 Pessoa was born in Lisbon on 13 June 1888.When Pessoa was five, his father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessôa, died of tuberculosis and the following year, on 2 January, his younger brother Jorge, aged one, also died.After the second marriage of his mother, Maria Magdalena Pinheiro Nogueira, proxy wedding to João Miguel dos Santos Rosa, Fernando sailed with his mother for South Africa in the beginning of 1896, to join his stepfather, a military officer appointed Portuguese consul in Durban, capital of the former British Colony of Natal.