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Dr. Michael Lobo

Historian · Genealogist · Scientist

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Your donation helps preserve the heritage of the Mangalorean Catholic community for generations to come.
Dr. Michael Lobo — PhD scientist, historian, and genealogist — has spent over three decades documenting the history, genealogy, and cultural legacy of Mangalorean Catholic families worldwide. His Genealogical Encyclopaedia of Mangalorean Catholic Families spans over 10,000 pages and records more than 1,000 families — a work unparalleled in the world.
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AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO:

"A Genealogical Encyclopaedia of Mangalorean Catholic Families"

IMPORTANT NOTE: This Preface was written in 1996, when the work as a whole was a little over 2000 pages. It has since grown to 10,000 pages.

In the intervening years, copies of my original 2000 page version went into unofficial circulation and various genealogical websites have emerged on the worldwide web with no credit given to me.

They have all been copied from my original 2000 page version that went into circulation. I am the only Mangalorean genealogist who has carried out research in the Portuguese and Latin birth and marriage registers of the old parish churches.

PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL 1996 VERSION OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA

This is a book on the genealogy of families of a community. It is, to my knowledge, the only work of its kind in existence.

What is the purpose served by such a work? This is a question that was put to me by numerous persons whom I met while researching the material for this book. We live in an era in which communities all over the world are undergoing a slow but steady decline. In former times - in fact even as recently as the early years of the 20th century, community life played an essential role in human existence. Members of a particular community lived in their native town or village for most of their life-spans; they shared the same religion, language and culture as other members of their community - and, with rare exceptions, they married within their community. But with today's advancing technology, the world has grown smaller and members of a particular community are spread all over the world. Inevitably this has led to a blending or fusion of communities & cultures - and marriages between persons of different communities, or even different nationalities, have become the rule rather than the exception. The youth of today are concerned chiefly with the present and perhaps the future - but the past is history. So where then is the need for a work of this kind which is concerned entirely with the past?

There are two main reasons which led me to embark on the study that has culminated in this book. One of these is personal, the other more general. Let me begin with the former. For as long as I can remember, I have always had a desire to create something of lasting worth. As a student, my major interest was mathematics. Accordingly I went into a research career in mathematics with nebulous hopes that I might one day succeed in tackling some famous unsolved problem. But it was not to be. Although I was, in due course, awarded a doctorate - and although my technical papers have now and again been accepted in international journals - I cannot, in all honesty, claim to have to created anything of truly lasting worth in my field of specialization. Science, by its very nature, must keep progressing; work that may have been of some significance in its time may soon be rendered obsolete because of the march of science in another direction. And this has been the fate of much of my contribution to mathematics. It is a matter of considerable frustration to me that my doctoral thesis - into which I put in years of labour - is now buried in the archives of the library at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. No mathematician has any further use for it, because the field of research to which it relates is now obsolete.

At various stages in my career, I have attempted to fulfil my potential by working on subjects wholly different from my professional field. I have always been fascinated by the study of origins and at one stage worked on the compilation of a dictionary of English words deriving from Ancient Greek. At another period, I attempted a similar study of origins - this time of popular songs. Both these works are of near-encyclopaedic size; neither has as yet been published, though I hope they may be some day. I have tentatively shelved them because, for the last few years, I have been wholly engrossed in my third major venture into the study of origins - the origins of families of the Mangalorean Catholic community.

