Preservation and restoration of your family treasures

Let’s talk a little bit of conservation of your family heirlooms!

If you read my profile you probably noticed that I’m also an artist, besides my background in Museology and Art History. I love to express my inner self through acrylics and, specially, watercolors. 

Before

At a certain point in my life I decided to work in the preservation and restoration field. It was easy to decide that I want to work with books as I love them since I was a little girl. Also, I could use my artist skills of over 20 years and my academic background to help people preserve their precious family treasures and books for the generations to come. 

After

The last 30 years of my life was dedicated to study arts, art history, and lately preservation and conservation. A few years ago I started using my art background to restore old books, family bibles and documents. Working with these family gems provides me with a great deal of gratification, challenge and excitement since it invites me to participate in the history portrayed by each book or manuscript, and the techniques utilized by that specific time period and culture.

The book restoration process depends on a series of characteristics presented by the book. First of all, is the thorough analysis of the book’s history and structure for this will determine which methods will be utilized when putting the book pieces together at the end.

Below a graphic, made by my daughter, explaining the steps I use in book restoration and a little bit of my work:

 Before                                                                                                    After

Last but not least, through my lenses, book restoration and conservation goes beyond the techniques utilized and the process of taking a book apart and placing it back together, it gives me the opportunity to immerse in a different time and experience the stories told by people all over the world!

Below you have two links where you can buy archival materials to store your documents, books and photos. If you need any help in a custom project, just let me know I will be more than happy to help you:

Archival Inc.

University Products

40 Top Genealogy Blogs - Around the World in 40 Blogs

I'm so happy that my blog was selected to represent one of the 40 Top Genealogy Blogs International from Family Tree Magazine!

I've been trying to do my best in helping others to find their relatives in Brazil while I research my ancestors! Every comment is welcome and I will be more than happy to help others not only with tips on where to research, but as well as restoring their family heirlooms, like books, family bibles, documents and translations whenever is needed.

Thank you, Family Tree Magazine! 

A Ship Manifest, a Passport, and a Newspaper in your research

A Ship Manifest, a Passport, and a Newspaper in your research

My great grandfather, Francisco Machado Drummond, grandson of Francisco Ferreira Drummond, the historian from São Sebastião, Terceira Island – Azores, emigrated from the Azores to Brazil, for the first time, when he had just completed 13 years old. His passport was clear with several information about himself. I found it at the archives in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island (see footnote 1.). This was the first of several other trips he was going to do during his lifetime between the Azores and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Finding his passport records at the Angra's archives brought so much life to my great grandfather, his family history, thus my family genealogy.

The second time he traveled to Rio de Janeiro was in the company of his second wife and a son of six months old. The year was 1893. After obtaining a copy of their passport for this second trip from the archives in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira, BPARAH, I was able to learn when they were traveling - June or July of 1893. Attached to the family passport there was also the ship ticket’s receipt. On the ticket receipt there was the ship's name, the Lissabon. What a great find to continue my research.

I decided to find more about my great grandfather, his family and his arrival in Brazil. I knew the year and the approximate months of arrival in Rio de Janeiro. The best place to start my research was using the Arquivo Nacional do Brasil and their online database. This is the equivalent of the National Archives of the USA. If I could find the ship manifest with his name and his family new doors were going to open, bringing more information and evidence. The Arquivo Nacional has a large online database in Portuguese immigration and is always updating their digital archives with more records.

After looking on some steamers arrivals at that time, all in pdf format, I finally found the ship they traveled to Brazil, the Lissabon, from the SÜDAMERIKANISCHEN DAMPFSCHIFFAHRTS GESSELSCHAFT , a german company leaving originally Hamburg, in Germany. After downloading the pdf to my computer, I took a careful look at the manifest and was able to find the date of arrival, July 8th 1893, the commandant’s name, Holm, and an extensive list of 363 passengers, all in 3rd class. Although the ship steamer had 2nd and 1st class, only the third class was listed. No death took place during the trip and all arrived in good condition. 

http://www.histarmar.com.ar

The newspapers of that time usually had information on what was happening on the Ports of Brazil, and knowing that the main library in Brazil, the Biblioteca Nacional, had them digitized and fully researchable, my next step was finding those with the approximate date of the ship’s arrival. I not only found the newspaper of my interest, but got more new information. The names of other passengers that were not listed on the ship manifest from Arquivo Nacional do Brasil were found on the newspapers. I don’t know why they did not list these passengers on the manifest, but they were probably traveling in the 1st and/or 2nd class. The number of days the ship took from São Miguel to Rio de Janeiro was 16 days, from a total of 27 days. The newspaper also has a list of all the ships that were arriving on that day besides the Lissabon, as well as other ones that were expected to arrive on the next couple of days. 

I learned that we really need to go as further as possible in our research, searching all kinds of sources. When we less expect we can find something new that can lead us to unexpected discoveries!

Detail of "O Pais - Domingo,  9 de Julho de 1893"

Biblioteca Nacional 

Biblioteca Nacional 

Find more about how to research in the Azores and Portugal at:
https://myportuguesegen.blogspot.com/p/researching-in-azores-and-portugal.html

Biblioteca Pública e Arquivo Regional Luis da Silva Ribeiro

Rua do Morrão, 42 - 9700-054 Angra do Heroísmo

Telefone: (+351) 295 401 000Fax: (+351) 295 401 009

email: bparah.arquivo@azores.gov.pt

http://www.bparlsr.azores.gov.pt/html/index.html

Old Steamers Ads

Researching the digital archives of Biblioteca Nacional - http://memoria.bn.br/hdb/uf.aspx - I found some ads from companies that were traveling between Europe and South America at Gazeta de Noticias newspaper. Those ads are a constant in the editions that I searched between the years of 1880 and 1899. These ones are of 9 March 1887 edition. You will find the cities where they stop besides the final destination and the departure date; on some you will also see the price of those tickets. The Norddeutscher Lloyd was one companies that traveled constantly to Brazil.

Below we have a specific ad that stops at the Azores Island, one of my interests as my family from my mother’s side is from Terceira Island.  If they had enough passengers to bring to Brazil on their way back they made the stop there. They also mention special conditions for those who are coming as colonists. I believe it’s about their price; they may have a special rate for those who were coming to settle.

Hamburgo Sudamerikanische Dampfschiff-fahrts-Gesellschall

The steamers of these lines leaves to 

Bahia, Lisboa and Hamburgo

 on the 5, 13, 20 and 27 of each month.

Coming back from Hamburgo

Azores Island

if there are enough passengers

 Excellent accommodations for the first class passengers.

Special conditions for those who are colonist.

SOMETIMES THE LINK TO BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DOES NOT WORK. THEIR SERVER IS NOT STABLE, PLEASE BE PATIENT AND TRY AGAIN LATER.

Newspaper Research in Brazil

Newspaper Research in Brazil

Rio de Janeiro has one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, the Biblioteca Nacional- www.bn.br

www.bn.br

It is considered by UNESCO one of the tenth libraries in the world and the biggest in South America. Part of it is digitized and available online for research.  You will find books, photos and newspapers from many states of Brazil. It’s precious for us doing genealogy.

What I most use is the newspaper database that is available on the following link and it’s fully researchable.

http://memoria.bn.br/hdb/uf.aspx

What I like most is that we can also save the images that are significant for our research.  I already found some nice references from the XIX century and some of my family members.

I wish its website was both in Portuguese and English.

http://memoria.bn.br/hdb/uf.aspx