Originally posted on Oct. 14, 2015
Continuing with our study of a Macanese family, the following article outlines Josephine Castro’s maternal side beginning with her earliest known relatives. Along with individual variants, such as settlement outside Macau and involvement in trade and government service, we also see a tendency to transfer cultural patterns in family size, location, and employment to new generations.
The Favacho Family
There is scant information on the next branch of the family, the Favachos. Tobias Maria Lopes’ second wife, Capitolina Maria Favacho, was the widow of a Macanese man named da Silva, but had no children from that union. Capitolina then married Tobias Lopes in January 1888 at Hong Kong’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. Their oldest child, Edeltrudes Maria Inocencia Lopes Castro, was Josephine Castro’s maternal grandmother.
Most of the five children in the family moved between Shanghai and Hong Kong throughout their adult lives. As we saw earlier, Edeltrudes met her husband, Frederico Castro, in Hong Hong and moved to Shanghai around 1905. Her brother, Cesar Cirino Lopes (1890 – 1952) was born in Hong Kong, moved to Shanghai until after World War II, then moved back to Hong Kong. His youngest brother, Luciano Leonel Favacho Lopes (1893 – 1969*) probably worked for a French trading company in Shanghai (it was rumored, but no records can be found). He was listed, however, in 1920 as a member of the Portuguese Company of the Shanghai Volunteer Corp, a local militia of about three hundred men, which formed part of the larger force that numbered nearly two thousand men from the French, German, Italian, British, and Portuguese concessions then existing in Shanghai. Luciano left Shanghai for Hong Kong in 1949, and eventually migrated to the United States, where he died around 1969.
It is also interesting to note that two of the five Favacho-Lopes children married outside the Macanese community. Despite the social stigma associated with inter-racial marriage that existed in European settlements at the turn of the twentieth century, Cesar Cirino Lopes (1890 – ?), the oldest son, and Esméria Lucrécia Lopes (1895 – ?), the youngest daughter, found partners outside the community. Cesar, for example, was married initially to Gualdamira Gertrudes dos Santos (1889 – ?), a Macanese woman, who bore him four children through 1921. He then married a Chinese woman, Norma Au, sometime in the early 1920s, producing no children. Cesar then married Lily Yuk-Lin Chan, who was also Chinese, in 1944. They subsequently produced three additional children from June 1945 to October 1951. The youngest sister, Esméria, married a German named Edward George Sharnhorst in 1921.
The d’Aquino Family
The earliest recorded relative of Josephine Castro’s mother, Maria Amelia de Aquino, suggests another migratory variant among early Luso- Asians. His given name, however, was not d’Aquino but Sebatiao Rodrigues, who lived and raised a family among Portuguese settlers in Tonkin (modern day Cambodia) in the late 17th century. Historian George Bryan Sousa writes that Portuguese traders at the time were competing with the Dutch for Japanese silver, which was brought to Tonkin by Japanese merchants after the closure of Nagasaki and other ports around 1640. The silver was traded for Chinese silk obtained by the Portuguese through Macau and Canton, which was in high demand by the Japanese aristocracy. Japanese silver also was used to purchase other Chinese and Asia goods, such as porcelain, for huge profits in Europe.
In Sebatiao Rodrigues’ case, we can only speculate that his parents were probably Portuguese, racially-mixed if they were born in Goa, or among the small group who came from Europe and settled in Tonkin in the late 17th century. Although we do not know how Rodrigues made his living, he was likely a merchant trader. He also may have been elderly when he died, given the dates of his appearance in Tonkin, and was married twice to mixed-race women. The first was named Inacia da Silva, who gave birth to a son named Bemvido Manuel Rodrigues (his dates of birth and death are unknown), but Inacia died shortly after. Sebatiao then married again to an unknown woman, and either produced or adopted a second son named Joao Tomas Rodrigues around 1770.
Joao Tomas Rodrigues (1770* – 1829) established a few precedents of his own. Genealogist Jorge Forjaz revealed that after Joao lost both parents at a young age, he and his older brother were tutored by a Jesuit named Father Antonio Rodrigues da Costa, possibly a relative, who brought them to Macau in 1794. After 1810 Joao Rodrigues began identifying himself as Joao Tomas d’Aquino, “apparently because of family quarrels”, Forjaz writes. While we do not know the nature of the disputes, which may have involved relatives in Macau, records indicate that Joao entered the shipping industry to make his fortune. He was eventually named Captain of a brig named the “Desempenho” (Performance), a trading vessel which traveled between Macau, the Malaccan straits, and Goa in the early 19th century. His share of cargos allowed him to settle in Macau and raise a family of six children from 1804 through 1814.