It is now difficult for me to pinpoint any definite moment at which I made the decision to embark on this study. It would be true to say that the idea grew gradually; certainly during the early stages of the project, I did not envisage producing anything on such a major scale. Initially my interest was sparked off by my discovery of an antique baptismal register at Milagres Church (and later of its counterpart at Rosario Cathedral). The register stretched over the period 1810-80 and I was quite captivated by the feel of the yellowed paper, the beautiful calligraphic handwriting and the old Portuguese script which was then the official language of the ecclesiastics. One day when browsing through this register, I discovered the birth record of my great-grandfather Antony Peter Lobo. I reproduce it here:

Aos doze de Setembro de mil octocentos e quarenta e hum annos por minha commissao o Padre Vincente Mariano Burreto puz os Santos Oleos a Pedro Antonio, nascido de hum mez e cinco dias, baptizado em casa por Laurenco Noronha, filho de Laurenco Lobo e de Ignacia Tellis: forao seos Padrinhos Francisco Mariano Mascarenhas e sua Mae Maria Saldanha por un ju commissar pez unceremonias Maria Fernandes sua nora, de que se fez este e me assignee.

Translated, this yields:

On the twelfth of September, one thousand eight hundred and forty one, my deputy, Father Vincente Mariano Burreto poured holy oil on Peter Antony, aged one month and five days, baptized in the house of Lawrence Noronha, son of Lawrence Lobo and Ignatia Tellis: the godparents were Francis Marian Mascarenhas and his mother Maria Saldanha who was represented at the ceremony by Maria Fernandes, her daughter-in-law, in good faith do I write these words.

Lawrence Lobo Prabhu, father of the child whose baptismal record is reproduced here, was an eminent member of the 19th century Mangalorean community. He was a munsiff, which was about the highest judicial position that a native could expect to attain in British India. In the course of his career, he came into the possession of vast acres of land in Mangalore including the whole of Lighthouse Hill, a portion of which he donated to the Jesuits for the foundation of St. Aloysius College. Lawrence Lobo Prabhu is now best remembered as the donor of the original site of St. Aloysius College.

Having discovered the birth record of Lawrence Lobo's eldest son Antony, I kept going through the register to locate the birth records of the other children of Lawrence and Ignatia. This became the nucleus of my first genealogical project - a biographical compilation of all the descendants of Lawrence Lobo (through both male and female lines of descent). I worked on this project in my spare time in late 1992 and early 1993 - and by the end of that year, had completed a first draft of the book which I contemplated publishing on a small scale hoping to find prospective buyers among the thousand odd descendants whose names featured in the book.

The line of descent from Lawrence Lobo Prabhu represented just one particular branch of my own ancestry and having by now become quite familiar with the old Portuguese script, I thought it worthwhile investigating some of the other lines. But I soon discovered that to attempt a comprehensive study of all my lines of ancestry would be a major undertaking, one that could not be reasonably attempted as a spare-time occupation. Not many people realize how rapidly the number of relations increase with each generation. For a typical individual, the totality of third cousins would probably run into thousands - and the totality of fourth cousins would cover a significant fraction of the community.

In fact if a member of a community truly wishes to discover all his ancestors and present-day relations, what he would need is a general reference book providing the genealogy of the families of his community. And as soon as I became convinced of this, I decided that rather than restrict my study to those families from whom I possessed direct descent, I would attempt a general study of the genealogy of the Mangalorean Catholic community.

As it happened, the moment I made this decision coincided with a turning phase in my life. I had come to the end of a contract at Cranfield University and rather than immediately attempt to find another, I decided that this would be an ideal time to take a break from my mathematical career and concentrate full time on this genealogy project. And so for two years, 1994-95, I immersed myself in this study. I copied virtually every 19th-century baptismal, marriage & death record I could locate at Rosario Cathedral and Milagres Church, cataloguing them according to surname. Unfortunately, only the baptismal registers were maintained in reasonably good condition; large sections of the marriage and death registers were missing. It is not really feasible to build up the genealogy of any family on the basis of baptismal records alone, but fortunately, at least in the case of the major families, I also had access to other sources of information. There were already published works on three important families - the Vas Naiks of Falnir (the first published work on the genealogy of a Mangalorean family), the Mascarenhases of Falnir, and the Fernandeses of Thonse (the family to which my mother belonged). There were also unpublished genealogies of various other families, most of them written by either Marian Saldanha (by profession a sea customs superintendant) or Rao Saheb Francis Lobo (by profession a deputy collector). Both these genealogists were very painstaking in their work – perhaps more so than the authors of the three aforementioned published works whose names are better-known because their books happen to be published.

