Journal of

History &
SEARCHING FOR THE SLAVE FAMILY
IN COLONIAL BRAZIL:
A Reconstruction from S%oPaulo

Alida C. Metcalf

ABSTRACT: TItis article reconstructs slave family Ige in a rural town in which a large
ntiniber of slaves married, slave wonren had high fertility, and slaves lived primarily in
nuclear families. The marriage and fertility rates of slaves lag behind those of the free
population, but do not dirfer radicallyfrom them. Thisportrait ofslavefamily Ige contrasts
with the conrnion portrayal of slavefamilies in Brazil in which historians report that few
slaves married and slave fertility was low. Despife the demographic similarities between
slave andfreefamilies. the key dgerences between the slave and thefree populations rested
on the niasterk legal right to own slaves as property. Because slaves were property, the
Portuguese laws of inheritance mandated the division of slaves among the heirs of the
deceased master. Probatejudges and heirs often broke up slavefamilies; thus the nrortality
of masters severely affected the ability of slavefaniilies to survive over time.

Through the analysis of censuses, parish
registers, property inventories, and planta-
tion lists, most Brazilian historians now
agree that many more slaves lived in fami-
lies than previously thought. Yet no con-
sensus exists on whether it was common for
Journal of Family History
Volume 16, Number 3, pages 283-297.
Copyright 0 1991 by JAI Press Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
ISSN: 0363-1990.
slaves to marry, what kinds of families
slaves lived in, whether planters con-
sciously encouraged or discouraged slaves
from forming families, or whether slave
families survived over time. In part,
disagreement stems from the fact that
slavery appeared in virtually all regions in
Alida C. hfetcay i s Associate Professor of Ilistory,
Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas. Her research
deals nith ruralfamily life in eighteenth-centuryBrazil.
284
Brazil, each unique, for over 300 years. In
such diverse areas, the demography of
slavery varied due to factors such as the rate
of the slave trade, whether the economy
was expanding or contracting, the size of
slaveholdings, and the character of the
region-i.e., mining district, ranching
frontier, established plantation zone, or
coastal city. Demographic analysis of slave
populations thus has yielded remarkably
different pictures of slave marriage, family
life, and fertility. As this article illustrates,
unique patterns of slave family life did
typify the disparate regions of Brazil, but
these dissimilarities should not obscure the
common traits of slavery.
This article reconstructs slave family life
in Santana de Parnaiba, a rural town
roughly comparable to a modern county,
in the captaincy of S5o Paulo. In this town
a large number of slaves married, bore
children, and lived in nuclear families. This
portrait of slave family life contrasts with
the common portrayal of slave families in
the northeastern sugar plantation region
(Schwartz 1985) or in the urban cities
(Karasch 1987). When marriage and
fertility rates of slaves in this town are
compared to those of the free population,
the rates of slaves lag behind those of the
free, but do not differ radically from them.
This suggests that slavery placed con-
straints on the ability of slaves to form
families that, if they had been formed
freely, probably would have resembled
those of the free population.
The major constraint placed on slaves
that differentiated them from the free
population rested on the master's legal
right to own slaves as property. Quite apart
from the physical control that masters
wielded over their slaves, because slaves
were property, the Portuguese laws of
inheritance immediately went into effect
when slaveowners died. These laws of
inheritance mandated the division of slaves
JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16/No. 311991
between the heirs (i.e., all children) of the ,
deceased. At inheritance, slave families
were broken up; thus the mortality of
masters dramatically affected the ability of
slave families to survive over time. This
aspect of slavery affected slaves and their
families everywhere in Brazil, regardless of
the region, the century, or the demography
of the slave population.
The town studied, Santana de Parnaiba,
contained three parishes throughout the
colonial period, each of which today is a
separate town. The colonial town lays near
the city of SZo Paulo on the Tiete River.
In 1820, it had a population of 7,090, 27
percent of whom were slaves. The slave-
owners of the town owned on average 6.8
slaves who were used primarily as agricul-
tural laborers on small and medium-sized
farms. Seventy-three percent of the slaves
in the town were creole slaves, while 27
percent had been born in Africa, the
majority in Angola and the Congo. Of the
free population, peasant farmers who did
not own slaves made up the majority of the
town. Descended from Indians, mestizos,
Portuguese, and free blacks, peasant
farmers accounted for 54 percent of the
total population and 74 percent of the free
population in 1820. Slave famiiies
resembled the families of the free peasantry
in structure, fertility, and marriage rates.'
In Santana de Parnaiba, unlike British
America, slaves married without restric-
tions in the parish church.* While histori-
ans suggest that few slaves married in Brazil
(Schwartz 1985, pp. 385-394; Karasch
1987, pp. 287-294), this was not the case for
the town of Santana de Parnaiba. All of the
sources used reflect to some degree the civil
status of slaves. The manuscript censuses
of the town listed the slaves by name and
marital status. Property inventories usually
declared which slaves were married and to
whom. The marriage registers which
survive from one parish, Santana, for the
Searching for the Slave Family in Colonial Brazil 285

