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Family, Stability, and Respectability: Seven Generations of Africans and Afro-descendants in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2016

Douglas C. Libby
Douglas C. Libby*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
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This article focuses on the history of an Afro-descendant family over its seven generations in one region of Minas Gerais. Although it is notoriously difficult to trace families founded by slaves, this one is an exception: it has proved possible to trace this family over a century and a half, and with a remarkable level of detail, because its members mostly stayed in one place. The implications of their permanence go beyond mere genealogy or family reconstitution to challenge long-standing historiographical perspectives. Over the years many scholars have agreed that Brazilian colonial and early imperial society was characterized by the near-constant movement of all segments of the population. New frontiers opened by agriculture, ranching, and mining attracted some members of the elite, but also beckoned the less favored with new opportunities. This incessant movement has even been touted as an impediment to the advancement of family history in Brazil.

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Articles
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The Americas , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 371 - 390
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Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2016 

This article focuses on the history of an Afro-descendant family over its seven generations in one region of Minas Gerais. Although it is notoriously difficult to trace families founded by slaves, this one is an exception: it has proved possible to trace this family over a century and a half, and with a remarkable level of detail, because its members mostly stayed in one place. The implications of their permanence go beyond mere genealogy or family reconstitution to challenge long-standing historiographical perspectives. Over the years many scholars have agreed that Brazilian colonial and early imperial society was characterized by the near-constant movement of all segments of the population. New frontiers opened by agriculture, ranching, and mining attracted some members of the elite, but also beckoned the less favored with new opportunities.Footnote 1 This incessant movement has even been touted as an impediment to the advancement of family history in Brazil.Footnote 2

Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho, José Fernandes da Silva, and several of their descendants, however, chose to stay put in the town of São José (present-day Tiradentes). In spite of what the historiography has told us, their experience was not unique. Many families throughout the colonial and provincial periods remained in one place or community over generations. Recent studies based on family reconstitution and inspired by micro-history have uncovered multigenerational stories strongly centered in a single locality or region.Footnote 3 These works invite scholars to reckon with a reality that saw some segments of the population cling to one place and a relatively certain future rather than take their chances on the frontiers. A somewhat elusive middling stratum was one of those segments. As Zephyr Frank has so clearly shown, manumitted Africans and their freeborn and freed descendants in Brazil could prosper as small slaveholders and entrepreneurs up to the termination of the transatlantic slave trade.Footnote 4

Pre-Republican Brazilian historiography has mostly ignored middling social groups, and the notion that permanence contributed to stability for families over several generations has never been explored.Footnote 5 Yet permanence at the family level was a viable survival strategy that could boost families' social standing and respectability within the community. Communal trust built over time could lead to posts and contracts with the local administration. Such trust was developed in several ways. Members of middling families, particularly women, were chosen frequently by other families to stand as godparents to their infants, a mark of respect that further enhanced their standing within and connection to the community. Practicing a mechanical trade, as many of the middling groups did, offered stability and opportunities for socioeconomic mobility, including the possibility of securing service contracts with the local government. Finally, literacy was another mark of middling status and upward social mobility. The family of Quitéria and José illustrates all these pathways to social mobility, from their permanence in one town to the literacy of most of their male family members. The story of their family reveals much about middling social strata and social mobility in pre-Republican Brazil, particularly among Africans and Afro-descendants.

The family narrative, unfolding over 160 years, is centered in the town of São José do Rio das Mortes. Located in the southeast of Minas Gerais, São José was an important center of Brazilian gold mining in the early eighteenth century. Before mid century, the provisioning of domestic markets became the mainstay of the regional economy, and it remained so throughout the nineteenth century, t. As the parish seat and nucleus of municipal administration, São José maintained its urban character over time, sustaining numerous commercial establishments as well as tradesmen and their workshops.Footnote 6 Generation after generation of Quitéria and José’s descendants thus found in this small town an amenable environment in which to maintain a middling social standing and pursue their social and economic ambitions.

The family reconstitution developed in this article is part of a broader research effort that relies on family history to achieve a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how historical tendencies and processes shape a single locality over time. This work has required cross-referencing data derived from diverse primary sources, most often parish archives (especially baptismal, marriage, and burial registers) and other ecclesiastical papers.Footnote 7 A 1795 ecclesiastical census and two municipal census, in 1831 and 1838, list individuals, offering us overviews of the community at different points in time and helping to contextualize socially some of Quitéria and José’s descendants.Footnote 8 Notarial documents, though few in number, illuminate three separate manumission processes that were crucial to the family history, and a small number of wills and probate records yield information about property held by some third- and fourth-generation family members and its eventual transmission to other descendants.Footnote 9 Finally, documents from the municipal council of São José relevant to this family's history; these include fiscal records, lists of local militia members, and accounting records of local public works and council business.Footnote 10

Brief Genealogy of the Moreira da Silva Family

The earliest protagonists of our story were probably captured as young adults in the interior of West Africa. After enduring the rigors of the Middle Passage, the newly enslaved minas (a generic term for West Africans) were transported from their port of disembarkation to the captaincy of Minas Gerais.Footnote 11 They likely arrived in São José in the late 1730s or early 1740s when the demand for slaves in the mining regions was highest and thousands of Africans were being imported annually. They received the names José and Quitéria and, given the difference in their surnames in later documents, were likely sold to different owners. It is unclear how they became a couple, but parish registers indicate that between the late 1740s and 1759 they maintained a consensual relationship that produced four illegitimate children (naturais).Footnote 12 In the baptismal record of their fourth child, the still single Quitéria was listed as forra (freedwoman). In 1764, the formally wed and now free couple José Fernandes da Silva and Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho baptized a fifth son, named for his father.Footnote 13

While the vast majority of Brazilian slaves remained enslaved all their lives, manumission nonetheless did occur—and not so infrequently—right up to abolition in 1888. In Minas Gerais the prosperity of the eighteenth-century gold cycle allowed for easy replacement of freed slaves and shaped a tradition of manumission that continued into the nineteenth century. The vast scholarship on manumission practices in Minas Gerais and the Portuguese empire supports speculation as to how first- and second-generation Moreira da Silvas became free. The consensus is that most manumissions were purchased by slaves themselves. Permitted to carry out independent income-producing activities, they accumulated money or credits which they used to purchase freedom. Buying freedom with payments over time (quartação or coartação), usually several years, became common in the mining economies of Minas Gerais, Goiás, and Mato Grosso, later spreading through the rest of Brazil, and facilitated many self-purchases or purchases of family members. Quitéria likely achieved freedom in this fashion, possibly after accumulating savings earned through some kind of commercial activity. José Fernandes da Silva may have been one of several male slave craftsmen who made money through their trade and applied it to their freedom. On the other hand, Quitéria herself paid outright for the manumission of her two daughters by offering two newly arrived Africans in exchange for her daughters’ freedom.Footnote 14 Later, she and José purchased their oldest son and promptly freed him.Footnote 15

Freedom could also be granted outright, and was often ceded at the baptismal font or in a will. The latter most likely did not occur in Quitéria's case; the presumed date of her manumission preceded her owner's death.Footnote 16 Because José’s owner remains unknown, there is no margin even for speculation in his case. Some grants of freedom were contingent upon further service, usually to surviving heirs. Gratuitous manumissions of female slaves or their offspring occasionally resulted from the sexual relationships white slave owners pursued with the women. Whether these relationships were consensual or forced—a strategy of survival among slave women, or an act of white male dominance—has been much debated. None of the evidence suggests, however, that the manumission of Moreira da Silva family members fit either of these two suppositions.Footnote 17

