The house on the high ground
How the Casa do Alto got its name — the family took the high fields no one else wanted, worked them harder than anyone, and never let the name go. Every branch carries some version of it.
Sample story · add yours
Stories & memories
The family in its own words
Records give us names and dates. Stories give us the people. This is a place for oral histories, recollections, letters, sayings, traditions, and the milestone memories that make an ancestor more than a line on a chart.
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Recently added stories
Submitted by relatives and approved by the curator.
🇺🇸 Featured story
From Freixo da Serra to America
Sometime in the last century, one of our own climbed down from the granite highlands, boarded a ship, and crossed the ocean to the United States — joining the great wave of Portuguese who built new lives in the mill towns of New England and the cities of New Jersey. They carried a language, a faith, and a village name: Freixo da Serra.
This is the family's central story, and the one we are working hardest to document — from the passenger manifest that first named the village, to the census pages and naturalization papers that trace the family's American beginnings.
Names, dates, ships, and places are still being confirmed — add what your side of the family remembers.
🇺🇸 Featured story
From Ludlow to the Capital and the Valley
Of the five children born to Antonio and Angela Guerra in the jute-mill town of Ludlow, Massachusetts, it was Serafim “Serf” Lawrence Guerra (1926–2019) who carried the family furthest. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, earned a degree in chemistry, and — in a fitting echo of the family's Portuguese-speaking roots — worked as an interpreter for the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
He founded his own company, Guerra Technical Sales, and married Constance Amber Bell — a marriage that lasted 74 years. Together they raised eight children: Tony, Marvin, Chuck, Larry, Connie, Melissa, Michelle, and Pamela. In Maryland he threw himself into civic life — the American Chemical Society, the Manor Country Club — before moving south to Virginia, where he served on planning bodies for Virginia Tech, on Fauquier County's zoning board, and on the board of the Library of Virginia. He was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Silver Spring, Maryland.
His eldest son, Anthony “Tony” Lawrence Guerra Sr. (1945–2024), later settled in Frederick, Maryland, and had a daughter named Angela Guerra Roelse — carrying the name of the immigrant matriarch, Angela Guerra, into a new American generation.
This Massachusetts → Maryland → Virginia line is now the family's most extensively
documented emigration branch — built from published obituaries — and we feature it more
prominently than the Brazil story, which remains Unverified.
Sources listed on Sources & Method.
More from the family
Recollections & traditions
The saying at the table
An old family saying, repeated before a hard task — the kind of small inherited phrase that only survives if someone writes it down.
Sample story · add yours
The wedding photograph
A single surviving photograph, and the memories different relatives attach to it. A good example of how one image can anchor many stories.
Sample story · add a photo
Other destinations
A one-way passage to Brazil
Not every departure led to America. The family always said Joaquim sailed for São Paulo around 1901 and was never seen again in the Serra. We keep his story here as part of the record, and we are still searching for his passenger manifest — and, we hope, for his descendants in Brazil.
Documented as family tradition; passenger records under review. Know something about the Brazil branch?
A gentle guide
What makes a story worth keeping
Almost anything, honestly. But if you're not sure where to start, these tend to be treasures:
- Oral histories — what an elder told you about their parents and grandparents.
- Everyday detail — trades, nicknames, recipes, songs, the way someone spoke.
- Turning points — a marriage, an emigration, a move to the town, a hardship survived.
- Objects & documents — a photograph, a letter, an entry in a family bible.
- Sayings and traditions — the small inherited things that vanish if unrecorded.
Don't worry about polish or certainty. Tell us what you remember and how you know it — whether it's a proven fact or "the way my grandmother always told it." We'll label it honestly and keep it safe.
Your memory belongs here
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