The Siqueiras
The convergence
Fernanda Elias Thompson's father, José Siqueira da Cruz (1940–2021), was born in Piauí, the eighth of eight children of Aprígio Siqueira da Cruz (1907–c.2002) and Alice da Costa e Silva (1908–c.1990).1
The Aprígio side of the family — Aprígio's parents Luzia Maria Siqueira and Manoel Antônio Da Cruz — is recorded in the family GEDCOM but not in the Miranda document. Aprígio's line is the Siqueira / Cruz / Da Cruz stream. It is the surname Fernanda's brothers, Marcelo and Gustavo, carry.2
Alice's side is different. Alice was the daughter of Rosendo Pereira da Silva Araújo (b. 1873) and Ângela Maria da Costa e Silva (1876–1916). The family GEDCOM lists Ângela's surname as Da Conceição — a Catholic devotional name common among Brazilian women — but the Árvore Genealógica de Joaquim Felipe Nery de Miranda (entry #558) records her birth surname as da Costa e Silva, and the matching death year (1916) at Fazenda Saco, Rio Grande do Piauí, confirms it is the same person.3
Rosendo Pereira da Silva Araújo is not the same person as Rosendo Siqueira da Cruz. The latter (b. c. 1938) is Fernanda's uncle — one of Aprígio and Alice's sons. He is almost certainly named after his maternal grandfather, the great-grandfather Rosendo Pereira da Silva Araújo (b. 1873). Two distinct people; this chapter keeps them distinguished.4
Tracing back through Alice
Through Alice da Costa e Silva, the line reaches deep into 19th-century Piauí. Her father Rosendo Pereira da Silva Araújo was the son of Raymundo Pereira da Silva (1832–1896) and Amália Maria da Costa e Silva (1839–1918) — entry #540.5
Her mother Ângela Maria's parents were José Fabrício da Costa e Silva (b. 1806) and Rufina Liberalina da Costa e Silva (d. 1866) — entry #563.6
The patriarch — and the convergence
Joaquim Felipe Nery de Miranda (died 1828), married to Quitéria Vieira de Carvalho, is the root of the 294-page family tree compiled c. 2016 by his descendants and titled in his name. He sits at entry #576. Two of his children matter for Fernanda's lineage:7
- Francisco Félix de Miranda (1808–1834) — entry #574. Despite his short life of twenty-six years, Francisco fathered Raymundo Pereira da Silva (1832), whose grandson would be Rosendo Pereira da Silva Araújo, whose daughter would be Alice.
- José Felipe Nery de Miranda (1799–1862) — entry #572. José Felipe fathered Rufina Liberalina, whose daughter would be Amália Maria da Costa e Silva (Raymundo's wife) — and whose other daughter Ângela Maria would marry Rosendo Pereira da Silva Araújo (Raymundo's son).
The result of this generational arithmetic: Alice da Costa e Silva's father Rosendo and her mother Ângela Maria were second cousins once removed — both descendants of Joaquim Felipe Nery de Miranda. Alice is therefore a double descendant of the patriarch, through two of his children whose grandchildren intermarried.8
This kind of consanguineous marriage was not unusual in 19th-century rural Brazil. Cousins married cousins across the small landowning families of Piauí and Minas Gerais, in part because the pool of socially acceptable matches in each município was small, in part because keeping land within a family network was a deliberate strategy. The Miranda compendium records dozens of similar same-family marriages across its 294 pages.
What the document does not say
The Árvore Genealógica de Joaquim Felipe Nery de Miranda contains no information about the Elias side of Fernanda's family. Maria Bárbara Elias Siqueira — Fernanda's mother — appears in entry #475 as the wife of José Siqueira da Cruz, but with no parents or grandparents traced. She is treated by the compiler as an in-law marrying into the Miranda tree. The Elias-side ancestry (João Elias from Almishtaya, Syria; Carmelita Gonçalves Mol of Acaiaca; Vô Tony and Vó Fia) belongs to the other half of this book and is documented separately in The Syrian Arrival, Tony and Fia, Carmelita and the Mol Line, and Acaiaca.9
Aprígio Siqueira da Cruz's own ancestors — the Siqueira / Da Cruz line proper — are also not in the Miranda document, because Aprígio (like Maria Bárbara two generations later) was an in-law from outside the Miranda tree. He is the husband of a Miranda descendant. His parents Luzia Maria Siqueira and Manoel Antônio Da Cruz are recorded in the family GEDCOM but their own ancestry has not yet been traced in this archive.10
Artifacts
Photos, scans, and documents that back this chapter. Each carries a SHA256 fingerprint so the file can be independently verified as unchanged since upload, and a short code — the tiny adjective-noun pair below each card — for compact reference (e.g. lineage.sent.li/a/sage-pine).