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  • Family, Stability, and Respectability: Seven Generations of Africans and Afro-descendants in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais
  • Douglas C. Libby (bio)

This article focuses on the history of an Afro-descendant family over its seven generations in one region of Minas Gerais. Although it is notoriously difficult to trace families founded by slaves, this one is an exception: it has proved possible to trace this family over a century and a half, and with a remarkable level of detail, because its members mostly stayed in one place. The implications of their permanence go beyond mere genealogy or family reconstitution to challenge long-standing historiographical perspectives. Over the years many scholars have agreed that Brazilian colonial and early imperial society was characterized by the near-constant movement of all segments of the population. New frontiers opened by agriculture, ranching, and mining attracted some members of the elite, but also beckoned the less favored with new opportunities.1 This incessant movement has even been touted as an impediment to the advancement of family history in Brazil.2 [End Page 371]

Quitéria Moreira de Carvalho, José Fernandes da Silva, and several of their descendants, however, chose to stay put in the town of São José (present-day Tiradentes). In spite of what the historiography has told us, their experience was not unique. Many families throughout the colonial and provincial periods remained in one place or community over generations. Recent studies based on family reconstitution and inspired by micro-history have uncovered multigenerational stories strongly centered in a single locality or region.3 These works invite scholars to reckon with a reality that saw some segments of the population cling to one place and a relatively certain future rather than take their chances on the frontiers. A somewhat elusive middling stratum was one of those segments. As Zephyr Frank has so clearly shown, manumitted Africans and their freeborn and freed descendants in Brazil could prosper as small slaveholders and entrepreneurs up to the termination of the transatlantic slave trade.4

Pre-Republican Brazilian historiography has mostly ignored middling social groups, and the notion that permanence contributed to stability for families over several generations has never been explored.5 Yet permanence at the family level was a viable survival strategy that could boost families’ social standing and respectability within the community. Communal trust built over time could lead to posts and contracts with the local administration. Such trust was developed in several ways. Members of middling families, particularly women, were chosen frequently by other families to stand as godparents to their infants, a mark of respect that further enhanced their standing within and connection to the community. Practicing a mechanical trade, as many of the middling groups did, offered stability and opportunities for socioeconomic mobility, including the possibility of securing service contracts with the local government. Finally, literacy was another mark of middling status and upward social mobility. The family of Quitéria and José illustrates all these pathways to social mobility, from their permanence in one town to the literacy of most of their male family members. The story of their family reveals much about middling social strata [End Page 372] and social mobility in pre-Republican Brazil, particularly among Africans and Afro-descendants.

The family narrative, unfolding over 160 years, is centered in the town of São José do Rio das Mortes. Located in the southeast of Minas Gerais, São José was an important center of Brazilian gold mining in the early eighteenth century. Before mid century, the provisioning of domestic markets became the mainstay of the regional economy, and it remained so throughout the nineteenth century, t. As the parish seat and nucleus of municipal administration, São José maintained its urban character over time, sustaining numerous commercial establishments as well as tradesmen and their workshops.6 Generation after generation of Quitéria and José’s descendants thus found in this small town an amenable environment in which to maintain a middling social standing and pursue their social and economic ambitions.

The family reconstitution developed in this article is part of a broader research effort that relies on family history to achieve a deeper and more nuanced...

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