J ohn's P ortuguese G enealogy H ome P age

This site is intended to provide English speaking genealogical researchers everywhere with assistance in discovering their Portuguese roots.

To really get you in the mood, try listening to the Portuguese National Anthem before you move onward.

If you are descended from Portuguese bloodlines, are interested in performing your own genealogical research, and don't speak any Portuguese, I can identify with you. In October of 1998, when I first took up genealogy as a hobby, I had no clue as to the inner workings of my ancestors' native tongue. Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news, fellow genealogists, is that no matter how long ago your ancestors left Portugal, you will eventually have to learn to read Portuguese. The good news is that you will only have to learn to read a very limited amount of Portuguese. Your primary source of information will be civil and/or Church birth and baptism, marriage, and death records, documents which tend to follow unoriginal, standardized formats. In other words, you will soon be able to find all the information you need -- once you get a little help to get you started. That's where this website comes in. In it, I offer you a little help. I can't promise to answer all your questions or provide you with all the information you want and need, but I can (possibly) get you started down the right path. So, let's get started. Lay on, MacDuff...

If you're in the mood, why not take a look at my Portuguese Family Tree?
***TAKE***A***LOOK***AT***THE***ALL***NEW***TOUR***!!!***
If you're looking for translation help, check out my home-made reference works...
... or my pre-translated documents.
In case I don't have what you need, here's some handy links you can use.
In the interest of Narcissism, I also included a little page about me.

This website is dedicated to my great grandmother, Laurinda de Jesus Gomes. She was just 19 years old in 1916, the year she emigrated from Germil, the small Portuguese village that was her home, to the United States. At the height of WWI, she crossed the Atlantic Ocean -- alone except for her 14 month old son, Antonio. She was following her husband, who had gone on ahead to make a start on a new life in a country whose language they did not speak. She made this journey with a mere $15 in her pocket. To make this journey at all required a tremendous amount of courage; a degree of courage to which I can only aspire. She died in 1992, having outlived her husband by some 48 years. I had the great fortune to have known her for the first 29 years of my life. I remain in awe of her today.

-John Schrader

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