Joao de Aquino’s fourth child, Maximiano Jose Januario d’Aquino (1811 to 1885), successfully used the family wealth to become a prominent figure in Macau. He became a wealthy merchant who purchased several houses near St. Joseph’s Seminary on a street later named after him called “Largo do Aquino”. In 1842 Maximiano was elected Almotace’ da Camara, a municipal official responsible for the supervision of weights and measures, and the taxation of food prices. He also was in charge of regulating food distribution in times of shortages, which would have been a key position as Macau’s trade declined and tensions with neighboring Chinese resulted in irregular deliveries coming across the border. He was later appointed Captain of the 4th battalion of the local militia, perhaps in the event of civil conflicts.
Like most Macanese men during the period, Maximiano also raised a large family. His first marriage to Rosa Brigida Barradas in February 1834 produced seven children up to January 1845. His second marriage, a year and four months after the birth of the last child, was to Rosa’s younger sister Candida Maria Barradas in April 1846. This union provided him with an eight child in 1847. Such a marriage so soon after the death of the first wife was not uncommon among the close-knit Macanese community of Macau, and was a feature of familial ties well into the 20th century. This was particularly true if the family was large and the children were young. In d’Aquino’s case, the children were all under twelve years old. The links between personal and professional life are also a distinguishing trait. During his life, for example, Maximiano’s business dealings led him to trade in both Macau and Hong Kong, resulting in him being listed in the Hong Kong Almanac of businesspeople in 1846. He also was influential enough to secure a position for his youngest son, also named Maximiano d’Aquino, with the merchant firm of Sassoon & Company in 1861, as recorded by Jose’ Pedro Braga. As Macau continued its decline after the end of the Opium wars, the senior d’Aquino probably ended his business ventures in the 1860’s and retired to Hong Kong, where he died around 1885.
The pattern of migration as suggested by the Rodrigues-d’Aquino family, from Portugal to Goa in the early 1600’s, to Cambodia later that century, to Macau in the 18th century, and finally to Hong Kong by the late 19th century continued to evolve in succeeding generations. The only deviation, in this case, was to Cambodia, which follows other historical evidence that early Portuguese trade appeared throughout Southeast Asia, particularly in what is now modern day Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand. The general migratory trend toward Macau and Hong Kong can be attributed to business interests in which family members were involved, particularly as Macau’s economy flourished and slowly contracted between 1700 and 1850, and as Hong Kong’s expanded with British interests in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was especially true as family members began settling in one of the most successful port cities opened to European trade, Shanghai.
This movement is evident among Maximiano d’Aquino’s descendants. For example, his oldest son Jose’ Estevao d’Aquino (1835 – 1903) was born in Macau, was married in Hong Kong in 1860 where he worked in business, and died in Shanghai in 1903. Birth, marriage, business records indicate that at least three of his siblings married and resettled in Hong Kong in the late 19th century, and it is likely that the other siblings followed suit. Jose’ d’Aquino’s third son, Josephine Castro’s grandfather on her mother’s side, Joao Tomas d’Aquino (1868 – 1940), was born and married in Hong Kong, and worked for China Traders Insurance Co. from 1895 to 1899, and for the trading firm of Butterfield & Swire beginning in 1900. By February 1901, however, Joao was in Shanghai for the birth of his fifth child. He remained there and died in 1940. Joao Tomas’ fourth daughter and Josephine Castro’s mother, Maria Amelia de Aquino (1902 – 1944) and her four younger brothers were all born in Shanghai. In Maria’s case, she returned to marry Frederico Henrique Castro II in Hong Kong in 1929, and returned to Shanghai to raise five children. Her oldest, Josephine, was born there in 1931, but as outlined earlier, migrated back to Hong Kong and eventually Macau to wait out the second world war until returning to Hong Kong in 1945.
Despite the paucity of information, the patterns evident from our outline of Josephine Castro’s ancestral lines suggest, in the final analysis, a number of cultural signposts that are consistent throughout the Macanese community.