eighteenth century, clearly record the Table I

marriages that the priests celebrated
between slaves.
Many slaves married during the eight-
eenth century, at least in the parish of
Santana. In that parish, 38 percent of all
marriages involved slaves. But from 1720
to 1820, the proportion of slave marriages
gradually declined from 44 percent of all
marriages in the 1730s to 29 percent by the
1810s. While it might appear initially that
the declining percentage of slave marriages
can be explained by changes in the
population of the parish, i.e., that slaves
declined as a proportion of the population,
more factors apparently were at work. For
the decades of the 1770s, 1 7 9 0 ~and~ 1810s
it is possible to calculate the crude marriage
rates for slaves and free persons in the
parish of Santana by linking the marriage
registers with the censuses. In the 1770s
Crude Marriage Rates, Santana Parish
1775 1798 1820
Slaves 6.6 7.0 7.4
Free 6.7 9.4 9.2
(Marriages per 1000 Individuals)
Source: Average number of marriages 1770-1779, 1790-1799,
1811-1820 and 1775,1798, and 1820 censuses.
slaves actually had a marriage rate
comparable to that of free persons. In the
1790s and 181Os, however, the marriage
rate for free persons outpaced slave
marriages in the parish church (see Table
I). The visible decline in slave marriages in
the early nineteenth century thus cannot
solely be explained by a declining propor-
tion of slaves in the parish. Since the slave
marriage rate itself declined, other factors,
perhaps masters or the church, discouraged
slaves from marrying.

80 --

-- -.+------------
---- ----i--------- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - - -
+

20 --
% Never Married
0 I I II

-Slave Women --+-- Free Women

Source: 1820 Census of Parnaiba

(N= 555 slave women; 1737 free women)
Figure 1. Ever Married and Never Married Slave and Free Women, Parnaiba, 1820
286
100
20 --
+---
-----____
----___-f--------------------+.---------------------
% Never Married
I
0 --
1- Slave Men
Source: 1820 Census of Parnaiba
(N= 651 slave men; 1206 free men)
figure 2. Ever Married and Never Married Slave and Free Men, Parnaiba, 1820
These crude marriage rates correspond
to what the census tells us about the
number of married slaves in the town
compared to the number of married free
individuals. The censuses reveal that while
many slaves were married, not as many
slaves married as did free persons. In the
town in 1820, for example, 448 slaves over
the age of fifteen were married, or 37
percent of all slaves, compared to 1,622 free
persons over the age of fifteen, or 55
percent of all free person^.^ When the
proportions of men and women among the
slave and free populations are examined,
an important difference comes to light. A
much lower proportion of slave men
married than free men. As is illustrated in
Figures 1 and 2, fewer slaves married than
free persons but slave men lagged farther
behind free men than slave women behind
JOURNALOF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16/No. 311991
% Ever Married
1
I
I
1
--+-- Free Men I
free women. As is evident from the
population pyramid (Figure 3), this
disparity emerged from the different age
and sex structure of the slave and free
populations. Among slaves, men outnum-
bered women in virtually all age cohorts;
among the free, women outnumbered men.
Thus, slave men and free women had the
hardest time finding marriage partners?
Historians do agree that few slaves in
Brazil married slaves who belonged to
different masters, at least in the rural areas
(SIenes 1987, p. 220; Schwartz 1985, p.
383). Here Parnaiba appears to be typical,
for almost all slave marriages in Santana
parish, 94 percent, occurred between slaves
of the same master.’ Masters with few
slaves may well have discouraged their
slaves from marrying, a factor which may
account for the paucity of slave marriages
Searching for the Slave family in Colonial Brazil 287

0
N
co
c

a'a
0

5
a
'
1
0

..-
C
.-
0
-a
3
0.
0
a
288 JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16/No. 3/1991

