A new interpretation of the Brazilian family has emerged during the last several decades. The traditional view of the large, extended, and patriarchal family has been shattered. The family is no longer described in monolithic terms but is now understood as encompassing a range of different types. One of these is the female-headed family, which emerges as a significant family form during the late colonial and early national periods in those regions of Brazil that have been studied.1 It has also become clear that residential units were smaller than previously imagined. Finally, marriage, at least ecclesiastically defined marriage, was a choice taken by only a small minority of the free adult population—despite the combined desires and pressures of the Portuguese state and the Catholic church. For the vast majority of the free population, what has emerged is the predominance of consensual unions—either residential or, more typically, nonresidential.
Perhaps the most remarkable gap in the work that has been done, including that by this writer, is the failure to examine the relationship between the Portuguese and the Brazilian family. To a large extent, this is due to the nature of the sources historians use. The census tracts and parish registers that form the core of this research are more common in Brazil for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than for earlier periods. Had the sources been richer for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is more likely that the need to examine the Portuguese antecedents of the Brazilian family would have been more obvious. The result is that social historians have focused so closely on discovering the parameters of this new and more complex view of the New World family that we have tended to be somewhat ahistorical.
This essay is an effort to explore the historical context by examining those Portuguese antecedents of the family type that developed in Minas Gerais, the gold-mining center of Brazil during the eighteenth century. The essay seeks to make three central points: (1) that the Portuguese family was not uniform but had distinct regional variations; (2) that immigrants to Minas Gerais came primarily from the north of Portugal, a socially distinct region; and (3) that the nature and structure of the northern Portuguese family was very similar to that found in Minas Gerais during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Finally, this study suggests that the explanation for this similarity may be found in the predominance of northern Portuguese immigration into a region—the mining zone of Minas Gerais—that exhibited some of the same broad economic features as northern Portugal. Thus the similarity results from the mix of imported sociocultural values and evolving economic structures.
Portugal has long been a land of emigrants; this essay extends that truism by arguing that those who left for Brazil took with them a specific view of and experience with the family, which formed the basis of the society they recreated and revalidated in the New World. The link between northern Portugal and Minas Gerais is obviously the convergence of values and social institutions, not in some vague sense of cultural inheritance but in the constant flow of Portuguese settlers to Brazil and, very often, back to Portugal. By the end of the eighteenth century, the sociodemographic configuration of the family of Minas Gerais was very similar to that of northern Portugal.
Northern Prototypes
The main sociodemographic division in Portugal was between the north (the provinces of Minho, Douro, and Trás-os-Montes) and, to a lesser degree, the north-central area (the Beiras), and the rest of Portugal. The city of Lisbon generally occupies a middle position. In a very general characterization, it can be said that the north had a greater proportion of females in the population, higher rates of celibacy (defined as the percentage of women remaining single), a later age at marriage, higher rates of illegitimacy and child abandonment, lower proportions of nuclear family structures and, conversely, higher proportions of extended and multiple families than the other regions of Portugal.2
The social context of northern Portugal was defined by a tendency for males to move alone, often to help their families. Their departure removed unneeded laborers from farms too small to feed large families, and also provided potential new sources of family income. The high number of men who emigrated—to Brazil as well as other parts of Portugal’s far-flung empire—had an important demographic impact on Portugal as a whole, and obviously on those regions supplying the bulk of the emigrants—the far north and north-central provinces. Thus, for example, in the important city of Guimarães in the northern province of Minho, the ratio of males to females was 76:100 in 1734, 72.5:100 in 1760, and 88.3:100 in 1788.3 Montana and Ancora, also in Minho, in 1827 demonstrated sex ratios of 89 males per 100 females.4 This pattern does not appear to hold for the center of Portugal. Coruche in Estremadura, for example, had a ratio of 105:100 in 1789; and Salvaterra de Magos, in the Alentejo, had a similar ratio in 1788.5 The Lisbon parish of Santiago, over the course of the seventeenth century, went from a predominance of females to that of males.6
The demographic predominance of females has its own major impact on society.7 One effect is the lower proportion of women who marry. Researchers studying Portuguese celibacy, defined as the proportion of single women, have used various measures to define this phenomenon, although two seem to have been more generally applied: definitive celibacy, usually defined as the proportion of never-married women aged 50 to 54; and a similar measure of women aged 20 to 24. On the basis of these measures, the northern population showed a higher proportion of single women than other areas of Portugal (see table 1). In 1864, for example, 27 percent of the women aged 50 to 54 in the city of Braga, in Minho, were single, and so were 81 percent of the women aged 20 to 24.8 Robert Rowland’s study of Montaria and Ancora reveals celibacy rates of 33.3 percent and 22.5 percent, respectively, for women aged 25 to 39, and definitive celibacy rates of 34.8 percent and 23.1 percent.9 Caroline Brettell found that in the decade 1860-69, 33.9 percent of the women who died over the age of 50 in the Minho parish of Santa Eulália (the pseudonym she chose for the community whose study she has carried to the present day) were celibate, as compared to only 10 percent of the men. The proportion during the eighteenth century was similar, although the data for that period include women as young as 20.10
The celibacy rates in central Portugal appear lower. In 1864, in the area of Beja in the Alentejo, 60 percent of the women aged 20 to 24 were single; but definitive celibacy was only 11 percent, suggesting that most women got married, but only after the age of 24.11 The rates for the women of Coruche, Estremadura, followed the same pattern.12
In regard to age at marriage, a startling difference emerges between the northern provinces and the rest of Portugal. For various years during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the average age at marriage for women in the north was considerably higher than for women elsewhere: it ranged from 22.4 to 28.3 in the north and 20 to 23.7 in the other regions. A comparison of 23 comarcas (administrative districts) in 1802 made by Rowland again demonstrates these differences.13 For Santa Eulália, Brettell found that the women’s marriage age varied between 24 and 30.5 during the entire period 1700–1970. Remarkably, in 12 of the 27 decades reported by Brettell, women’s average age at marriage was actually higher than men’s.14 In Coruche in 1789, however, the average age at first marriage was 20.6 for women, 26.2 for men.15
The average marriage age for men was roughly similar throughout Portugal.16 A pattern of very late marriages emerges clearly in the Minho communities of Montaria and Ancora, where males’ average age when they married was 29, as compared to 27 for women.17 This same result is reported for the Alto Minho community of Couto in the period 1860–1900.18
The available data demonstrate that the general population of the north had a higher proportion of women than other areas of Portugal. This reinforces the commonly held belief that northern men were very mobile and tended to move to other areas of Portugal as well as the Portuguese colonies. The absence of men contributed to a social pattern in which women delayed marriage until their later twenties or, in many cases, their early thirties. Among the reasons for delay was probably the tendency to wait for the men to return, and, they hoped, in improved financial circumstances.
