User:Saguescabe/sandbox
Gervásio Pires | |
|---|---|
 At age 27, c. 1792 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 26 June 1765 São Frei Pedro Gonçalves, Recife, Brazil |
| Died | 9 March 1836 (aged 70) Recife, Brazil |
Gervásio Pires Ferreira (26 June 1765 – 9 March 1836) was a Brazilian merchant and politician.
Early life[edit]
Gervásio Pires was born in the freguesia of São Frei Pedro Gonçalves (commonly called Corpo Santo), Recife, in the early morning of 26 June 1765, being the twelfth child of the rich Portuguese trader Domingos Pires Ferreira and his wife D. Joana Maria de Deus, born in Pernambuco. After finishing primary school here and at the age of 11 to 12 years, his parents made him go to the College of Mafra, in Portugal, where he studied Humanities, moved to Coimbra, enrolling in the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Coimbra.
He was myopic. At the end of the first year of University he was attacked by a severe ophthalmia, from which he suffered throughout his life, approximately, and it was therefore necessary for him to abstract from forced academic study. Due to a constant tradition in the family, he dedicated himself more freely to studying Law, or as an audit at the University, or with a particular jurisconsult, and he often demonstrated that he had not wasted his time uselessly. He returned to Pernambuco.
His father then indicated the ecclesiastical status to him; but, disgusted by him, he returned to Lisbon, and registered as a businessman in that large square and dedicated everything to commerce, he married in the same city on 8 July 1792 with D. Genoveva Perpétua de Jesus Caldas, daughter of the rich trader José Pereira de Sousa Caldas, and his wife D. Teresa Joaquina de Jesus. Her father was the paternal uncle of the renowned Brazilian poet, the Dr. António Pereira de Sousa Caldas. Intelligent and active, austerely honest, the businessman Gervasio Pires Ferreira became a great capitalist and not so much because of this quality, as because of his knowledge and commercial acumen, he was generally attended and respected.