Hello Tomas,
I found your story of Celtic influence very interesting.
As to your theory of your links to Silveira, I have done some research into your possible ancestry because as you know we are showing as distantly related and you never told me much of anything about your line other than what I picked up through your comments to the list. So I started with the probability that you come from the Silveira Leal family of Flamengos and I traced them back and found that the first with the name Silveira Leal came over from Praia do Almoxarife, which as you know just just north of the city of Horta.
The direct paternal line continues with the name Pereira and Silveira is coming from a maternal branch. But there is a brother of this ancestor who does use Silveira, as well. But Silveira from the mother is coming from her own father who is from Lajes do Pico and Leal is from her mother who is from Piedade, Pico.
Since I have a lot of Piedade ancestry, I was thinking maybe that's our link by Leal. This is the time period of the late 1600s and Piedade records run out, so it might forever remain speculation until more DNA testing can help resolve things.
This doesn't totally shoot down your theory because Silveira was used by that brother and I don't know where he got it from. But that generation was in Praia do Almoxarife. Maybe earlier generations were from Flamengos and is the reason later generations moved there. Maybe they were moving back there.
Maybe your summer home in Santo Amaro isn't so far away from your original Leal ancestors from Piedade.
Good luck.
Doug da Rocha Holmes
Pico & Terceira Genealogist
Pico & Terceira Genealogist
=============================================
Get ready for NFL Fantasy Football and join me in the newly created Azores Genealogist League. Still looking for more participants.
Write me here for more info: [email protected]
=============================================
Get ready for NFL Fantasy Football and join me in the newly created Azores Genealogist League. Still looking for more participants.
Write me here for more info: [email protected]
=============================================
---------- Original Message --------
Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Re: Family Finder Matches to the British
Isles and Ireland
From: Tomas Leal <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, August 05, 2014 2:15 am
To: [email protected]
I too was surprised that my Y-DNA results were simply "Celtic," which I've always associated with Ireland and the British Isles--my mother's side. What was more surprising is the long line of males on my paternal side--the Y chromosome sources--coming up Celtic, so I was a bit confused.I dug into some history and found there were TWO Celtic migrations, both from central Europe westward. The second one swept up through modern-day France and across the channel to Ireland and the British Isles, and the timing of this one covers the period of the Norman Invasion. What was news to me was the much earlier one that turned southward and went into the Iberian Peninsula and settled in the area of Galicia. Then I learned that the Portuguese language is derived from Galician, as is modern Spanish. Thus, "Celtic" made more sense for my Y-DNA line, making Portuguese a Celtic language. Even today, Galician folk songs and dances (viewable on YouTube) resemble what I've seen in both Ireland and in the Azores.Further, I found that the Celtic genes do appear in some people from Flanders, though not a majority. My paternal line is from Flamengos, Faial, which as many on this list know was settled by Flemish colonists, so it's possible the Celtic strain from Flanders into Galicia made it to Faial as well. Wilhelm van der Haagen was a leader of this colonization (at the invitation of the Portuguese king), and he adopted a Portuguese translation of his name: Guilermo Silveira. The Germanic "haag" is the equivalent of the Portguese "silveira," a name that appears in the middle of every male on my paternal side from my grandfather to the grandfather of my great-grandfather (as far back as I know names, so far). Further, three of van der Haagen's children (two daughters and one son) are known to have settled and died in Flamengos. Most of us know the Portuguese tradition of using the mother's family name as a "middle name" for many offspring, but Azoreans also seem to use family names to indicate connection with land as well. A woman might retain her family name after marriage if the couple remained on land her family had owned, for example.Thus, a supposition I'm trying to track down is that the males on my paternal line had some connection with a female some generations earlier who owned land in the "Valley of the Flemish" ("Vale dos Flamengos" is still used as a name for the area) and whose family name was Silveira, possibly one of van der Haagen's daughters. A Leal married a Silveira and moved to live on her family's land. The second part of my hypothesis is that even though Silveira is a fairly common Portuguese name (similar to "Smith" in the U.S. in occurence), the persistence of its use with males in my paternal line has something to do with a desire to indicate a connection to the "original" Silveiras--the children of van der Haagen. None of my Faialense relatives knows of any such distant connection, but there is little knowedge at all among them about previous generations. For people living in subsistence, focus was more on present-day survival than ancestry records, so it's not surprising so little is known further back than a generation or two.Tomás Leal
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.
