Portugal Quick Start Guide

Portugal Quick Start Guide

Portugal: Ancestor's birth, marriage, or death location unknown
FamilySearch Indexed records: Try searching first in indexed records. Try a variety of searches with ancestor’s name, or with parent’s names, or just by parent’s surnames AND using the option to limit locality by country of Portugal and under event use ANY and the name of the state in Portugal.

Contact family members: If they do not have even a minimal of information AND have no idea of where and when to look, encourage them to contact family members who might have that information. This could be older aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

Portugal, Ancestor's birth location AND names of parents, spouse, or children are known
FamilySearch Indexed records: Try searching first in indexed records. Try a variety of searches with ancestor’s name, or with parents’ names, or just by parents’ surnames AND using the option to limit locality by country Portugal and under event use ANY and the name of the state in Portugal.

FamilySearch Browse Images: If no results from previous search for the ancestor or any siblings, you will have to browse images for the locality. Civil registration began about 1832 but was not mandatory until 1911. Its official beginnings were in 1878. Catholic Church records are also a good choice as they cover all time periods. If you can find the ancestor in both record types, that is best as you will get more information to advance the pedigree.

Portuguese website Tombo.pt: This site has parish records as well as several other record types such as passports, wills, census, etc. Start at http://tombo.pt/. On the left side of the page choose the district distrito. Next choose a municipality municipio. Next choose a parish freguesia. The number to the right of parish name is the number of books digitized. Choose a book to view from the list of available records. Only the words in blue are actual links to books. The images will open in a new tab in your browser. Use the navigation tools in the image viewer to navigate the books.

FamilySearch Catalog: Not all records for Portugal are online, be sure to check the catalog before giving up on finding records.

Research Strategies
If you don’t know the names of the parents, but you know the name of the spouse and/or the names of some of his children, begin with a marriage search (if they married in Portugal and you know the place). Or begin with a search for the birth/baptism record for one of their children (if you have an approximate birth date and place).

Surname Peculiarities
In Portuguese culture the females of a family often took on the mother’s name for their surname while the males took on the surname of the father. There are however exceptions to this if one family name was more prominent in society or had greater wealth in which case the whole family might choose to use that surname regardless of whether it belonged to the mother or father.

Finding a Locality
For help locating a place in Portugal, you may want to try one of the following resources: Google, Wikipedia, or gazetteers.

Online Resources
Some useful online websites for Portugal can be found in the Wiki article Portugal Websites. (English only)