Of José and Quitéria's five children, four appear in official records as adults. Antônia Moreira da Silva and Joaquim Moreira da Silva eventually married and raised families of their own. Ana Moreira da Silva also married but the couple apparently remained childless. Severino Moreira da Silva was still a bachelor living with his widowed mother in 1795.Footnote 18 Between 1781 and 1815 Antônia and Joaquim baptized six children, four of whom survived to adulthood.Footnote 19 Two of their children are of special interest: Manoel Martins Coimbra was ordained a priest, and Esméria Martins dos Passos married and had children.Footnote 20 Between 1802 and 1808, Esméria and her husband produced the only fourth-generation family members I have been able to trace.Footnote 21 All four of Esméria's children appear as adults in sources dating from the 1820s and beyond and would among them produce some 18 children. However, the only fifth-generation descendants of José and Quitéria who appear as adults in the official documents are the children of Bárbara Patrícia Lopes's consensual union with a member of the local white elite, and of José Vieira Lopes's marriage to his paternal second cousin, Maria José Cupertino.Footnote 22

All eight of Bárbara Patrícia's children survived to adulthood, and several appear prominently in the sources, often designated as pardos (denoting their mixed racial origin).Footnote 23 José Vieira Lopes's only daughter from his first marriage, Maria Madalena Vieira, married in 1827 and the couple had three children.Footnote 24 All five members of Maria Madalena's nuclear family were labeled crioulos (Brazilian-born of solely African ancestry).Footnote 25 Hence, from the fifth generation on the family came to be divided between a pardo and a crioulo branch. Their members maintained close relations, nonetheless.Footnote 26

Between 1844 and 1884, seven of Bárbara Patrícia's children went on to produce 46 sixth-generation family members.Footnote 27 I have thus far been able to identify a total of 49 sixth-generation descendants of José and Quitéria in the sources. Parish registers also include ten marriages involving sixth-generation family members.Footnote 28 Additionally, between 1866 and 1895 the baptisms of 32 seventh-generation infants were recorded.Footnote 29 The seventh generation was certainly larger than this figure suggests, but was not explored because the research project População e Economia da Paróquia de São José do Rio das Mortes established a cutoff date of 1895 for examining baptismal registers.Footnote 30 Therefore, identifying a more complete set of descendants will be possible only in future studies.

Thus far, I have been able to identify a total of 115 direct descendants of the former slave couple José Fernandes da Silva and Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho. Table 1 presents a simple recapitulation of each generation according to gender and the number of family members who appear as adults in the sources.

Table 1

Direct descendents of José Fernandes da Silva and Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho, by gender (appearing as adults), 1754–1895

Sources: Arquidiocese de São João del-Rei, Centro de Documentação, Arquivo Paroquial de Santo Antônio de São José do Rio das Mortes, Livros 6. 7, 8, 9, 10, 10A, 11, 11A, 12, 13, 14,15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, Óbitos 1860–1932. Manuscript. Arquidiocese de São João del-Rei, Centro de Documentação, Arquivo Paroquial de Nossa Senhora do Pilar de São João del-Rei, Livros 27, 32, 37, 28. Manuscript.

Stability and Status: The First Four Generations

The registers that confirm the presence of José and Quitéria's descendants in São José speak to a sense of belonging, of rootedness. Their prolonged permanence in São José, moreover, lent the family a certain respectability, based on the social standing that José and Quitéria seem to have achieved. A sure sign of Quitéria's local prestige was her appearance in no fewer than 17 baptismal records as the godmother to infants of color from outside the family.Footnote 31 Parish registers, including the 1795 Rol de Confessados (a list of parishioners) offer additional evidence of the family's social standing. According to the Rol, Quitéria and most of her children were slave owners: she owned at least four slaves, her daughter Ana Moreira da Silva owned at least three, and her son Joaquim Moreira da Silva and daughter Antônia Moreira da Silva each owned at least two.Footnote 32 The Rol also reveals that Antônia was married to the alferes (second lieutenant) Joaquim Martins de Souza, described as a crioulo forro (freed black). Joaquim's status as an officer, undoubtedly in the black regiment of the local militia, would also have provided him a fair measure of respect within the community.Footnote 33 Following in her mother's footsteps, daughter Ana became godmother to ten infants from outside the family, and Ana's husband, Pedro da Silva Lourenço, was godfather to seven non-family members, mostly slaves.Footnote 34 Finally, in 1812 son Joaquim, then a widower, became affiliated with the local militia through his marriage to the daughter of a captain (again, most likely in the black regiment). How these first two generations made their living remains unknown. Nonetheless, by the end of the eighteenth century they had laid claim to a middling social position far removed from the impoverished masses, the so-called desclassificados.Footnote 35

Evidence related to the third and fourth generations of this still purely African-descendant family is more robust. In 1819, grandson Manoel Martins Coimbra, then coadjutor of the vicar, began to appear frequently in the parish registers, officiating at baptisms and weddings.Footnote 36 I have not yet found any evidence regarding Manoel's studies or his ordination as a priest. His position as a cleric and spiritual guide to his congregation suggests, nonetheless, personal achievement and respectability in São José. If sources that show us Manoel's path to the priesthood eventually emerge, they may help explain the family's upward social mobility during the first three generations.

By 1831, Manoel and his spinster sister Quitéria Maria were residing together in São José. Each owned slaves, he five and she two.Footnote 37 A year later Manoel passed away, leaving a modest estate of 907$816 (roughly £116.25), not including the four slaves he manumitted in his will.Footnote 38 Quitéria Maria inherited the fifth slave, her brother's half of their jointly owned two-story home on the Rua Direita (equivalent to Main or High Street), and some personal items. The siblings' slave holdings, their shared home located in a prestigious part of town, and Manoel's other possessions qualified them as members of the local middling strata.

A third grandchild of Quitéria and José, Esméria Martins dos Passos, married João Patrício Lopes in 1800; the couple would produce the only fourth-generation members of the family I have been able to trace.Footnote 39 Esméria figured in some of the tax records of the São José municipality, and she made a total of nine payments of a levy imposed on shopkeepers and vendors during 1803 and 1804. Unfortunately, these records do not specify what merchandise she was selling.Footnote 40 Given that João Patrício was later described as a tailor, Esméria likely ran some sort of market attached to his workshop.Footnote 41 In 1804 João Patrício appeared as the owner of the ganguela slave Juliana, who was baptizing her son Gervásio.Footnote 42 Like the rest of the third generation, Esméria and João Patrício were small-scale slaveholders.

João Patrício Lopes was not simply a tailor, however. Registers of payments for his services as town jailer survive for the years 1819 and 1823.Footnote 43 Administering the local jail was surely a part-time job that dovetailed nicely with tailoring. The post of jailer attested, moreover, to João Patrício's modest prestige and trustworthiness in the eyes of the local community. In 1838, João Patrício appeared as “adjunct doorkeeper” of the municipal council. Later that same year he figured simply as doorkeeper, a post he held until his death in 1851.Footnote 44 While not exactly propelling him into the ranks of the local gentry, the doorkeeper post was a prestigious one for a person who was often labeled as crioulo and who clearly descended from slaves.Footnote 45 Moreover, his occupation and activities, like those of other members of his generation, were clearly urban in nature, a characteristic that also marked later generations.