Brettell carries this issue further by developing a complicated and compelling argument describing a society in which the role of women is greatly enhanced by the shortage of men. Brettell concludes that this shortage produced a form of independence on the women’s part, and a cultural pattern in which women could elect not to marry without any social stigma—in fact, parents could encourage such a decision as a way of ensuring adequate care for their old age.19 Women’s tendency to remain single combined with men’s tendency to emigrate produced a form of matrifocality that resulted in a flexible inheritance system, in which the women who stayed at home often became the primary transmitters of family property. Daughters not only inherited equally with their brothers, they typically continued living in the homes of their deceased parents. It is interesting that the naming practices of the residents of Santa Eulália reflected this pattern. Daughters often assumed their mother’s family name and sons that of their fathers.20 The sense of enhanced status was reinforced by the tendency to name illegitimate children as heirs. Moreover, women’s predominance in the north meant that many were active in the economic life of their communities, a situation that brought them greater freedom of movement and social interaction.21
In this context it is not surprising that the proportion of women heading households in northern Portugal was relatively high. In Montaria in 1827, 17.5 percent of the households were headed by women (6.7 percent by single women); in Ancora, 32.8 percent were headed by women (18.0 percent single).22 But this phenomenon can also be found in other areas of Portugal. In the central community of Coruche, women headed 18.2 percent of the households; and of these 127 households, 11.8 percent were headed by single women.23 Unfortunately, no other studies of the gender of household heads permit a determination of the typicality of these communities.
In terms of the size of households, some differences are apparent between the north and the rest of the country. Between 1734 and 1760, the average size of households in Guimarães oscillated between 4.7 and 3.8 persons, with a tendency to decrease over time.24 In 1789 the average household size in the city of Porto, in Douro province, was 4.2.25 Montana and Ancora in 1827 averaged 5.4 and 4.6 people per unit, respectively, and in 1800, Santa Eulália’s average was 4.3.26 The comparison between the north and the rest of the country is limited by only one case coming from a non-northern area. In Coruche the average was 3.4—considerably smaller than any reported for the north.27
One result of this northern social constellation, particularly the higher proportion of women in the population and the lower rates of marriage, was illegitimacy. The illegitimacy rate for Santa Eulália for the period 1700–1860 has been calculated to have varied between 5.1 and 12.1 percent of all births.28 Many of those babies were born to women who already had more than one illegitimate child; during the nineteenth century these women accounted for half of all illegitimate births.29
For the area of Guimarães the proportion of births that were defined as illegitimate varied from a low of 14 percent during the decade 1680–89 to a high of 25.1 percent for 1810–19.30 Research by João de Pina-Cabral on Couto and Paço, two communities of the Alto Minho, has yielded rates ranging from 14.3 percent to 22.5 percent over the period 1860–1940.31 Illegitimacy was defined, in this situation, as including natural children whose parents were not wed and abandoned children whose parents were unknown and who were given up for foster care.32 Illegitimacy was so common that Raul Iturra describes it as a means of ensuring a ready supply of labor while preventing the dispersal of property.33
Some evidence from other regions of Portugal also suggests that illegitimacy was higher in the north than in other regions, except Lisbon. During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, 4.2 percent of the children born in the central village of Penamacor were illegitimate.34 The percentage of illegitimate births in the Lisbon parish of Nossa Senhora das Merces was 23 for the same period.35 In this regard as in others, Lisbon appears to resemble the north more than the center and south of Portugal.
Accompanying these high rates of illegitimacy were high levels of infant abandonment. In Porto, a substantial number of the children born each year were subsequently abandoned. In 1785 the total was 856, of whom a slight majority (51.9 percent) were male. Agostinho Rabello da Costa, who provides these figures in a work published in 1789, also reports that 2,736 children were born in 1786. He provides no birth data for 1785 or abandonment statistics for 1786, but if these figures can be assumed to be reasonably consistent, they would suggest that about a third of the children born each year were abandoned.36 This startling proportion may well reflect a tendency among single rural women to give birth in the city of Porto, where greater anonymity was possible. In Guimarães, the share of abandoned children remained less than 10 percent until the decade 1790–99, when it reached 12.9 percent. During the period 1810–19 it reached 21.9 percent.37
By the end of the eighteenth century the problem of abandoned children had become so acute in Portugal that it spawned a series of new national laws regulating the treatment of abandoned infants.38 Unfortunately, the crown’s efforts did not solve the problem. Antonio Joaquim de Gouveia Pinto estimated in 1820 that approximately 10,000 infants were abandoned annually in Portugal and that there were some 30,000 expostos, or abandoned children, under the age of 7.39 The research for this study could locate no information on abandoned children in other particular regions of Portugal, so comparison is impossible. Such high overall numbers of abandoned children, however, suggest several explanations. It seems probable that some social stigma was attached to a single mother raising her own children. Economic conditions undoubtedly were difficult, and the burden of raising children may have proved unbearable for many mothers. Apparently the same was true for married couples. Evidence suggests that some couples abandoned their children because they were unable to care for them at the time, but expected to retrieve them once their economic prospects improved.40 In northern Portugal, child abandonment and male outmigration were both linked to the difficult economic situation—population growth and an equitable inheritance pattern, leaving smaller and smaller landholdings—which many individuals saw as hopeless. Abandonment and outmigration are similar social responses: both reduce the number of children in the household.
