Tips to find your family tree if your background is Catholic and from Goa: 1. Get all names of people and places (as many as you can) relevant to your ancestors, from others who might know in your family.
2. What is specially important is the 'vaddos' (localities) in villages you are connected to. Try to be certain about these geographies before you get started. 3. If you don't know which village your family is linked to, it's like searching for a pin in the proverbial haystack. If you do, then it could be rather easy. 4. Visit the local comunidade (usually open during a fixed day of the week, find out in advance... as they are unlikely to oblige if you visit on the 'wrong' date). Better if you informally talk to someone on the committee, or ask when it would be best to visit. Match your timings to their convenience, and not the other way around. 5. At the comunidade they'd know the people from each localities, how this matches with certain surnames, and could also give you pointers as to who your relatives might be. 6. Don't let the caste distinctions of a past era bother you. (It shouldn't, unless you subscribe to some form of racism.) But also be ready to use this as a guide to comprehend the links of earlier times. In certain cases (e.g. see The Last Prabhu, a book now out-of-print by Dr Bernardo de Sousa), even DNA tests, whch can be done at reasonable rates in the West, have been used to trace connections going back 36 generations with people who long migrated to other distant areas, Mangalore in this case! 7. Generally first-names can also keep repeating in a family. It is seen as a way of paying tribute to an ancestor (almost a kind of belief in reincarnation, as it were), by naming a child after him/her. So, for instance, I know that names like 'Manuel' and 'Salvador' (often in combination with each other) keep repeating in my paternal family. 8. This is a vital clue. So if I come across other Manuel Salvadors in the village I'm connected to, and sharing the same surname, it might mean we're related. (Of course, this is not a given. Some villages have commonly used saint-names. For instance, you'll find many Damiao-Cosmes in Divar and many Meninos from Colva. Not surprisingly, the names of the local patron saints there are Damao and Cosme, the twins, and Menino Jesus or Infant Jesus.) 9. It does help if you could locate your grandparents church of baptism, marriage, death. Not tough if you ask around with the elders in the family. This gives you dates and names of ancestors further up the line. When my family returned to Goa in the 1960s, my mum sifted through church records and almost single-handed managed to trace her family tree till 1795! 10. Once there, check out the church office timings (usually open in the mornings), make an appointment if possible, and go check the registers. If possible. You can also try and track down via the Church archives at the Archbishop's Palace in Panjim. Not sure what's where though. Some records might be traceable via the Archives, but it could be more disorganised there. 10. As far as I know, there are no formal and fail-safe services being offered in today's Goa to track down ancestors, family trees, etc. The situation might have changed due to the recent rush for Portuguese passports, but that's a different ball game. If you ask around, you might find some individuals who could give you useful pointers about names, surnames, village clans, etcetera. But these are few and far between. As far as I know, people are reluctant to offer such services, because a search can be time-consuming, and can at times yield no results. 11. Of course, the starting point is to know which surname and which village you're tracking. You need to know you're a XXXX (surname) from XXX (village). Otherwise you might not make much headway. Sharing a common surname across villages means nothing. But within the village, and in the same locality, it could very well mean that you're at least a distant relative (daijim -- extended clan). 12. Anyone have any further tips, corrections, additions may kindly enlighten us further. Please note, I am not a qualified historian and don't have specific domain knowledge in this field. Just that this query keeps coming up all the time, so I decided to share what's known (someone might point out inaccuracies above!) 13. Lastly, if you wish, do take a look at an article I'd written long back on this subject: http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/the-old-family-tree-shade/216523 It is written from a journalistic perspective. -- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ Frederick Noronha | http://about.me/noronhafrederick | http://goa1556.in _/ P +91-832-2409490 M 9822122436 Twitter @fn Facebook: fredericknoronha _/ Goa,1556 CC shared audio content https://archive.org/details/goa1556 _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
