Hi all, Indeed, as John indicated these would be the Captain of the local "Companhia de Ordenanças". Which mostly meant someone was ordering others around. Most of these others were local peasants with a pitchfork as their best "weapon", and they received little to no training. So when the pirates invaded, these Ordenanças platoons were supposed to defend against them. However, in terms of weapons technology difference, they stood as good a chance as if they were being invaded by the Navy SEALS. It wasn't until much later that fortifications (and cannons) were installed in the islands to defend against pirates.
There's a very good paper on this here: http://www.ihit.pt/new/boletins/distribuicao_territorial.pdf João Ventura http://tombo.pt/en On Thursday, 3 July 2014 12:19:04 UTC+2, John Raposo wrote: > > The islands had local militia's that were responsible for different areas > of each island. They were headed by a captain. You will also find the term > Sargento used for a lower officer of these militias. > > > On Wednesday, July 2, 2014 7:35 PM, tanya808smith <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > Hello, > > I just was going over some of my ancestor lines taken from the Rodrigo > Rodrigues: Genealogies Book and came across a number of family names with > Capitao as seen below. Would any one know what the most likely type of > captain this could be referring to based during the 1630's - 1670's. OR > does it mean something else? > > > Francisco Raposo, Capitão > Sebastião Raposo do Amaral, Capitão, > Capitão Manuel Pavão > Agostinho Raposo, Capitão > Capitão Amador Dias > Capitão Tomé Gonçalves Falcão > > Thanks for any input you may have. > > Tanya > -- > 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] <javascript:>. > 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]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