A final area in which significant comparisons can be drawn is that of family structure. The literature on this subject (for both Brazil and Portugal) has grown enormously over the last two decades. Fortunately, the tendency has been to use the typology suggested by Peter Laslett, though the evidence so far is inconclusive.41 It does appear that here again the south and north of Portugal differed, with the center seemingly closer to the southern pattern, except for Lisbon. The first difference was the lower proportion of nuclear or “simple” families in the north than in the south. Simple families are defined as those containing individuals linked by marriage or individuals whose children reside with them. In effect, these units are one- or two-generation families. Conversely, extended and multiple family units tended to be more common in the north. Isolated households (in which the head had no relatives) and related households (those coheaded by relatives, such as siblings) apparently did not prevail in one area over the other (see tables 2 and 3).
Brazilian Parallels
While some of its elements were shared by other regions of Portugal, the social configuration that defined the north was unique—shaped by the absence of men and characterized by late age at marriage for women, low marriage rates in the general population, low proportions of nuclear families, and high rates of illegitimacy and child abandonment.
Remarkably, the same characteristics have been attributed to Brazil, and especially to the gold-mining areas of Portugal’s largest colony.42 Minas Gerais, with the discovery of gold in 1695, obviously attracted a large number of people from throughout Brazil as well as Portugal—not to mention the large influx of forced immigrants from Africa. It is extraordinarily difficult to obtain information regarding emigration from Portugal. Although a passport system was instituted in 1720 in an effort to limit the number of Portuguese who sought to travel to Brazil, it seems clear that Portuguese regulations were largely ignored as thousands flooded into Brazil’s ports on their way to seek their fortune.43 It is possible, however, to obtain a sense of the nature of this immigration by sampling the parish and notarial records in Brazil to determine who arrived. Obviously, this is an inadequate way to measure the number of those who left Portugal; but it is a reasonable method of pinpointing the regions from which they departed.
To obtain a qualitative sense of migratory patterns, three sources were used: marriage registers, wills, and the records of the Inquisition. Despite their differences, all three lead to very similar conclusions—which gives the conclusions some credibility.
The marriage records for the parish of Antonio Dias, one of the two into which the Mineiro capital of Vila Rica was apportioned, yield the names of 341 grooms who were born in Europe for the period 1709-1804. Of these, the majority of individuals were born in two northern Portuguese provinces: Minho and Douro (see table 4). These two provinces alone accounted for exactly two-thirds of the grooms born in Portugal. The third northern province, Trás-os-Montes, perhaps because of its extreme isolation and poverty, sent few of its sons to Vila Rica. The only other areas represented significantly in this sample are the central province of Estremadura and the islands of Madeira and the Azores. Almost all the grooms from Estremadura were born in Lisbon.
Far fewer Portuguese women appear in the marriage registers (see table 5). This is not surprising, given the traditional perception of a male-dominated migratory stream. What is surprising, even though the sample is very small, is the high proportion of women immigrating from the Portuguese islands. It seems probable that most of these women traveled in the company of their fathers or husbands rather than as individual immigrants.
The wills left by the men of Antonio Diaz yield the same general conclusions about the predominance of immigration from the north.44 Of the 120 wills examined, 78 were prepared by men born in Portugal (see table 6). Approximately 70 percent of these testators were born in the far north, the majority in Minho province. While it is not possible to determine from their wills the date these immigrants arrived in Brazil, these documents do reflect a continuing Portuguese immigration into Vila Rica throughout the eighteenth century. Nor was the northern presence limited to Vila Rica, as is evident from the records of Itatiaia, a rural parish in the termo (district) of Vila Rica but some distance from the urban center. There, 78 percent of the men born in Portugal who left wills during the last third of the eighteenth century were born in the far north.45
The records of the Inquisition are one of the most intriguing of the sources on immigration, and on spatial mobility in general. The Portuguese Inquisition as a juridical body actually operated in Brazil for very limited periods, unlike the Spanish Inquisition, which established a corporate presence in the New World. The Inquisition did function actively, however, through the established church hierarchy, reinforced by its own familiares, or deputized agents, until it was disbanded at the time of Brazil’s independence.46 The massive number of denunciations and judicial processes that have survived (and these are probably but a fraction of the original quantity) is a testament to the Inquisition’s omnipresence, and to its perseverance.47
Two Mobile Societies
The Inquisition cases relating to Portuguese immigrants living in Minas Gerais show the same patterns as the previous two sources—reinforcing the significance of immigration from Portugal’s north. Immigrants from the far north were the majority, with another third coming from the north-central area of the Beiras—the Litoral, Baixa, and Alta regions (see table 7). Again, Lisbon in the center provided but a tiny handful of immigrants, and the south virtually none.
These sources reinforce the perception, commonly held in the eighteenth century itself, that the north was the source of immigrants to the gold-mining regions of Brazil. The Portuguese law of March 20, 1720, vainly mandating the use of a passport system, noted that Minho, “[formerly] being the most peopled today finds itself in a state in which there are not enough people to cultivate the lands nor to provide for the inhabitants.”48 Word of the Brazilian gold mines attracted so many thousands of northern men that emigration, once the safety valve, was now a temporary threat to the economy.
