“BEING IN MY RIGHT MIND, I MAKE MY WILL”: TESTAMENTARY REVELATIONS OF AFRICANS IN 18TH-CENTURY RECIFE.

Abstract

In this article we investigate two wills made in the nineteenth century, in the parish (now neighborhood) of Recife, by Africans who went through the experience of captivity and later conquered freedom. One of them, of a gentleman, single, and who had a daughter with whom he lived from an early age; the other, of a widow who had no children.

These wills reveal to us a little of the trajectory of these two Africans, such as: the circle of friendship, the belief, the conception of the world, the place where they lived. Therefore the wills reveal aspects of life beyond the hour of death.