto were movers and shakers in latter 19th century Azorean society and politics. José do Canto's mansion and gardens in Ponta Delgada are now part of the University. When you go to Furnas, there is a real gem of a neo-baroque church right at the edge of the lake, and next door to a pink chalet-manor house. That was José do Canto's country estate and the church he had built as a mausauleum for himself and his wife. Alas, the church is falling into ruin! Sic transit Gloria mundi!
Ernesto wanted his index as part of the movement to establish a civil registry (wich the church resisted). Even in his day, many records had already been lost. Take for example do Cant's index of Bretanha records which go back no further than 1703. Yet, an 18th century vicar in Bretanha developed an index of whatever records dating back to about 1550 were still in existence. That index is all we have left of marriages and births pre 1703 and there are many gaps. The early records of Santo António, indexed by do Canto, no longer exist. Thank God for his index! John -------------------------------------------- On Sat, 2/1/14, Cheri Mello <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] Ernesto do Canto Index To: "Azores Genealogy" <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, February 1, 2014, 3:13 AM Translation (of sorts), Ernesto do Canto, Doctor, was born on 12 December 1831 in Prestes on S. Roque and died on 21 August 1900. He received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of Coimbra on 25 July1856, was a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisbon and was in other, both national and foreign scientific societies. He was distinguished as a scholar, historian and genealogist, having authored Arquivo dos Açores and other publications of recognized merit. He was President of the General Board of the District of Ponta Delgada and one of the most prestigious figures of the Azorean society during the nineteenth century. He married in the chapel of Nossa Senhora do Amparo, attached to the house-solar this family in S. Peter Ponta Delgada on 05 May 1859, with his niece, Margarida Leite Canto. Now that I've kinda fixed the English (what's a house-solar) and fixed his wife's/niece's name from Daisy Milk Canto back to Margarida Leite Canto (there are just some things that should never be translated!) I'll share what I know. I think Canto may have also been involved in politics. I swear I read that somewhere. I don't know if he went to the various churches to borrow the books (this would be the latter 1800s) or had them sent to him. From the original books, he created indices of SOME families of SOME freguesias. Maybe the families had some prominence, maybe they were important to him. When was in Ponta Delgada, I looked at Canto's indices and I copied some of them. The stuff I copied and typed up in Excel were the families that I was working on and where no film existed. The only index I have an entire copy of is Achada. I have a hard copy that was photocopied for me and I took it home and typed it up in Excel. I asked for the list of Canto's indices. I typed it up. So attached is how it was written by Canto in the order that Canto wrote it down. The only thing I could not capture in Word is the bracket { going down the side where he indicated that this particular group of freguesias was from Ribeira Grande or Nordeste or whatever. I used Canto's spellings from the 1880s/90s. So it is in "old" Portuguese. And what you see may not be what you get (if you go there to look at these indices). Achada says it is for marriages only, from 1695-1729. Rodrigo Rodrigues went back through Canto's work and added more families and tried to clarify what Canto could not read. The index starts in the 1680s and has more families than what Canto extracted or considered important (to him) or may be prominent. Cheri Mello Listowner, Azores-Gen Researching: Vila Franca, Ponta Garca, Ribeira Quente, Ribeira das Tainhas, Achada -- 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. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores. -- 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. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
