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 English Corner |
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English Corner |
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Dear Katherine, Although I have records pertaining to several generations of your predecessors, there are a few "insignificant" items that I should bring to your attention. You see, most people you'll meet as you grow older are unique in their own way - we are all unique, in fact - although some are "more unique" than others. Please notice how I wrote "more unique". In particular, I'd like to introduce you to Maria da Piedade da Ponte Machado. When she was a young girl on St. Michael's Island (São Miguel), in the Azores, she was only known as Maria da Piedade. She acquired the Ponte Machado name upon marriage. That Ponte was not related to your mother's Ponte maiden name. Maria da Piedade, according to my mother, was blonde and blue eyed. Because of her genes, I still have cousins in the Azores who are also blonde. At least they were when I still lived there. In generational terms, this is how the lineage came down to you: Maria da Piedade (da Ponte Machado) -> Maria da Conceição da Ponte Machado (da Costa Afonso) -> Isabel de Jesus da Costa Afonso (da Ponte) -> Manuel Louis Ponte -> Jane Lucia Ponte (Norman) -> Katherine Frederick Norman. Maria da Piedade was born in the Portuguese colony of Angola, in the 19th century. Her parents were Portuguese and, according to history and hearsay, this is how she got to the Azores: 1. It was customary for European powers to send some of their "criminals" (quite often political dissidents) to some of their colonies in order to settle them with their own people, rather than with the natives of those lands. The British, for example, sent many of those "criminals" to what is now Australia. The largest number consisted primarily of Irish and, for all we know, you may also have relatives in Australia, thanks to that form of punishment. The Portuguese were no different from the English, and they also sent some of their "criminals' to their owncolonies, particularly in Africa. Prior to that, they were often sent to Brazil, not as "criminals" but as exiled settlers with considerable privileges which were not available to the native populations. 2. One of the people sent to Angola as punishment was a young woman from the Azores, who had to serve for several years as housemaid to the family of a Portuguese prison captain in charge of the São Paulo (St. Paul) de Luanda garrisons. The young woman served her term for several years, but, instead of remaining in Angola, as many of the other prisoners did, managed to return to her native island in the Azores. In those days women married at a very early age. Obviously by the time she got out of Angola, she had no hopes of finding a husband, or having children. Through either a desire for revenge, or through love, or simply to have a child of her own, she kidnapped the daughter of the Portuguese captain and brought her to the Azores. Thus the reason why Maria da Piedade (her baptismal name) had no other family name. In those days the world had no telephones and no airplanes. Ships were also slow. For their part, the Azores were isolated islands up in the North Atlantic - quite far from Africa - although quite important as far their shipping location was concerned. By the time Maria da Piedade was eventually found, she was already a marriageable teen who was not going to give up the Azores in exchange for her chance to marry a young Azorean farmhand by the name of Francisco da Ponte Machado. The result, as far as you're concerned, is written above. It's not your complete family tree, but only one "branch" of it that seems to have a "dead end" in a 19th century kidnapping. You are several generations from its top, just as your brothers, and your cousins, Dena, Sarah, Elizabeth, Donald, Addison, and Whitney are. But those are not the only people from Maria da Piedade's lineage. You still have distant cousins in the Azores, as well as in other parts of the United States and Canada (Both in English-speaking Ontario, and in French-speaking Quebec). What the above proves, although not scientifically and historically accurate to the nth degree, is that, in many ways, our lives are touched by many unseen elements that, if looked at properly, will help us conclude that we all have probably more in common than all the lines we've created to separate us from one another. May you remain kind and gentle. And may God bless you. With love, "GrandPa" Manuel Manuel L. Ponte St. Louis, Missouri mlp@fclass.net |
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