MMIPO

José Rodrigues d'Araújo Porto was born on January 10th, 1815 in Porto. Son of Luís Antonio Rodrigues de Araújo and Ana Albina São José he was baptized in the Church of Santo Ildefonso. He lived for 31 years in the city of Recife, Pernambuco Province, in Brazil, where he married Cândida Cardosa d'Araújo Porto.

Together they had a son, named José, who was never married or had any descendants. At the date of his testament, drawn up in November 28, 1883, both his wife and his son had already died. After returning home from Recife, he lived for 12 years in the city of Lisbon. After this period he returned to Porto.

In the tenth and nineteenth testamentary dispositions, in a document that has a total of fifty-nine, a certain amount of donations were designated to the Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Porto both in Registrations of Portuguese Debt, with an income of three percent, or the equivalent in revenues in 1881 Government Bonds, with an income of five percent, with the obligation to pay Maria de Jesus Coelho the amount of one hundred thousand reis (Portuguese currency at the time) a month and also to pay his uncle, José Marcelino Peres Pinto and wife, the sum of thirty thousand reis a month until their deaths, among other legacies. Another obligation assigned to the Santa Casa was to, annually and perpetually, perform six Masses, one for his soul, another one for his wife and son as well as three more for the souls of his and her wife's relatives. Also contemplated was the obligation to, annually and in a perpetual way, provide six full winter clothes to six poor, three of each sex.

Many institutions in Brazil and in Portugal (Porto and Lisbon) were contemplated with donations. Among the institutions under the aegis of the Misericórdia do Porto: Recolhimento das Lázaras e Lázaros, the Recolhimento das Velhas Inválidas and the Asilo dos Entrevados de Cimo de Vila (current Hospital de S. Lázaro), the Asilo Barão de Nova Sintra (current Colégio Barão de Nova Sintra), the Recolhimento das Meninas Órfãs de S. Lázaro (current Colégio Nossa Senhora da Esperança).

In the forty-eighth testamentary disposition it is explicit the desire of Araújo Porto to allocate the remaining of his heritage to the creation (or support) of an institution dedicated to the care of deaf-mutes, which would be under the administration of Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Porto. This structure, dubbed Instituto Araújo Porto, was inaugurated on February 26, 1893. The building is situated in RuaRua Joaquim de Vasconcelos street on terrains that had been donated to Misericórdia by another benefactor, José Vaz de Araújo Veiga.

José Rodrigues de Araújo Porto died on July 27th , 1887. He was buried in Lisbon, as expressed in his testament.

Portrait of José Rodrigues d'Araújo Porto

Oil on canvas

Exposed in the room dedicated to the history and action Misericórdia do Porto,

Painted in 1890 by Eduardo Teixeira Pinto Ribeiro.