The degree of individual mobility reflected in the Inquisition records is staggering. No doubt, some of those being investigated moved about in an effort to avoid capture by the authorities. This source of information, moreover, certainly is biased, because many of those studied had been charged in Portugal and were arrested in Brazil. But even for these subjects, it is significant that many men and, less often, women had traveled extensively in Portugal before embarking for Brazil’s shores; and once in Brazil they continued to move around. Many of those arrested in Portugal, Inquisition records confirm, also had moved away from their birthplace to another part of Portugal. Migration seems to have been a common feature of life in the eighteenth century, both in Portugal and its Brazilian colony. The example of João Teixeira, arrested in 1765 for bigamy, is typical:
He has never left the dominions of Portugal and in them he had lived in the place of Porto Fermozo, his fatherland, and in the city of Ponta Delgada on the Island of São Miguel, from whence he came to this city of Lisbon and where he lived for three years, and from here he embarked for Pernambuco, in which captaincy he resided in the city of Olinda and in the towns of Santo Antonio de Olinda, Jaguaripe, Rio Fermozo, Agoa Petuba, and Goyana, and in passing in many other lands.49
In another example, João Rodrigues M esquita, ordered arrested for practicing Judaism in 1733, was born in Vinhães. The language used to describe the places he had resided indicates the continuing attachment of widely traveled immigrants to their patria. Mesquita noted that he had always lived in Vinhães—except for the 12½ years he spent in Viana do Castelo and, in passing, Braga and “some other places in the Province of Minho.” He then casually noted that in Brazil he had lived in Vila Rica, Guarapiranga, and Tejuco, where he was finally arrested.50 What makes Mesquita remarkable is that he accomplished all this before the age of 34, his age when arrested. He had spent more than one-third of his life away from his birthplace, but in his mind he had “always” resided there. Mesquita, as it turns out, was hardly unusual. On the contrary, it is extraordinarily unusual in these records to find a person who had not lived away from his or her place of birth.
This spatial mobility was hardly limited to the Portuguese. Inquisition subjects born in Brazil demonstrated the same footloose behavior. For example, Agostinho José de Azeredo, born in Rio de Janeiro, had lived in three of the four comarcas of colonial Minas Gerais: Sabará, Ouro Preto, and Rio das Mortes.51 Even the comparatively young prisoner Andre da Veiga Freire, identified as a 24-year-old student who “had never left the Province of Rio de Janeiro,” where he was born, noted that he only went to Minas Gerais “for Reasons of Commerce.”52 What strikes the reader of these records is the commonplace nature of travel for residents of eighteenth-century Portugal and its colonies.
The Inquisition records also demonstrate another pattern of mobility: many people born in Brazil traveled to Portugal, whether to conduct business, improve their health, visit relatives, or take up residence. Luis Alves Monteiro, accused of being a Jew, was born about 1680 in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a sugar planter. In addition to his native region, Monteiro lived in Bahia, Porto, and Lisbon—clearly dangerous choices for someone seeking to hide his heretical innermost secrets.53 Those wishing to conceal their religious identity could be expected to avoid the major cities, where the Inquisition’s presence was strong. But Monteiro’s case and others demonstrate that people traveled in both directions, occasionally with stops at the Portuguese Atlantic islands or other parts of the Portuguese Empire.
What is surprising is that many Portuguese immigrants were really temporary migrants, in the sense that they frequently returned to Portugal. For example, João de Sousa Lisboa, an important businessman and tax farmer in Vila Rica, made an unknown number of separate visits to Brazil and the mining zone before moving there permanently sometime in the late 1740s.54
From a twentieth-century vantage point, such extensive spatial mobility is hard to visualize. Compared to today’s ease of travel, the historical difficulties of traveling often evoke an image of people dying in the place where they were born. This image no doubt has been reinforced by the paucity of sources that would provide a measure of actual mobility.55 One such measure is to compare the same community at two different points in time. Lamentably, no evidence is available for the eighteenth century when mobility, in the midst of gold fever, must have been very high, given the other indicators available. But fortunately such measures are available for rural Minas Gerais during the Regency, when mobility seemingly was also extraordinarily high. São Gonçalo do Baço, in the comarca of Ouro Preto, was a small, rural community that in 1831 comprised 577 individuals organized into 149 households. Seven years later, the community had grown to 720 inhabitants, while the number of households had dropped somewhat, to 141.56
These data suggest a reasonable level of stability. But the image is only superficial, and it is belied by the enormous demographic changes that occurred. Over a very short time span—during which there is no indication of unusual circumstances, such as epidemics or catastrophic economic changes—a significant transformation took place among the heads of households. Fully 62 percent of the household heads in 1831 were not heading households in 1838. This substantial mobility is remarkable, particularly because these were the established heads of households in a rural community, the very people who should have had a stake in the community’s economy and who should have been linked most tightly by social ties to the complex fabric of colonial society.
Urban mobility also appears to have been exceedingly high. João de Sousa Lisboa, the Vila Rica businessman, owned 15 urban rental properties; for 10 of them, detailed records are available covering the 1750s and 1760s. The average length of stay of Lisboa’s 132 renters was one year; women were the most transitory, averaging 8½ months.57 Some of the renters stayed a month and moved on, while others stayed for several years. They could as easily have moved to the next block or another part of town as to Sabará, São João del Rei, Rio de Janeiro, or Lisbon; but it is clear that people moved often. It also becomes evident from these various sources that spatial mobility, urban or rural, was as important a feature of life in Minas Gerais as it was in northern Portugal.
This continuing and complex pattern of immigration and internal migration is relevant to the issue of family formation and the social configuration of marriage. Continuing emigration from Portugal, especially from the north, had the effect of imposing and then reinforcing a specific set of values on the social ethos of Minas Gerais. This mechanism worked the same way as the fresh levies of African slaves worked to reinforce African culture in Brazil, especially in zones such as Salvador.
The Predominance of Women
By the end of the eighteenth century, this demographic movement, combined with a collapsing economy, created a situation not unlike that of northern Portugal. The points of comparison are significant, particularly in those aspects that affect the nature of the family. Perhaps the most significant element is the predominance of females in the free population, evident during the first four decades of the nineteenth century. In 1804 the sex ratio of Vila Rica was 81.5 males for every 100 females, while for nearby Cachoeira, an important regional farming and cattle community, it was 89.5 males per 100 females. To make broader comparisons, the present study chose 12 communities in Minas Gerais, representing a range of urban-rural and mining-farming typologies. This sample, for the period 1831-1838, had a total population of 14,461, of whom 9,521 were free. It yielded a sex balance of 87.2 males per 100 females.
