# Gracia Maria da Conceição Magalhães: An African in the Recôncavo of Rio de Janeiro  
Even after she was no longer a slave, the memories of the journey from Africa to Rio de Janeiro never disappeared. Gracia Maria da Conceição Magalhães had time to remember everything before her death. She took comfort in the knowledge that she had earned enough money in her life to guarantee all the Catholic sacraments. She would be shrouded in the habit of Saint Anthony, a special item, and her burial would be held in the cemetery of the confraternity of Our Lady of the Rosary, located in the parish of Nossa Senhora da Piedade de Iguaçu, where she lived out her last years. Judging by the pompous name she bore after being manumitted and by her ostentatious possessions, few people would imagine that Gracia Maria was an African, born in Guinea. She died just before Christmas, on 18 December 1789. Though a member of Our Lady of the Rosary, she was especially devoted to Our Lady of the Conception. Wrong were those who thought that she owed her surname only to Luiz de Magalhães, the former master who liberated her. Always canny, she paid her contributions  
to the confraternity. In this manner, she ensured that everything would be done according to her will, since she was certain that the confraternity would meet the obligations that governed the religious institution. She was a widow when she passed away, her husband, Manoel Gomes Torres, having died years before.