Table 2
Slave and Free Marriages, Santana Parish, 1730-1820
Brides
~

Free Free Free

Slave Indian Black White
Grooms N % N % N % N %

Slave 225 a9 14 45 42 49 0 0
Free Indian 11 4 11 36 2 2 1 0
Free Black 17 7 6 19 34 40 6 1
Free White 0 0 0 0 8 9 498 99
Total 253 100 31 100 86 100 505 100

Source: Slave and Free Marriage Registers, Parish of Santana, Decades 1730, 1750, 1770, 1790, and 1810.

between slaves of different masters. This is
a major difference between slavery in Brazil
and the United States. In the latter “broad
marriages” were not uncommon. These
were marriages of slaves who lived on
different estates and who were allowed to
visit their spouses (Gutman 1976, pp. 131-
142; Kulikoff 1986, pp. 352-380). Those few
slaves in Brazil who married off the estate
tended to wed slaves who belonged to the
kin of their masters. Ties between the
families of the masters then facilitated the
maintenance of slave families.6
Slaves, like the free, overwhelmingly
married within their class. Eighty-nine
percent of slave brides wedded slave men,
leaving only eleven percent who married
free Indian or free black men (Table 2). For
free white women, the marriage pattern is
even more striking. For the brides for
whom the parish priest listed no social
status (meaning that he presumed them
white) none married slaves and only one
percent wedded free black or free Indian
men. Still, a significant portion of slaves
did marry free persons, especially slave men
who were more likely than slave women to
wed spouses from the free population.
Twenty percent of the slave grooms
wedded free Indian or free black women.
Perhaps the abundance of free women in
Parnaiba or the greater ease with which
slave women obtained their freedom made
it possible for slave men to marry free
women. Such a marriage held major
advantages for slaves. Most of the free
blacks whom slaves married lived with the
same master, usually as a servant or a
retainer.7 Families thus remained together.
But more importantly, even if a man
remained a slave, his children, born of a
free wife, would join the growing free black
population.
The data from Parnaibashow that slaves
married according to canon law (se; Silva
1980) and with the blessing of their masters.
Whether this was unique to Parnaiba,
which seems unlikely, or due to the
excessively zealous priests who lived there,
o r a characteristic of the eighteenth
century, or to the kind of economy found
in Parnaiba, awaits confirmation by
further comparative analysis of other
Brazilian communities.
A second unusual feature of slave life in
Parnaiba centers on the fertility of slave
women which does not appear to differ
significantly from that of free women. The
linking of parish baptismal records with the
census data allows us to calculate the crude
Searching for the Slave Family in Colonial Brazil
birth rate8 and the general fertility rate' for
slave and free women in Santana parish in
1820. The crude birth rate reached 53.1 for
slaves and 56.1 for the free. This high birth
rate is likewise reflected in the general
fertility rate in which slave women had a
rate of 197 births per 1,000 women at risk;
free women had a rate of 214. Fertility may
have even been higher for both slave and
free women because the data reflect
baptisms, not actual births. Priests bap-
tized babies from one to three weeks old,
thus those infants who died in the first days
or weeks of life, before baptism, are not
recorded in the baptismal registers.
The similarity between the fertility rates
of slave and free women in Santana parish
may be explained by the fact that the parish
had a slave population that was 85 percent
creole. In predominantly creole slave
populations, the effects of the African slave
trade on the sex and age structure of the
slave population are muted. For example,
the ratio of creole male slaves to creole
female slaves in Parnaiba was 103 men per
100 women. But among African slaves, the
sex ratio was 164 men per 100 women.
Because Brazilian-born slaves predomi-
nated in the town, a more equal ratio of
male to female slaves prevailed than has
been found in other Brazilian regions. This
fact largely accounts for the similarity
between the fertility of slave and free
women. Elsewhere in Brazil, slave fertility
was much lower."
The slaves of Santana de Parnaiba lived
predominantly in three types of families:
nuclear families, matrifocal families, and
solitary families. Polygamous families,
common in Africa especially among
wealthier men, are impossible to discern (if
they existed at all) in Parnaiba. The
possibility that polygyny existed in slave
populations cannot be rejected, for Hig-
man (1976, pp. 165-171) finds polygamous
families in the Caribbean. Complex slave
289
families occasionally formed in Parnaiba,
but as will be shown, could not endure over
time. Nuclear families constituted the most
common slave family type, followed by
matrifocal families. Analysis of manuscript
censuses in other communities in S5o
Paulo, such as Lorena and Bananal, sug-
gest that these three family types are char-
acteristic of the region as a whole (Costa,
Slenes, and Schwartz 1987; Motta, n.d.).