The imbalance in favor of women is more remarkable because a century earlier, the mining zones had suffered from such a shortage of women that the Portuguese government was forced to adopt a number of measures—only partially effective—to ensure women’s availability, such as banning convents in the mining zone and requiring royal permission for women to join convents in Portugal. By the turn of the century, however, it was the men who were in short supply. This reversal can be explained only by gender-differentiated outmigration—men left and women stayed.
The ease with which Mineiro males moved in search of new economic opportunities mirrors the pattern demonstrated for northern Portuguese men. The men of northern Portugal were ever ready to migrate to seek their fortune. The society that emerged in Minas Gerais was no different; men were ready to move to the next gold strike or the next booming agricultural zone. The specific economic systems may have differed, but the relationship of the population to the economy was very similar.
While the rates of celibacy for northern Portugal, described earlier, may seem high, those in Minas Gerais were at least as high and often higher (see table 8). Whereas definitive celibacy—single women aged 50 to 54—for northern Portugal ranged between 23.1 and 34.8 percent, for the 12 selected Mineiro communities definitive celibacy was 45.5 percent. There were differences, however. Because northern Portuguese women married later than Mineiro women, their celibacy rates dropped more precipitously after the age of 25. After age 25, celibacy rates for Mineiro women surpass those of their northern Portuguese sisters.
The relatively late age of marriage among the northern Portuguese apparently was not matched by Mineiro women. In Antonio Dias parish, women’s age at marriage gradually increased during the second half of the eighteenth century; but even so, women’s typical age at marriage here was closer to the central Portuguese pattern than the northern one. Mineiro women married at about 22 or 23. While this was younger than virtually every reported average age for northern Portuguese women, it was older than expected for traditional colonial societies. The overall tendency in Brazil during the eighteenth century, moreover, was for marriage age to increase as the society became more solidly established (see table 9).
The lower marriage age could well be an indication of the effect of the frontier on social behavior. In the north of Portugal, emigration served as a safety valve by drawing away a surplus population, and marriage was delayed until the contracting partners had the economic means to sustain a household. Often this meant waiting for the emigrant male to return home. On the frontier in Minas Gerais, easier access to land may well have permitted couples to marry young rather than having to wait for the propitious moment when opportunity matched interest.
Another family-related issue emerges from the significant findings about the gender of household heads. The high proportion of women who headed households in Brazil, and especially in Minas Gerais, is an important part of the new social history that has emerged recently. In Minas Gerais, women headed households in clearly appreciable numbers. In the sample of 12 communities used for this study, fully one-third of the households were headed by women, and of these, 58.7 percent of the women were single and 34.1 percent were widowed (see table 10). The remainder were married, but no husband was recorded as residing in the home at the time of the census. During the third decade of the nineteenth century, women constituted between 23.5 and 40.6 percent of the household heads in these 12 communities.
For single women, having a child normally meant establishing an independent household. In Minas Gerais, as in northern Portugal, a single daughter who became pregnant typically left the home. The sample of Mineiro communities yielded only 35 cases of single mothers living in their parents’ home; that is, only 2 percent of the 1,400 mothers in the sample. The birth of a child constituted an opportunity for a woman to establish her own household. Moreover, despite the fact that one-third of the households were headed by women, 60 percent of these dependent single mothers lived in homes headed by women. This surely represents the increasing feminization of the household. And that process is confirmed by an analysis of Vila Rica itself, where the sex ratio was 39:100 for households headed by women, 102:100 for households headed by men.
The average household size in the mining zones of Minas Gerais typically was larger than in Portugal—ranging from 3.8 to 7.8 individuals per household, with a mean of 6.7 (and a median of 4.5). To a great extent, the size differential reflects the presence of slaves and agregados, which more than offset the numbers of domestic servants in Portugal. The northern Portuguese household averaged between 3.8 and 5.4 persons—higher than for other regions of Portugal. Minas Gerais was simply a point farther along the continuum.
Agregados were found in about a third of the households in the 12 sample communities. Households with agregados had substantially different structures than those without these retainers. Households with agregados were more likely to be headed by women: 39.2 percent versus 29.6 percent. The heads of households with agregados were more likely to be living without a spouse or children. While this could imply the existence of consensual unions, it is unlikely in cases where the household head was a woman, because her consort would then almost certainly have been listed as the household head. But it is possible where a man was the head.
The scale of illegitimacy in Minas Gerais was considerably larger than in any region of Portugal. In Antonio Dias parish, for example, the illegitimacy rate varied regularly between one-quarter and one-half of all free births annually.58 This is reinforced by the wills prepared by women from 1749 to 1783. Of 25 wills examined, 13, or 52 percent, came from women who had had children out of wedlock—four of whom subsequently married. One reason for this high figure may be that most of these women were ex-slaves, which strongly suggests sexual exploitation.59 In another measure, the residential census data for the 12 Mineiro communities for 1831-1838, at least 16 percent of the children residing at home were born out of wedlock.60 While the type of evidence varies, each source confirms that the rate of illegitimacy was higher in Minas Gerais than in the north of Portugal, which in turn showed higher rates than the rest of that country.
To summarize, a higher proportion of Mineiro women remained single and had children out of wedlock than did northern Portuguese women. The lower Portuguese rate suggests a greater degree of social discipline, defined in terms of discouraging premarital sexual activities. This suggestion is reinforced by the distinction that women in northern Portugal waited longer to get married than their Mineiro counterparts and still the level of illegitimacy was comparatively low.