Three of Esméria and João Patrício's sons were, according to the 1831 nominal list, tradesmen like their father. Roque Patrício Lopes, a shoemaker, and Joaquim Simões Lopes, a carpenter, both lived with their parents. Their younger brother José Vieira Lopes, a goldsmith, established a separate household with his wife Maria José Cupertino (a seamstress), their infant son, and a young African slave woman.Footnote 46 The Moreira da Silvas' middling social standing, along with the main occupations of some of their members, suggests that freeborn and freed tradesmen of African descent often held an intermediate position within the prevailing social hierarchy. It also indicates that São José’s urban environment, like that of other cities and small urban centers in nineteenth-century Brazil, was favorable to tradesmen. From early colonial times to the nineteenth century, major ports such as Recife, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro were hotbeds of craftwork and service-oriented activities. Slaves often practiced trades and provided all nature of services, as did freedmen and free-born African descendants. The workforce overall was predominantly African-descendant, whatever their legal condition. The same characteristics carried over to inland areas, not least Minas Gerais with its relatively dense urban network.Footnote 47 Further evidence of the Lopes brothers' social standing, as well as that of other tradesmen, appears in the 1833 municipal roll of the Guarda Nacional, a unitary militia organization formed to replace the old colonial regiments. As members of the Guarda, Roque, Joaquim, and José ranked among the recognized citizens (cidadãos e votantes) of the town of São José.Footnote 48

More information about this generation's middling status comes from the inheritance papers of José Vieira Lopes's wife, who died in 1838. The couple's modest estate comprised their home, furniture, goldsmithing and gardening tools, a few debts owed to José, and the cabinda slave Catharina and her son Alexandre (appraised respectively at 500$000 and 200$000).Footnote 49 The estimated value of the estate was 964$360 (the equivalent of about £114.90 in 1838). By way of comparison, in the neighboring town of São João del-Rei between 1831 and 1835 some 24 percent of all probated estates were worth up to 1:000$000. Despite legislation requiring that the estates of all deceased go through a process of evaluating the respective assets, families with little or no property rarely initiated the necessary procedures, even when orphaned minors remained behind.Footnote 50 The estates that did go through inventories tended to belong to deceased persons of a middling economic status, largely small slaveholders and homeowners. When compared to the findings for the town of São João, the average value of the Moreira da Silvas probated estates found so far (averaging just under 1:000$000), places them at the threshold of more substantial wealth and points, again, to a respectable if modest economic standing.Footnote 51

Reconstitution of the fourth-generation nuclear families continues the record of the Moreira da Silvas' presence in São José. Roque Patrício Lopes, the oldest of Esméria and João Patrício's sons, married Ana Joaquina Faria in 1835.Footnote 52 A year later, the couple baptized their son Hipólito in the town's mother church. They baptized another son, Zeferino, in August of 1839 in that same venue.Footnote 53 Inexplicably, their family was not included in the nominal list of 1838, even though parish records suggest the couple had not left the São José community.Footnote 54 In fact, Ana Joaquina served as a godmother seven times between 1841 and 1865.Footnote 55 These records suggest that this small family, paternally descended from Quitéria and José, remained in the town of São José for many years, probably for the duration of Roque and Ana Joaquina's lives.Footnote 56

In January of 1834, moving only slightly beyond São José, Joaquim Simões Lopes, the carpenter son of Esméria and João Patrício, married Maria Apolinária de Jesus in the Church of Nossa Senhora do Pilar in the town of São João del-Rei.Footnote 57 Joaquim, it seems, was residing in São João at the time of his marriage and would continue to do so afterwards. In December of 1836, the couple baptized their son Porciano in the same church.Footnote 58 To be sure, the towns of São José and São João were very close to one another and moving between them was done easily. Nonetheless, Joaquim's relocation constituted the first documented example of migration out of São José by a Moreira da Silva descendant. Undoubtedly, Joaquim was attracted by the prosperity and rapid growth of São João during this period.Footnote 59 Still, the migration was so limited in terms of distance that it barely counters the remarkable, multigenerational permanence of the Moreira da Silva family in São José and its proximities.

Fourth-generation out-migrations were not limited to Joaquim's move to neighboring São João. In February of 1840, his brother José Vieira Lopes, then a widower, married Alexandrina Margarida Fernandes in the Church of Santo Antônio in their native town of São José.Footnote 60 Between 1840 and 1851, José and Alexandrina baptized five children, not in São José but in the mother church of São João del-Rei.Footnote 61 José must have reestablished himself as a goldsmith in São João to avail himself of a larger and livelier market. The couple's relocation is further signaled by the fact that none of their children's godparents were recognizable as members of José’s extended family; presumably this is because they were chosen from among the couple's connections in São João rather than those in São José. Moreover, José and Alexandrina's children have not appeared in the São José sources as adults, nor have José’s sons José and Francisco from his previous marriage, who likely accompanied their father on his move to São João. Missing information about fifth-generation black Moreira da Silvas could indicate, therefore, migrations out of the São João/São José region altogether.Footnote 62

A key figure in the Moreira da Silvas' long history in the town of São José was great-great-granddaughter Bárbara Patrícia Lopes. Though she never formally married, Bárbara produced over two-fifths of the family's fifth generation, and all eight of her children appear as adults in the sources. Born in 1802, Bárbara surfaced again in the nominal list of 1831 as an unmarried crioula residing in her cleric uncle Manoel Martins Coimbra's household.Footnote 63 By then, Bárbara had given birth to three sons who had been declared foundlings and sponsored by maternal uncles and aunts.Footnote 64 In 1832 and 1834 two additional boys were baptized as foundlings and they too counted upon maternal relatives as godparents.Footnote 65 In 1836, 1838, and 1841, Bárbara baptized three daughters as a single mother. Each girl's godmother was a maternal relative, while their godfathers were related to Silvestre Albino Fonseca.Footnote 66 White and hailing from a local elite clan, Silvestre was a long-time member of the elected municipal council and eventually municipal judge.Footnote 67 He was also Bárbara's long-standing partner and the father of her children. Their relationship was revealed when two of their grandchildren, wishing to marry each other, requested dispensation from the impediment of consanguinity: Silvestre Albino Fonseca and Bárbara Patrícia Lopes were nonchalantly recorded as their common grandparents.Footnote 68

Silvestre and Bárbara's informal union was likely well known and acknowledged by the São José community much sooner, though. In the nominal list of 1838, Bárbara and six of her children appear living with her spinster aunt Quitéria Maria de Souza. The document described all eight household members as pardos, even aunt and niece who had theretofore always been labeled as crioulas when color was mentioned. Bárbara and Quitéria were partially whitened because of the collective recognition of the respect owed to women who were raising the children of a local luminary. The upward social mobility implicit in that transformation is of considerable significance. Also indicative of their improved social standing was the observation that both women were “vivendo de sua agência” (living of their own agency). This ambiguous occupational description indicated that they relied on the labor of Quitéria Maria's slaves, instead of their own, and perhaps a stipend from Silvestre for their upkeep.

Quitéria Maria must have been fond of and concerned for the well-being of her pardo grandnieces and grandnephews. In 1852 she bequeathed her townhouse to six of Bárbara's children (four of whom were also her godchildren). Until they came of age, however, the house remained under the care of their mother, who inherited the services of Maria, a congo slave, and her daughter Filipa, a crioula slave, for ten and twenty years respectively.Footnote 69 At the very moment the ending of the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil was undermining the future of Brazilian slavery, we have an elderly maiden aunt clinging to the old slave society habit of granting manumissions conditional on service to heirs. Her act, anachronistic though it was, helped to ensure the permanence of yet another generation of her family in the town of São José.

Permanence and Middling Status: The Fifth to Seventh Generations

Despite Quitéria Maria's attempt at perpetuating a dying life style, Moreira da Silva family members, like the majority of the Brazilian population after the 1850s, would no longer be able to afford slaveholding.Footnote 70 Quitéria Maria's will was the last document to attest to any family member's ownership of slaves. This chronology coincides with the steep rise in slave prices and increased concentration of slave property among large rural producers that followed the termination of Brazil's participation in the international slave trade. Much has been written about Brazil's transition from a slave society to one based on contractual labor relations. These studies have focused mostly on the fate of slaves and ex-slaves amid the dismantling of a 300-year-old slave system or, alternatively, the trials and tribulations of the agro-export elite during the crises leading up to and following abolition. Indeed, the post-slave-trade period has inspired the most dichotomous analyses of Brazilian slavery. Middling sectors only rarely appear in studies of these transitional years.

