João Maria Ferreira do Amaral

João Maria Ferreira do Amaral (Lisbon, Alcântara, March 4, 1803 – Macau, August 22, 1849) was the 53rd Portuguese Governor of Macau. He was appointed on April 21, 1846.

He was the first born son of Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral, born in Lisbon, Alcântara, on May 3, 1773, a Fidalgo of the Royal Household and a Sergeant of the Portuguese Army and of the Foreign Legion who died frozen at the French Invasion of Russia in the Winter of 1812, and wife, married in Lisbon, Alcântara, on February 4, 1801, Ana Isabel Cirila de Mendonça, and older brother of Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral, born in Lisbon, Alcântara, October 15, 1804, and Francisca Ferreira do Amaral, born in Lisbon, Alcântara, May 10, 1805, both without further notice.

A distinguished and valliant Officer of the Portuguese Royal Fleet, who, in 1821, was a Midshipman and started his brilliant military career at the Fleet which, in Brazil, defended the rights of Portugal. In that campaign he lost his right arm. He was amputated without anesthesia and after the procedure he endured he took his own arm, threw it and shout "Viva Portugal!" ("Long live Portugal!").

In 1848, being a Parliamentary for Angola, he was appointed Governor of Macau, where he was murdered assassinated by the Chinese residents for unilaterally taxing them against the wishes of the Chinese government.

He married posthumously by proxy through a testamentary disposition in Lisbon, Santa Catarina, on October 20, 1849 with Maria Helena de Albuquerque (Funchal, São Pedro, 1817 – Lisbon, June 6, 1909, then widow of António Teixeira Dória, ...th Lord of the Majorat of ... (married in 1836 and by whom she had an only son João Eduardo Teixeira Dória, an Artillery Officer, born in Lisbon, São Paulo, October 13, 1841, who died unmarried and without issue), and later 1st Baroness de Oliveira Lima (Decree of October 18, 1883) (in remuneration of the services of her late third husband the Councilor and General-Director of the Ministry of the Navy and Overseas Manuel Jorge de Oliveira Lima (Porto, Santo Ildefonso, October 13, 1804 – Lisbon, July 11, 1876), without issue), in order to legitimize his only son Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral. She was the seventh of eight children of João Agostinho de Freitas Brito Figueiroa de Albuquerque (Funchal, Santa Maria Maior, June 14, 1793 – London, October 27, 1862), Successor in many Majorats, Colonel of Auxiliary Artillery, 372nd Commander of the Royal Order of Our Lady of the Conception of Vila Viçosa, of Portugal (April 14, 1852), and wife Carlota Amália de Ornelas e Vasconcelos, sister of the ...th Lord of the Majorat and 1st Baron de São Pedro.