aldina pereira francisco part 1 (birth)

Aldina Pereira Francisco is my husband's great grandmother from the Azores, Portugal.  It has been passed down to him that she is from the Island of Sao Miguel, but I have not ventured into any Portuguese records yet.  I have searched a little for her records in the US, but have found the Azores naming traditions to be difficult to follow.  Sometimes their surnames will be completely different from one census to the next, which makes tracing the families very difficult.  I thought I would give it another try though by starting with reading some guides on Azore genealogy.  This is how I came across the Azore Genealogy group on Google groups.  They brought me to the Centro de Conhecimento dos Açores (CCA) website, which is done by the Portuguese government and includes parish records all the way up to the 1900s.  As suggested on this Azores Google group, the easiest way to link to this site is through the tombo portal.

To use this site, I would need to know which part of Sao Miguel Aldina was from.  I had already found her passenger record which states she and her brother Anibal were from Ribeira Grande, Sao Miguel, Azores.  The record gives an address for their father Antonio A. Pereira of R. Gonçalo Bezerra.  After looking this street up on google maps and looking at the wikipedia article on Ribeira Grande, I knew that this address would be part of the Matriz parish.  I browsed through the year 1889 (estimated birth date from passenger record) in these parish books and was very excited to find Aldina's baptismal record.  These records not only give Aldina's parent's names, but her maternal and paternal grandparents.  The record also states that her parents were from, and married, in another parish of Ribeirinha, Ribeira Grande at the church of Santíssimo Salvador do Mundo.


baptismal record for Aldina Pereira from Matriz, Ribeira Grande, Sao Miguel

I have tried to translate this record, with a little help from the Azores Google Group...

"On the thirteenth day of the month of august/
of the year one thousand eight hundred eighty/
nine in the mother church parish/
of Nossa Senhora da/
Estrella, council of the town/
of Ribeira Grande, diocese/
of Angra, baptized solemnly/
an individual of the feminine/
sex to whom I gave the name of Aldina/
and that born at one hour/
in the morning on the nineteenth day of/
the month of July…/
legitimate daughter of Antonio/
de Amaral Pereira, carpenter, and of/
Maria de Paixao, …/
domestic, natives of/
Santissimo Salvador of the/
place of Ribeirinha where they where/
married …, /
paternal granddaughter of Antonio de Amaral/
and Margareda Izabel, maternal/
of Jose Jacintheo Moreira and/
Maria do Espineto Santo.  For/
godfather Jose …/
.../
...godmother Filomena de/
Jesus…"

Below is a photo of the church Aldina Pereira was baptized in.

By José Luís Ávila Silveira/Pedro Noronha e Costa (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons"
Matriz da Ribeira Grande, Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Estrela, Ilha de São Miguel, Açores