The late nineteenth-century experiences of Moreira da Silva family members who appear in the sources, particularly those from the pardo branch, thus guide us into relatively uncharted historiographical territory. Even in this period of radical change, and given also the protracted decline of São José from the 1820s, the family's permanence in the town of continued to contribute to its stability, middling standing, and upward social and professional mobility.Footnote 71 By then, São João del-Rei had replaced São José as the urban center of the rich agricultural and ranching Rio das Mortes region. São José, once a proud colonial urban center but relegated to small-town rural status as the nineteenth century progressed, would have offered only shrinking options to those seeking an improved social standing, thus tempting its population with migration. Still, the municipal council of São José remained the administrative center of a large territory and the site of various judicial and notarial activities.Footnote 72 Also, São José continued to serve as the seat of an ever diminishing but still important parish with solid links to domestic markets and, ultimately, the world economy. The lives of fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-generation descendants of José and Quitéria shed light on the town's middling strata and the decades leading up to the end of slavery and the Empire.

By the second half of the nineteenth century, the family descended from José Fernandes da Silva and Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho had become a fixture in the São José community. Parish registers reveal numerous marriages and at least 80 baptisms of fifth- and sixth-generation family members. Municipal council records provide something of a socioeconomic record, indicating how members of these generations made a living and maintained their social status. The qualifying list that named 1,847 national guard inductees, for instance, included infantrymen Maximiano Albino da Fonseca and Carlos Albino dos Passos, the two oldest sons of Bárbara Patrícia and Silvestre; both men were listed as tailors.Footnote 73 Additionally, Francisco dos Reis Bittencourt, the couple's youngest son, appeared in the 1860s and early 1870s as a minor municipal council official. Francisco would later purvey kerosene and other oils to local authorities, suggesting he had become a merchant.Footnote 74 Finally, Fortunato Albino da Fonseca, Bárbara's third son, apparently led a protest against the municipal judge's decision to cede a piece of public urban land to an outsider. His signature (large and well-penned) headed a list of a hundred others, including that of his younger brother Martiniano Albino da Fonseca, presented to council members in May of 1861.Footnote 75 His leadership in a community matter underscores the long-standing respectability of the Moreira da Silvas in São José. Taken together, information about the brothers confirms continuity in the family's occupational activities: two fifth-generation pardo brothers were artisans, while other family members held minor public service posts or took up commercial pursuits.

Members of the crioulo branch of the Moreira da Silva family may have also made a living as artisans. Joaquim Marcelino de Almeida, the husband of Maria Madalena Vieira, daughter of José Vieira Lopes and the only fifth-generation adult from the family's crioulo branch to appear in the sources, was a carpenter. Municipal council account books from the 1880s mention payments to him for carpentry work on public buildings.Footnote 76 A part of the world relatively untouched by technological advances, São José was one of several small urban centers where families continued to support themselves through craftwork. Three of the fifth-generation pardo brothers appear in the council papers in other connections. During the 1870s and 1880s Martiniano received payments for blacksmithing services and, in 1892, won a contract for a bridge repair. He also served as temporary court official in 1881 and 1892.Footnote 77 Similarly, Maximiano served twice during 1883 as a temporary court official.Footnote 78 Fortunato, moreover, held contracts for road repair and other public works in 1878 and 1882, supplied water to the local jail in 1878, and served as temporary court official in 1878 and 1887.Footnote 79 Most significantly, from 1881 to 1887 Fortunato served in the same position his grandfather, João Patrício Lopes, had occupied some 40 years earlier: doorkeeper of the São José municipal council.Footnote 80

As the nineteenth century wore on, male members of the Moreira da Silva family continued to exercise craft activities, maintained at least one commercial enterprise, engaged in small-time entrepreneurship, and provided various services to the public to help make ends meet. Also worth noting is that fifth-generation males demonstrated functional literacy, indicated by their dexterous signatures in various papers of the municipal council. Their ability to read and write likely gave them advantages in a society still characterized by widespread illiteracy.Footnote 81 For instance, it may have facilitated their access to contracts and posts with the local government and helped them better organize their work, businesses, and family affairs. During the drawn-out transition toward a society based on free labor, capacities such as literacy or craftwork skills may have been crucial in keeping families financially and socially afloat. At any rate, the Moreira da Silvas' socioeconomic standing experienced little change in the period following the end of the slave trade.

The limited evidence available about four sixth-generation males indicates a certain degree of upward social mobility in which literacy played an important role.Footnote 82 José Maximinano da Fonseca Mattos, Fortunato's son, was contracted by the municipal council to provide maintenance of the local jail, along with other jobs. The family, it seems, continued to successfully tap into a bit of local government patronage.Footnote 83 Francisco Ferreira da Fonseca, Martiniano's son, was identified in his 1888 marriage register as a notary (tabelião), an occupation that, while not one of the liberal professions, was prestigious in the local community.Footnote 84 Joaquim Fonseca, Martiniano's second son, appears in early twentieth-century registers as the town's postal agent.Footnote 85 Finally, in Martiniano's probate records, one of his surviving sons and heirs was Father João Baptista da Fonseca.Footnote 86 A cleric, following in the footsteps of his great-great-uncle Manoel Martins Coimbra, João Baptista embodied the social mobility and stability that had marked this family of Afro-descendants since the late eighteenth century.

Conclusion

The successive generations of the Moreira da Silva family appear to have maintained a remarkably stable middling social position within the town of São José despite the broader changes that inevitably marked this long and challenging historical period. While their experience does not offer a linear story of upward social mobility, it suggests a tenacious grasp on a modicum of social and economic standing and belies the notion that families almost invariably experienced the social environments of the past in cycles of upward or downward mobility. It highlights, moreover, the complex, unreliable, and often unquantifiable nature of markers of social standing such as slave ownership, overall wealth, occupational status, ties to the community and especially to godparents, suffrage status, membership in lay brotherhoods or in the local militia, and participation in aspects of local government.

To be sure, this particular Afro-Brazilian family should not be considered as the norm for the parishioners of São José or the population of Minas Gerais, much less that of Brazil as a whole. Nevertheless, because I have been able to discover records of their experiences and provide a detailed account of them over an extended period of time, the findings are significant. Scholars can no longer ignore the possibility that multiple generations of families could stay put in one place; nor can they deny that permanence may have constituted a long-term family strategy aimed at maintaining social and economic stability. Moreover, such a strategy may have been particularly appealing to families and other groups who found themselves somewhere in the middle of the typical social hierarchy of the prevailing slave society. As a fixture in the town of São José, and through their familiarity within the local community, the Moreira da Silvas were able to maintain and reproduce, generation after generation, the family's respectability and status as townspeople of good standing. Indeed, they were sought out to serve as godparents to infants belonging to a fairly broad range of local social groups.Footnote 87 The literacy of many of their male family members, moreover, suggests an additional social strategy—one deserving of further investigation—that helped Moreira da Silva men secure posts in local government and trusted access to public business.

It seems quite reasonable to assert that, at one point or another, José, Quitéria, and their descendants pretty much exhausted all the possible directions family history could take for Africans and Afro-descendants in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Brazil. Again, that is not to say that the family can be touted as typical and, in fact, any claim of typicality could not likely be supported by means of the micro-historical approach to family reconstitution employed here. Rather, the approach suggests that the findings cover a very broad range of historical experiences. In doing so, they help us to understand better how families may have navigated changing social and economic realities over a long period of time.