As for the factor of child abandonment, it appears that the number of children abandoned in Minas Gerais was substantial, but less than that documented for the city of Porto. The number of expostos in Antonio Dias parish increased after 1711 until 1809-1818, when it began to decline, probably due to the effects of outmigration. At the high point, 1799-1818, expostos amounted to 11 percent of all baptisms.61 The registry books used to maintain the list of abandoned children being subsidized by the municipal council demonstrate that in the 1770s at least 99 children were abandoned, while in the following decade the number jumped to 164.62 Northern Portugal had significantly higher levels of child abandonment, implying that there was less of a stigma attached to single women raising their children in Minas Gerais. It could also mean that women in Minas Gerais were better able to find financial support for their families and therefore were less likely to abandon their children.
Residential family structures in Minas Gerais also present a wide range of patterns, but the overriding tendency was to replicate some of the characteristics of the north of Portugal. This is very plainly evident in terms of the prevalence of simple or nuclear families. The nuclear family in Minas Gerais was somewhat more common than in the Portuguese north and apparently more comparable to the proportion found in the rest of Portugal. But this differential disappears when the larger number of single parents or abandoned spouses in Minas Gerais is accounted for. The result is a remarkably similar proportion of nuclear families headed by never-married adults.
In Portugal, households headed by single women were more common in the north than in the south, but even these figures pale compared with those for Minas Gerais. In Minas Gerais, the proportion of single mother-headed households often reached the double digits. For example, 14.6 percent of all households in the parish of Ouro Preto in 1838 were headed by single mothers. The figure for the nearby community of Cachoeira do Campo is more typical, however, at 8.8 percent. For the 12 Mineiro communities used in this study, 8.5 percent of all households were headed by single mothers with resident children (see table 11). The figures for female-headed households, of course, are significantly higher. For the sample in this study, 32.9 percent of the households were headed by women. Women, furthermore, constituted 53.4 percent of the free population.
Ethnic Comparisons
While it could be assumed that slavery had a deleterious impact on the free family, it would appear that the presence of slave women is not an adequate explanation for the social pattern of the residential household found in Minas Gerais. This is evident from the existence of the same patterns found in the north of Portugal—precisely the origin of most of the immigrants to the mining zones. If anything, slavery and the availability of women in subjugated roles probably only exacerbated the existing social tendencies toward illegitimacy and low rates of marriage.
This interpretation is reinforced by evidence that family structure did not differ significantly among races (see table 12). Creole black residential groupings tended toward a comparatively greater proportion of isolated households and a comparatively smaller proportion of simple or nuclear units, but the overall differences are not glaring. This is remarkable; it suggests that this aspect of social behavior was not as affected by race as might have been expected. Moreover, if race is used as an indicator of social class, then neither was class a crucial variable in determining family structure. The clear implication of this material is that black attitudes toward the formation of households were not measurably different from those of whites.
The area where differences were substantial was in the proportion of single mothers who headed their own households. The proportion of creole black women in that situation was more than double that of white women, almost certainly reflecting the greater exploitation of black women. While there were social differences between whites and blacks, such as age at marriage and child spacing, their definitions of the residential household bore a surprising similarity. The explanation for this convergence of residential family typologies is difficult to advance with certainty. It seems possible to suggest, however, that northern Portugal provided the broad configuration of residential family structure but that the specific details of that structure evolved from Mineiros’ interrelationships, in the context of the specific economic situation in Minas Gerais.
Taken as a whole, Mineiro society emerges with the same group of social traits as northern Portugal. This constellation includes a demographic predominance of free females, a high proportion of female-headed households, low rates of marriage, a higher-than-expected age at marriage, the tendency for single mothers to establish their own households, high rates of illegitimacy and child abandonment, and low proportions of nuclear families defined by marriage. This constellation of traits is a mirror of that found in Minho and Douro.
The central argument of this essay is that immigrants from Portugal to Minas Gerais came primarily from the north of Portugal, where household structure and residential family type differed from other parts of the country. These immigrants brought with them a particular set of social and cultural values, which defined the way they interacted with a social and economic environment that was, despite superficial differences, similar to the one they had left.
The economic situation in northern Portugal forced young men to seek their fortunes elsewhere. They came to constitute a labor pool prepared to move easily from one economic opportunity to the next. Their lives were characterized by migration, which continued in Brazil. In Minas Gerais their movements were also shaped by economic factors—new gold strikes or business opportunities.
In Minas Gerais as in northern Portugal, women stayed behind and formed the functional base of society. They headed their own households, often outside of wedlock; earned a living as best they could to support their households; and frequently had children and raised families. Women’s demographic predominance was perhaps the single most important aspect of their new socioeconomic environment. All races and classes were subject to the same demographic processes and responded in similar, though not exactly the same, fashion.
This relationship between regions of the metropole and its colony points to the need for further study of the Portuguese roots of colonial Brazilian society. The Mineiro family clearly owed much to the social environment of Minho and Douro. In the end, that is not surprising, given the continuous flow of people between the Old World and the New. The origins of the Mineiro family are to be found less on the Brazilian frontier, with its diversity of races, than on the crowded farms of Portugal’s struggling north.
Part of the research for this essay was conducted with the support of the Fulbright program and the Research and Creative Activities program of Cleveland State University. The author would like to express his gratitude to both for their assistance.
The research made use of the following archives: Arquivo da Curia de Mariana (ACM), Arquivo Nacional do Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (ANTT), Arquivo da Paroquia de Antonio Dias (APAD), Arquivo da Paroquia de Ouro Preto (APOP), the Arquivo Público Mineiro (APM), and the archive of the Servido do Patrimonio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, Ouro Preto (ASPHAN).
