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Anonymous
2016-01-20 21:14:05 Post No. 583042
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Anonymous
2016-01-20 21:14:05
Post No. 583042
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Does anyone have any good info on the Protestant Reformation in Iberia and/or Portuguese and Spanish settlers in North America? It's sort of a genealogical query for me.I have this ancestor named Domingo Mederios (later family spelling Maderas, Maderio, Medeares, etc.). He lived in Virginia in the 1600's, but no one knows anything before that. His neighbors in the area he lived in seem to be mostly French and Dutch Protestants so we assume he came over with them, so maybe he was from the Spanish Netherlands. Mederios is a Portuguese name meaning "wooded place" but maybe he was a Spaniard of distant Portuguese ancestry.
He's recorded as being kind of well off, owning 3,000 acres for cattle ranching and tobacco and he imported some indentured servants, but his estate mostly went away when his heirs couldn't maintain it. I don't know if his good fortune was a result of coming to the colonies or if he already had money to set up shop when he came here. So in short I guess my questions are, aside from if there are any good sources on the history of Protestants in Portugal and Spain, was Protestantism at all popular among the Spaniards in the Netherlands (were there even that many there or was it just part of the Hapsburg empire?) or alternatively, was it at all common for Iberians from Brazil or the Caribbean to for whatever reason decide to try their luck in the British colonies up north? Though I figure they'd be more inclined to find somewhere Catholic like Louisiana to settle if that were there case. I'd ask these on a genealogy forum instead but while those people are good for asking about records and naming customs and that sort of thing, it's harder to find people knowledgeable about the overall historical circumstances. Thanks.