References

1. See for example Furtado, Celso, The Economic Growth of Brazil: A Survey from Colonial to Modern Times (Berkeley and Los Angles: University of California Press, 1963), 58–71 Google Scholar; and Prado Júnior, Caio, Formação do Brasil contemporâneo, 14th ed. (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1976), 186–210 Google Scholar. See the more recent works by Schwartz, Stuart, “Plantations and Peripheries, c. 1580-c. 1750,” in Colonial Brazil, Bethell, Leslie, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 67–144 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pereira Ivo, Isnara, Homens de caminho: trânsitos culturais, comércio e cores nos sertões da América portuguesa, século XVIII (Vitória da Conquista: Edições UESB, 2012)Google Scholar. Minas Gerais during the gold rush period is often considered to have been plagued by the incessant movement of nearly all segments of the population. See Buarque de Holanda, Sérgio, História geral da civilização brasileira. Tomo I. A época colonial: administração, economia, sociedade, vol. 2 (São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1960), 295–298 Google Scholar; and e Souza, Laura de Mello, Desclassificados do ouro. A pobreza mineira no século XVIII (Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1982)Google Scholar. Another classic that attributes a sort of nomadism to the non-slaveholding lower classes in Brazil is de Carvalho Franco, Maria Sylvia, O homem livre na ordem escravocrata (São Paulo: IEB/USP, 1974)Google Scholar. A more recent return to this theme can be found in de Castro Faria, Sheila, A colônia em movimento: fortuna e família no cotidiano colonial (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998)Google Scholar.

2. See for example Castro Faria, A colônia em movimento, 108–114.

3. See among others Guedes, Roberto, Egressos do cativeiro: trabalho, família, aliança e mobilidade social (Porto Feliz, São Paulo, c. 1798-c.1850 (Rio de Janeiro: FAPERJ/Mauad X, 2008)Google Scholar; Machado, Cacilda, A trama das vontades: negros, pardos e brancos na construção da hierarquia social do Brasil escravista (Rio de Janeiro: Apicuri, 2008)Google Scholar; Bacellar, Carlos de A. P., Os senhores da terra: família e sistema sucessório entre os senhores de engenho do oeste paulista, 1765–1855 (Campinas: CMU/Unicamp, 1997)Google Scholar; and de Sampaio, Antônio Carlos Jucá, “A família Almeida Jordão na formação da comunidade mercantil carioca (c. 1690-c. 1750),” in Nomes e números: alternativas metodológicas para a história econômica e social, de Almeida, Carla Maria Carvalho and de Oliveira, Mônica Ribeiro, eds. (Juiz de Fora: Editora UFJF, 2006), 51–70 Google Scholar.

4. Key to understanding this social ascendancy are the relatively low slave prices from the 1760s through 1850. The result was remarkably widespread slave ownership and solid social support for the slave system even in the face of growing international abolitionism. Frank, Zephyr L., Dutra's World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Frank, “Wealth Holding in Southeastern Brazil, 1815–1860,” Hispanic American Historical Review 85:2 (May 2005): 221–255.

5. An important exception here is Guedes, Egressos do cativeiro.

6. An excellent study of the local history of São José is Olinto Rodrigues dos Santos Filho, Guia da cidade de Tiradentes: história e arte (Tiradentes: Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Tiradentes, 2012).

7. Livros 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10A, 11, 11A, 12, 12, 13, 14,15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, and 86, Óbitos 1860–1932, Arquidiocese de São João del-Rei, Centro de Documentação, Arquivo Paroquial de Santo Antônio de São José do Rio das Mortes [hereafter APSASJRM]; Livros 11, 32, 37, 38, Arquidiocese de São João del-Rei, Centro de Documentação, Arquivo Paroquial de Nossa Senhora do Pilar de São João del-Rei [hereafter APNSPSJR]; Registros, Arquivo Eclesiástico do Arquidiocese de Mariana, Processos Matrimoniais/Dispensas de Consanguinidade. The genealogy emerging from these parish registers serves as the backbone of this study, particularly in regard to the stability and remarkable permanence of the family in the Vila of São José.

8. Rol dos confessados desta Freguezia de S. Antonio da Villa de S. Joze, Comarca do Rio das Mortes, deste prezente anno de 1795, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Tiradentes. The Rol is unpaginated and it is therefore not possible to provide precise citations for specific data. The original manuscript lists are part of the holdings of the Arquivo Público Mineiro. Here we use data from the Listas nominativas da década de 1830, Seção Provincial, Arquivo Público Mineiro, organized in data bases by the Núcleo de Pesquisa em História Econômica e Demográfica of the Centro de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. [Hereafter, Lista de 1831 and Lista de 1838] The nominal lists also provide snapshots of how groups within the extended family were organized at three points in time, the composition of slaveholdings belonging to family members, and, occasionally, indications as to individual economic activities.

9. The notarial sources are part of the holdings of the Escritório Técnico do Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional-São João Del-Rei [hereafter ETIPHAN-SJR], São José.

10. Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes. These local government sources contain indications of how some family members earned their living and what sort of standing they enjoyed in the São José community.

11. The best discussions of terms referring to African slaves and especially on the meanings ascribed to the term mina can be found in de Carvalho Soares, Mariza, People of Faith: Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011), 80–100 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soares, Carvalho, “Histórias cruzadas: os mahis setecentistas no Brasil e no Daomé,” in Tráfico, cativeiro e liberdade: Rio de Janeiro, séculos XVII–XIX, Florentino, Manolo, ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2005), 134 Google Scholar; Florentino, “Indícios para o traçado das rotas terrestres de escravos da Baía do Benim, século XVIII,” in Rotas atlânticas da diáspora africana da Baía do Benim ao Rio de Janeiro, Mariza de Carvalho Soares, ed. (Niteroí: Editora da Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2007), 65–67.

12. Livro 7, fols. 34, 92, 131, APSASJRM. The oldest child who appears in later sources was probably baptized around 1748, a period for which almost no baptismal records have survived. He is listed in the Rol as a 47-year-old bachelor residing with his widowed mother.

13. Livro 7, fol. 205, APSASJRM.

14. Livro de notas do segundo ofício, ETIPHAN-SJR, fols. 10, 11

15. Ibid., fol. 126.

16. Quitéria's owner, Antônio Moreira de Carvalho, was buried in March of 1763, nearly four years after she first appeared as a freedwoman., APSASJRM; Livro 7, 131; Livro 80, 28v.

