1 On the regional split of Portuguese family structure see Bacci, M. Livi, A century of Portuguese fertility (Princeton, 1971)Google Scholar, Rowland, R., ‘Sistemas familiares e padrões demográficos em Portugal: questões para uma investigaçāo comparada’, Ler História 3 (1984), 3–32Google Scholar, and Nunes, J. A., ‘On household composition in northwestern Portugal. Some critical remarks and a case study’, Sociologia Ruralis 26 (1986), 77–96Google Scholar. For a study of elite Portuguese families see Boone, J. L. III, ‘Parental investment and elite family structure in preindustrial states: a case study of late medieval-early modern Portuguese genealogies’, American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 859–78Google Scholar. Metcalf, A. C., in Family and frontier in colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822 (Berkeley, 1992), pp. 96–7, discusses the provisions in Portuguese law that favored elite families.Google Scholar

2 A titled nobility did accompany the Brazilian empire (1822–1889) but, according to conventional historical wisdom, key privileges of the nobility, such as the right to establish entailed estates, were abolished. In a recent article, M. B. Nizza da Silva illustrates that entailed estates were more common in colonial Brazil than historians have previously thought and that they were not necessarily abolished at Independence. See Nizza da Silva, M. B., ‘Herança no Brasil colonial: os bens vinculados’, Revista de Ciências Históricas (Porto) 5 (1990), 291–319.Google Scholar

3 Freyre, G., in The masters and the slaves [Casa-Grande & Senzala]: a study in the development of Brazilian civilization, trans. Putnam, Samuel (2nd ed. rev., New York, 1966)Google Scholar, argued that Brazilian families were large, extended, and patriarchal. This view has long been held as the classic statement of Brazilian family structure. As demographic studies began to be done in the 1970s, however, it became apparent that the majority of the population lived in nuclear families or in households headed by women. See de Mesquita Samara, E., As mulheres, o poder, e afamilia: São Paulo, século XIX (São Paulo, 1989)Google Scholar, and ‘A história da família no Brasil,’ Revista Brasileira de História 9 (1988–1989), 7–35, for an excellent critique of Freyre and a review of this literature.Google Scholar

4 Metcalf explicitly differentiates family life by social class and argues for the importance of doing so in Family and frontier, which analyses planter, peasant, and slave families. Other studies which have limited themselves to specific groups include Marcílio, M. L., Caiçara: terra e população: estudo de demografia histórica e da história social de Ubatuba (São Paulo, 1986)Google Scholar, which describes peasant families; Slenes, R., ‘Escravidão e familia: padrões de casamento e estabilidade familiar numa comunidade escrava (Campinas, século XIX)’, Estudos Econômicos 17 (1987), 217–27Google Scholar, which studies slave families; and Borges, D., The family in Bahia, Brazil, 1870–1945 (Stanford, 1992) which, despite the somewhat misleading title, analyses elite families.Google Scholar

5 For a fuller description of these communities see Brettell, C. B., Men who migrate, women who wait: population and history in a Portuguese parish (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar, and Metcalf, , Family and frontier.Google Scholar

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7 O'Neill, B., Social inequality in a Portuguese hamlet (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, de Pina-Cabral, J., Sons of Adam, daughters of Eve (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, Cole, S., Women of the Praia: work and lives in a Portuguese coastal community (Princeton, 1991)Google Scholar, and Kelley, H., ‘Unwed mothers and household reputation in a Spanish Galician community’, American Ethnologist 18 (1991), 565–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, all document the high levels of illegitimacy found in parts of Portugal and Spain compared to the rest of western Europe.

8 The high ratios of illegitimacy are reported in Kuznesof, E. A., ‘Sexual politics, race, and bastard-bearing in nineteenth-century Brazil: a question of culture or power?’ Journal of Family History 16 (1991), 241–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, de Queirós Mattoso, K., Família e sociedade na Bahia do século XIX (São Paulo, 1988)Google Scholar, Marcílio, M. L., A cidade de São Paulo:povoamento e população, 1750–1850 (São Paulo, 1974)Google Scholar, Ramos, D., ‘Single and married women in Vila Rica, Brazil, 1754–1838’, Journal of Family History 16 (1991), 261–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Venâncio, R. P., Ilegitimadade e concubinato no Brasil colonial: Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo, 1760–1800 (São Paulo, 1986).Google Scholar

