Ana de Jesus

Like many other enslaved persons of her time, Ana de Jesus must have won her freedom with the savings she accumulated by finding alluvial gold in the rivers of Vila Rica. Although it is not known how she made a living, we know that she prospered to the point of also buying some slaves, as was common for many freedpersons who lived in Minas Gerais in the last decades of the seventeenth century. There is also no record of when she was born or died. However, documents reveal that she married Tomás de Freitas in January 1745, who was, until then, an enslaved man belonging to her.