Slaves married in their twenties, women
on the average at 22 years; men at 29 years.
Once married, slaves formed nuclear
families. The most important factor
affecting the character of these new families
was the wealth of the master. Slaves who
belonged to masters who owned many
slaves found it easier to form nuclear
families (Costa, Slenes, and Schwartz 1987;
Graham 1976, pp. 382402; Gutman 1976,
pp. 45-61; Schwartz 1985, pp. 395-399).
The predominance of nuclear families is
easily seen on the large estates of Parnaiba,
such as those of Manoel Correa Penteado,
Rodrigo Bicudo Chassim, and Domingos
Rodrigues de Fonseca Leme, the largest
slaveowners in eighteenth-century Parna-
iba." By combining the lists of slaves from
the inventories of these estates, all settled
within a ten year period (1738-1749), a
picture of slave family life on large estates
emerges. As illustrated in Table 3,88 percent
Table 3
Slave Families on Three Large Estates
~~~
# of # of
Households Slaves
Families N % N %
Nuclear 46 a8 172 74
5 10 21 9
Single Parent
Complex 1 2 3 1
Solitary _ - 30 16
Total 52 100 234 100
Source: Estates of DomingosRdrigues de Fonseca Leme, 1 738,
Rodrigo k u d o Chassim, 1743, and Manoel Correa
Penteado, 1745.
290
of the slave families conformed to nuclear
families; 74 percent of the slaves on the
three estates lived in such families.
The first census of Parnaiba which
recorded information on slaves, that of
1775, suggests that the majority of the
slaves in the town did not live on large
estates. Slave plantations where more than
50 slaves lived and worked was the
experience of only 135 slaves, or 11 percent
of the slave population in 1775. On the
other hand, those slaveowners with more
than ten slaves, 36 in all in 1775, owned 700
slaves or 59 percent of all slaves in the town.
The average size of the slave labor force of
this elite reached only 19.4 slaves. Given the
ownership patterns of eighteenth-century
Parnaiba, then, most slaves did not live on
large plantations. Therefore, the slave
family patterns visible in Table 3 cannot be
accepted as representative for all slaves.
Matrifocal families were a second
common family structure for slaves in
Parnaiba, particularly for those who lived
on smaller farms with fewer slaves. Among
Agostinha Rodrigues’s 22 slaves, only two
slave families appeared in her inventory of
1757, both matrifocal families: Luzia, a
creole woman of 40 and her two children,
and Elena, a creole woman of 20, with her
daughter Ursula.” In Barbara Pais’
inventory, only three slave families are
visible among her eighteen slaves, all
matrifocal families: Roza with her ten-
year-old daughter, Maria with her two
children, and Angela with her four
~hi1dren.I~
According to the baptismal register for
the parish of Santana in 1820, 51 percent
of the slave babies baptized had unknown
fathers. Apparently haIf of slave children
began their lives as the children of single
mothers, living in matrifocal families.
Some, but not all, of these children were
the offspring of white men who wished to
keep their paternity secret or who never
JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16”. 3/1991
knew of the existence of their slave
children. Some fathers, on learning of their
paternit ,did free their children, but others
did not. ?Such
l
children grew up as mulatto
slaves. Thus, slave women created matri-
focal families composed of themselves and
their children, while the father or fathers of
their children remained nebulous figures at
the fringes of the family.
Undoubtedly, the sexual exploitation of
slave women was one of the primary
reasons why matrifocal slave families
formed. As women who were considered
property by their owners and racially
inferior by whites, slave women were
extremely vulnerable to sexual advances by
their masters, their masters’ kin, and free
men in general. Some slave women were
able to become mistresses of free men and
received favors from them. While such
women sought o r bought their own
freedom as well as the freedom of their
children, most slave women could not.
Not all of the babies of slave women and
“unknown fathers” could have been the
children of free men. Undoubtedly, many
were the children of slave men. In other
slave populations, historians have found
that slave women often had their first
children before they married (Gptman
1976, pp. 60-67; Slenes 1987, p. 220). Later,
they married and formed nuclear families
with their mates and their children.” This
may have been the case in Parnaiba. Such
matrifocal families would have been of
short duration and later would have
evolved into nuclear families. Possibly,
some of these matrifocal families may have
been polygamous families where slaves
recreated a common African family form.
Among the free population, matrifocal
families also appeared. In 1820, women
headed 28 percent of all households in the
free population; of these female heads of
households, nineteen percent were single
mothers. Similarly, a high number of poor
Searching for the Slave Family in Colonial Brazil
free women baptized their children giving
the father as “unknown.” Still, as Figure 1