17. The literature on manumission in Brazil is vast. See for example Russell-Wood, A. J. R., Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (Oxford: Oneworld, 2002), 27–49 Google Scholar; de Sousa Soares, Márcio, A emissão do cativeiro: a dádiva da alforria e o governo dos escravos nos Campos dos Goitaceses, c. 1750-c. 1830 (Rio de Janeiro: Apicuri, 2009)Google Scholar; França Paiva, Eduardo, Escravos e libertos nas Minas Gerais do século XVIII: estratégias de resistência através dos testamentos (São Paulo: Annablume, 1995)Google Scholar; Paiva, França, Escravidão e universo cultural na Colônia: Minas Gerais, 1716–1789 (Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2001)Google Scholar; Gonçalves, Andréa Lisley, As margens da liberdade: estudo sobre a prática de alforrias em Minas colonial e provincial (Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço, 2011)Google Scholar; de Pinto Goés, José Roberto, “Padrões de alforrias no Rio de Janeiro,” in Nas rotas do império: eixos mercantis, tráfico e relações sociais no mundo português, Fragoso, João, Florentino, Manolo, Jucá, Antônio Carlos, and Campos, Adriana, eds. (Vitória: EDUFES, 2006), 517–568 Google Scholar; de Queirós Mattoso, Kátia M., “A propósito de cartas de alforria: Bahia, 1779–1850,” Anais de História (Assis) (1972): 23–52 Google Scholar; Mattoso, Queirós, “A carta de alforria como fonte complementar para o estudo da rentabilidade da mão-de-obra escrava urbana (1819–1888),” in A moderna história econômica, Peláez, Carlos Manuel and Buescu, Mircea, eds. (Rio de Janeiro: APEC, 1976), 149–168 Google Scholar; Schwartz, Stuart B., “The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia 1684–1745,” Hispanic American Historical Review 4:54 (November 1974): 603–635 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kiernan, James P., “Baptism and Manumission in Brazil: Paraty, 1789–1822,” Social Science History 3:1 (Fall 1978): 56–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karash, Mary, “The Forms of Manumission in Rio de Janeiro, 1807–1831,” Anais, VIII Reunião Anual. Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa Histórica (1989): 39–41 Google Scholar; Figueiredo, Luciano, O avesso da memória: cotidiano e trabalho da mulher em Minas Gerais no século XVIII (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio/Brasília: EDUNB, 1993)Google Scholar; Guedes, Roberto, “De ex-escravo a elite escravista: a trajetória de ascensão social do pardo alferes Joaquim Barbosa Neves (Porto Feliz, São Paulo, século XIX),” in Conquistadores e negociantes: histórias de elites no Antigo Regime nos trópicos. América lusa, séculos XVI a XVIII, Ribeiro Fragoso, João Luís, Carvalho de Almeida, Carla Maria, and Jucá de Sampaio, Antônio Carlos, eds. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2007), 337–376 Google Scholar; Higgins, Kathleen, 'Licentious Liberty' in a Brazilian Gold-Mining Region: Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century Sabará, Minas Gerais (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; de Mello e Souza, Laura, “Coartação: problemática e episódios referentes a Minas Gerais no século XVIII,” in Normas e conflitos: aspectos da história de Minas Gerais no século XVIII (Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 1999), 151–174 Google Scholar; Libby, Douglas Cole and Paiva, Clotilde Andrade, “Manumission Practices in a Late Eighteenth-Century Brazilian Slave Parish: São José d'El Rey in 1795,” Slavery & Abolition 21:1 (April 2000): 96–127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Libby, Douglas Cole and Graça Filho, Afonso de Alencastro, “Reconstruindo a liberdade: alforrias e forros na freguesia de São José do Rio das Mortes, 1750–1850,” Varia Historia 30 (July 2003): 112–151 Google Scholar; Chaloub, Sidney, Visões da liberdade: uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na Corte (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990)Google Scholar; Botelho, Tarcísio Rodrigues, “As alforrias em Minas Gerais no século XIX,” Varia Historia 23 (July 2000): 61–76 Google Scholar; Duarte Lacerda, Antônio Henrique, Os padrões de alforrias em um município cafeeiro em expansão: Juiz de Fora, Zona da Mata de Minas Gerais, 1844–1888 (São Paulo: FAPEB, 2006)Google Scholar; and Libby, Douglas Cole and Graça Filho, Afonso de Alencastro, “Notarized and Baptismal Manumissions in the Parish of São José do Rio das Mortes, Minas Gerais (c. 1750-c. 1850) The Americas 66:2, (October 2009): 211–240 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Rol dos confessados. Ana and Pedro appear in a separate household in the Rol. No children were listed, but they did possess three slaves. The couple never baptized any children of their own in São José, although they participated in other baptisms and saw to it that two infants born to their only female slave received the baptismal sacrament.

19. Livro 7, fols. 544, 630, APSASJRM; Livro 8, fols. 88, 196, 308, APSASJRM; Livro 12, fol. 31v, APSASJRM.

20. Thus far I have not been able to locate any sources dealing with Manoel's education or the steps leading to his ordination.

21. Livro 10, fols. 48, 162, 229, 281, APSASJRM; Livro 24, fol. 143, APSASJRM.

22. Livro 12, fol. 137v, APSASJRM; Livro 14, fols. 18-18v, 124, 144, 150, 173v, 189v, 223, APSASJRM; Livro 15, fols. 55, 60, 109, 111v, APSASJRM. This article also takes a closer look at the families of Roque Patrício Lopes and Joaquim Patrício Lopes, as well as the family resulting from José Vieira Lopes´s second marriage. Livro 27, fol. 92v, APNSPSJR; Livro 32, fol. 399, APNSPSJR; Livro 37, fols. 82, 148v, APNSPSJR; Livro 38, fols. 57v, 222, 308, APNSPSJR.

23. See for example Livro 27, fols. 110, 141v, 165v, 176v, APSASJRM; and Livro 28, fols. 13v-14 (double entry), 33, APSASJRM.

24. Livro 27, fol. 151v, APSASJRM.

25. Livro 16, fols. 94v, 143v, 182, APSASJRM.

26. Two of Bárbara Patrícia's daughters, Balduina Paulina da Fonseca and Claudimira Alexandrina, da Fonseca stood as godmothers for great-grandchilden of Maria Madalena Vieira, in 1877 and 1889 respectively. Livro 11A, fol. 88, APSASJRM; Livro 17, fol. 50v, APSASJRM.

27. Livro 14, fol. 284, APSASJRM; Livro 15, fols. 256v-257, APSASJRM; Livro 16, fols. 22, 47, 55, 70v, 86v, 98, 148v-149, 161, 172v, 175, 198, 198v, 222, 223, 226, 247v, 248v, APSASJRM; Livro 11A, fols. 7, 22, 33v, 45, 48v, 56v, 60, 82, 82v, 106v, 113v, 131v, 140v, 157, 161v, 170, 172, 181v, 182v, 195v, APSASJRM.

28. Livro 28, fols. 25v, 45, 49v, 58, 61v-62, 76, 84, 128, 132, 147, APSASJRM.

29. Livro 10A, fols. 37v, 47v, 72v, 84, 93v, 98v, 118, APSASJRM; Livro 11A, fols. 39, 53, 79v, 100v, 101, 119, 131, 132, 142v, 144, 156, 159, 159v, 161, 177v-178, 188, 189, 199, APSASJRM; Livro 17, fols. 50v, 61, 67, 81v-82, 127v, 148, APSASJRM.

30. This project, which focuses on the demographic and economic history of the São José do Rio das Mortes region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries over the years, has counted on the support of the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) and the collaboration of a number of colleagues. From the Universidade Federal de Minas, these are Gerais Clotilde de Andrade Paiva and Tarcísio Rodrigues Botelho; from the Universidade Federal de São João del Rei, Afonso de Alencastro Graça Filho; and from Stanford University, Zephyr L. Frank.

31. Livro 7, fols. 242, 268, 323, 427, 497v, APSASJRM; Livro 8, fols. 10, 87, 101, 117, 119, 197, 200, 235v, 320, APSASJRM; Livro 9, fols. 365, 404, 493v, APSASJRM.

32. Rol de Confessados. It should be recalled here that children under seven years of age were not listed on the Rol, so it is possible that these holdings were slightly larger than indicated here.

33. The rank of alferes was equivalent to second lieutenant. For an important study of these militias, see Cotta, Francis Albert, Matrizes do sistema policial brasileiro (Belo Horizonte: Crisálida, 2012), 259–292 Google Scholar.

34. Livro 7, fols. 229, 197, 230 (double entry, twins), 235v, 289, APSASJRM; Livro 8, fol. 129, APSASJRM; Livro 9, fol. 412 (double entry), 475v, APSASJRM; Livro 12, fols. 81v, 153v, APSASJRM.

35. The reference here, of course, is to Souza, Desclassificados do ouro.

36. Livro 27, fol. 6v, APSASJRM.

37. Lista de 1831. São José do Rio das Mortes, Padre Gaspar, Lage, Desterro, São João Batista, Passa Tempo, Japão, Oliveira, Cláudio.

38. Cartório JO, Caixa 512, fols. 6–7, ETIPHAN-SJR.

39. Livro 24, fol. 143, APSASJRM. In this marriage register and in the Rol de Confessados João Patrício Lopes was inscribed as a crioulo.

40. Listas de Vendas, Livro 1, fols. 1v, 2, 2v, 3, 3v, 4, 4v, 5, 5v, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José.

41. Lista de 1831 and Lista de 1838. In neither of these lists was any mention was made of Esméria's occupation.

42. Livro 10, fol. 141, APSASJRM. Ganguela was a designation of nação indicating a West Central African origin. Juliana may well have been part of Esméria's dowry (if, indeed, she had one). The couple's children were born between 1802 and 1808 and it thus seems very likely that Juliana served as wet nurse as well as performing the heaviest housework.