9 While the number of foundlings recorded in the registers of Lanheses was small, within the conçelho of Viana do Castelo during the first half of the nineteenth century, the number of abandoned children was by no means insignificant. See Brettell, C. B. and Feijó, R., ‘Foundlings in nineteenth-century Portugal: public welfare and family strategies’, in Enfance abandonné et société en Europe, XlVe-XIXe siècles (Rome, 1991), 273–300, for further discussion.Google Scholar

10 See O'Neill, , Social inequalityGoogle Scholar, Pina-Cabral, , Sons of AdamGoogle Scholar, and Cole, , Women of the Praia.Google Scholar

11 Brettell, , Men who migrate.Google Scholar

12 This sample over-represents the stable and established free population of Santana, and therefore the results of this record linkage must be approached with that in mind.

13 José was already 112 days old at his baptism; his mother Anna Roza was the daughter of a surgeon of the city of São Paulo. His godparents came from slaveholding families, possibly linked to his parents through kinship ties (Baptism of José 26–12–1820, Livros Paroquiais de Santana de Parnaíba, Arquivo da Cúria Diosesana de Jundiaí (hereafter ACDJ).

14 Will, Rev. Felippe de Santiago Xavier, 1793, Registro de Testamentos, vol. 6, 2–8, 456–2, Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo (hereafter AESP).

15 Brettell, and Feijó, , ‘Foundlings in nineteenth-century Portugal’.Google Scholar

16 This is a complex issue. Brettell provides further elaboration in Men who migrate. See Kelley, H., ‘Unwed mothers,’ for a discussion in the context of Spanish Galicia.Google Scholar

17 Boone, , ‘Parental investment’.Google Scholar

18 da Silva Dias, J. S., Correntes de sentimento religioso em Portugal (Coimbra, 1960).Google Scholar

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21 See de Almeida, C. M., Codigo Phillipino, ou Ordenaçōes e lets do reino de Portugal (24th edn, Rio de Janeiro, 1870; reprint edn, Lisbon, 1985)Google Scholar (hereafter Ordenações), Livro iv, Tit. xcii and xciii, and especially note 1, p. 944.

22 Metcalf, , Family and frontier, 70–7 and 71–2Google Scholar, and Lewin, L., ‘Natural and spurious children in Brazilian inheritance law from colony to empire: a methodological essay’, The Americas 48 (1992), 351–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Arquivo Distrital de Viana do Castelo, Tabelião João José de Fonseca, Livro 25, Fl. 16.

24 Arquivo da Paróquia de Lanheses, Livro de Testamentos.

25 Inv. Domingos Fernandes, 1653. In Departamento do Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo, Inventários e testamentos (São Paulo, 1895–), vol. 27, 69–119.Google Scholar

26 Inv. Salvador Garcia Pontes Lumbria, 1747, Inventários do Primeiro Ofício, 14,519, 685–73, AESP.

27 Will, Rev. Manoel Mendes de Almeida, 1777, Registro de Testamentos, vol. 3, 39–48, 455–1, AESP.Google Scholar

28 According to Portuguese law, the natural children of peasant men were entitled to an equal share (legítima) of their fathers' property, but the natural children of the nobility were not. Natural children of the nobility could, however, receive simple bequests from their fathers' wills. Ordenações Livro IV, Tit. XCII and XCIII.

29 Ordenações, Livro IV, Tit. XLVI and XLVIII.

30 Ordenações, Livro IV, Tit. XLVII.

31 Ordenações, Livro IV, Tit. XCVI.

32 Ordenações, Livro IV, Tit. C.

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36 Cole, , Women of the PraiaGoogle Scholar. The centrality of women in household formation and inheritance is also characteristic of coastal Galicia in northwestern Spain; see Lison-Tolosana, C., ‘The ethics of inheritance’, in Peristiany, J. G. ed., Mediterranean family structures (Cambridge, 1976)Google Scholar, and Kelley, , ‘Unwed mothers’.Google Scholar

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40 Metcalf, , ‘Fathers and sons’, ‘Women and means’, and Family and frontier, 87–119Google Scholar. Nazzari finds similar strategies in the city of São Paulo; see Disappearance of the dowry.

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