Albert Gouveia
albert.gouv...@gmail.com

It was sometime in the 1970s, during which period I was
very early on in my career at the National Insitute of
Oceanography. When I came across a page written by my
grand-uncle giving some details about the family up to his
parents and no more, I was eager to know more. But I put that
curiosity on the backburner; my scientific work at NIO was
quite time-consuming.

Forward to 2006 when I was sick. I had to take almost five
months off from work. It was then that I suddenly remembered
the piece of paper and decide to flesh it out with the details I
could find. So I opened every drawer and searched for
letters, photos and in fact anything connected with the family.

Soon I had enough to start.

At this point, I realised I would need some tool to put this
data into shape. Ideally, this would need to be one that had
the capacity to not only store the data but which could help
me visualise it and create all sorts of reports. Obviously, I
was looking for something in the Free Software domain. It was
not long before I hit upon a genealogical research software
called Gramps [https://gramps-project.org/]. I spent a week
getting familiar with the software and in the process put in the
little data that I had found.

Then what?

          It is at this point that I had to take a decision
          as to what was the purpose of my data collection.
          After much thought, I decided to keep it simple.
          The idea was to collect and depict in a format so
          that my grandchildren would have a ready reckoner
          to the family tree. You see, my son had just got
          married a few months earlier. It was of course
          quite possible that there may be no interest, but I
          could anyway stick up a chart somewhere in the
          house that would make them pause at some time or
          the other.

Additionally, the software had the capability to take in all
sorts of data -- like photographs, letters, and so on. All
this is fine, but you need data to begin somewhere.

So I marched off to the village church to look at what was
possible and came across these registers that were all in
Portuguese. I soon realised that it was no mean task to get
data from the church records. But something my younger son
said stuck in my mind. He said, "Just leaf through the pages
till the logic jumps out". If it was English maybe it would
have been easier, but Portuguese?

Anyway I did what he suggested, using my limited knowledge of
French. Within a week it was clear. For records before 1910
or so you have to scan record by record unless you already
knew the approximate dates of birth, marriage or death of
your ancestors in question. After 1910, many of the records
have an index at the end. This helped.

          But even here there are many pitfalls. For
          instance, was the maiden name used or not?
          Such a search must be also coupled with visits to
          as many relatives as possible, to pick information
          and clues. It is important that you do not badger
          them with questions beyond the first few. Just
          let the talk and note relevant details as they come
          along.

Too many interruptions and the flow will dry up.

Another thing I learnt (and I wonder if this is a Goan
characteristic) is that if you send a long set of question to
any of your relatives, you will almost surely not get answers.

This happens for a variety of reasons.

After a fair amount of time spent waiting for replies and a
little soul searching, I chanced upon a clue. It struck me that
everyone was perhaps too busy with their day to day life and
therefore had no time to fill out the full questionnaire. So they would
probably put it on the back burner to fill later. They would
also perhaps decide to send to you only when it was complete.
This probably meant never.

          So, one sent off another email or letter
          requesting the relatives to please not search
          for data but answer only what they could immediately
          lay their hands on, or already knew. The result was
          amazing. Lots and lots of information poured in and
          continues to trickle in, either when they remembered,
          came across something or when I gently  prodded them again.

I did go to many a church. Depending on the various church
policies, I was able to  slowly get more data. Obviously,
along the way, I picked up data of many a *Gouveia* who
shared a surname and whom I came across.

          My database now has 4872 individuals, connected to
          each other in some way or the other. This includes
          about 101 Gouveias. Many of my nephews and nieces
          have received a PDF file of their relevant family
          tree and, hopefully, it will be useful. It also helps
          fill up the database when they find bits of data.
          One of my nieces, Dr. Michelle Gouveia, printed out
          the family tree for my granddaughter Kiara and
          stuck it in a place where she could read it as she grew up.

I end by adding that while I have used the software for a
very simple purpose, it could be used for far more by
those interested.

There are many interesting features to the software. For instance,
its ability to show the geographical spread of families, store
important events of every family member spread over their
life, and so on. One output is called the 'book output' which offers
various information of the people. One of my cousins is using
this as a base to write about the Dias family (my paternal
grandmother's family).

          There is also another genealogical site,
          http://www.geni.com. One of the curators on this
          site is Faust Desa who lives in London who has put
          in a lot of Goan data. Much data from 1910 to
          about 1990 is available with the Church of the
          Latter Saints, which can be found via
          https://wiki.fibis.org/index.php/Goa_Church_Records
          Information can also be culled from the Directorate
          of Archives And Archaeology both from the birth and
          death records and from property records. I must
          confess though that I have done very little of a search there.
--
Albert Gouveia, IITian and scientist, retired as the head of
the National Institute of Oceanography computers department.
He is known for his support to Free Software and Open Source
in Goa. Send your comments and queries to him (address
above), with a cc to goa...@goanet.org

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