43. Documentação interna, caixa 1, parcel 97, fols. 46–17; parcel 118, fols. 8–9, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

44. Lançamentos de Fianças, Autos e Contratos e Arrematações, Livro 1, fols. 2, 3, 4, 6, 11v, 12, 13v, 16v, 19, 20v, 22v, 24, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes. It is of note that in his capacity as doorkeeper João Patrício regularly signed council documents. His signatures suggest a better than rudimentary literacy.

45. João Patrício's burial register, for example, designated him as a crioulo. Livro 85, fol. 97v, APSASJRM. For a description of the duties entailed in the post of doorkeeper (porteiro) see Cláudia Resende Silva, “Senado da Câmara da Vila de São João del-Rei: da administração colonial à pesquisa histórica,” (Master's thesis: Escola de Biblioteconomia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 1999), 84. The council doorkeeper's duties included those involving public bidding for contracts and offices and the auctioning off of properties to pay debts left by their deceased owners. These symbolic duties of the porteiro rendered the office somewhat analogous to the Anglo-Saxon post of sergeant-at-arms. See also Fonseca, Cláudia Damasceno, Arraiais e vilas d'el Rei: espaço e poder nas Minas setecentistas. (Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2011), 282 Google Scholar. It is possible that the câmaras employed a system of awarding the position of porteiro to the highest bidder, although that seems rather unlikely given that the pay was minimal. See Teixeira Coelho, José João, Instrução para o Governador da Capitania de Minas (Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro/Centro de Estudos Históricos e Culturais, 1994), 221–229 Google Scholar.

46. Lista de 1831. The enslaved woman was named Catarina and she gave birth to a son in April of 1833. José and Maria José had three children between 1830 and 1836. Just as the slave woman belonging to João Patrício and Esméria back at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Catarina must surely have served as a wet nurse. Having a wet nurse, in other words, was not a luxury reserved only for the wealthy. Livro 15, fol. 143v, APSASJRM.

47. See among others Frank, Dutra's World; Frank, “Wealth Holding in Southeastern Brazil, 1815–1860”; José Newton Coelho Meneses, Artes fabris e ofícios banais: o controle dos ofícios mecânicos pelas Câmaras de Lisboa e das vilas de Minas Gerais (1750–1808) (Belo Horizonte: Fino Traço, 2013); Russell-Wood, Slavery and Freedom, 50–66; de Carvalho, Marcus Joaquim M., Liberdade: rotina e rupturas do escravismo no Recife, 1822–1850 (Recife: Editora Universitária da UFPE, 1998 Google Scholar; Graham, Sandra Lauderdale, House and Street: The Domestic World of Servants and Masters in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Luna, Francisco Vidal and Klein, Herbert S., Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750–1850 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; de Souza Andrade, Maria José, A mão de obra escrava em Salvador, 1811–1860 (São Paulo: Corrupio, 1988)Google Scholar; Nogueira da Silva, Marilene Rosa, Negro na rua: a nova face da escravidão (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1988)Google Scholar; Francisco de Carvalho Dias de Andrade, “A memória das máquinas: um estudo da história da técnica em São Paulo” (Master's thesis: Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2011); Fabiano Gomes da Silva, “Pedra e cal: os construtores em Vila Rica no século XVIII" (Master's thesis: Programa de Pós-Graduação em História, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2007); Crislayne Gloss Marão Alfagali, “Em casa de ferreiro pior apeiro: os artesãos de ferro em Vila Rica e Mariana no século XVIII” (Master's thesis: Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2012); Carlos Alberto Medeiros Lima, Artífices do Rio de Janeiro (1790–1808) (Rio de Janeiro: Apicuri, 2008); and Libby, Douglas Cole, “Habilidades, artífices e ofícios na sociedade escravista,” in Trabalho livre, trabalho escravo: Brasil e Europa, séculos XVIII e XIX, Libby, Douglas Cole and Furtado, Júnia Ferreira, eds. (São Paulo: Annablume, 2006), 57–74 Google Scholar. The delightful narrative of the adventures of Rufino, an African slave and later freedman and suspected Islamic extremist, up and down the Brazilian coast and in West Africa often deals with his own activities as a cook and the craftwork and services carried out by his companions. Reis, João José, Gomes, Flávio dos Santos, and de Carvalho, Marcus Joaquim M., O Alufá Rufino: tráfico, escravidão e liberdade no Atlântico negro (c. 1822-c. 1853) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010)Google Scholar.

48. Documentação interna, caixa 2, parcel 9, fols. 72–74, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes. Based on nominal annual incomes, laws regarding the electoral system enfranchised large numbers of votantes who were eligible to vote for a reduced number of eleitores, whose yearly incomes were much higher. The eleitores were charged with electing members of the provincial assemblies and of the Imperial House of Deputies.

49. Cartório JO, Caixa 432, fols. 4–5, ETIPHAN-SJR. Cabinda was a generic term referring to African slaves shipped out of the port of that name. Agreements sealed at the Congress of Vienna gradually outlawed the transatlantic slave trade north of the equator. From about 1820 the southern port of Cabinda became a major point for reshipment of slaves captured in West Africa (the areas above the equator); thus the Cabinda label was rendered extremely ambiguous for the last three decades of the slave trade to Brazil.

50. For a detailed account of inheritance laws and practices in the colonial period and during the Empire, see Lewin, Linda, Surprise Heirs I: Illegitimacy, Patrimonial Rights, and Legal Nationalism in Luso-Brazilian Inheritance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Lewin, Surprise Heirs II: Illegitimacy, Inheritance Rights, and Public Power in the Formation of Imperial Brazil, 1822–1889 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

51. Filho, Afonso de Alencastro Graça, A Princesa do Oeste e o mito da decadência de Minas Gerais: São João del-Rei (1831–1888) (São Paulo: Annablume, 2002), 144 Google Scholar.

52. Both Roque and his brother Joaquim would appear with two sets of names in the sources. Sometimes the former was listed as Roque Simões Lopes, and other times as Roque Patrício Lopes. The same happened with his brother, who was identified as Joaquim Patrício Lopes or Joaquim Simões Lopes. The genealogical studies carried out so far have not led to the origin of the family name Simões, although logically it must have come from their paternal line.

53. Livro 14, fols. 144v, 189v, APSASJRM.

54. The nominal lists of the pre- and proto-statistical periods obviously can present any number of problems. There is a fair possibility that the household of Roque and his family was simply skipped over by whoever was invested with the task of elaborating the list. Problems may have occurred when the document was transcribed onto the worksheet as well. It is also possible that the family had briefly relocated, later returning to São José.

55. Livro 6, fol. 236v, APSASJRM; Livro 14, fols. 264v, 276, APSASJRM; Livro 16, fols. 24v, 139, 186v, APSASJRM; Livro 11A, fol. 24v, APSASJRM.

56. Up to this fifth generation, very few people have been “lost” from this family's history. Among the second generation José was unaccounted for as an adult; he almost certainly died as a child. Of the third generation, Brígida should have appeared in her parents' household in the Rol since she would have been only 12 at the time; she too almost certainly died very young. As we have already seen, Ana Rita da Silva, daughter of Joaquim Moreira da Silva, would marry and remain in the Vila until at least the 1830s, when she would have reached her forties. As to José, Joaquim Moreira da Silva´s son by his second marriage, only his baptismal record has turned up. This José, undoubtedly named for his grandfather, probably died as a child, but the possibility that he grew up and married outside the parish cannot be discounted. I can confirm that he did not marry in the neighboring parish of Nossa Senhora do Pilar de São João del-Rei.

57. Livro 11, fol. 104, APNSPSJR. At the time of this marriage Maria Apolinária had not yet reached her eleventh birthday. It should also be noted that in her baptismal record, and in those of her six brothers and sisters, the parents, José Apoliário Almeida and Francisca Maria Chagas, were designated as crioulos forros. Livro 29, fol. 176, APNSPSJR; Livro 30, fols. 65v, 92v, APNSPSJR; Livro 34, fols. 18v, 46v, 93v, APNSPSJR.