shows, the proportion of single slave
women remained greater than that of free
women. The phenomenon of matrifocal
families thus was more prevalent in the slave
population than in the free population.
Matrifocal and nuclear families are both
parts of what Peter Laslett and Richard
Wall (1972) call a “simple family,” that is a
family composed of parent($ and children.
But given the pervasiveness of female-
headed households in Brazil (Kuznesof
1980, 1991; Ramos 1991), it is important to
distinguish between those that had both
parents present (nuclear families) and those
headed by women (matrifocal families).
Here slaves were not unique from the free
population; what differed was the larger
number of matrifocal families among slaves.
The third kind of family life for slaves
in Parnaiba was solitary family life. These
were the slaves who lived with other slaves
with whom they had no blood or kinship
ties. Probably most slaves lived in solitary
families at some point in their lives-
Africans when they arrived in the town,
and Creoles when they had been sold. On
the larger plantations, these solitary slaves
lived in barracks segregated by sex (Costa
1989). On smaller farms, they may have
lived together in a communal sort of
relationship, perhaps sharing a shed. Slaves
belonging to masters with only one or two
slaves probably lived with the masters’
family, much as servants.
The family bonds of solitary slaves are
the most difficult for historians to recon-
struct. Solitary slaves, both men and
women, appear in property inventories and
in the census registers with their names,
ages, place of birth, color, and gender
recorded, but not their family relation-
ships. As Figure 2 shows, a large propor-
tion of slave men never married. Possibly
they had wives and fathered children
291
outside of the formal sacraments of
Catholic marriage and baptism. Perhaps
they moved in and out of temporary unions
with various slave women. Some probably
had no family ties at all.
While it may be impossible to accurately
compute how many slaves lived in nuclear
families, matrifocal families, or solitary
families, some rough estimates may be
derived from the evidence contained in the
censuses and property inventories from
Parnaiba. According to the 1820 census, 57
percent of slave women and 56 percent of
slave men over the age of 24 were classified
as married or widowed. These slaves and
their children lived in or had lived in
nuclear families, some of which may have
become extended families as time passed.
But since half of the children born in the
parish of Santana were born to single
mothers, these slave children probably
lived in matrifocal families, at least initially.
Some matrifocal families may have become
nuclear families when single mothers
married. The very high number of male
slaves over the age of 24 who remained
single (44 percent) suggests that the solitary
male was a pervasive feature of slavery. The
property inventories of the three largest
slaveowners in eighteenth-century,
Parnaiba underscore that a significant
number of slaves did not appear to have
family ties. While these slaves did not
necessarily live outside of families, as they
might be part of an extended family or a
kin network, they do not appear to have
lived in a domestic household.
For the slave couples who formed
families and bore children and for the single
mothers with children, the extra-familial
ties they established at baptism were an
important part of family life. Slaves
followed two patterns when selecting
godparents for their infants. Slaves either
linked their children horizontally to other
slaves or vertically to members of the free
292
population. Each strategy made sense: by
giving their children free godparents, and
possibly slaveowners, they hoped t o
provide their children access to more
powerful individuals in the community. By
choosing slave godparents for their child-
ren, on the other hand, they linked their
children into the slave community. Such
bonds served to reinforce the ties that slaves
had to each other.
As Stephen Gudeman and Stuart
Schwartz have shown, masters did not
serve as the godparents of their slaves
(1984, p. 407).16 In Parnaiba, no master
appeared as the godparent of his or her
slave except one. In that instance, a slave
baby about to die was baptized by his own
master, who performed the role of god-
father as well as that of priest.I7 While
masters did not serve as godparents in
Parnaiba, occasionally their children did
sponsor the slave children who belonged to
their parents. Six times in 115 baptisms of
slave children the unmarried children of
masters served as godparents for slaves.'*
Who were the godparents if not the
master or the members of the master's
family? Analysis of the baptism records
from the parish of Santana reveals that 32
percent of the godfathers and 34 percent of
the godmothers of slave babies were
themselves slaves. These slave godparents
came from the same parish as the baby,
most of them were unmarried, and most,
therefore, were young. Slaves tended to
sponsor the children of married slaves,
rather than the children of single mothers.
