This article addresses the theme of family in the scope of the Parish of Senhor Bom Jesus of Cuiabá, the oldest and most populated one. Its main focus was to understand how the local specifications pertinent to the region of Mato Grosso would have forged alternative forms of family organizations than to focus on the existence of patriarchal family characteristics. It also studied to what extent families of Cuiabá in their various forms have accepted illegitimate children. The research was carried out by consulting the baptism documents (1853-1890 period) of the Archives of the Metropolitan Curia of Cuiabá. Among the results, it was found that resorting to relatives seems to have been a common and recurrent solution in the care of the illegitimate kid, which shows that the family was the domain chosen at large to shelter the ones born out of formal marriages.
Family; Frontier; Illegitimacy
