One of the things we do is help our members find their genealogical history by "connecting" them to our Icelandic Roots tree. To do this, we use many tools including old Icelandic census records, parish records, regional records and genealogical books. Occasionally, we run up against a brick wall and would like to use this audience as a resource!
A month ago, we received an unusual inquiry. That's because most Icelanders emigrated from Iceland during the emigration period (1870 - 1914) and emigrated in groups to Canada and the USA via Scotland. In this situation, the request came from Italy!
The person's grandfather was Eduardo Teixeira Coelho, who was born on Terceira Island in the Azores on January 4th, 1919. Eduardo was a Portuguese comic book artist best known for his adventure series Ragnar le Viking!
Eduardo's father was Gregario Bernardo Alexandersson Coelho. Portuguese law, in effect in the Azores, required Gregario to change his name from Alexandersson to Coelho.
We were told that Gregario's father emigrated from Iceland and worked on a cable ship that was laying telegraph lines. Since the first ocean Icelandic telegraph was not laid until 1906, he must have emigrated before then, perhaps with the group of Icelanders that came to Curitiba, Brazil in 1873. Our search ends here. We continue to look at Icelandic census record for someone with the first name Alexander who matches any of our scenarios.
We need your help! If you have any clues about this case, please send them to support@icelandicroots.com! We occasionally have mysteries like this one and hope to use this forum to learn more. Put on your detective hats!