They sponsored more boys than girls.
Free persons living in the parish of
Santana served as the majority of the
godparents of slave babies. Most of the free
godparents, like the slaves, were single. Of
the free godparents, 36 godfathers and 19
godmothers were slaveowners, usually
small slaveholders who owned less than ten
slaves. Free godparents were more likely
JOURNALOF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16/No. 3/1991
Table 4
Godparents of Slave Babies
Babies
Legitimate Illegitimate
Godparents N % N %
Free 32 58 44 79
Slave 23 42 12 21
Total 55 100 56 100
Source: Baptisms of Slaves, 1770,1798,1820, parish of Santana.
than slave godparents to sponsor the
children of single mothers (see Table 4).
Slave godparents were twice as likely to
sponsor legitimate children. Free godpar-
ents sponsored more children of unknown
fathers. Why? One possible explanation
suggests that the slave nuclear family was
far more integrated into the slave commun-
ity than the matrifocal family. Slave
couples chose other slaves as godparents
for their children. Single mothers, whose
children were often mulattoes, chose free
godparents. Such a difference suggests that
the nuclear family served as the foundation
for slave community life, while single
mothers sought to build connections to free
men, perhaps as a way to achieve freedom
for themselves and their ~hi1dren.I~
The major difference between the fimily
lives of slaves and the family lives of the free
population in Santana de Parnaiba lies in
their family cycles. Like the families of the
free, slave families developed in response to
events in their own lives, such as marriages,
the births of children, and the deaths of the
aged. Yet unlike the free, events in the lives
of masters, such as marriages, births, and
deaths, affected the family lives of slaves.20
Thus, slaves lived within two family
cycles-one of their own making and
another of their masters'. One slave family
cycle began when nuclear families formed
as slaves reached their late twenties and
grew with the birth of children. Nuclear
Searching for the Slave Family in Colonial Brazil
families endured until families became
extended with the addition of kin or
fragmented due to the death of a spouse.
An alternate slave family cycle based on the
matrifocal family also developed. These
families formed and grew as single women
bore children.
Since Portuguese laws of inheritance
called for an equal division of family
property among all children of the
deceased, slaves, by law, had to be divided
equally among all heirs at inheritance. Thus
slaves who had been living in established
families would be powerless to stop the
dissolution of estates mandated by inher-
itance law. Moreover, Portuguese mar-
riage laws established the principle of
community property. Husbands and wives
each owned one half of the property
acquired during their marriage. Thus
inheritance took place twice: after the death
of each spouse. At each time, slaves were
evaluated and divided or sold to settle the
estate.
Slaves were the major part of the assets
of the planter class-accounting for 53%of
the value of their property (Metcalf 1986,
p. 463). Moreover, slaves, unlike land,
could be easily transported to the frontier
where younger generations of planters
opened new estates. Thus, inheritance and
the presence of the frontier worked in
tandem to break up slave families.
The division of Manoel Correa Penteado’s
estate in 1745 provides many clues to what
happened to slaves when their masters
died.21 As one of the largest estates in
eighteenth century Parnaiba, Manoel’s
estate offered the space for many slave
families to form. At Manoel’s death in
1745,25 slave families existed on the estate.
The majority of these (thirteen) were
nuclear families, followed by married
childless couples (eight), and four house-
holds headed by a single parent. When the
estate was inventoried and divided, one
293
heir, Fern50 Pais de Barros, managed to
consolidate almost half of the slaves into
his hands. In addition to the slaves he
inherited in his own right, Fern50 Pais de
Barros bid on and purchased slaves from
the estate when they were auctioned.
What happened to the slave families
after the death of their master? The first
observation that can be made is that the
probate court judge and the heirs refrained
from separating married slaves. All but one
of the slave couples remained together after
Manoel died.22But the probate judge and
the heirs did not take the same pains to
maintain the family tie between parents
and children. The slave couple Antonio
and Luiza’s two children ended up with
Fernlo’s brother Manoel. Two of Silvestre
and Felicia’s three children went to a
purchaser at the auction, as did their one-
year-old baby. Fern50 inherited three
children of the widow Eugenia, while his
brother Manoel inherited the widow
Eugenia herself. Fern50 inherited the two-
year-old son of Maria do Rozario, whose
matrifocal family was completely divided
among six heirs and purchasers at the
auction.
In 1749, only four years after Fernlo
Pais de Barros consolidated his estate b y ,
purchasing or inheriting 48 slaves from his
