Historical Demography: alternative method for building demographic datasets from parish registers data and an exploratory application to a Brazilian colonial parish (1709 to 1804)

However abundant in the archives of the colonial period, good quality parish registers remain highly under-utilized and underestimated by Brazil historical demographers, except for the last two or three decades of the 19th century. In addition, since they are a long-term register-based data set, parish registers provide an opportunity for using direct demographic analysis methods, including cohort fertility rates, as tools for fertility analysis. The major reason for the scarce use of these valuable sources is attributed to the difficulty of finding ready-to-use historical demographic datasets with information generated from long-term vital events series recorded in the original handwritten parish books.
In order to overcome the main methodological difficulty, this paper aims to presenting an alternative method to develop a demographic data set of censitarian characteristics, based upon colonial parochial registers. The basic analytical unit is a well defined population attached to a territory with well known boundaries: the parish. The method includes the establishment of criteria to identify and attribute age to the Parish residents, overcoming sources limitations and deficiencies.