my grampa roda came from a village named cova outside of figueira da foz in coimbra province. as far as i can tell, we know nothing abt his ancestry, & he may be adopted. one of my cousins did some research & mostly she found that portuguese genealogies are tuff to trace, b/c children often took the name of whichever parent had the more important family; some took both - e.g., de souza y costa (of the mother by the father, kind of like a horses breeding history!). the reason we think grampa may have been adopted: orphanages were mostly run by nuns & they often had a system which enabled the mother to leave a child w/o giving away her identity - a wheel (or roda, pronounced rotha) on which the child was placed that was then spun so that the child entered the orphanage thru an opening in the door. orphans were often given the name roda. we have a bit more of grammas family history...more on that later.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 04:55:35 +0000
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