father, his wife (Angela Ribeira Leite) died.
As required by law, their community
property underwent the process of inherit-
ance. From Angela’s inventory, it is
possible to trace the slave families that
Fernso inherited or purchased in 1745
through the most vulnerable time in the
family cycle, that which followed the death
of their master.”
When the slave lists in Angela’s and
Manoel’s inventories are compared, many
of the same slave families are visible.
Silvestre and Felicia, whom Fernlo Pais de
Barros had purchased from the auction,
appear in Angela’s inventory with three
294
children. Claudio and Roza also appear in
Angela’s inventory with four children.
Eugenia, a widow with five children in
1745, is in Angela’s inventory as well.
Antonio and Luiza likewise show up in
Angela’s inventory with a daughter. The
evaluators described Vitoria, married to a
freedman in Ferniio’s household, and her
two children. Gracis and Irya, whom
Ferniio purchased in 1745, surface in
Angela’s inventory of 1749. The couples
Ignacio and Catharina, childless in 1745,
and Antonio and Mariana, also childless in
1745, similarly emerge in the inventory of
1749. Moreover, some slave families slated
to be sold or separated in Manoel’s
inventory emerge partially intact on
FernZo’s farm in 1749.
The presence of the same slave families
in both inventories might lead one to
conclude that slave families weathered the
storm of death and inheritance. But on
closer inspection, major changes did take
place in the family lives of these slaves. The
widow Eugenia, who had five children in
1745, had only two young children with her
in 1749. Only one of her children appears
in both inventories. Similarly, the three
children who appear with Silvestre and
Felicia are not the same children listed with
their parents in 1745. The story is the same
for virtually all of the slave families who
appear in both inventories. Nearly all had
lost some children who had been inherited
by heirs or sold at auction after Manoel’s
death. The families remained “nuclear” in
structure, but only because children had
been born since Ferniio’s father’s death.
Apparently the older children of these slave
families had been sold or inherited by other
heirs. Some of these children may have
continued to live in Parnaiba, but doubt-
lessly others had been taken by their new
masters to the frontier to the west.
Because their families were tied to events
in the families of their masters, particularly
JOURNAL OF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16/No. 3/1991
the mortality of the masters, slave families
rarely became large, complex, or extended.
Despite the prevailing belief that slave
women had low fertility in Brazil, the slave
women on these estates certainly bore
children. But slave families were not any
larger because inheritance separated
children from their parents. Nearly all of
the children described in Angela’s inven-
tory had been born since Manoel’s death.
Slaves had less stable family lives than
other social groups because they had no
control over the mortality of their masters
or over the process of inheritance. On large
estates where adult slaves could marry,
families formed. When masters or mis-
tresses died, however, inheritance began.
Then the bonds which slaves had ‘formed
so carefully with each other were rent apart.
Significantly, on the religious estates which
were not affected by inheritance, the largest
and most complex slave families formed
(Graham 1976).
This comparison between the slaves and
the free population reveals that slave
families resembled free families in many
respects. Marriage rates and the general
fertility rate are lower for slaves than for
the free while the proportion of adults who
remained single is higher for slaves. Ip part
these demographic measures differ because
the slave population had a larger number
of males relative to females, a fact caused
by the preference for men by African slave
traders. In the free population, the
migration of men to the frontier created the
opposite sex imbalance: women outnum-
bered men (Figure 3). But the major
difference between free and slave families
rests with the impact of Portuguese laws of
inheritance. Because property had to be
divided equally among all children at
inheritance, slave families broke apart
when their owners died. Factors beyond
the control of slaves, such as the mortality
of masters or inheritance laws, thus
Searching for the Slave Family in Colonial Brazil
prevented slave nuclear families from
becoming large, extended, or complex.
How typical are these patterns of slave
family life for colonial Brazil? The unusual
features of slave family life in Santana de
Parnaiba are the high proportion of
married slaves and the higher birth rate of
slave women. Yet the basic contours of
slave family life found in Parnaiba are
characteristic of other agricultural com-
munities. Nuclear families predominated,
especially on large estates. Matrifocal
families formed on smaller estates. Solitary
individuals with no discernable family ties
lived on virtually every estate. As has been
confirmed by recent research in Bahia,