To summarize then, this encyclopaedia is the end-product of a slow process of assimilation of material from various sources - church records, notes of earlier genealogists, and last but not least personal interviews with a large number of Mangaloreans, many of whom have settled in Bangalore, Bombay, Madras, and various other parts of India and even abroad. From a purely intellectual point of view, I have found this project immensely satisfying; it has been like solving a colossal jigsaw puzzle; each little church record or scrap of information from a personal interview serving to put one piece of the puzzle into place. I can truly say that I did not feel such a measure of satisfaction while working on my doctoral thesis. And I honestly believe that with the compilation of this work, I have achieved a major goal in my life - the creation of something of lasting value. It is true that my doctoral thesis is permanently buried in the library archives at the Indian Institute of Science, but I feel that this genealogical encyclopaedia will remain a standard work of reference for descendants of the Mangalorean Catholic community a hundred years from now.

This brings me back to the statement I made earlier - that there were two main reasons which led me to an embark on this genealogical project - one personal, the other more general. I have dwelt at sufficient length on the personal reason; let me now touch on the more general one.

Why study genealogy? Is a knowledge of the names of our remote ancestors going to have any effect on our everyday lives?

If I were asked these questions, I would reply with counter-questions. Why study history? Is a knowledge of the names of ancient kings & queens going to have any effect on present-day politics? And yet history, as a subject, is a compulsory part of the curriculum of nearly all schools.

If the importance of a subject is to be judged from a purely utilitarian viewpoint, then admittedly genealogy is of not of much value. But then neither is history. Neither is archaeology. And neither are any of various other scientific disciplines such as pure mathematics or galactic astronomy. Genealogy, in common with all these disciplines, cannot assist in the production of material comfort. But it is undoubtedly a valuable addition to human knowledge.

Admittedly not everyone is interested in genealogy - just as not everyone is interested in the disciplines named in the last paragraph. In the course of my research into this project, I encountered a wide spectrum of the Mangalorean community - their interest in my work ranging from very high to very low. However there were a sufficiently large number of persons in the high-interest range of the spectrum to make me convinced that what I was doing was worthwhile.

This is an appropriate point to make another comment. In the course of my various interviews, I could not help observing that the persons most interested in the work were descendants of the elite families of 19th century Mangalore. In a way, this was a little unfortunate because it is in connection with the lesser-known families that I really needed all the help I could get, if I were to build up their genealogies accurately (most of the elite families feature in the notes of 19th century genealogists). I cannot stress too strongly that the purpose of this work is not to glorify the descendants of these elite families. It is true that when discussing these families, I have pointed out the important roles they have played in the history of the community, but this is solely for reasons of historical accuracy. There is no implication whatever that descendants of other families are inferior because their ancestors happened to be less educated or wealthy. One might just as well argue that the modern American is inferior to the modern Greek or Egyptian.

Nevertheless, because I have received a greater degree of co-operation from some persons and a lesser degree (or none at all) from others, the work appears accurate in parts and sketchy in others. This inconsistency is unfortunate but unavoidable.

My purpose in studying the genealogy of our community was only to add to knowledge - to preserve the names of our ancestors for posterity. After all, however uninterested we may be in our ancestors, we owe them our very existence. Had this book not been written, the chances are that most of these names would have been permanently lost. Many of the registers which formed the basis of my research were already in an advanced state of dilapidation.

The work is not comprehensive. Although about 1000 families are covered, the community has many more; but it is simply impossible to attempt to treat them all. Perhaps more families can be included in future editions of the work. But the book is already very large - and as I mentioned at the start of this preface, it is probably the only work of its kind in existence. The Mangalorean Catholic community now has the distinction of being the only community in the world to have its own genealogical encyclopaedia.

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