58. Livro 32, fol. 399, APNSPSJR. The ease with which one could move between the two vilas is reflected in the fact that grandmother Esméria Martins dos Passos stood as godmother for Porciano.

59. See Graça Filho, A Princesa do Oeste.

60. The evidence points to Alexandrina Margarida having been baptized on June 28, 1818. Livro 12, fol. 67, APNSPSJR. Manumitted at the baptismal font, she was the natural daughter of Ana, a crioula slave belonging to Felícia Fernandes Barbosa.

61. Livro 37, fols. 92, 148v, APNSPSJR; Livro 38, fols. 57v, 222, 308v, APNSPSJR.

62. The marriage registers from these parishes do not record any weddings involving these six members of the fifth generation.

63. Livro 10, fol. 48, APSASJRM.

64. Livro 12, fol. 137v, APSASJRM; Livro 14, fol. 127, APSASJRM; Livro 15, fol. 60, APSASJRM.

65. Livro 14, fol. 9v, APSASJRM; Livro 15, fol. 109, APSASJRM.

66. Livro 14, fols. 150, 173v, 223, APSASJRM.

67. In the Lista de 1838 Silvestre's occupation was given as juiz municipal.

68. Processo Matrimonial/Dispensa de Consangüinidade, Ladislau Albino Nepomuceno and Francisca Sancha da Silva, Registro 114519, Armário 45, pasta 11452, Arquivo Eclesiástico do Arcebispado de Mariana. This dispensation dated from September 1889. Within the São José community the memory of Silvestre and Bárbara's “secret” consensual union was still quite fresh at the end of the nineteenth century.

69. Testamento 138, 1852; Cartório JO, Caixa 271, 1855, ETIPHAN-SJR. In the process of estate settlement Maria's annual services were evaluated at 60,000 réis and Felipa's at 10,000. Unfortunately, the inheritance papers give no clue as to what kind of work these slaves might have done. Because Maria and Felipa were conditionally manumitted in the will, their considerable value was not included in the estate which was evaluated at slightly over one conto de reis, or £114.17.

70. See Frank, “Wealth Holding”; and Libby, Douglas Cole, “O 'Grande Plantel' mineiro do século XIX: origens e posses,” in História de Minas Gerais. A Província de Minas Gerais, de Resende, Maria Efigênia Lage and Villalta, Luiz Carlos, eds. (Belo Horizonte: Companhia das Letras/Autêntica, 2013), 171–198 Google Scholar.

71. Douglas Cole Libby “A Paróquia e a Vila de São José do Rio das Mortes: fontes e estudos,”Anais do Seminário Tiradentes: História e Cultura (Tiradentes: Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Tiradentes, forthcoming). Here I point to population loss and a dwindling commercial sector as indicators of the stagnation and decline of the Vila as an urban center. In 'Grande Plantel' I argue that the disappearance of small holdings sapped the slave system of the strength it had long derived from a socially ample and diverse distribution of slave property. Former owners of small holdings and their descendants became indifferent to the fate of the slave system as abolition inexorably approached. In the specific case of the São João/São José region, chattel slavery was increasingly concentrated after 1850 into holdings generally considered as medium-sized (from 11 to 50 slaves) and well suited for the provisioning agriculture and ranching typical of the local economy. Libby, “O 'Grande Plantel.'”

72. As the evidence makes clear, the Moreira da Silva family members often took advantage of the employment opportunities offered by the Câmara. A little over a decade after the proclamation of the Republic, the renamed Tiradentes became a county seat and thus an important judicial center. In the earliest years of the twentieth century when the county seat was moved, Tiradentes continued the secular decline of old São José. See Santos Filho, Guia da cidade de Tiradentes, 9, 43–44.

73. Lista de Qualificação, January 1845, documentação interna, caixa 10, parcel 1, fol. 38, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

74. Documentação interna, caixa 11, parcel 26, fol. 11, November 8, 1869, parcel 32, fols. 21–23; January 11, 1871, parccel 32, fol. 39; Despesas, December 31, 1871, parcel 44, fol. 3; Despesas, June 30, 1874, parcel 47, fol. 10; Receitas e despesas, December 31, 1876. Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

75. Correspondência recebida, May 26, 1861, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes, caixa 11, pacotilha 4, fols. 19–22.

76. Receitas e despesas, Livro 126, fol. 3; Livro 127, fol. 2; Livro 134, fol. 2, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

77. Receitas e despesas, Livro 120, fols. 2, 7; Livro 121, fol. 5; Livro 125, fol. 2, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes; Receitas e despesas, Livro 116, fols. 2, 8; Livro 127, fol. 3; Livro 150, fol. 8, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

78. Receitas e despesas, Livro 130, fol. 3; Livro 131, fol. 3, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

79. Receitas e despesas, Livro 115, fols. 2, 4; Livro 116, fols. 3, 16, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes; Receitas e despesas, Livro 121, fols. 4, 10, 13, 14; Livro 141, fol. 3, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

80. Receitas e despesas, Livro 122, fol. 4; Livro 123, fol. 3; Livro 124, fol. 5; Livro 125, fol. 5; Livro 126, fol. 7; Livro 127, fol. 6; Livro 128, fol. 6; Livro 130, fol. 5; Livro 132, fol. 8; Livro 133, fol. 5; Livro 136, fol. 5; Livro 139, fol. 5; Livro 140, fol. 4; Livro 141, fol. 5; Livro 142. Fol. 9; Livro 143, fol. 6; Livro 144, fol. 5; Livro 145, fol. 8. Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

81. See notes 61–67. The only hard evidence regarding literacy levels of Moreira da Silva women suggests that schooling was not as readily available for girls as it appears to have been for some boys. Bárbara Patrícia Lopes was the executrix of her aunt Quitéria Maria de Souza's estate, but unlike her aunt who signed several documents as the executrix of her brother's estate, Bárbara Patrícia left no signatures in the respective documentation. For now, then, there is no way of knowing whether or not Bárbara's illiteracy was the rule for Moreira da Silva women of the fifth, sixth, and seventh generations. Cartório JO, Caixa 271, 1855, ETIPHAN-SJR.

82. Given the importance literacy appears to have had in securing the Moreira da Silvas' social and economic standing, it is especially frustrating that no sources relating to the education of family members have turned up thus far.

83. Receitas e despesas, Livro 134, fol. 2; Livro 135, fol. 2; Livro 139, 3; Livro 141, fol. 3; Livro 142, fol. 5; Livro 145, fol. 4; Livro 146, fol. 2, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

84. Livro 28, fol. 122v, APSASJRM. It is almost certain that Francisco was awarded a notary and registry office in São José; that is to say, he owned the office and may have tendered the highest bid in order to obtain it. That would have involved a good deal of money as well as prestige and political connections at the local and regional levels. This intriguing finding bears further investigation, but one possibility may have been that his wife´s dowry included the cartório or sufficient resources for Francisco to make the winning bid.

85. Receitas e despesas, Livro 157, doc. 66, July 31, 1912, Fundo Câmara da Vila de São José, Arquivo Municipal de Tiradentes.

86. São José, Cartório CSO, caixa 91, ETIPHAN-SJR.

87. A thorough study of the many families whose children were sponsored by members of the Moreira da Silva clan would constitute a daunting task. Among them were children of slaves and freedmen, but otherwise most of the godchildren seem to have belonged to middling social strata. This may suggest a pattern in which those in the middle of prevailing social hierarchies tended to stick together and not necessarily seek out supposedly prestigious godparents. That was the case in colonial Mexico. See Cope, R. Douglas, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

Figure 0

Table 1 Direct descendents of José Fernandes da Silva and Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho, by gender (appearing as adults), 1754–1895