About the family

A shared project, built with care

The Guerra Family Project is a community effort to document the ancestry, relationships, and stories of the Guerra family whose roots reach back to the parish of Freixo da Serra, in the municipality of Gouveia, Portugal.

What we are trying to do

Our goal is to build one trustworthy, welcoming home for what the family knows about itself. That means gathering names and dates, yes — but also the photographs in shoeboxes, the stories told at holidays, the letters kept in a drawer, and the memories that only the eldest relatives still carry. We want the record to be warm and human, and also honest about the limits of what can be proven.

What is known about our roots in Freixo da Serra

Freixo da Serra was a small civil parish in the highlands of the Serra da Estrela, in the Guarda district of central Portugal. For generations, Guerra families here lived by farming and by the wool trade that shaped this whole region. From this parish the family gradually spread — to the nearby town of Gouveia, to Lisbon, and, in the great emigration years, overseas to places such as Brazil. You can read more about the place itself on the Freixo da Serra page.

The earliest ancestors we can reliably identify sit in the early 1800s. Beyond that, the trail depends on surviving parish and civil records, and we mark clearly where the evidence becomes thin.

An honest note about the Guerra surname. "Guerra" is a widespread Portuguese surname, and there are many unrelated Guerra families across Portugal, Brazil, and beyond. Belonging to a Guerra family does not, by itself, mean belonging to this line. This project documents the specific, evidence-linked family connected to Freixo da Serra. We deliberately keep documented connections separate from speculative or unverified ones — see Sources & Method for how we label the difference.

How the research is compiled

The project grows in small, careful steps:

  1. Gather. Relatives contribute records, photos, and memories through the Contribute page — no account required.
  2. Review. A family curator checks each submission for clarity, privacy, and documentation quality before anything is published.
  3. Record. Confirmed facts are added to the family tree with their sources attached, so anyone can see the evidence behind a claim.
  4. Label. Where something is a family tradition or an open lead rather than a proven fact, we say so plainly with an evidence-status tag.
  5. Revisit. Nothing is ever "finished." New evidence can and does change the picture, and corrections are always welcome.

Our promises

We promise to protect the privacy of living relatives, to credit the families who share stories and photographs, to be transparent about our sources, and to never republish paywalled or copyrighted material from commercial genealogy platforms. Those commitments are spelled out in our Privacy & Ethics policy.

This is your project too

If you carry a piece of this family's story, it belongs here. Please share what you know or say hello.