The Archive
An archive that exists nowhere else.
More than 800,000 immigrant records, passports, parish books, consular registration certificates, copied, digitized and indexed across two decades of archival work. Not a third-party license: our own work, document by document.
Figures updated July 2026. Success rate calculated over documentary searches completed between 2006 and 2026; success is defined as locating the document or equivalent proof.
How it was built
Two decades, document by document.
The Mnésis archive was not bought or licensed; it was built. Across more than twenty years of historical research, we worked through archives, libraries, notarial archives, civil registries and historical institutions from the north to the south of Brazil, as well as archives in Portugal and Spain. In every survey, one constant concern: not merely to find the information sought, but to preserve, catalog and organize everything found. Thousands of documents were copied, digitized and incorporated into our internal research databases, which today allow us to locate information, cross-reference data and reconstruct family trajectories at a depth automated search alone cannot match.
What sets it apart
Sources that are not on any subscription site.
Portuguese consular registrations: complete coverage
We hold every consular registration of the Portuguese consulates that exist in Brazil today. From the São Paulo consulate alone there are 87,348 Portuguese immigration documents (1890 to 1970), not counting the records of wives and children, which are exclusive to our archive.
Pará: 95% of Portuguese immigrants mapped
In the state of Pará we have mapped 95% of all Portuguese immigrants registered between 1870 and 1960, and virtually every documentary immigration collection, from Santarém to Belém, is digitized, alongside civil and parish registers.
Passports & travel files
Passport applications that reveal origin, parentage and, often, entire family histories, like letters kept inside the files.
Parish registers
Baptisms, marriages and deaths from before civil registration, copied directly from the parish books.
Consular registrations
Immigrant registration certificates with photographs, filiation and the exact birthplace, freguesia, concelho and distrito.
The record you need may already be here.
Tell us the surname and the place. We will tell you whether it is likely to be in our archive, or where else the documentary trail leads.
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