The historiography on the Brazilian family has grown enormously. See, for example, María Odila Leite de Silva Dias, Quotidiano e poder em São Paulo no sáculo XIX (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1984); Arlene Diaz and Jeff Stewart, “Occupational Class and Female-headed Households in Santiago Maior do Iguape, Brazil, 1835,” Journal of Family History 16:3 (1991). 299-313; Elizabeth A. Kuznesof, “The Role of the Female-headed Household in Brazilian Modernization: São Paulo, 1765-1835,” Journal of Social History 13 (1980), 589-613; idem., “The History of the Family in Latin America: A Critique of Recent Work,” Latin American Research Review 24:2 (1989), 168-86; Darrell E. Levi, The Prados of São Paulo, Brazil: An Elite Family and Social Change, 1840-1930 (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1987); Linda Lewin, Politics and Parentela in Paraíba: A Case Study of Family-based Oligarchy in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987); Maria Luiza Marcilio, A cidade de São Paulo: povoamento e população, 1750-1850 (São Paulo: Livraria Pioneira Editora, 1974); Kátia M. de Queirós Mattoso, “Slave, Free, and Freed Family Structures in Nineteenth-Century Salvador, Brazil,” Luso-Brazilian Review 25:1 (1988), 69-84; Laima Mesgravis, A Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo (1599-1884): contribuição ao estudo da assistência social no Brasil (São Paulo: Conselho Estadual de Cultura, 1974); Alida C. Metcalf, Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580-1822 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1992); Donald Ramos, “Marriage and the Family in Colonial Vila Rica,” HAHR 55:2 (May 1975), 200-25; idem., “Single and Married Women in Vila Rica, Brazil: 1754-1838” Journal of Family History 16:3 (1991), 261-82; Eni de Mesquita Samara, A família brasileira, 3d ed. (São Paulo: Conselho Estadual de Cultura, 1983); and Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva, Sistemas de casamento no Brasil colonial (São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz Editora, 1984).
Robert Rowland, “Sistemas familiares e padrões demográficos em Portugal: questões para urna investigação comparada,” Ler História 3 (1984), 24; Caroline B. Brettell, Homens que partem, mulheres que esperam [Men Who Migrate, Women Who Wait: Population and History in a Portuguese Parish], trans. Ana Mafalda Tello, Portugal de Perto no. 23 (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1991), 274.
Maria Norberta Bettencourt Amorim, Exploração dos róis de confessados duma paró-quia de Guimarães (1734–1760) (Guimarães: Centro Gráfico, 1983), 10; and Maria Norberta Simas Bettencourt Amorim, Guimarães, 1580–1819: estudo demográfico (Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigaçãn Científica, 1987), 464.
Robert Rowland, “Montaria e Ancora, 1827: duas freguesias do Noroeste segundo os livros de registo das companhias de ordenanças,” Studium Generale-Estudos Contemporâneos 2/3 (1982), 199-242, esp. 206.
For Coruche, see J. Manuel Nazareth and Fernando de Sousa, A demografia portuguesa em finais do Antigo Regime, Cadernos da Revista de História Económica e Social no. 4 (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa Editora, 1983), 18. For Salvatore de Magos, see idem., “Aspectos sociodemográficos de Salvador de Magos nos finais do século XVIII,” Análise Social 17:66 (1981-82), 326.
Teresa Ferreira Rodrigues, “Para o estudo dos róis de confessados: a freguesia de Santiago (1630-1680),” Nova História 3/4 (1985), 79-105, esp. 83.
Marcia Guttentag and Paul Secord, Too Many Women: The Sex Ratio Question (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1983).
J. Manuel Nazareth, “As inter-elações entre família e emigração em Portugal: estudo exploratório,” Economia e sociológia 23 (1977), 31-50, 45-46.
Rowland, “Montaria e Ancora,” 213.
Brettell, Homens que partem, 150.
Nazareth, “As inter-relações,” 45-46.
Nazareth and Sousa, A demografia portuguesa," 38-39. Percentages were extrapolated from data presented.
Rowland, “Sistemas familiares,” 26.
Brettell, Homens que partem, 119. In the years between 1862 and 1933, the average age for women in the central community of Pinheiros was 24, for men 26. Raul Iturra, “Casamento, ritual, e lucro: a produção dos produtores numa aldeia portuguesa (1862–83),” Ler História 5 (1985), 59–81, 72.
Nazareth and Sousa, “A demografia portuguesa,” 41.
Rowland, “Sistemas familiares,” 26–27.
Idem., “Montaria e Ancora,” 212.
João de Pina-Cabral, Filhos de Adão, filhas de Eva: a visão do mundo camponesa no Alto Minho [Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve], trans. Paulo Valverde, Portugal de Perto no. 19 (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1989), 95.
Brettell, Homens que partem, 272–82.
Ibid.
Ibid., 253–76.
Rowland, “Montaria e Ancora,” 215.
Nazareth and Sousa, “A demografia portuguesa,” 58.
Amorim, “Exploração dos róis,” 25.
Agostinho Rebello da Costa. Descripção typográfica e histórica da cidade do Porto (Porto, 1789; rev. ed., Porto: Livraria Progedior, 1945), 44.
Rowland, “Montaria e Ancora,” 213; Brettell, Homerts que partem, 172.
Nazareth and Sousa, “A demografia portuguesa,” 45.
Brettell, Homens que partem, 235.
Ibid., 243.
Amorim, Guimarães, 241.
Pina-Cabral, Filhos de Adão, 84.
No distinction is made here between natural children, whose parents could have married but did not, and “spurious"” children, whose parents, because of impediments and restrictions, could not have married legally.
Iturra, “Casamento, ritual, e lucro,” 68. For a fuller exploration of this issue see Iturra, “A reprodução no celibato,” Ler História 11 (1987), 95–105.
Carlota Maria Gonçalves Borges Landeiro, A vila de Penamacor no 1° quartel do sécula XVIII (ensato de demografia histórica) (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Demográficos, 1965). 55.
Maria de Lourdes A. C. M. C. do Carmo da Silva Neto, A freguesia de Nossa Senhora das Merces de Lishoa no 1° quartel do sáculo XVIII: ensato de demografía histórica (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Demográficos, 1967), 35.
Da Costa, Descripção typográfica e histórica, 44-48.
Amorim, Guimarães, 239.