masters did not serve as godparents to their
slaves. Inheritance, and the subsequent
division of property, affected slaves
everywhere with the concomitant rupture
in slave family life.
As historians reconstruct the demo-
graphy of slavery in the different regions of
Brazil, it is likely that they will find
significant variation among regions and
over time. The relatively stable agricultural
economy of eighteenth-century Parnaiba,
plus the established presence of the local
parish priest, probably are responsible for
the high marriage and fertility rates of
slaves in Parnaiba. Other regions which
lacked these characteristics may have
created a very different context for slave
family life. Nevertheless, the slave families
in this town shared basic similarities with
slave families elsewhere in Brazil. Most
important of these is the effect of inheri-
tance, a process which prevented slave
families in Brazil from enduring over time.
NOTES
1. But slave families did not resemble the
families of slaveowners who had very different
household structures (Metcalf 1986).
295
2. According to Kulikoff, “No slaves
enjoyed the security of legal marriage’’ in the
tobacco-growing region of the Chesapeake in the
eighteenth century (1986, p. 353). Higman states
that Anglican and Catholic priests performed
“relatively few marriages” in the British
Caribbean, but that Moravian and Wesleyan
missionaries did emphasize the importance of
marriage (1984, pp. 369-370). In Latin America,
however, the church supported in principal the
right of slaves to marry (Silva 1984).
3. Costa and Gutitrrez (1984) do a similar
analysis of the manuscript censuses for SBo
Paulo and Parani and find a much larger gap
between the slave and the free population in
1830.
4. The larger numbers of slave men was
due to the effects of the slave trade which
favored men over women. Among the free
population, the migration of men to the frontier
left behind a society in which women outnum-
bered men.
5. Elsewhere, I have reported that mar-
riages between slaves of different masters
reached 13percent. This figure was based on the
inclusion of marriages between slaves and
Indian wards (udministrudos), who also might
belong to different masters. I have eliminated
these marriages in this analysis of slave
marriages (Metcalf 1983, p. 181; 1987, p. 238).
6. The slave couple Antonio and Elena
belonged to cousins; the slave couple Manoel
and Maria belonged to an uncle and a nephew. ’
The slave couples Victorino and Roza, Manoel
and Maria, Francisco and Maria also appear to
have belonged to kin, judging from the names
of their masters (Slave marriage register,
Arquivo d a Curia Diocesana de Jundiai,
hereafter ACDJ).
7. For example Rafael, a slave, and Anna,
a free woman, both lived on the estate of
Rafael’s master as did Bento, a free man who
lived as a retainer on the estate of his wife’s
mistress (1820 census of Parnaiba, Arquivo do
Estado de Siio Paulo, hereafter AESP).
8. Crude birth rate = number of births in
a yearlsize of population in same year * 1000.
9. General fertility rate = number of births
in a yearlwomen aged 15-44 years in same year
* 1000.
296
10. Schwartz reports that in Bahia “slave
women were simply not bearing enough
children for this population to grow or even
remain stable without considerable additions
from the [slave] trade”(1985, p. 360).
11. Inv. Manoel Correa Penteado 1745,
Inventhrios do Primeiro Oficio, hereafter IPO,
#14,406, 676-64 AESP; Inv. Rodrigo Bicudo
Chassim 1743, IPO #14,648,698-86 AESP; Inv.
Domingos Rodrigues de Fonseca Leme 1738,
IPO #15,085,740-128 AESP; see also the estate
of Angela Ribeira k i t e 1749, IPO #14,584,692-
80 AESP.
12. Inv. Agostinha Rodrigues 1757, Inven-
tarios e Testamentos, hereafter IT, 534-57,
AESP.
13. Inv. Barbara Pais 1761, IT 539-62,
AESP.
14. For example, the mulatto slave Bento
(six years old), Maria (three years old), Antonio
(three years old), Ricardo (five months), and
Manoel (six months) were all freed by their
fathers or probable fathers in the 1780s and
1790s (Notary Books, Livros de Parnaiba,
hereafter LP, 85, 56, 57, 6061-13, 6065-17,
AESP).
15. Motta(n.d.) cites such acase in Bananal
wherein a slave mother listed in one census as
“single” appeared in a subsequent census as
“married” to the father of her children.
16. Previous historians, e.g., Mattoso,
1986, p. 114, have suggested that masters did
serve as godparents to their,slaves.
17. Baptism of Caetano 1820, ACDJ. It
was not uncommon for a man to stand in for
the priest and baptize babies in extremis-those
judged near death.
18. Slave baptisms on 4/ 11, 71 17, and S/
26 1798, and 4/9,4/ 13, and 11/21 1820, ACDJ.
19. This reinforces the “mulatto escape
hatch” theory developed by Carl Degler (1971).
20. Gutman (1976, p. 138) illustrates this
same phenomenon in the United States south.
21. Inv. Manoel Correa Penteado 1745,
IPO #14,406,676-64 AESP.
22. This couple who was separated later
appeared together among Ferniio Pais de
Barros’s slaves.
23. Inv. Angela Ribeira Leite 1749, IPO
#14,584, 692-80 AESP.
JOURNALOF FAMILY HISTORY Vol. 16/No. 311991
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