Sources & method
How we know what we know
Good family history is honest about its evidence. On this site, every person and story carries a label telling you how well it is documented — so you can trust the strong parts and help us strengthen the rest.
Our four evidence labels
Confirmed
Supported by at least one reliable primary record that a researcher has actually reviewed — for example a baptism, marriage, or civil registration that names the person and fits the family. The source is listed on the person's card.
Likely
Strong, consistent indirect evidence points this way, but a direct proving record hasn't been found or reviewed yet. A reasonable conclusion — held with appropriate caution.
Unverified
A lead, claim, or online hint we have not yet checked against real records. Included so it isn't lost, but not to be relied upon. These are our open research questions.
Family tradition
A story handed down by the family. Often it holds a real kernel of truth — and sometimes it doesn't. We treasure it, record who told it, and keep it clearly separate from proven fact.
Where the evidence comes from
Sources we use
Family history draws on many kinds of records, each with its own strengths and blind spots:
- Civil records — government birth, marriage, and death registration (in Portugal, from the late 1800s onward).
- Parish records — baptisms, marriages, and burials kept by the local church; the backbone of older Portuguese genealogy.
- Census & parish rolls — population lists such as the rol de confessados that place a family in a village at a moment in time.
- Immigration & passenger records — ship manifests and arrival records that trace emigration to Brazil, the Americas, and elsewhere.
- Oral history — first-hand testimony from relatives, carefully attributed and dated.
- Cemetery records — headstones, burial registers, and grave locations.
- Family bibles — handwritten birth, marriage, and death entries kept at home.
- Photographs — dated and captioned where possible; a photo can confirm a relationship or a place.
- DNA clues — used cautiously, only with the tester's consent and sound interpretation. DNA can support or challenge a paper trail, but it never overrides consent or privacy. We publish no one's genetic data.
Using paid platforms responsibly
About Ancestry and other commercial sites
Commercial genealogy platforms such as Ancestry.com can be genuinely useful for finding research avenues — spotting which record collections might hold a relative, what fields to look for, or where a family might have moved. We treat them as signposts, not as content to copy.
To keep this site lawful and respectful, we follow clear rules:
- We do not copy, scrape, or republish copyrighted text, record images, family trees, record abstracts, or database content from Ancestry or any paid platform.
- We do not reproduce private, paywalled, or other users' submitted content.
- When a paid platform points us toward something, we independently locate and summarise it in our own words, and cite the underlying original record (e.g. "1848 baptism register, Freixo da Serra parish") rather than the platform's paywalled page.
- Anything drawn only from such a platform, and not yet independently confirmed, is marked Unverified and flagged for manual review.
How we cite
Wherever possible, a fact on this site points to the original record behind it: the type of record, the place it was created, and the date or reference. This lets any relative or researcher follow the same trail and check the work for themselves. Where a fact rests only on a family memory, we say so and name who remembered it.
Background information about places and history (for example, the pages about Freixo da Serra and Gouveia) is summarised in our own words from public reference sources, and is meant as context rather than as proof of any individual's ancestry.