The laws included those issued on Jan. 31, 1775; May 24, 1783; Mar. 31, 1787; June 5, 1800; Nov. 9, 1802; Mar. 18, 1805; Oct. 18, 1806; June 19, 1813; and Oct. 24, 1814. See Antonio Joaquim de Gouveia Pinto, Compilação das providencias que a bem da criação, e educação dos expostos ou engeitados (Lisbon: Imprensa Regia, 1820), 7, 9, 20, 27, 37, 41, 50.
Ibid., 51.
Brettell, Homens que partem, 271–72.
Peter Laslett, ed., Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 28-32.
Caroline Brettell relates a historical pattern whereby male-biased immigration leads to delayed marriage for women, permanent spinsterhood, high rates of illegitimacy, uxorilocal residence patterns, female heirship, and unusually lengthy birth intervals within fertility histories. Brettell, Leaving, Remaining, and Returning: The Multifaceted Portuguese Migratory System," in Portuguese Migration in Global Perspective, ed. David Higgs (Toronto: The Multicultural History Society of Toronto, 1990), 61-80, 69-70.
Manuel Cardozo, “The Brazilian Gold Rush,” The Americas 3 (Oct. 1946), 137-60; and Donald Ramos, A Social History of Ouro Preto: Stresses of Dynamic Urbanization in Colonial Brazil, 1695-1726" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Florida, 1972), 36-52.
Wills located in APAD, APOP, ASPHAN, and ACM.
ACM, Livro de testamentos, Itatiaia, 1770-1839, passim. Residents born in Portugal left 23 wills. All these testators were male, and 18 of them were born in the three northern provinces of Minho, Douro, and Trás-os-Montes. Again, the majority came from Minho.
Some nine hundred familiares were at work in Brazil in the late eighteenth century. Despite the importance of the gold-mining regions, comparatively few of them were posted in Minas Gerais. David Higgs, “O controle inquisitorial no Brasil colonial nos fins do século XVIII,” Anais da X Reunião da Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa Histórica, 122-24.
The Inquisition of Lisbon’s jurisdiction included all the Portuguese colonies as well as the Lisbon region. The Inquisition’s collection of documents, housed in ANTT, contains more than 36,000 processes; they are indexed only by the name of the accused and a date, often that of arrest or denunciation. This study examined more than 350 processes to identify some 180 relating to Brazil, and of these, about 75 relating to Minas Gerais. For a description of the collection, see Ann Pescatello, “Relatorio from Portugal: The Archives and Libraries of Portugal and Their Significance for the Study of Brazilian History,” Latin American Research Review 5:2 (Summer 1970), 17-52.
Law of Mar. 20, 1720, quoted in David Higgs, “Portuguese Migration Before 1800,” in Higgs, Portuguese Migration in Global Perspective, 18.
ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, 9690, João Teixeira, 1765. Because the Inquisition documents comprise the interrogation records, they are written in the third person.
Ibid., 8018, João Rodrigues Mesquita, 1735.
Ibid., 16524, 8670, Agostinho José de Azeredo, 1741.
Ibid., 1476, Andre da Veiga Freire, 1720.
Ibid., 695, Luis Alves Monteiro, 1713.
ANTT, Santo Officio, Habilitações, maço 95, dl. 1604, JOÃO.
This mobility, along with the vagaries of Portuguese and Brazilian name choices, has complicated to a remarkable degree our ability to use traditional historical family reconstitution methods with any hope of attaining the rigor and neatness of similar studies conducted in Europe and the United States. The problem probably has less to do with recordkeeping than with the magnitude of the mobility, complicated by the practice of giving each of several children different surnames. Just to add a touch of pimenta, the children apparently had some freedom to change names at their confirmation, although the frequency of this practice is not yet known. In one case, for example, Miguel da Cunha on his confirmation changed his name to João Batista. ANTT, Inquisição de Lisboa, 8018.
APM, Recenseamento da população de São Gonçalo de Baço, 1839. The census was actually conducted late in 1838, as the certifying official indicates.
APM, Codice 2050 (Delegacia Fiscal), passim.
Iraci del Nero da Costa, Vila Rica: população (1719-1826) (São Paulo: IPE-USP, 1979), 222-27.
Based on wills found in APAD, APOP, ASPHAN, and ACM. These figures seem to be typical for eighteenth-century Brazil; the illegitimacy ratios of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are comparable. In Rio de Janeiro in 1779, the combined proportion of illegitimate and abandoned (exposto) baptisms was 12 to 19 percent in the rural areas and about 45 percent in the urban area. Renato Pinto Venancio, “A infáncia abandonada no Brasil colonial: o caso do Rio de Janeiro no século XVIII,” Anais do Musen Paulista 35 (1986-87), 221–32. A rate of 39 percent has been reported for São Paulo between 1741 and 1845, comprising 16 percent abandoned and 23 percent illegitimate. Maria Luiza Marcilio, A cidade de São Paulo, 157-59.
Children of all ages residing with a single female parent numbered 714, with 4,470 resident children overall. APM, Recenseamento da populaçào de São Gonçalo de Baço, 1839.
Francisco Vidal Luna and Iracidel Nero da Costa, “Demografia histórica de Minas Gerais,” Revista Brasileira de Estados Políticos 58 (1984), 24. These figures seem low compared not only with Porto but with other areas of Brazil. In São Paulo, the proportion of abandoned children dropped from an average of 17 to 25 percent between 1800 and 1825 to a range of 10 to 21 percent between 1831 and 1845, to less than 10 percent after 1851, and finally reached insignificant rates after 1866. Laima Mesgravis, A Santa Casa de Misericórdia de São Paulo, 172-73. Maria Luiza Marcilio reports that in São Paulo between 1741 and 1845, expostos accounted for 15.99 percent of all free births. A cidade de São Paulo, 157-59.
APM, Camara Municipal de Ouro Preto, Registros de Expostos, Codices 88 and 111, passim. The registries for 1774, 1778, and 1788 are only partial.
